During a recent United flight from San Francisco to Maui, I played the “Halfway to Hawaii Game”. The objective, determine the exact time the airplane would reach the geographical midpoint of the flight to Hawaii. Shortly after takeoff, the crew provided this flight data: Departure – 6:07a Hawaii time Duration – 4hrs 42min Distance – [...]
Every now and then it’s useful to challenge oneself, to grow, to stretch. A couple of months ago, a friend of mine noticed a McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Arby’s within spitting distance of each other, a trifecta of sorts. Then came the eureka moment, where he envisioned combining a Big Mac, Double Down and [...]
In college, I got by without a car. Whether it was going to the grocery store, a punk rock show, the airport etc. I walked, skateboarded, took public transportation or bummed a ride from a friend. Cars were an unnecessary expense and parking was a pain in the ass. When I got a job, I [...]
Unless Derek Jeter suffers a season ending injury, he will collect his 3000th career hit sometime during the 2011 season. Before opening day, Mike Vaccaro of the NY Post thought it would happen around June 7th based on Jeter’s historical average of 1.27 hits per game. Through the first 16 games of 2011, Jeter had [...]
In 1999 I acquired my first digital camera, an Epson PhotoPC 700. Looking back at the tech specs (1.3 megapixels, 4 megabytes of internal storage, no optical zoom) makes me wonder why I took photos with this camera at all. At its maximum resolution (1280×960) it could store 5 photos at “super fine” resolution, 11 [...]
A some point last year I became infatuated with a game commonly known as Flood-It by a company called LabPixies. My obsession resulted in the creation of a clone I call C O L O R F L O W which addresses the major faults I found with the game, namely there was no way [...]
Today marked another step towards Judgement Day as a computer, built and programmed by IBM, competed against the two best human Jeopardy players of all-time, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. After watching the episode I wondered if Google Search would be competitive in this forum. So I tried typing a few of the answers, verbatim, [...]
In the summer of 2003, I read an article about the Tahoe Rim Trail being awarded national status. I was familiar with the big name trails e.g. Appalachian and Pacific Crest, for which completing a thru-hike was a many month commitment. This trail was only 165 miles long and there were less than 200 people [...]
Most travel guidebooks inundate the reader with “must sees”. For example, any book on Paris will mention the Eiffel Tower, perhaps going so far as to say one must travel up the tower (at least to the second level). I don’t think anyone would argue with listing the Eiffel Tower as a Paris “must see”. [...]
I enjoyed Halloween as a kid, walking all over the neighborhood filling pillowcases upon pillowcases with the good (candy and coins) and the bad (fruit or toothbrush, which prompted retaliation as I grew older). In college, the holiday lost its allure as going to gatherings of costumed drunk people whether it be in the student [...]
