I was over at Third Ward last month (dropping my surfboard off for glassing with Dave Murphy) and had a conference call which meant I had to walk around the neighbourhood rather than jump onto the L train. Found a group of great street paintings a couple of blocks from the subway – lucky find. Enjoy!
I have big plans for my very small apartment – but, of course, they are limited by funds, skill, and time available. Still, I’m starting small and making some progress as I go – I upgraded my work desk and started the process of updating the kitchen counters.
Here’s the before picture of my desk
And here’s the after – with butcherblock counter that matches the Kitchen counters.
The difference is probably more obvious in the kitchen
Before:
And after:
Next step is to replace all the kitchen counter tops with the same wood.
I’m from England, I also travel a lot to other parts of the world – South America, Australia and New Zealand, Europe, and Asia. Sometimes I buy DVDs in those places that are not available in the USA.
Currently those DVDs are coasters because of the abject stupidity and closed-mindedness of the various DVD hardware and software companies in the US. The rest of the world gave up on this region malarky quite some time ago – if I go to buy a DVD player in the areas listed above chances are it will be region free. But here in the USA (“home of the free?”) I am unable to buy one of those through normal channels, or change my DVD player to read and play them, or use any one of my multiple computers to play them. I almost resorted to changing the DVD drive region on my laptop to Region 2 (even though that would now exclude region 3 and 6 content), but apparently I can’t even do that, although I am supposed to have 4 of my 5 changes available.
Let me be very clear – these are bought and paid for DVDs from airport and high street retailers in foreign countries. They are content that is UNAVAILABLE in the US or Canada (and, FYI, they are travel, music, comedy, and TV shows; nothing else). I truly don’t understand why my choices to play legally obtained content are:
1. Purchase grey-market “region-free” DVD player from dodgy online retailer at huge markup.
2. Download multiple different software packages and attempt to extract, rip, convert, and burn DVDs that may or may not then work in my DVD player.
3. Download dodgy “firmware flash” programs to modify the firmware on my laptop DVD player – invalidating the warranty and causing who knows what other issues.
4. Attempt to obtain illegally torrented versions of this content online.
None of these options are attractive to me. I really wish the MPAA or whomever is responsible for these asinine restrictions could explain what someone whose interests lie beyond the shit shoveled through network TV in the US can do legally to play overseas DVDs in the US.
I’ll keep digging on this and when I find a reasonable option, I’ll be very happy to share it.
It’s been quite a while since I posted here – I embraced twitter, but that’s a very different forum for ideas
So – I’ll be making a conscious effort to post more regularly here and post some pics, some achievements, some thoughts on tech, etc.
What triggered this return? I don’t know; just a threshold being crossed, a decision to take back some control over my life and take some new steps. I’m going to articulate some goals for the coming year in the next few days – get them out there and it will keep me accountable – even if the only person who sees them is me.
Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone – especially to Kim who has been a wonderful, important part of my life for the past 2.5 years and I hope for many more.
As a Brit, a Geographer, and someone has lived many places and traveled to many more; I am fascinated and puzzled by the British attitude to the weather.
I could fill dozens if not hundreds of pages about various UK responses to too much rain (any time), some snow or ice in the winter, some heat or sun in the summer, or some falling leaves in the autumn / fall. Right now the news is that after a few mild winters, a normal winter weather pattern leaves the country in ruins.
Let’s recap – the United Kingdom is a NORTHERN European country. London lies at 51ºN, Manchester at 53º30′, Edinburgh at 55ºN. Compare these to Calgary (51ºN), Edmonton (53º30’N) and Moscow (55º45’N). Equivalents for my friends in the Southern hemisphere are tougher, but Ushuaia in Argentina (when I was there last summer/winter, people were skiing at close to sea level and it snowed every day) is at 54º48′ S, closest thing for my Kiwi friends is Invercargill at 46º24’S. Question – do you think people in that latter (non-UK) list put snow tyres on in winter? Do their city and county councils have snow ploughs and gritters?
Yes, I understand the difference between a Maritime and Continental climate, and the influence of the Gulf Stream on UK weather, but I also know about the jet stream and persistent Northern Hemisphere highs in the winter and the fact that a country this far north is going to get hit by winter storms a few times each year. Anthropogenic climate change is likely to increase the frequency of extreme events as temperature gradients N to S get out of equilibrium due to localized responses to increased CO2 and other greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. I’m pretty sure that I’m also not the only person who has studied this and knows these facts.
So, why?
Gatwick Airport closed for second day
And, yes, the usual suspects will be out saying that snow in winter disproves “global warming” when it does no such thing and all serious scientists have known for 25+ years that effects of anthropogenic climate change will be unevenly distributed. The Lake District / southern Scotland is at the same latitude as James Bay in central Canada or Ketchikan in southern Alaska. Will you buy some snow tyres, some winter boots, and a warm coat, please?
Well, the application is in for the NYC marathon next year and (unless I manage to screw something up), I should be in automatically with the 9+1 program through NY Road Runners. I have run 6 races so far this year and and I have three more to go – a 4 mile on Nov 21, a 10k on december 5, and a 15k on December 19. I even managed to register twice for the Kleinermann 10k! Maybe I’ll get two shirts.
I also registered for the NYC half in March, which I ran last year, but that’s a lottery and no guarantees.
Who would ever have thought I’d be able to even think of running those distances? But almost 400 training and race miles this year so far (and another hundred or so left in the year) and a couple of setbacks with a hip injury in the summer and a nasty chest infection in the fall, I guess I’m getting to be somewhat serious about this.
According to urlai.com:
“Text analysis
And to make a change from the bitching about people like AT&T and AmEX – something positive.
I finished the Norway Run last weekend in 16:07 which is a 9:28 / mile pace. Granted that’s a short race, but I’m getting back to the pace I ran in the spring in Brooklyn, so I think I just do much better with cooler weather.
I have three more races still scheduled for the year –
I’ll probably throw a couple of extras in there too to make doubly sure I hit the 9+1 requirement for the 2011 marathon and then it’s right into training for that. So even with three weeks off for this blasted bronchitis and sinus infection (which still isn’t cleared) I’m feeling like I’m on the right path.
So here are some more Goals:
In common with most of the rest of the parasitic “financial services” industry they don’t deserve to remain in business.
Their latest bullshit is to inform me that the “membership rewards” I earned by charging over $100,000 in business travel are now worth less than half what they were when I accrued them. They’ve created some kind of second tier “rewards” program which requires more than twice the number of points to actually be able to redeem them for travel. And they’ve also taken away the ability to transfer points from this program to airline miles. I’m sure they informed me of this on one of this 3 point type newsprint mailers with 75 pages they love to send out, but I notice that they don’t have this anywhere on their web sites. They are ashamed of this ripoff as they should be.
This is on top of what they did to me and tens of thousands of other people last year when they halved my credit line, then raised my interest rates to usurious levels because of the hit to my credit score that their unilateral actions caused. Of course, when I paid my account off in full and my credit score went right back where it had been, the enormous interest rates stayed where they were.
Why do companies seem to think that screwing their loyal and bill-paying customers is a good and sustainable business plan? I often charge thousands of dollars a month to my credit cards for business travel and I’ll be damned if any of that business goes to AmEx. Our company even started a new program for company AmEx cards and I told them I wasn’t interested – I’d rather stick with my United Airlines visa. Chase are crooks too, but not quite as outrageous as AmEx. If I could buy air tickets, rent cars, and reserve hotels without a credit card I would.
And can someone explain why credit card interest rates are still at 20-30% when savings interest rates are <1%? Could it have anything to do with the fact that they gave credit cards to college students with no income, dogs and dead people, and now they expect the rest of us to bail them out from their stupidity and greed?
Always a pain. Heading back to the US tomorrow and very much looking forward to getting home, rested and back to my usual diet, sleep habits and workouts. I’ve been in Townsville, Cairns, back to Townsville, Melbourne, and now Sydney. Hasn’t helped that it’s been cold and rainy here in Sydney and I’m coming down with a bad cold right before my flights home. Oh well….
Townsville is a nice-ish quiet town with a great seafront called the Strand. 5km out and back which added up to 4 miles with the distance to and from the hotel (Holiday Inn salt shaker building if you’ve ever been to Townsville). Then up to Cairns to visit my cousin Robert and his family up there. Quite a bit further to drive than I thought but I had a great time – they made me feel very welcome and shared their wonderful house with me. They really are living the Aussie dream up there although the sun and humidity kicked my ass!
Melbourne was cold and damp, but I finally got to run the Tan Track and really enjoyed that, although I was starting to feel rundown even then, so the hill halfway round was a bear. Track itself is just short of 4km, but distance to and from my hotel at the far end of Flinders Lane in docklands meant that it added up to 5 miles total. I was out there early Saturday morning after some joker rang my room at 5am and woke me up; and then flew to Sydney that morning – that’s probably where the downward spiral began because a hard run in the cold and damp followed by a packed flight is a great recipe for respiratory infections.
One thing, though, in both places was the high number of walkers and runners out there which made me feel really good about being a part of that. It’s probably why I should be heading to the east or west sides to run along the river rather than just stay on the treadmill at the gym next door.
