2007
- Support for a travel timezone so you can flip your clock around much easier.
- When you are looking at photos, the orientation sensor is used to show you the photo in the right orientation. Nice touch.
- The D-pad control is almost touch sensitive. It’s hard to explain, but a nice effect in the UI.
- Flight home is 2 hours delayed from New York. Other flights are getting cancelled. I’m screwed.
- Ridiculously frustrated at the lack of WiFi at LGA.
- A lot of people rebooking for tomorrow. 🙁
- Flight cancelled. On 6am flight tomorrow. No hotel rooms. Going to Frost & Nixon, then an all-nighter.
- Got Frost/Nixon ticket. Luggage checked at nearby Marriot. Good for next 4 hours. 🤞
- In cab to friends couch. Gave up on the “romance” of staying up all night in Times Square.
- Frost/Nixon was great.
- So happy to have shelter.
- Settled down enough to go to sleep now. Up in 4 hours.
- Up and dressed. Time to try this airport thing again. Thanks Hadar and Lois!
- Just got a Northwest departure notice via email that says my flight is on time!
- Observing that in fact NY does sleep.
- Not sure which is scarier: a taxi driver in clogged traffic or on the open freeway.
- Through security and at gates. That went way faster than I expected.
- Flight is boarding!
- Landed! This saga ends.
Wondering if anyone I know uses StumbleUpon? If you do, ping me.
Sitting down to watch “An Inconvenient Truth” again. First time.
What food would you give up the Internet for?
Tammy and I had a really funny conversation today on the way home from the grocery store. I prompted the question of giving up the Internet for something. For example, if you were forced, would you give up chocolate, or the Internet. Forever. Not a month, but permanently. Would you never have another bite of chocolate so you could continue to bathe in the wonders of the Internet.
To me this question was simple – I’d be passing on the chocolate. I love chocolate. Don’t get me wrong. Lindt and Vosges are very special brands in my book. But compared to the Internet, it’s no question.
I theorized that if given the choice of continuing to use the Internet or drinking nutrient complete meal replacement shakes that I would have to think for a long time. What flavors exactly? Tammy laughed at me, citing that I wouldn’t make it through a single Thanksgiving.
So, that made me wonder, what would your breaking point be? What food do you care so much about that you would abandon the Internet forever for it?
Solatube Installed
A few weeks ago I was flipping through a recent issue of Home Power magazine and I stumbled upon an article abut solar tubes. (Sorry, I would provide a link to the article but they don’t make it available online.) Solar tubes are not new technology, but there has been some pretty amazing improvements in recent years. The author of the article had installed a Solatube in his office and was very pleased with it.
Shortly after this we ran into Solar Midwest while we were at the Living Green Expo. They had the Solatube units on display and I got to ask a ton of questions. Shortly after that I got a quote and decided to get one installed.
The basic principle of the Solatube is exremely simple. You mount a light collector on your roof. You then run a 10" or 14" tube that is exceptionally reflective to a room in your house. There are three main areas of technical focus. Making the collector dome as efficient as possible, losing as little light as possible in the tube, and distributing in the room in an even way. This diagram from Solatube’s website sums it up well.
The advancements in the collector dome and the efficiency of the pipe are incredible. It can collect light all day, picking up even dull light on a cloudy day. There is no need for direct sunlight. The tube itself is extremely efficient and loses very little light.
Let me skip to the after shot. Here is the room with the Solatube.
The effect is shocking. This room was one of the more poorly lit areas in our upstairs, and now it is as bright and enjoyable as the most windowed areas in the house. Note the relative sizing of the Solatube versus the cans next to it. This is the 14" unit and it delivers a whopping amount of light. Tammy and I are both very pleased with it and are thinking we will likely have two more installed at some point in the future.
Some FAQ items to share with everyone, in no particular order:
Does heat transfer through it?
Surprisingly no. The Solatube itself is just sending the light. The heat part doesn’t make it down.
What about storms?
I felt the dome, and it’s impressively thick. I’m not sure exactly what would take it out, but I’m very confident the roof around it would have issues before the dome itself cracked.
Is it ugly?
It’s another thing on your roof, so you may not like that. We were able to install it in a location that is completely invisible.
Due to this great placement you cannot even see the dome from the street. I don’t think it would be an issue even if you could see it.
Does it save energy?
Well, it depends. If you have rooms that you use lights during the day it definitely would. Our situation was more of a luxury since we like a lot of light and this room was just dimly lit. We didn’t use lights there that much during the day, but it was drab. Now it’s bright and full of light.
Great locations for this technology would be a windowless bathroom, or a closet. Those are the locations we are considering for a future use. Or frankly anywhere you want nice, full-spectrum sunlight.
Would you recomment Solar Midwest?
Yes, they did a great job through the whole project. As a bonus, all the pre-sales activity was via email which I appreciated.
What about basements?
To me the killer utility of solar tubes is in the basement of a house. This is easily done in a new build, but nearly impossible in an existing house due to the tubing required. I can only dream of the day when I pipe a bunch of natural light into the lower level of a new house.
Can you see moonlight?
Yes. There is a cool bluish glow on a full moon.
Finished watching Children of Men. Hmmm…
Drive to Work
I’m having some more fun with the time-elapsed feature of my new camera. It has an ability to take the most trivial things and make them at least a little interesting. Check out this video of my morning drive. There is a decent amount of sun glare, and the “mount” wasn’t all that great, but it’s still fun. I think I’ll do it again after I get a Gorillapod that will give me a better mount. Until then…
Also check out the short time-elapsed video of my flight take-off.
Pleo may ship in the next month – exciting!
Shoe Experimentation
I’ve went a little crazy over the last few weeks with some new shoe experimentation. To put this in context, I’m a really boring shoe guy. Up to this point in time, I’ve never been a fan of shoes that are “two-tone”, they had to be dark, subtle colors and generally shouldn’t stand out. My dress shoes were all Allen Edmonds, which are great shoes but as my wife points out more fitting for the 50-something crowd.
A few weeks ago we were in Macy’s looking for new dress shoes to displace the Allen Edmonds and I stumbled upon these shoes.
They were two-tone, and I shouldn’t like that, but I really liked them. I got them and decided that I needed to break out of my many year rut. These Ecco shoes broke the mold. It was time to get crazy!
These orange (really bright orange) Crocs were the next to arrive. They are ridiculously bright and at a size 13 look a lot like clown shoes. I think their awesome. You can’t beat them for doing stuff in the yard and even the occassional errand on the weekends.
Having entered new territory with my bright orange Crocs, it was time to go even further. Tammy logged me on to Zappos and browsing we went. She was gleeful to shop for shoes with me. :-)
I love these Campers. They are crazy, and very flashy, but totally cool.
These Gola’s are also very cool, and really radical for me. They remind me a lot of wrestling shoes. They have an extremely thin sole.
Do you have any orange shoes? Go get some. It’s fun!
Canon SD750
I’ve been thinking for a while about upgrading my small, travel-friendly camera. I’ve had a Canon S500 for nearly three years. It is/was a great camera, and amazingly rugged. But, it was a litle too heavy, and not small enough to slip into your shirt pocket so it wasn’t great for fun, light pictures on the go. On my recent trip to NY I got an hour of free time and headed over to B&H Photo and Video on 9th Avenue. I wanted to see the store that I had ordered so much from online, and it was a gadget geeks dream. If you like camera stuff, you must go.
I checked out a dozen of the Canon small cameras and decided to go ahead with the Canon SD750. It is only a month old, and has an amazing form factor. It’s about the size of my Blackberry 8800, just a couple of millimeters thicker. Pretty crazy. I seriously considered the Canon SD800IS because I really wanted optical image stabilization, but I didn’t like the older form factor.
The startup time for the camera is good. Not like my Canon 20D, but that’s to be expected. It is ready to shoot in a second. The real “wow” happens when you look at the back though.
The screen on the SD750 is just massive. It’s only 3" in size, but it seems just enormous. You can read a detailed review if you are curious, but there are some really nice convenience features on this camera that I’m loving.
The pictures I’ve taken so far are great. The only thing I really miss is that it doesn’t support Canon RAW, so I’ve got JPEG files back into my workflow. Oh well. It’s a great camera.
Assembling Mazie's Birthday Present
One of the cool features of my new Canon SD750 is a brain-dead simple way to do time-elapsed movies. I just had to play today while putting together Mazie’s birthday present. In case you are wondering, it isn’t Mazie’s birthday today. That’s a few weeks away but the present we got her had arrived and we decided to let her have it now. Fewer things on her actual birthday make it easier for her little 2 year old self.
Anyway – here in 48 seconds is Mazie and I putting together her new table and chairs. I love it.
Jon Stewart Stand-up Night
Last night we went to see Jon Stewart do his stand-up show at the Orpheum downtown. I’m a very committed fan of The Daily Show, and some friends (here and here) and I got the opportunity to actual see a taping of The Daily Show a few weeks ago. Stewart’s delivery is a riot, and his writing team is top notch.
A friend of Tammy’s saw that he was coming and called us up to see if we wanted to go. There wasn’t much thinking required – of course. The show was great.
He came on stage with almost no introduction, just five or six words, no warm-up act, he just walked out and started throwing out some great material. I laughed so hard that at the end of the 90 minute performance I was hoping he would stop soon because I was just wore out!
In addition to the expected political bits he did a great riff on dealing with technology that had me nearly delirious. He also seemed to leave Minneapolis with an impression that we have “hallways connecting people to Hooters restaurants”.
Also, by far the most popular t-shirt at the show…
Dinner at Woody’s Grill.
Just rebooted the Road Sign Math server — it was down for 4 days. Need to move that to WordPress!
New UI for Google Analytics is strikingly good.
Stranded in New York
Tonight, for only the second time in the 10 years or so that I’ve traveled for business, I got stranded. I was to depart New York tonight on a 6:00pm flight out of LaGuardia. I heard that storms were coming, and I was worried because my experience is that LaGuardia is a horrible airport when dealing with bad weather. Newark seems to do the best for the NY region with tough weather.
My 6:00pm flight was delayed to 6:40pm before I even left for the aiport. On the way to the airport I got three additional delays on my Blackberry pushing it back 20 minutes each. By the time I arrived at the airport I was looking at an 7:50pm departure and other flights were being canceled. They then “delayed” my flight until 7:00am the next morning, which I found humorous since 13 hours, overnight, hardly seems like a delay. The cherry on top was when they then canceled my 7:00am “delayed” flight and rebooked everyone on regularly scheduled flights the next day.
This was bad enough, but on top of it there are no hotel rooms in the entire city of New York. None. Seriously, I’m not kidding. No rooms. The closest I came was a $900 room at the Four Seasons that ended up getting booked while I was on the phone with the guy debating if $900 was at all sensible for a room to sleep one night in, getting up at 4:00am for an early flight out. I decided no, and the room got taken anyway.
I planned to have a fun time with it, and head into town with no hotel room. Ya know, make lemonade and all. I know there is a Starbucks in Times Square open all night, and I figured I’d just connect there and stay up all night drinking espresso. I was seriously worried about the 2:00am to 5:00am period though. I knew I would get pretty tired.
Then I got a voicemail from friends in New York. He’s on Twitter, and saw my flailing desperation. I had considered calling them but I was still clinging to the romance of braving New York all night. I quickly opted to take the couch in their apartment and that’s where I write this. I’m getting ready to wind down and sleep a couple hours before heading out.
It’s amazing how much ruckus a blustery storm can bring.
See also Stranded in New York Tweets.
Frost/Nixon on Broadway
Tonight while I was stranded in New York I decided to take a moment to forget the travel struggles and enjoy some theater. I had heard on MPR back home about Frost/Nixon (wikipedia link as well), and I was really intrigued. I had sort of forgotten about it since I didn’t think I would get an opportunity to go. Earlier on this trip though I had walked by the Jacobs Theatre and saw it listed and it had stuck with me. So, tonight when I was struggling with flight delays that turned into cancellations, I decided to go see if I could get in the 8:00pm show. A quick taxi ride and I grabbed a nice ticket on the main floor for one.
I didn’t know the story behind Frost/Nixon until I had heard it recounted on the radio. The headline is David Frost, with an entertainment background (as opposed to journalism) gets these interviews with Nixon after he’s resigned the presidency by paying Nixon a lot of money. The play explores how both men were hoping to save or recover their careers through these interviews. Nixon to show he was innocent. Frost to show he was a serious talent. Battle played through debate, and only one could win. Nixon lost.
The play is very well done. They intermix video and sound very well. Michael Sheen (David Frost) and Frank Langella (Richard Nixon) are just amazing. Langella does something that was a first for me – he does close-up “TV” acting at the same time he’s doing stage acting. Really impressive. I’d recommend it to anyone.
Stranded in New York Tweets
See also Stranded in New York.
One of the tweets highlighted in my MarketWatch Farewell Video.
In New York and skinny jeans are everywhere.
Starbucks people are using wireless headsets. Getting too close to McDonalds. 🙁
One of the tweets highlighted in my MarketWatch Farewell Video.