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.
- 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.
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.