#side-projects

For those of you Oceansouls who became fans of Johanna Kurkela by way of her collaboration with Tuomas on his solo album, there is good news! Tuomas and Johanna, along with Troy Donockley, have formed a musical project called Auri (Finnish for "aurora" or "sunrise"; thanks to Satu Eronen for the translation!). Surely this will be some great music to tide us all over until a new Nightwish album comes. More information can be found by clicking the photo above.

An old friend asked me to make a video for a project she’s working on. It’s for a good cause, and I thought it would take like an hour, max, so I said sure. I worked on it for like 6 hours yesterday and am not done. Turns out a thousand-word essay does not fit into a minute of video. My first attempt was 7 minutes. I’ve pared it down to 3, but I’m aiming for 1. I’ve seen my own face in the mirror…

The last mile is always the hardest.

I’m soaked from the rain. My tires spit with every spin, speckling my face with mud.

I turn right on 43rd, and start pedalling up the hill.

And it gets steeper. Steeper than I like. Cranks groan with every push, and so do my knees. I’m tired.

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Untappd is an app that provides a social aspect to one's beer drinking experience: log which beers you've had, connect to your friends, and see what they are drinking.  It's a great app!  There are so many craft beers available today, making it hard to remember what you've had and what is good, so I mostly use it for tracking purposes.

Today, I'm officially announcing BeerSwift, an app that connects to the Untappd platform.  The main idea is to complement the Untappd experience by providing faster, easier beer check-ins.  It will be very useful for power users, tracking beer flights, and events where you taste a lot of different beers.  I'm still in the planning phase, but here are the features most likely to end up in version 1:

Beer Queue: A simple list of all the beers you've been drinking. Add them as you go, then check them in to Untappd all at once!

Multiple Check-in Options: Quick Add, Barcode Scanning (scan the beer label), and Snap Photo (take a picture of the beer & it's automatically identified).

Offline Support: Queue up beers then check them in later at your convenience.

Focus on Speed: Spend less time on the phone and more time drinking/socializing.