In re: SF liveblog

Live from SF some pics in front of Hills Bros Coffee (don’t worry I am not drinking any)

In re: iced tea

I was listening to a podcast of the Splendid Table a week or so ago and one of the guests was a tea shop owner and tea expert who talked about iced tea, and how to make it. Anyway he converted me to cold brewed (overnight in the fridge) that yields a less tanic / acrid (is that a word ? ). Anyway it has less bite and a softer taste, but you can do it with any tea black, green, white whatever you fancy. He also explained why sun tea is a bad idea (you are putting organic matter in a warm moist environment, couldn’t design a better place for bacteria growth. Anyway with the warm weather we have been having nothing beats some nice cold iced tea (is that redundant?) well except maybe the occasional lemonade. Also don’t get me started on the horrors of sweet tea, one of things I don’t miss about living. In Virgina.

In re: blogging from above

So I am sitting (when I write, not when it gets uploaded) here halfway between Dallas and San francisco in seat 13F and I thought why not fire off a post. I am on my way to SF for what looks to be a great weekend, visiting great friends in a really great city that I only have spent a little time in, and getting some good meals in. I’ll through out my props to the inter terminal transport in Dallas, which is simple and you don’t need to leave security ( a plus for a lot of reasons, the one that came to mind today was not throwing away the overpriced water I bought in Ohio) for comparison sake Newark you need to go through security if you train (I hear if you bus, you don’t but they don’t make that common knowlege.

I’ll leave you with a picture of Ohios domeless statehouse, not the only State with no dome, but the only rotunda without a dome ( apparently the civil war led to the dome craze as troops returned home having seen the capitol building.

In re: overpacked? Brooks Brothers order a bit wasteful.

So a bit ago I ordered some new work shirts from Brooks Brothers online during a big sale they had (their non-iron shirts are amazing). Anyway I also ordered a replacement pair of the little knotted string cuff links (the only kind I’ll wear generally, a more casual and cool looking I think , just be careful of them coming apart — hence the replacement. I assumed when ordering they would throw the little things in with my shirts as they are tiny, so I was a bit surprised when a seperate box showed up. Now having read consumer reports back page I have seen my share of wasteful packaging and too large boxes, but considering a small envelope would have held the knots I was a bit surprised by the box. I just wonder how the packers of the box can’t figure out a better way, oh well.

In re: mobile blogging

What’s different about this post? Not sure if you will notice any difference between this post and any of my earlier ones. To keep you from guessing I’ll give you the answer… I am blogging from my iPhone (yeah it’s the now antiquated 1st gen). Anyway wordpress the website that runs my blog has a mobile edition now that is really lean and simple to use – meaning it loads fast on 2g edge networks and is a simple screen that fits the small screen well. It will be interesting to see if I get into doing shorter more spontaious posts or stick with the tried and true.

Update: so just as I found out about that today they came out with a free wordpress iPhone native app, so far looking pretty good.

In re: Fighting a ticket with GPS?

Speeding tickets are one of the more annoying things to deal with, there is a certain helplessness that most people feel in terms of the ability to fight a supposed radar gun reading.  An interesting case is taking place out west on the subject where a teen was nabbed for speeding, the only difference between this and every other case is that the kid and his family are trying to fight the ticket w/ the GPS data they have (his car was equipped with a GPS unit that reported back to a central service with his speed so that his parents would know if he was speeding).  Of course GPS in every car is something that reeks of big brother to many folks, but here we got a case where it might be able to poke a hole in the normally open and shut case of speeding.

See article Nabbed for speeding? GPS data could get you off the hook – from Ars Technica