Jamie Thingelstad

Awesome new Community Supported Kitchen program from Corner Table and Scott Pampuch.

Congratsulations!

@TECHdotMN: Zencoder Raises $2M for Cloud-based Video Encoding

Last year we had some hardscaping done in our backyard. We created a little planting area next to the garage. This year I’d like to plant it but am not sure what to plant.

The area is almost always in the shade, so we need plants that do well with low light. We only want native plants and have a strong bias for perennials. I could see a couple of annuals if they really added to it. I like tall native grasses but I’m guessing the constant shade will be a problem.

Any suggestions from Minnesotan “green thumbs” reading? Here is a photo of the planting bed alongside the garage.

On Facebook I follow a handful of people who are semi-famous, and I don’t know but I know there work. One of those people is Jim Brandenburg, the renowned photographer that calls Ely, Minnesota his home. Anyway, he posted today that he was selling some of his gear, and it really seems that “Ellen” isn’t quiet getting it. Awkward. The ALL CAPS is just bonus.

My friend Garrick recently posted about an ergonomic improvement to his workspace. He got a monitor arm to get his display up where it worked better for him. Recently I’ve felt a lot of back fatigue and aching and I feel a lot better when I sit up straight. My monitor is typically to low for this though, so inspired by Garrick I ordered a duplicate of his rig. I got the Ergotron LX LCD Arm along with an adapter for the Apple Cinema display.

I have a 30" cinema display that I mounted this on. I had to adjust the tension a lot to hold the big monitor, but my first reaction is that it is way better. Plus, I got a lot of desk space back and flexibility to collaborate with others that come into my office.

I like it enough I may need to get one for home too! (For comparison, that is an 11" MacBook Air next to the display.)

I’m not in love with the cable management, but it works well enough. I could do better with some extra zip ties in a cleanup session.

A few weeks ago we went back to North Dakota for a long weekend to visit my Grandma Rose. In her house she has this needlework display with the names of all the grandchildren, my cousins, on it. Fifteen names in total.

I’ve seen this many times. My mother is the one that did the needlework on it. But now, with my own family in mind, I stood there in recognition for what it represented, family.

My book club is reading Triumph of the City by Edward Glaeser, an economist at Harvard University. It has been an interesting read. I was a bit surprised to find Minneapolis with a short highlight on successful cities.

Many might also have written off Minneapolis, which lost 30 percent of its population between 1950 and 1980 and hardly seemed like a natural candidate for urban renaissance. The city’s winters make Boston seem balmy, and the advantages that once came from its riverside location became largely irrelevant after World War II. But Minneapolis, like Boston and New York, has come back. In 2009, per capita personal income in the Minneapolis metropolitan area was $45,750, making it the highest-earning metropolitan area in the Midwest and the twenty-fifth highest in the country.

The secret of the city’s success is education: 47.4 percent of the city’s adults have a college degree, and 37.5 percent of the Minneapolis area’s adults have a college degree, making it the seventh-best-educated metropolitan area with more than a million people in America. The Scandinavian Lutherans who originally settled the region brought with them a belief in learning, but most of all, Minneapolis’s highly educated population reflects its land-grant college, the University of Minnesota. The city’s most striking economic success stories have some link to that school.

Medtronic, which earns $14.6 billion in annual revenues and has thirty-eight thousand employees, was formed in 1949 when a graduate student in electrical engineering at the University of Minnesota partnered with his brother-in-law to make medical devices in a garage. The company’s early success reflected, in part, connections with people like Walt Lillehei, a University of Minnesota professor and a pioneer in open-heart surgery, who saw the need for a small, battery-powered pacemaker and turned to Medtronic to whip one up. Minneapolis’s megaretailer, Target, owes much of its success to Bob Ulrich, another University of Minnesota graduate, who helped create the chain’s blend of logistics and style. Target’s slightly more highbrow alternative to big-box competitors like Walmart and Kmart seems natural for the sophisticated Ulrich, a collector of African art who has spent a fortune endowing a Museum of Musical Instruments.

I didn’t realize Minneapolis ranked so high in education.

The design of the Internet allows for an incredible amount of decentralization. My blog, is run on my server, and yet you can all get to it. We don’t have to have all blogs in one place. And that is a good thing.

I got three notices recently that highlight one of many downsides of centralization. Epsilon had a data breach, and the dominoes fall all over the place.

Tyler’s Awesome Yoda Shirt — “Judge me by my size you do?”

Fun watching people file into Target Field to watch the Twins game today! Jets just flew over Target field.

Got an Ignite Minneapolis ticket. That was too hard. Please charge something for the next one.

I’m going to suggest that we have a new title, Font Stack of Boredom™, for the following CSS block.

font-family: Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;

A couple of weeks ago I revisited the Fitbit site to learn more about their product. After doing some research I decided to jump in and I ordered my Fitbit. I got it last Thursday. The first setup was pretty easy and I really like how it wirelessly uploads data without me having to think about it. I’m using it both for activity throughout the day and to track sleep. I’ll share some more about the results after I have some more time with it.

Tammy got a new haircut yesterday at Lili. She looks amazing.

Just got my Fitbit. Have it charged and paired with my account. Looking forward to seeing data.

My Fitbit just shipped. Excited to try it out.

Wow!

@ESPNResearch: 5.9 million brackets in the ESPN Tournament Challenge… and TWO have the Final Four correct. TWO!

Tammy got this cool bookshelf for the kids to keep their books in.

Someone make a Pinboard2Wordpress plugin?

Put up a draft page of API documentation here: http://pinboard.in/api

— Pinboard (@Pinboard) March 26, 2011