Author: Rick

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Sodastream Hack

Sodastream is great at making bubbly water. To save on the cost and time needed to switch out the CO2 canisters, I decided to hook up a regular CO2 tank instead of using the small canisters from Sodastream.

ITEMS NEEDED

1) FreedomOne+ adapter from CO2 Doctor on this order page. I ordered the model with 72H (meaning 72 inch length straight cable) and CGAWG (connector type for standard CO2 tanks, as opposed to PBWG for Paintball Tank connector). Other companies make similar adapters, but this one is well built and the company is helpful and responsive. With this modification from the CO2 Doctor, a 5 or 20 pound tank can be connected.

2) 5 lb CO2 tank that I fill at my local paintball store for $10. Gas companies also do refills. I consider myself a normal-to-heavy user of Sodastream with a few glasses/day. I make extra fizzy water (4-7 farts of the Sodastream, depending on mood). My pressure gauge still shows that I have a lot of CO2 left and I’ve been using the single 5 lb tank for over 6 months.

3) Sodastream. I liked the look of the Sodastream Pure model the most. It can hold only the smaller 14.5 oz cylinders which is fine because I’m not using the internal tank. I drilled a hole at the bottom of it and another hole in my kitchen counter to hide my large tank underneath (see pics).

VALUE

This isn’t cheap at $300 total: adapter from CO2 Doctor ($130), Sodastream ($80-130), CO2 tank ($65), and a single fill-up ($10). But any addict to carbonated water can easily spend this in under a year. And the ongoing cost or marginal cost per additional amount of carbonated water after the initial cost is almost nothing.

SODA

You can easily add syrups to make your own sodas. The Sodastream syrups don’t taste good to me and they contain Aspartame. Instead try the great syrups from Pittsburg Soda Pop.

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SEO Services Continued

Just got this Spam.

I had stopped by your site and took a look at your ranking for some of your terms and just wondered if you’d be at all interested in having your site improved in terms of where it’s ranked on the major engines with the terms you’d like as well as some I’d like to suggest. I can get your site a much better ranking and have done so for about 400 people to date. Many of which now have a first page listing for ther keywords they wanted. Yes, I’m a real person, Yes, I actually just came back from viewing your site. I already know you get a ton of offers day to day. This is obviously different, I have plenty of references, work from home alone, have been doing this since the early 90’s and still find time to raise 3 little girls.

Call me at home if you want to, check out my site [removed]. I work at home all day long helping people out with their traffic and sites, automating page content updates via rss feeds (google loves that), doing press releases, article creation and distribution, building one way inbound links, Social Bookmarking, starting RSS feeds for your site, setting up Web 2.0 properties, social networking help for twitter followers, Facebook likes, setting up link wheels, etc. I have clients that are swearing by what it is I do for them and would love to show you some examples if you’re at all interested. Otherwise I won’t bother you again.

Winston
(319) XXX-XXXX
PO Box 8822
Cedar Rapids, IA 52408

So Winston, you’re a real person who just read my site. Did you read my most recent post on SEO Spammers like yourself?

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SEO Services

As always, I recommend to ignore spam emails suggesting that someone will improve your search rank by performing Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Google knows about the tactics that SEO Consultants use. And if Google notices that you are artificially trying to improve your rank, they can penalize or ban your site from their search. Instead, the best way to improve search rank is follow our Google SEO and Other Search Engine Results Performance Suggestions.

Here’s the latest SEO spam that I received from sify.com:

Hi,

I am Sunny, SEO Consultant.

I hope you are doing well and have time to read my proposal.

Advertising in the online world is one of the most inexpensive and highly effective methods of promoting a business.

We are a Leading Indian Based SEO & Web Development Company and one of the very few companies which offer organic SEO Services with a full range of supporting services such as one way themed text links, blog submissions, directory submissions, article writing and postings, etc.

We are a team of 85+ professionals which includes 28 full time SEO experts. We are proud to inform you that our team handled 180+ SEO projects and obtained 100000+ manually built links in the past 1 year.

Let me know if you are interested and I’ll present you with a proposal that would not only improve sales of your company but also brand your products.

Feel free to contact me in case of any enquiry.

Kind Regards
Name: Sunny
Designation: Online SEO Consultant
Country: India

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Unlock SIM for International Travel

If you travel internationally, it’s nice to be able to put in a local-country SIM card for Internet and calls. This is far cheaper than International Roaming.

AT&T won’t do it

I just confirmed with AT&T that they changed their policy. They no longer unlock the SIM card on iPhones, even for customers in good standing for over a year. Compare this to Verizon that will unlock a phone after 3 months.

So if you are buying an iPhone and travel internationally, don’t chose AT&T as your carrier.

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iTunes Match

Benefits

iTunes Match accomplishes a few things for me:

  1. Updates my collection to 256 kbps aac files (higher quality)
  2. Backs up my collection online (iCloud)
  3. Makes it easier to use other Apple products for my music collection without needing to download everything. This makes it easier to use a lower capacity laptop, iPhone, or iPad.

It’s worked pretty seamlessly for me and costs $25/year, although you only need one year if you just are interested in accomplishing #1 above.

Updating to 256 kbps

I followed the Macworld instructions to create a Smart Playlist that shows just the songs needing an upgrade (see picture). Hold down option key when clicking the plus to add the conditional rule for iCloud Matched or Purchased.

Then I selected all the files and deleted them, making sure to NOT select to delete them from iCloud. Then I downloaded the files over a couple of days.