Ahoy!

We've been out on the water a few times.

The Boat Arrives

Lila and I bought a boat and today it arrived! I have to say its gorgeous. We rigged it today, for practice, and it will go into the water hopefully this weekend!

Blackberry Pearl 8130 review

Despite the fact that I love apple, I went ahead yesterday and bought a blackberry. I was eligible for a new phone and the Blackberry Pearl 8130 was on sale at bestbuy so I went for it.

I'm really happy with it - the operating system is complicated and the suretype keyboard takes some getting used to... but it works flawlessly once you get it.

Naturally the first thing I did to my pearl was to download a theme to make it look more like an iphone. I had some trouble getting the theme to load on the phone but the customer service people at www.mobihand.com sorted it out for me.

One really cool feature is the case that it comes with. The case is unimpressive looking and sort of useless seeming since there is no belt clip. But the case contains a magnet that the phone "notices" when it slides in automatically putting the phone to sleep. You can change how the phone responds to emails for example depending on whether it is in the case or not. I ordered a third party case from otterbox, which comes with a holster that accomplishes the same feature. BTW, there are some videos on youtube of people tossing blackberrys in this case down stairs and into snowbanks.

The GPS feature of the phone, paired up with sprint service anyways, works really well. I used it to drive to some address in White Plains that I had no idea how to get there (I was picking up an ebay purchase, not driving around aimlessly). The gps took me there perfectly.

Overall, its a great phone and I highly recommend it to other people. If anyone out there has any questions I'd be happy to try to answer them!

Day in the park

Lila and I went to Central Park last weekend for her niece cassidy's birthday. Then we say these two guys walking thru the park. Naturally a photo op ensued.



Yes. Thats Lila's older brother standing between Captain America and Spiderman. They said they lost a bet.

Cozumel 2008

Lila and I went for a week to Cozumel, Mexico. We mostly went diving and relaxed at the hotel. The food was excellent.

Mix up in the mail

I ordered this:



and got this:



Sierra Trading Post: Where jesus isn't exactly sure what you ordered.

A welcome houseguest

Fred came to stay for the last four days and I've got a few things to list that I know to be true:
1. A labatts in maine tastes the same as a Labatts in NY.
2. A labatts with fred always tastes great.
3. Dave Duhalde is really loud. All the time.
4. Fred is probably Jon Todd's brother he never had.

If anyone thinks of anything else defining about fred why not post them here.

Keep moving forward!!

I've learned something about myself. Whatever the last pixar movie that I watched is always the best movie I've ever seen.

The most recent:


The movie is all about scientific ingenuity and how you (really you there reading this) could invent the future!!!

And the plot moves wicked fast.

The best bumper sticker I've ever seen

Even better than the darwin fish:

Buy one

Say What?

Words.

Is there anything that unites people the way common language does? Words are complex, elegant, and simple. But I really never stop to think about words.

Here are two documentaries that I've seen that really made me think about words and their place in my life.


Wordplay

A great movie about crossword puzzles, the people who do them, and the people who create them. In my mind the under two minutes nytimes crossword solve contained in the film is equivalent two the crazy kids who solve rubic's cubes in under 30 secs.


Helvetica

This movie is a little slower, and not as exciting, but extremely interesting. Seemingly benign, fonts have a really interesting history brought forth in this very swiss movie.

Good Watching.

Cell phones

Lots of cool stuff coming out of the Mobile World Congress (I can't explain Robert Redford either). Many new phones and the line between computers and cell phones are blurring.

An observant pursuer of information would notice the complete lack of mention of Apple. When do we get iphone 2.0?

The Best meal I've ever had cooked for me

Lila just made me this extremely good fried shrimp dish out of "The Silver Spoon" cookbook. Those of you who know lila, know that she is a great cook. This recipe was so good that I've decided to risk copyright infrigement yet again and post it.

Fried Shrimp in pink sauce

Ingredients:
4 table spoons of tomato paste
3 tablespoons heavy cream
juice of 1/2 lemon, strained
1.5 cups dry white wine
1 teaspoon grated fresh root ginger
1 garlic clove
16 large raw shrimp, peeled and deveined
2 egg whites
vegetable oil, for deep-frying
all-purpose flour, for dusting
salt and pepper

Combine the tomato paste, cream, and lemon juice in a bowl, season with salt and pepper and set aside. Pour the wine into a dish and add a pinch of salt and the ginger and the garlic. Add the shrimp, mix well and let marinate for about 1 hour. Stiffly whisk the egg whites in a grease-free bowl. Drain the shrimp and immerse them in the egg white. Heat the oil for deep frying in a large pan. Spread out the flour in a shallow dish. Holding each shrimp by the tip of its tail, dip it in the flour, then put it in to the hot oil and cook until golden brown. Remove with a slotted spatula and drain on paper towels. Season with salt and serve the pink sauce, handed separately.

Good eating

Nerdcore kinda

was just shown this by lila's older brother. And yes, I'm really excited about adding youtube videos to my blog.

Tim Burton scares me again

This was one seriously scary movie. There were funny bits, and sad bits, but mostly just scary bloody bits. You should probably go see it.

Voices from Macworld

Jon and I left Macworld yesterday and I thought I'd post some show photos as well as some thoughts.

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This was the Apple show floor, pretty much the dominant feature of the expo. There was this big stage and pretty much every hour there was some sort of presentation. The focus of many of these was of course the...

The Macbook Air!!

Here we can see many Apple fans checking out the new ultra-portable. It is really cool. Although it doesn't come with a CD drive, it is able to use any other wifi enabled computer's cd drive. In my opinion the perfect companion to the Air is the mini. you could run a headless mini somewhere out of sight and just use it for storage and the drive.

Of course many other companies were at Macworld. Google had a cool booth...


Naturally there was no where to sit, few power outlets and the wifi didn't work...


All in all we had a really good time. San Francisco is a great city with lots of good food, fun places to visit, and plenty of bars. Also everyone is trendy. So we felt right at home.

Steve and Barry's

Lila's brother, Joey, is on a budget and he needs new sneakers. What should he get? Can he be stylish and cheap? I suggested checking out Sierratradingpost but no, thats not cheap enough. Can you look cool and be cheap? Yes!! At Steve and Barry's you can!! You can be as cool as either, Stephan Marburry, Venus Williams, or Sarah Jessica Parker.

Encouraged by Joey, I checked out S&B's for gifts and yes I did buy some. But let me tell you why I won't do that again. Steve and Barry's occupies the niche that none of us knew existed between Old Navy (its a step below) and Walmart (its a half step above). Its kind of like target but only with clothes and the clothes aren't as nice.

To be fair, I know its nice for people to be able to get the gear that the pros wear at those prices (Marburry and Williams both compete in their own footwear). And if you want to look fasionable, well we all know that Sex in the City has told us that SJP is hot. So I guess shopping there is appropriate for some, but I don't think its for me.

The force is strong with this one

As evidenced by my last post I've been thinking about evolution and religion recently. The question has been raised, can one reconcile religious belief with science? And I've come to the conclusion that at least I can't. If you are the strictest definition of a religious person, you hold content of your religious text to be true. What science proposes as the history of the universe, including all interactions on our own planet, is really at odds with religious texts. Can you really believe in evolution and believe in the bible or the koran or anything else at the same time? I personally can't.

I was telling lila that I don't think I believe in anything religious and that I think I'm an atheist. But then I decided that isn't really true, I believe in science. And one of the central tenants to all science is the first law of thermodynamics. Energy is conserved. Also, for something to exist it has to have some energy. Check out this debate. So one might say that energy flows throughout everything, binding everything together in one universal manner? Sound familiar? I'm not an atheist, I'm a jedi.

Creationism makes you dumb

Watching a pbs video on evolution and it is striking. As an educated science type, you loose sight of the fact there are actually a lot of people out there who don't believe in evolution. To which I say: Are you out of your mind?

I recall an old doonesbury cartoon in which a doctor tells a patient they have cancer, an ever changing evolving disease. He then asks the patient what type of treatment they want, the creationist treatment or the evolution treatment. The guy asks the difference and the doctors says well in the evolution treatment we give you drugs and chemo, the whole nine yards. In the creationist treatment we pat you on the back, give you some penicillin and send you on your way. The patient, a creationist, asks to hear more about the evolution based treatment.

Recently in a wired magazine, I read an article from the international congress on science, in which they were discussing doing away with the word "theory" and replacing it with the word "law" as its basically the same thing anyways.

A lot of misunderstanding of science derives from a lack of understanding of normal words in a science context. While ignorance is unfortunate, what's even worse are the people who do understand what the words mean and take advantage of it.

And to top it off, this idiotic debate makes us the laughing stock of the rest of world. Health care, education, and now science ed. I hate this country.

What to Eat on thanksgiving

OR


Truthfully I really don't like thanksgiving food. Turkey is ok, with barbeque sauce but everything else is not want I want to be eating. I'm always hoping that the thanksgiving dinner will fail and we'll have to go out to a Chinese Restaurant since they'll be the only ones open. I guess I'm not too american but thats just the way it is. You try eating salt free, fat free, skin free turkey and bad kugel for thanksgiving your whole life. You'd want Chinese food too.

Bowdoin from Birth

Last night, Lila and I went out to dinner with my family and some other non-family but very close family members. In total there were four bowdoin grads, and adam who we figure is going to get in (college application process is kind of like the NY Lotto, hey you never know). We ended up singing Beneath the Pines (my favorite).

Also in other news, I, who normally surf the web and play computer games got a perfect score on my writing & literacy midterm. I'm the Fred of my TC class. Except I don't play Casey at the Bat and Requiems at the same time and throw stuff at people. It'd be hard to throw stuff at myself.