SwimFinsSF

How come

no one is posting comments to my blog? Is commenting broken? Am I not writing anything comment-worthy… Or do you all just hate me?

(just kidding – just worried that the move to wordpress broke comments for folks)…

A new toy

I got my new toy today – all Apple Employees are getting ’em… and DAMN They’re cute. Can’t wait to get it home and loaded up with my tunes!. Was just needing this at the gym this morning!

A new look

Once again I spent way too much time futzing with my blog when I should have been doing other things… But as a result I now have a brand shiny new WP blog with all of my old content and a shiny new look. This is an example of a powerful tool (MT) falling down because if QA and usability issues. I really liked MT cuz you can customize all sorts of stuff but unfortunately its power is also its downfall – every time I touched something I broke something else cuz their customization tools didn’t take into account things that the user changed on their own… So now i’m in WP.. For now… We’ll see how this works out..

DAMN

I was futzing with templates on a private blog that I have up here and the changes I made to that blasted my template for my main blog… GRRRRRR… And I put that template together so long ago that I don’t really remember how I built it… I’ll do a little poking around to see if I can re-create it… But i’m betting this may be an excuse to move to WP and try something new..

So in the mean time forgive the stock template – don’t have much time to fix it right now…

DAMN DAMN DAMN DAMN DAMN

Nuvi 360 Observations

Like I said earlier, I broke down and got myself a really cool toy last week.. After seeing Brian’s and talking to Randy about it I broke down and got myself a Garman Nuvi 360. My justification for getting it was the traffic integration feature as well as our upcoming trip to europe… But in reality its really just cuz its a cool toy and I’m a geek. Up until now I never wanted a Nav system because the fact is I don’t get lost driving around SF or going to work – I live here. But the other features seemed to make it make sense for home and its small enough that I can take it on trips.. So I figured what the hell..

So.. Now that i’ve been using it for a little while here are some observations for those considering it.. Since I couldn’t find good discussions on the thing online I figured I’d share! 🙂

• Interface is very good.. It took me a little while to figure out how to get it to show me maps for a place that I wasn’t currently at because it is always trying to give you directions from your current location. But if you choose ‘Find Location’ and navigate to an address you can then select ‘show map’ at the bottom of the screen.. Thats very cool when you’re trying to look at maps in other states or countries cuz otherwise it’ll try and drive you there which is rough for points across an ocean.. (strangely it couldn’t find a route from SF to berlin..
• Dashboard Mount: This has been giving me grief. First, when I put the power cord into the mount I couldn’t get it out.. still can’t.. which is frustrating since I HATE cords all around my car.. I only want it plugged in when it needs juice. It has also started loosing suction on the window lately – probably just needs cleaning but still.. This is particularly a problem living in a big city where you can’t really leave a cool gadget in sight when parked – taking it on and off is a little troublesome..
• Traffic integration: This is REALLY cool.. shows you both incidents on the freeway as well as red, green, and red on roads to indicate traffic flow.. WAY cool.. Confusing part here is they have a bunch of different models (10,11,and 12) and I had a hard time figuring out which one to buy.. I finally just picked the 12 cuz it looked the least conspicuous and it seems to work.. Only issue I have with it is that it needs the nuvi to be connected to power which means it needs to be in the cradle (kind of a bummer when I got the thing at work and the cradle was at home..)
• European Maps: So this one was wierd.. They have two versions – one that comes on a DVD and one that comes pre loaded onto an SD card.. The one on the SD card, in retrospect is what I should have gotten but I couldn’t tell and got the DVD version. This version requires that you run the maps on a PC and then send them to the Nuvi.. great if you don’t want all the maps but a hassle otherwise (and thank GOD for Bootcamp – otherwise i’d be screwed).. Its also kind of counter-intuitive how to get the right things sent across.. It turns out you have to go into the application and select the segments of the maps in the map browser and hilite them and then click transfer to get the maps over.. There really shoudl be a ‘send all the damn maps’ option or more clear directions..
• Phone integration: This is also cool and everyone I talked to says they can hear me fine.. I do wish the volume went up louder on the thing though – road noise makes it a little hard to hear some times.. I also wish there was a ‘answer with phone’ option for the situations where I don’t want to talk on speaker.. Its probably there but I couldn’t find it..

Overall this thing is REALLY damn cool and I HIGHLY recommend it.. just a little nits that I wish worked differently.. but thats OK.. I’ll live.. still love my gadget.. can’t wait to try it in europe! 🙂

(Oh yea.. and I need to post a link to Technorati Profile so I can claim my blog.. so here it is..)

My Software Plugs for the week

Gotta take a second to plug my to current favorite things… First is kind of biased since a good friend of mine created the product – but even still its VERY COOL… PumpOne is this REALLY cool workout guides for your iPod. Its basically workouts that you can download to your ipod so you have workout guides at hand while you’re listening to your music at the gym. They have a bunch of different types of workouts for both men and women and all of them have the same clear easy to follow steps to walk you through what ya need to do… Check it out either directly or over at Apple’s site..

The other is just my favorite new time sync… They’ve FINALLY started supporting Plaxo on Mac OS X. as a result i’ve killed WAY too much time pestering my friends to update their contact information and cleaning out my address book. But seriously – the idea is VERY cool and its about f-ing time they made a mac version.. For those of you that don’t know, Plaxo is a web integrated service that helps you keep your address book up to date by allowing your contacts to update your address book for you. You can send email requests to your contacts which sends them to a web page where they can update their information and the next time you sync your address book with Plaxo you get the updates. But, even cooler, it also allows you to connect your address book with other Plaxo users so if any of your contacts are also plaxo members you automatically get their updates whenever they make changes without having to send a request. They definitely have some things to work out (especially when it comes to iSync) but its still very cool…

ok… enough plugging… Happy saturday..