iPhone/iPad/Pre experiment, part two

iPad map connected to mobile hotspotI’ll give away a hint at the results of my exper­i­ments by say­ing this: round two end­ed up being the final round of test­ing, and the the­o­ret­i­cal win­ner in the con­test of iPad2 WiFi ver­sus first-gen­er­a­tion iPad with 3G and WiFi is: the first-gen­er­a­tion iPad.

More details about my con­straints and deci­sion cri­te­ria can be found in part one, but the basic run­down is: I want to know whether an iOS device with­out 3G or GPS could … Read the rest

iPhone/iPad/Pre experiment, part one

With the iPad2 out this week­end, I’ve start­ed to con­sid­er an upgrade from the orig­i­nal iPad to the new­er, lighter mod­el. Mon­ey is a fac­tor, so if I were to get a new one I’d have to sell the old one, and that would still leave me short of a replacement.

I’ve start­ed to con­sid­er whether I could get away with a plain WiFi ver­sion of the iPad, which would knock $130 off the price of the mod­el … Read the rest

Spacemen by the seashore

Well, real­ly space­men by the bayshore, but it sounds bet­ter with allit­er­a­tion. And I real­ly did­n’t want to lead with «Astro­nauts by the estu­ary» for lots of rea­sons, not least of which is that it isn’t actu­al­ly alliteration.

Street art is (some­times) fas­ci­nat­ing here in San Fran­cis­co. From stick­er­ers to mural­ists to… flat met­al cutouts of astro­nauts. On my run today I went past these and could­n’t quite believe my eyes. It was­n’t just one of these—there were four … Read the rest

What happens when I don’t pencil first

Philz MugOn Foun­tain Pen Net­work there is a top­ic start­ed by the user watch_art (also known as the print­mak­er Shawn New­ton) who called for draw­ings of cof­fee mugs. The one rule he stat­ed was that the draw­ing be done with each per­son­’s favorite pen.

Well, I’m not real­ly sure which pen is my favorite, but I know which foun­tain pens I’ve most enjoyed draw­ing with so I opened up my sketch­book and set myself up with my Philz Cof­feeRead the rest

Site of the day: Internet Movie Car Database

I’ve nev­er done a site of the day before, so it may as well be site of the year. Don’t expect a new web­site to be show­cased every day. I think some­one else already had that idea.

Remem­ber back when the Inter­net was full of won­drous sites that cap­tured the imag­i­na­tion and made us think, «wow, this World Wide Web thing is real­ly great?» Peo­ple came up with new ways of pre­sent­ing and sort­ing and fil­ter­ing con­tent and there­fore … Read the rest

What goes downhill must come up

I was up for a short while before head­ing out for my coffee/morning walk, but it’s pret­ty close to first thing. Fol­low­ing doc­tor’s orders I had a very nice walk and fol­low­ing doc­tor’s sug­ges­tion I got reg­u­lar cof­fee rather than decaf. The point is to see if we can get my mind bet­ter focused. When I quit caf­feine a cou­ple years back I hon­est­ly noticed no dif­fer­ence in focus or my sleep cycle. No dif­fer­ence in my abil­i­ty to wake … Read the rest

Walk, don’t run

I’ve been instruct­ed by one of my doc­tors to do a ten minute walk every day. It’s embar­rass­ing to have to be told to do this, but she was right for a lot of rea­sons. I get too hung up on hav­ing to run or hav­ing to do some sub­stan­tial dis­tance. Ten min­utes is bare­ly more than walk­ing out the door and turn­ing around to come back. Seri­ous­ly it’s a third of a mile out and a third of a … Read the rest

Starting slowly and tapering off

Start slow­ly and taper off. That’s the slo­gan of the Dol­phin South End Run­ners, the run­ning club to which I belong. It seems that if I’m always start­ing, I’m always slow. I know I should­n’t com­pare my times against the races I ran when I was six or sev­en years younger, but but it’s hard to look at a 13 min/mile pace and feel very good about it know­ing that once upon a time I could do a … Read the rest

Taking the black racer to the remote office

Jan­u­ary has been a tough month. Some­times get­ting things accom­plished comes some­what nat­u­ral­ly and oth­er times it is an uphill bat­tle just get­ting through each day. Jan­u­ary has been a whole month of the lat­ter. It has­n’t been a bad month so much as it has been a dif­fi­cult month.

I real­ly mean it when I write that it has­n’t been a bad month. The sit­u­a­tion with my totaled Moto Guzzi has been resolved in what is prob­a­bly the best of … Read the rest

Without wheels

The Guzzi is in the shop, and the news is not good. Repairs to the dam­age caused by a neigh­bor back­ing into the bike will be in the mul­ti­ples of thou­sands of dol­lars. This means it’s time to get insur­ance com­pa­nies involved. And I prob­a­bly should have got­ten them involved at minute one.

I was told not to be shocked by the first num­ber that I got. The bent steer­ing stop is part of the frame, and the only right … Read the rest