What God Wants
“I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.”
Bacon Cinnamon Rolls
It’s no secret that adding bacon to just about any recipe will make it taste even better. In fact, it is a truism that even applies to sweets.
I recently saw a picture of cinnamon rolls that were rolled around bacon and knew that my tongue needed to experience it.
Cooking Bacon Cinnamon Rolls
The ingredients are about as simple as it gets.
You need to get the Flaky rolls, because the regular cinnamon rolls don’t unroll.
Since this is a breakfast indulgence, don’t microwave your bacon. Do it the right way with a skillet!
Once the bacon is crispy, but still bendable, degrease it with paper towels. Then unroll the Pillsbury Flaky Cinnamon Rolls and roll them back up with the bacon strips.
Once they’re rolled, they should look like this.
Bake the rolls for about twelve minutes (or until they look like they’re ready). The rolls should be golden brown.
The final step is applying the icing. This is also my favorite step, because I like to scrape (and eat) the icing container clean.
Compliment your bacon cinnamon rolls with eggs, and you’ve got yourself a mighty fine breakfast!
The Flappy Bird creator is the only real friend you have
In a world of games like Candy Crush, game creators borrow from pscyhology to intentionally make their games as addictive as possible. Players then allow these games to rob them of their precious time. Time away from socializing, relating, loving and even creating.
If the game creators are lucky, they can make a lot of money. The end result is a profitable company and a sea of people who wasted their time and potential on nothing.
And then you have Flappy Bird.
The creator of Flappy Bird wrote the game in a week and over time it became one of the most successful games on iTunes. At its peak it was making $50,000/day in advertising. And then Dong Nguyen, the game’s creator, removed it.
Dong Nguyen told Forbes…
“Flappy Bird was designed to play in a few minutes when you are relaxed.”
“But it happened to become an addictive product. I think it has become a problem. To solve that problem, it’s best to take down Flappy Bird. It’s gone forever.”
So there you have it. Dong Nguyen is the only person looking out for your best interests in this cold and dark gaming world. He would rather you do something with your life than allow himself to get filthy, stinking rich.
Update March 11, 2014
Rolling Stone caught with Dong Nguyen and was able to get him to further elucidate his decision to pull the game.
But the hardest thing of all, he says, was something else entirely. He hands me his iPhone so that I can scroll through some messages he’s saved. One is from a woman chastising him for “distracting the children of the world.” Another laments that “13 kids at my school broke their phones because of your game, and they still play it cause it’s addicting like crack.” Nguyen tells me of e-mails from workers who had lost their jobs, a mother who had stopped talking to her kids. “At first I thought they were just joking,” he says, “but I realize they really hurt themselves.” Nguyen – who says he botched tests in high school because he was playing too much Counter-Strike – genuinely took them to heart.
By early February, the weight of everything – the scrutiny, the relentless criticism and accusations – felt crushing. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t focus, didn’t want to go outdoors. His parents, he says, “worried about my well-being.” His tweets became darker and more cryptic. “I can call ‘Flappy Bird’ is a success of mine,” read one. “But it also ruins my simple life. So now I hate it.” He realized there was one thing to do: Pull the game. After tweeting that he was taking it down, 10 million people downloaded it in 22 hours. Then he hit a button, and Flappy Bird disappeared. When I ask him why he did it, he answers with the same conviction that led him to create the game. “I’m master of my own fate,” he says. “Independent thinker.”
Near the end of the article, the author, David Kushner, asked him “will Flappy Bird ever fly again?” His answer was maybe, but it will have to come with the warning, “Please take a break.”
How to throw a Minecraft LAN Party
My son just turned eight and he wanted to have a Minecraft themed party, so I figured why not throw a LAN party!
Minecraft Server
If you’re going to have a Minecraft LAN party, you might as well run the server locally. I chose to go with McMyAdmin, because it’s easy to use and also runs on OS X.
I installed it on an old Mac mini and had the server up-and-running in a few minutes.
Computers for Playing Minecraft
Finding enough computers for guests will probably be the hardest task for most people.
I highly recommend having a computer for everyone, otherwise people will feel left out and will probably get bored. In most cases that will mean reducing the number of people you invite (which is actually a good thing).
At our party, we used my laptop, my wife’s iMac, the kids’ old iMac and the old Mac mini running the server. We were short one computer, but one of the kids was able to bring his parent’s laptop.
Everyone will need a Minecraft account, so make sure they know that in advance. And if they’re young, get the login info from their parents before the party. Otherwise, you’ll be stuck either setting up accounts or with some very disappointed kids.
Setting Up the LAN
I have a good WiFi network, but I wanted the network and gameplay to be super fast. So I set up a wired gigabit network!
I bought Netgear’s 8-Port Gigabit Ethernet Switch and hooked everything up with Cat6 ethernet cables. Needless to say, there was NO lag! 🙂
Minecraft Party Activities
When the kids showed up, they were greeted with Minecraft music. And by Minecraft music, I mean all of the random people who have changed the lyrics to popular songs and turned them into Minecraft songs.
I was able to do this by pulling up Spotify on my iPad mini and playing one of the numerous Minecraft playlists that were available. I used the awesome Big JamBox by Jawbone for the speakers.
We also took regular black and green balloons and Minecrafted them!
There was even a dance room, because why not!?
Before we started the LAN party, we had the kids create Minecraft objects using the Melty Beads Animal Friends kit.
We then found patterns online for them to use.
After the bead project, we started the main event. I’m pretty sure they could have kept playing for days. Lucky for us it was just two hours 🙂
For the finale we made a Minecraft Pig cake out of homemade cupcakes. The boys didn’t mind that it was pink, because it was a pig…and it’s cake!
All-in-all, it was great party.
How “Cards Against Humanity” pwned Marketing in 2013
If you’ve never heard of Cards Against Humanity (CAH), then you’re probably a boring, prudish person with boring, prudish friends. And that’s okay, I’m just saying.
CAH is what Mad Libs would be if it was turned into a card game and everything was dirty and awful. Basically, it’s the best card game you’ll ever play, aside from Texas Hold’em.
Black Friday Special
For their Black Friday deal, they decided to raise their prices, instead of offering the expected discount. It worked and they had amazing sales.
While that was brilliant, it didn’t come close to their amazing old school postal mail campaign.
12 Days of Holiday Bullshit
CAH presented anyone with $12 to burn the opportunity to get twelve random gifts from them in the mail. It was dubbed the 12 Days of Holiday Bullshit. I of course immediately threw my money at them.
What followed were twelve envelopes sent over several days to my home. I don’t know how much they spent on this campaign, but between the postage and what was in the envelopes, it had to be well over the price I paid for it. On top of that, 100,000 people participated in this campaign! That means they received $1.2 million dollars and it probably cost them $1.5 to $2 million to do it. Thems big numbers!
The campaign was very memorable, and now their brand is laser etched into my brain. Well done!
Here’s a list of my favorite gifts, which also include the personalized card they made with my name on it (as seen at the beginning of this post).
A custom made cartoon newspaper
A new game I’ll never play
Some cards with a little political edge
The best card of all, a donation to DonorsChoose.org
You can see all the gifts that were sent at http://www.holidaybullshit.com/
Where to Eat Late in Nashville
Image by Marshall Astor – Some rights reserved
The Tennessean had an interesting article this morning about where to eat late in Nashville. I’ve always wondered which restaurants were open late – other than Waffle House – and now I know! Here are ten yummy restaurants you can go to after a late night game or concert.
10 Places to Eat Late in Nashville
- Athens Family Restaurant Open 24 hours
- Cafe Coco Open 24 hours
- Cabana Open until 2AM
- The Goldrush Restaurant and Bar Open until 1:30AM
- The Hermitage Cafe Open until 1:30AM
- Paradise Park Trailer Resort Open until 4AM
- The Patterson House Open until 2:15AM Tuesday-Sunday
- Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack Open until 4AM Friday-Saturday
- Sunset Grill Open until Midnight Monday-Thursday, 1:30AM Friday-Saturday
- Suzy Wong’s House of Yum Open until 2AM Monday, 11PM Sunday-Tuesday, 4AM Wednesday- Saturday
How to Get the WordPress “Upgrade Automatically” Feature to Work on Pair Networks
If you use the (best) Web hosting provider Pair, and you run WordPress, then you have undoubtedly found out that you can’t upgrade automatically new versions of WordPress or updates for your plugins. The reason for that is because by default, the System CGI: php-cgiwrap is not configured. Fortunately, it’s not too difficult to enable.
Enabling Automatic Upgrades on WordPress
To use PHP 5 with php-cgiwrap, you must first copy php5.cgi to your own Web directory’s (public_html) cgi-bin directory by SSH.
Step 1
Create the cgi-bin folder in your public_html folder, if it doesn’t exist already.
Step 2
Copy and paste in your terminal connection:
cp /usr/www/cgi-bin/php5.cgi ~/public_html/cgi-bin/
Step 3
Copy and paste in your terminal connection:
chmod 755 ~/public_html/cgi-bin/php5.cgi
Step 4
Add the following lines to your WordPress .htaccess file. Make sure you change [username] with your actual Pair account username (remove the brackets.)
Action application/x-pair-sphp5 /cgi-sys/php-cgiwrap/[username]/php5.cgi/
AddType application/x-pair-sphp5 .php
That’s it. Assuming you did it correctly, you’ll now be able to automatically upgrade WordPress and your plugins. If you need more details or help with this process, view Pair’s Knowledge Base article, “Authoring/Development – System CGI: php-cgiwrap.”