Journal Posts

I’ll do a big post about the launch of WPtouch Pro 3.0 in a few days, but for now all I’ll say is that it has been a fairly massive undertaking that we started almost a full year ago. We’ll be revealing everything on Thursday, but for now everyone will have to make due with a quick teaser: If you’re interested in being notified when we launch in a few days, head on over to BraveNewCode.com and sign-up at the bottom. We’re definitely looking forward to pulling back the veil and showing everyone what we’ve been working on for quite a while now. WPtouch Pro 3.0: Now Available WPtouch Pro 3.0 is now available! If you’re interested in picking up a copy, then head on over to the main WPtouch Pro 3.0 product page and purchase a copy. WPtouch Pro 3.0 has a 7-day refund guarantee, so you can test […]

Back when I got back from Europe in December, I decided I needed a hobby to help me get through the cold Canadian winter. I eventually decided to take up beer making, since a) I like beer b) some of my friends brew beer and c) most of my friends like to drink beer, especially when it’s free. I’ve probably done close to 10 all-grain beer brews so far, and I wanted to share some of the things I have learned in this adventure. Had I read a post like this before I started, it probably would have saved me lots of pain and grief. But in the nature of giving back to beer drinkers and brewers around the world, here are some of my thoughts about all-grain brewing. Mash Temperature Is Important One of the hard parts about brewing beer is that almost everyone gives you different advice. For […]

I had an opportunity the other day to record an hour long podcast with my friend John Biehler. John recently started a technology-based podcast called TekEh that has a particular emphasis on Canadian content and guests. His first episode was Kemp Edwards from HootSuite, and talked mainly about the experiences of being in Austin, Texas for South by Southwest. I was excited to be the second guest in the series, and spent an hour sipping a rum and coke and talking about WordPress, our experiences at BraveNewCode creating commercial plugins, having clients, photography, travelling around the world, and everyone’s favourite beverage, beer. It was a really fun experience, and I hope I get additional opportunities to record a few podcasts in the near future. To take a listen, head on over to TekEh and subscribe to the Podcast on iTunes or listen to the embedded audio there.

My previous beer, a Milk Stout, was pretty much a total failure. So I decided I would make another attempt at a stout, this time without lactose though (for arbitrary reasons). A beer I’ve always quite enjoyed is Howe Sound Brewery’s Oatmeal Stout, so I thought I would try my hand at making an oatmeal stout. An oatmeal stout, as the name implies, uses oatmeal as part of its grain bill. While the oats don’t really add a dominant taste, they do impart a particular body to the beer as well as some complexity. Recipe The local home brew supply shop I normally use was pretty much out of every English yeast I wanted to use for this stout, so I ended up grabbing some Windsor Dry Yeast. I didn’t really research it all that much, since it’s basically all I could get my hands on at the time, but […]

Another year is almost upon us, and I thought a final post was in order. It was definitely an interesting year for me, the highlight (at a personal level) probably being a third surgery on my eye socket (which I was told four years ago wasn’t possible). But I also did a fair bit of traveling, and I thought a little photo-finish finale was in order for 2012. I hope everyone has a really amazing New Year’s eve – all the best to everyone for 2013.

About a week after I brewed my first beer I decided I would get another one in the queue so I would have one more to taste when they became ready. I decided to try my hand at a milk stout, another type of beer I thoroughly enjoy. I spent some time looking at other milk stout recipes and ultimately crafted something in BeerSmith2 that I thought would taste pretty good (based on a theoretical imagination in my head of what each of these base malts taste like). Unfortunately I missed my FG on this one by a huge amount (like 15 pts). I finally tracked it down to an improper estimate of mash efficiency in BeerSmith2 based on a few other changes I made. Ultimately I have a huge problem with how BeerSmith2 calculates this number. From a home-brewer’s perspective, mash efficiency is a pretty important number as it’s […]

Very recently I decided I would try making an American India Pale Ale (IPA). My main reason with choosing this type of beer is that it’s one of my favourite styles, and I have a lot of great memories sitting around drinking a really hoppy beer amongst friends. I decided when I was in Europe that the first method for all-grain brewing I would attempt when I returned back home would be Brew In A Bag (BIAB). Basically you use a big-ass nylon bag to hold all your grains and have your brew kettle do double-duty as a mash tun as well. This method was apparently started by Australian home-brewers as a method to save both time and equipment. The downside to this method is that you often need a fairly large brew kettle to account for all the water and the grains. Design I used BeerSmith2 to do the […]

I’m back now from Europe, and taking a well deserved rest from travel for a few months. While I had a good time on my last trip, it wasn’t something I was totally looking forward to at the time, mainly because I had just gotten through recovering from a big surgery and was enjoying life around home. In terms of my surgery, I think the end result is quite a bit better. I had a private CT scan done in Serbia so I could gain some peace of mind with regards to the outcome, and here was the end result. You can basically see the titanium mesh which is under my left eye (shown on the right), and the complete lack of bone underneath it, which was the source of most of my issues. The implant has restored the proper configuration of the inside of my eye socket, and the […]

France – the legendary birthplace of Roulette – has a very long tradition of playing gambling games. The popular French game ‘Poque’ is thought to be the forerunner of modern poker. This lends itself perfectly to the story that modern poker derived from French settlers in the Louisiana basin before it moved up the Mississippi. Despite poker being considered an American game which is most famously place in Las Vegas, the poker scene in France is very big too. The online world of poker is just as popular in France as the casinos. Poker fanatics can join a range of forums and brush up on their skills at partypoker.fr/how_to_play.html, as well as visit a variety of popular casinos like the Aviation Club de France. In France, there are entire rooms purely dedicated to slot machines which explains why this is France’s main revenue. In addition, France can lay claim to […]

As many people know, I tend to travel quite a bit – over the last 18 months I believe I have visited on the order of 13 or 14 countries. And while there are always interesting things to do in each new city or country I visit, sometimes I miss some of the comforts of home (such as english TV or movies). Back home when I am bored I typically watch Apple TV or Netflix. Unfortunately when I am outside of North America and I try to access Netflix I often end up with a message like this: One way I’ve found around this is to simply tunnel all my traffic through a VPN server in the United States. The service I use to do this is StrongVPN, and an account costs around $55 USD per year. The sign-up process only took me about ten minutes, and another five minutes […]