all about the beer

Last night, P'unk Ave hosted another fantastic Junto.  This month's topic was Free Beer. And yes, there was plenty of free beer!  In bottles we had the Chris Matta wheat brew, and from Grain Star Brewery, a nice keg of luscious porter. 

The panel discussion centered around the Open Source movement.  The 3 panelists included: Howard Ross (homebrewer and web developer), Robert Hall (Adobe Community Expert and Flash master), and Tom Boutell (Open Source maniac).  The moderators were Kelani Nichole and Alex Gilbert. The panel discussion focused on the Open Source movement vs. proprietary software development and wandered into the maze of patents (a future Junto) and even touched on recipes: from the very microbrews we were drinking to food recipes.  Engaging conversation all around.  If you couldn't make it last night, check out this photoset on Flickr.

If you are now feeling crazy thirsty for some beer, you're in luck! A new Two Guys on Beer episode came out today!  Drink up!

thunderstorm theater

gac

There were quite a few thunderstorms blowing through Philadelphia tonight.  I caught the first one from the best seat possible: safely inside the storefront that houses P'unk Avenue.  Within minutes, the sky turned ominously dark and rain pelted down in heavy sheets.  The street quickly turned into a river, the storm drains choking on the voluminous flow of rainwater. Handfuls of hail bounced and skipped along the sidewalk, the night sky cracked open with splinters of lightning.  Out went the studio lights as our pupils widened to take in the swift ferocity of a midsummer night's storm.

Thank you, gac, for encouraging me to share. What fantastic experience did you have today?

geezeo vs. mint: first impressions

I received a lot of great responses from my last finance-related post, so I thought I would try my hand at another.  Disclaimer: DO NOT take financial advice from me! I'm the worst!!! However, that is the same reason why I am trying to learn how to be better with money, be friends with money, make peace with money, roll around in money... wait, got carried away for a second there!

Onward.

A while back, I decided to dip my toes in the waters of personal finance websites.  I know there are several but Geezeo and Mint were the 2 top contenders that had been kicking around in my brain.  After a few "Geezeo vs. Mint" google searches, it became somewhat more apparent that Geezeo was the direction to head (by a nose).

A few months ago, I created an account on Geezeo and set up my bank accounts and one credit card.  I felt a little weird about putting my personal information out there, but Geezeo claims to be secure.  I have to be honest, I set it up several months ago and didn't visit again until this past weekend. I decided to set up ALL of my accounts on there (I've got several).  The only card they were missing was my Macy's store card. No big deal. 

Time to plan my budget.  This is where the experience went off the rails for me. I totally didn't get it. I entered my income and realized it was incorrect, but I could NOT figure out how to update it. There was no edit button, no undo, no nothing. I clicked all over the place, and resorted to submitting a support ticket.  That was Saturday.  They did get back to me by Sunday and pointed out that I could update my income on my profile page (or settings? I don't remember).  I updated it,  but I still didn't really know what I was doing.

I was also distracted by the community aspects that I couldn't immediately relate to.  Even though I am going out on a limb here and talking about my finances on my blog, I think it's actually a really personal thing, and I seriously doubt I would twitter my personal spending habits to all my followers.

During that period of waiting, I got antsy and decided to check out Mint.  First impressions hit me over the head. The site grabbed me a little quicker, from the design to the ease of adding accounts (ALL of them).  Within minutes I was able to take a look at all my spending habits, and see an interactive pie chart to see what was going where. I started making new labels and categories and updating anything that my bank improperly labeled.  I found out that I have spent A LOT of money at a local mexican restaurant that I like to frequent as well as Zappos (no surprise there).  I was hooked.

Now this is not a post intended to trash Geezeo.  I think they are really trying to engage with the community and get people to be more comfortable with taking control of their finances.  Once I really got pulled in by Mint, I reacted strongly and deleted my Geezeo account pronto. The truth is, I still feel really uncomfortable about having so many of my personal accounts all tied to one place. I didn't like the idea of this occurring in 2 places.

Ironically, Sunday night I got a new follower on Twitter: Peter Glyman, the co-founder of Geezeo. Yep, following me on twitter, wanting to know about my experience so far, and quickly discovering that I had abandoned it.  He wanted to know what kind of feedback I had in order to want to continue on as a member.  And I guess that means I might have to continue playing with it.

If Peter hadn't reached out to me personally, I think I may have gone full speed ahead with Mint. But I am compelled to continue to play around with both and report back with more concrete findings.

Anyone out there have any experiences with either site, or perhaps another? Please share in the comments!

have you downloaded the new girl talk album yet?

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Last week my friend Kyle suggested I download the new Girl Talk album. Yeah, yeah, I'm busy. I will get to it later. And then another friend asked, and then another. Not to mention it was all over twitter. Nothing like a little peer pressure to get me to try something.

I decided to take the plunge and downloaded it today and let me tell you... it is the JAM. If you're looking for super fun party music with all your favorite hip-hop, pop, random indie rock... this is for you.

Girl Talk is offering a pay what you want (aka FREE) download on their site: download it today! Be sure to follow up and let me know how much fun you had the second you pressed play!

art for the cash poor

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Another fun event on the horizon in Philly is this weekend's Art for the Cash Poor.  It is occurring on Saturday and Sunday June 14th and 15th from 1 to 6pm each day at The Crane Arts Building. It's a great place to find new treasures for your home / yourself, gifts for friends, etc.  I went last year and there was live music, local microbrews flowing, and lots of friendly faces.  Here's the event description from InLiquid:

AFTCP is a chance to meet local artists and purchase artwork at bargain prices. View a vast array of media, including photographs, paintings, prints, jewelry, clothing, and hand-made books, with nothing priced above $199. There will be food from top local restaurants and libations available, and live music for your enjoyment while you peruse the artwork.

Art for the Cash Poor
June 14-15
1-6pm
Crane Arts Building
1400 N American St. (MAP)

reminder: ignite philly THIS wednesday 6/11!

Just a friendly reminder that Ignite Philly is mere days away! I know many of you already have it on your calendar and have intercepted it numerous ways across the blogosphere, but some of my readers aren't plugged in 24/7... so this is for you!

For more information, check out an article profiling the event in Friday's Philadelphia Business Journal. Also, the Ignite Philly website has completely up to date event and speaker information, and the twitter updates have been rolling in.

If you're still having doubts, you should come for this guy, Geoff DiMasi, an Ignite Philly founder and one of the Philly creative community's biggest champions:

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girls' night with the DS lite

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Check out my new Nintendo DS Lite!  I attended "A Girlfriend's Guide to Gaming" party on Friday night, hosted by my pal Marisa and sponsored by Nintendo.  Nintendo really wants to tap into the female market and works with the lovely ladies at Brand About Town to host parties in cities all across the country.

Our party was held in a beautiful loft space in Old City, complete with fancy furnishings, food, candles, candy, and lots of DS Lites stacked on little tables at each station for us to play.  Upon arrival, we were each given a charm bracelet and were told that once we completed each game, we'd receive a charm for our bracelet. Once we collected all of the charms, we got a special surprise!

There were 4 games in total: Nintendogs (my niece has this and loves it), Mario Kart (very fun), a crossword puzzle game (I guess I wasn't that into it, because I totally don't remember what it was called), and my personal favorite Brain Age.  Brain Age was the last game I played, and I was hooked.  It's pretty nerdy, but I was thinking that my brain could use a little exercise.  Guess it was my lucky night because that game turned out to be a special surprise along with my very own DS Lite! Yay!

As you can see, I haven't even opened it up yet... I am a little afraid that I might get addicted.

DS Lite party pics on Flickr >>

yes i watch american idol

Thehandofdavid
And I am so stoked that David Cook won.. he was totally amazing!  He had me at Hello!

ignite philly is coming on june 11th!

Ignite_philly
"If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds?"

Come to Ignite Philly on Wednesday June 11th at Johnny Brenda's and find out! This is a FREE event!

"Ignite is a series of speakers talking about inspiring projects for 5 minutes. The presentations can be serious, funny, or somewhere in between. We just hope that it would help ignite something in someone.
"

Featured speakers include: the iSepta guys, Alex Hillman of Indy Hall, Scott and Marisa of Fork You, Kristin Thompson of the Future of Music Coalition, 100K house, and many more!

Stay tuned by visiting the Ignite Philly website and by following ignitephilly on Twitter. Also, check out all the event details on the Ignite blog (the source of all of great quotes above).

Many thanks to the powerhouse of creative minds at P'unk Avenue and The Hacktory for bringing this event to our fair city.

IgnitePhilly
June 11, 2008, 6pm
Johnny Brenda's. 1201 N. Frankford Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19125

isepta is the wave of the future

There's been an unstoppable buzz in Philly and on Twitter lately about iSepta, "Simple Septa Schedules on the Go", the amazing iPhone application put out by the rock solid development team of Randy Schmidt and Chris Conley (aka ümlatte), skinned in a beautiful interface design by Jason Tremblay.

Randy dreamed up iSepta back in March during a day where he was was riding the rails.

R38y_2

Within minutes, many of Randy's friends started responding to such an idea, myself included. We've all experienced frustration trying to navigate the Septa schedules (see below).  It's not that they don't do the job, they could just do it so much better.  How do I read this thing?

Septa_sched

That's where Randy, Chris and Jason stepped in to make it happen. iSepta was released to the local community for design feedback, usability, user experience, etc.  Twitter was used as an open forum for people to find out about the app, test it on other devices like Blackberries and on the web, and now SMS!  As you can see below, the interface is so much easier on the eyes.

Isepta_2

Well today is the big day, iSepta has launched! Click on over to the ümlatte blog for a detailed summary of the project and all the latest news.  This is a big day for Philadelphia!

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