The search for the perfect travel mug

Sadly, the search for the perfect travel mug continues. I had hoped that I had found the ultimate in form and function with the Brugo mug, but alas, this was not the case. Luckily though, the Contigo Extreme is about as close to perfection as it comes, so I will be satisfied for now.

Brugo Mug
The Brugo mug was a bit of a disappointment. This mug claims it has the ability to be spillproof and to regulate the temperature of the liquid on a per sip basis so that it it at the perfect drinking temperature. Note: I was only able to test this mug for about an hour (see below).

• Upon testing, the mug passed the temperature regulation claim with flying colors. You tip the mug to allow some of the liquid to enter the “temperature control chamber,” where it is instantly cooled to a lovely, hot, but not scalding temperature. The rest of the liquid stays a nice hot temperature for a decent amount of time. Sadly though, this is about where the positives end.
• The mug relies on the user aligning the lid so that a bit of plastic interlocks with another bit on the miug. Unfortunately, within an hour of owning the mug, I managed to misalign the interlocking pieces in such a way that it became impossible to open the mug. Huge design flaw. Their website refers to aligning “hash marks” on the lid and mug. This would have been a much better design (far less prone to user error), but the interlocking plastic allowed me to render the mug useless.
• I also found that any claims to be spillproof were false, even using the loosest definition of spillproof. The website and manual indicate that when the lid dial is in the “locked” position it should be spillproof and caution the user that the temperature control chamber should be emptied after putting the mug into the locked position. Originally I thought that it might be leakproof. I tested this by setting the lid dial to the locked position, emptying the temperature control chamber and holding the mug upside down. The mug steadily leaked fluid. Next I figured that spillproof meant that it wouldn’t leak if you knocked the mug over. So, I once again I set the lid dial to the locked position, ensured that the temperature control chamber was empty, then knocked the mug over and gently rolled it over a few times. There was definitely fluid leaking from both the mouth opening and the lid dial itself.

Contigo Autoseal
The Contigo Autoseal has a great concept behind it, a self sealing lid. You press the “autoseal” lid to drink and release and the lid is locked and the mug is leakproof. Unfortunately, it ended up having a few too many other small design flaws for me to go with it. Overall though, it performs MUCH better than the Brugo mug. Note: I was able to test this mug for weeks.

• I noticed a lot of minor spillage - from the autoseal button, from the air vent, from opening the unit when it is full of hot liquid. Contigo specifically claimed that the mug eliminated steam spray, but I encountered it every time I first used the mug after filling it with hot liquid. The autoseal button also had slight leakage, as did the air vent. The mouth opening always retained a couple of drops of liquid which would often leak as well.
• iI found it hard to vent the fluid to a tolerable temperature. Hot coffee is usually too hot to drink. The unit keeps the fluid at that temperature for so long that you need to find another way to cool it off (a strength and weakness). I attempted to solve the problem by venting the liquid by holding down the autoseal button. Continuing to hold the mouthpiece open by holding down the autoseal button is just impractical. The only recourse you have is to remove the lid. I have tried to remove the lid immediately after filling the unit with hot (scalding) coffee. If I attempt to remove the lid without venting the unit first then the coffee spills over and out onto your hands. OUCH. Otherwise, leaving the mug sitting on your desk without a lid is a risk in itself (watch out keyboard!).
• The mouth opening in the lid is awkward to use. It is hard to find the opening without looking at the mug and you have to tilt your head pretty far back before fluid will actually come out. If there were a slight depression above the hole it would be easier find the hole and use it.
• The lid comes off and goes on a lot easier than the Contigo Extreme (see below).
• The lid is so weird on the inside that i have no idea how to clean it. Either I have never been able to clean it well enough or the lid absorbs flavor because after switching to tea my coffee was tea flavored for about 3 refills.
• The autoseal button is poorly designed for practical use - because the unit has no handle, I have tucked it under an arm or on top of a pile of stuff I was carrying and have accidentally pressed the button and had the unit leak. if the button were flush with the unit it would be a lot more difficult to accidentally activate the autoseal.

Overall though, these are minor design flaws. For someone who sits at their desk and doesn’t move around much, this is a great mug. Not having a handle and the inherent problems with the autoseal button caused me to think twice about filling it and throwing it into my bag on the way to work.

Contigo Extreme
This mug is the Cadillac of travel mugs.

• Truly leakproof. I have had my mug for about 4 years now and the lid has only now started to fail. This only occurs when I fill the mug with hot liquid and shake it. Easy enough fix since they sell replacement lids, just haven’t gotten around to ordering mine yet.
• Super cool handle with carabiner. Having a handle is infinitely useful in my opinion. Having a carabiner makes it even more useful. Now you can fill the mug up, clip it to your backpack and get going.
• Keeps liquids hot for a long time. Of course, you need to flip open the mouthpiece in order to vent the fluid to cool enough to drink. Leaving the mouthpiece open is a bit of a risk, but in my 4 years with the mug, I’ve been able to catch the mug before any real spillage has occurred since the mug isn’t fully open.
• The only disadvantage this mug has is that the liquid stays hot, so you burn your tongue until it hits the right temperature.

Really, I dare you to suggest a better mug. Leave a comment and I’ll test the mug.

Automate your database backups using cron jobs in cpanel

I’ve been trying to do this off and on for years. Finally, finally I found the answer, and it is actually working! This is for people hosting with a service that uses Cpanel. Quick step by step:

1. Log into cpanel and choose the MySQL Database link
2. Create a database user named “backup” and add that user with full permissions to each database you have
3. Go back to the cpanel home and choose the Cron jobs link
4. If you want to run your backup at midnight every night, then choose the Advanced option
5. Advanced: Leave all of the “Minute Hour Day Month Weekday” options at their default
6. Standard: Use the form fields to choose how often you would like to run your backups, and at what time.
7. BOTH: Paste the following line into the Command field (There are only two changes that need to be made to the line below: change DBPASSWORD to the database password you created for your MySQL user “backup” and change YOURACCOUNT to your account username)
   date=`date -I` ; mysqldump -ubackup -pPASSWORD -A | gzip > /home/YOURACCOUNT/xbackup_$date.sql.gz
8. Click Commit changes and you are all done.

This should create a gzipped file in the root directory of your account named something like xbackup_2008-02-21.sql.gz. Now you can use something cool like FTP Synchronizer to create your own backups. More on that later.

Totally irrelevant, but totally fun

One of my favorite blogs is called “Cute with Chris.” It is authored/produced by actor, Chris Leavins. He basically produces a video on a weekly basis making fun of/celebrating cute kitties and puppies. It is completely ridiculous, but also, completely addictive. When I first came across it I spent an entire weekend watching archive videos.

The point of my post here is that finally, I have entered the fabulous world of internet stardom. Chris has posted one of my emails. It won’t make any sense to you unless you’ve been following his blog, but I am totally excited.

Read my post!

To the uninitiated, here are a couple of my all time favorite video blog posts.

show 148– “Lotion Makes You Slippery”
The launch of CWC Slovakia.

Show 138 - “Airplane Poop”’
Chris is travelling today. This episode comes to you from high in the sky.


show 92– BEATBOX with Chris
SPECIAL PRESENTATION. “Chris the Human Beatbox”.

Resizing Images in Paint Shop Pro

A quick tutorial on the basics of resizing images in Paint Shop Pro for the web.

Joomla & JCE Editor Images and Advanced Image Features

When using Joomla as your content editor, you may wish to use the JCE text editor as your editing tool. It has a lot of advanced features in the free version, but if you subscribe, you can also download some neat advanced plugins. I explore two of those plugins, JCE Image Manager Extended and JCE Captions in this video.

I’m married!

Jacob and I were married on October 6, 2007. It was a beautiful day and everything went wonderfully. You can see all the details at http://keryakes.com. I’ll be changing my name to Christine Keryakes soon!

My Wedding Companion

Score: 3/5
http://www.fivestarsoftware.com/
I downloaded this one a few months ago and really gave it a shot. Aesthetically, this software is terrible, terrible terrible. Its a very old windows application style. In the initial screen you almost think that maybe, just maybe it isn’t as bad as you thought it would be, but no! As soon as you click one of those pretty modern(ism) buttons you are slammed with fuschia and cyan. I mean, you can’t just throw together a bunch of colors and call it ok, people!!

Clearly, I am having a really hard time getting over the user interface badness.

To my credit, I did spend more than a few hours tweaking this software during my first trial download. I really really did try to use it.

That said, I’m gonna have to give this one a 3 out of 5. I’ll come back and elaborate why later.

As an aside….
Sometimes I want to quit my job and become a software user interface mercenary. There are a lot of good developers out there who come up with fantastic products but their user interfaces are so terrible that they scare people away. Sooo sad.

The Organized Wedding

Score: 4/5
http://www.theorganizedwedding.com/
Ok, this one is starting out cool. It just asked to choose my Faith. The closest option it had was Greek Orthodox so I am going for it., Supposedly this choice will effect the tasks and events listing in the software.

Finished the setup, they had some interesting options, so far so good guys. Now the interface has come up. I’m cringing but trying to give it a chance.

The software has an appointments feature. I am a big fan of cross product compatibility but I am guessing that this software doesn’t integrate back into Outlook (the necessary evil in my life). So sad. [img]http://img116.exs.cx/img116/6469/g5cgrin.gif[/img]

Has a pretty darned cool seating feature - it actually draws a line from one couple to the other so that you can see if you accidentally separated them. Wish you could actually put the tables in the reception hall layout though. Kind of annoying that you can’t.

Addresses: This one has an addressbook import, but it is only from Outlook contacts. Which is almost OK, but it is a pain to import from csv to Outlook, so I am getting annoyed. It does have a Households concept, which I definitely like. As far as addressing goes though, it just falls short. It has great Etiquette options, but for those of us with particular tastes will be a bit disappointed. I want to be able to choose whether it uses Miss or Ms, and I want to be able to add kids to the outer envelope. This software does not allow you to customize the automatic format, although you can manually overwrite what it has come up with. Too much work for me. [img]http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/shared/emoticons/razz.gif[/img]

Done for now. I’ll probably revisit this one.

Wedding Planner 5.4

Score: 0
http://www.weddingglobe.com/

This software, by Wedding Globe, boasts:

Don’t buy another software package that was developed in the stone age. The latest release of our software was updated November 30, 2003. It is developed to to have better compatibility and functionality for today’s users.

That awesome up-to-date software came up with a sweet error when being installed… Something to the effect of: This software is incompatible with this operating system. I gave it a shot anyway and it froze about 10 seconds into it.

Software reviews

There are a whole lot of wedding planning software companies out there. Right now I am downloading and trying out each one. Let me tell you, as a software designer, this is a PAINFUL experience!! There are a lot of bad designs, I’ll see if I can wade through the mess and still find it usable.