JG: James Gagliardi

Homemade Wine

Several years ago I made my own wine. The first two batches were made at a "make your own" wine facility, both (a white and a red) turned out great. I then bought the same equipment to make it at home. My next two batches did not go so well. So for the last 3 years the equipment has been collecting dust.

This weekend I decided to dust off my wine equipment and head to the brew supply to pick up wine supplies.

You don't need to crush your own grapes. You can buy wine grape juice in almost all varietals. I choose to make a Montepulciano wine.

The juice will spend 1 week in the 6 gallon bucket. After one week I will transfer it to the glass carboy where it will sit for another 10 days, at which time I will add additional chemicals. 8 days later I will transfer to a second carboy where it will sit for another 4 weeks, until it is ready to be bottled.

I will transfer it to bottles. Cork, Foil, and Label the bottles, where they will sit for another six months. If all goes well, we should have a nice red wine for Valentines Day.

More updates to follow.

Smoothies

With the weather hot and steamy, I decided to make my own smoothies.

Several years ago about a cheap slushy blender from Target, which I've used to make root beer freezes (a blended root beer float), but never for smoothies.

It's simple and healthy with no additives.

Ingredients:
- 4 oz lemonade
- 1 banana
- 1 cup frozen strawberries
- 1 half avocado

Blend.

Homemade Grilled Pizza

Yes, I really made that pizza.

This past weekend we decided to make homemade grilled pizza. Yum!

You should prep all of your toppings, including pizza sauce or pesto, veggies, and meat (which should be pre-cooked before applying to your pizza)

Using Betty Crocker Pizza Crust roll it out at about an 1/8 inch (It will be thinner than you think you should). Oil one side of your pizza crust. (You could also substitute making your own pizza crusts with tortillas, pitas, or pre-made pizza crusts)

If you are using a gas grill, set it to 600°

You'll want to "smack" your pizza dough on to the grill, oil side down, so that it lays flat on the grill.
While on the grill, oil the top of your pizza dough.
Close grill lid for 1 minute 30 seconds (1:30) this will get your pizza crust bubbly on top and crunchy on the bottom.

Using tongs and your pizza peel, flip the crust over, and quickly add any of your toppings while your pizza crust is still on the grill. (While I prefer applying the toppings while the crust is still on the grill, you can also remove it and apply the toppings off the grill).

Close the grill for 2 minutes 30 seconds (2:30). Check that your cheese has melted. If not, leave on the grill for another 30 seconds to 1 minute.

Enjoy!

The Singularity In Movies

Here is a video I produced based on the book "The Singularity Is Near" by Ray Kurzweil. While reading the book, I couldn't help but think of the many movies that reference future technology.

The “Singularity” is when the biological brain and artificial intelligence will come together and function as one for increased performance.

Movies referenced:

• The Net
• Minority Report
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
• Johnny Mnemonic
• The Final Cut
• RoboCop
• The Surrogates
• Short Circuit
• AI: Artifical Intellegence
• Lawnmower Man
• Virtuosity
• Terminator 2
• The Star Trek Borg: A Documentary
• The Matrix

Ray Kurzweil, full interviews:

http://youtube.com/​watch?v=1uIzS1uCOcE

http://youtube.com/​watch?v=0BUYbEgOZt4

(This is an abridged version, edited from it's original length)

Kaleidoscope: Board Game

As a follow up to last week's trivia questions, we needed to design a board game to facilitate the trivia. I volunteered to create the board.

I wanted elements of the The Game of Life, including "life moments", such as "You've just earned enough frequent flyer miles to take you and your family on a 'free' vacation. Jump ahead 2 spaces", and "While traveling abroad, you forgot your power converter and ruined your electronics. Start over."

I started with a plain blue background, which originally started as an "ocean blue" color. Next I added the game spaces, I then added in the latitude and longitude lines followed by a map both were originally aligned vertically and horizontally but after adding the the compass at an angle, I decide to shift the the lines and map at the same angle.

I transferred our team name to be the board game name as well, as I tweaked the name of the game and included a shadow, I decided to add the same shadow to the games spaces as well as add colors to the spaces.

Lastly I came up with the tag line "Passport to Global Success," which brought in the last embellishment of the passport stamps surrounding the board game.

To tie all of it together, I included passport stamps to the trivia cards, and for the game pieces we decided to use coins from around the world.

Kaleidoscope

Although I am "learning" though out the year as part of being back in school, I have made it a habit to not just use things we've learned. Part of #52projects is for a self discovery, but occasionally a school project will merit using it as my weekly project.

For my Organization Behavior course, we discussed the four frames of organizations, the class was broken into 5 groups, one for each of the four frames and one group discussing how each frame is effected by working in a global organization. Since I work for a global company I volunteer to be in the global frame.

Each group needed to come up with a team name. We chose "Kaleidoscope," which was to represent that everyone's view is different. The colors and patterns are constantly coming together in new, different & beautiful patterns, just like in this global economy/market people and companies are coming together in new, different, creative, and inspiring ways.

We decided we were going to create a game, in the spirit of The Game of Life, with questions about organization structural, company politics, human resource differences, and symbolism in a region/country/company.

One of the challenges and interesting take-aways while constructing the trivia questions is that there can be a fine line between generalities and stereotypes. The differences we highlighted were intended to be generalizations, not absolutes, and that individuals may think, act, and be different based on their life experiences. (The dictionary sums up the the differences as a stereotype will ignore new information, while a generalization can continuously change based on new information)

Here is a sample of the 50 questions I came up with:

While in your office in the Philippines, you hear an associate mention she’s looking forward to the 13th Month. What does she mean?

You have a Chinese employee that has celebrating their 10 year anniversary with the company. As customary, you give a gift. What gift should avoid giving as a gift?
A. A Name brand item
B. Clock
C. Wine
D. Polo Shirt with company logo

A soon-to-be first time father, an employee in your German office plans to take (unpaid) parental leave. How long is he requesting to take off?
A. 3 Months
B. 6 Months
C. 1 Year
D. 3 Years

You are staying at a Japanese hotel and are given a room on the 13th floor (usually removed from US hotels). You ask for a room on a different floor. As you enter the elevator, you notice a button missing for what floor?

Cassette Tape USB Drive

To continue on the theme on crafting a mixed tape. I was inspired to take the concept a little further and build a cassette tape USB drive.

All you need is:

• Cassette Tape
• USB Thumb Drive
• Small Screw Driver
• Utility Knife

It turns out Target still sells cassette tapes, unfortunately, the new ones are not held together with screws and are instead molded together. But I happen across an old used cassette tape that used screws.

1. Remove the screws and take the front of the tape case off. I chose to leave the actual tape in place so I found the best location to house the usb portion.
2. Remove the casing around the USB drive.
3. Use an utility knife, to notch out space for the USB to stick out the side of the cassette. The USB drive I used, fit perfectly around the inside of the cassette tape, so it did not require gluing, taping, or otherwise securing the drive inside the cassette tape.
4. Replace the front of the case, and screw back together.
5. Plug it into your computer to test it out.

This was a fun easy project that will certainly become the conversation piece the next time a USB Drive is required.

Food Diary

14: Food Diary

This week I decide to try a technique to pay closer attention to what I actually eat: take a picture.

During an episode of the A&E TV show Heavy, which chronicles the weight loss efforts of individuals suffering with extreme obesity, they shared a technique of taking a picture of everything you eat. The idea is to be more aware of what food you are putting into your body.

So for an entire week, I took a picture of everything I ate (with the exception of water and vitamins).

Even though I'm fairly conscious about what I eat, I don't always choose healthy options, so I thought it would be an interesting experiment to see if it would change my eating behavior.

Over the past week I was traveling for several days for business and was in class during the weekend. This would prove to make things more difficult since I didn't always have a say over where we ate plus it would limit some of my food options.

When I was at home or in the office, it curbed the food I ate (or didn't eat), including snacks, junk food, and sodas. When I was traveling or at school, not so much.

I made a few more unhealthy choices that I didn't think I would make at the start of the experiment, but a side-effects was I was more aware of was how much I ate.

Random Variables

13: Mixed Tape

The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention. Then you got to take it up a notch, but you don't wanna blow your wad, so then you got to cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules. - Rob (Jon Cusack), High Fidelity (2000)

My eclectic music tastes goes back to days of eight track and vinyl. I remember listening to Billy Joel and Kenny Rogers on eight track but my favorite was a Best of 1983 compilation that included Electric Avenue and Mr Roboto. My first record I remember was Mary Poppins (what can I say I was probably five) but my personal collection in the years following included The Police and Motley Crue. My first cassette was The Dukes of Hazzard soundtrack (which I lost a week later), and went on to grow my collection to include Beastie Boys and Run DMC. My first CD was Two In A Room (with their one-hit "Wiggle It"), my second CD was Led Zeppelin.

Since the days of cassette, when I first got my first duel cassette player, I began making mixed tapes. Prior to recordable CDs, one of my favorite gadget purchases, was the Sony MiniDisc player recorder, which was perfect for making mixed albums. Today, we can easily make playlists using software like iTunes. But with the likes of Pandora and other music sites, for the most part, it's a lost art.

So when I saw the music assortment from a friend from school in her iTunes library, I offered to expand her music collection -- with a handcrafted mixed playlist of music I've been listening to lately. And a great assignment for one of my 52 projects.

Since it was a handcrafted playlist intended for one person, I'll just the artists it included:

• Aimee Allen
• Alexa Ray Joel
• Carlos Bertonatti
• Dave Barnes
• Donovan Frankenreiter
• Eric Hutchinson
• G. Love and Special Sauce
• Ingrid Michaelson
• Matt White
• One EskimO
• Sean Fournier
• Tristan Prettyman
• Zac Brown Band

Another favorite part is coming up with a name for the album. A key topic in one of the courses I am taking is related to decision making, and in particular Random Variables, which has become the name of my mix.

One of the best parts of a mixed album is it is a snapshot in time and captures the mode and thoughts of the day. I still enjoy dusting off and listening to the mixed CDs from years ago (which has since been moved to my MP3 collection).

Post Script: I had the opportunity to be involved in the Cities Sampler volumes 8-10, a yearly compilation CD release by the Twin Cities radio station Cities 97.  I was also the model used on the cover of the Cities 97 Cities Sampler Vol. 9. (As they say, I have a face for radio. And apparently the feet of a model.)

Bluetooth Retro Handset

12: Bluetooth Retro Handset

After finding an old desktop phone, I thought it would be cool to replace the handset with Bluetooth.

Taking apart the phone and the bluetooth was realatively simple. The only technical part would be in moving the bluetooth microphone down the shaft of handset, which required extending the wiring from the board to the microphone. I've torn apart plenty of devices, speakers, and electical devices that I didn't think it would be a difficult challenge.

As I attempted to splice the wires, the microphone wire snapped at the base which had been soldered to the board. In my attempts to reconnect the wire (using a hot glue gun instead of a soldering gun), I was unable to get the microphone to work.

And so, my project sit incomplete.