Archive for the ‘Gear’ Category
Newton Gravity shoe review
Quick summary: An efficient, neutral-gaited runner’s dream trainer. The upper is perfect (very breathable; you can see toes through the mesh), and the midfoot cushioning suits me perfectly. Most comfortable shoe I’ve ever run a marathon in. Cons? Too expensive ($175), but I’ll make sacrifices.
2009 Gravity: I’m a fan of the red
It’s Chrimmistime!
This week has been a devastating one for AAPL stock, but undaunted by financial realities I am now awaiting the arrival of a new Mac Pro workstation. Seems like forever ago I began my wait for this hardware refresh so I could replace my aging PowerBook 17. Minorly awesome were upgrade prices for [...]
Closer to a good-enough e-book
Despite its fugliness (which I suspect is less so in person) and high price tag, I have been excited about Amazon’s Kindle e-reader for some time. I still have major content concerns (can I at least get a discount on titles I’ve already bought from Amazon, please?) that prevent me from investing in such [...]
Earplugs and alarm clocks
I’ve recently begun sleeping in earplugs, since I try to be in bed pretty early in order to get up insanely early and run. I sleep well in earplugs, but how could I trust that I’d hear my alarm, short of waking my entire building in the process? Enter the Sonic Boom alarm [...]
New iMacs, iPods nice in person
While at the mall tonight shopping for glasses, I slipped into the Apple store for another of my three-minute visits to check out the new hardware.
The new iMac is a gorgeous kitchen computer, even with the horrendous glare of its glossy screen¹. Unfortunately I’ll never buy an all-in-one.
As I expected, the new iPod Nano [...]
Trail shoes
I ran trails for years in old pairs of road Gel-Nimbus, which are perfectly fine for some trails. However, when trails are very technical or just very rocky, I have found that I benefit enormously from a well-chosen pair of trail shoes. Mark it up to lots of slipping and sore feet at [...]
HD-DVD
For those keeping track, stand-alone players are almost affordable. In my opinion, investment in a media collection is still out of the question, but Netflix has media in both HD formats.
Honestly, my first HD player will probably be either in an Xbox 360 (which I may finally get in order to play with the [...]
Slingbox Pro is superb, but crippled
I got my Slingbox Pro this week, and the easiest way to summarize the experience is that it just works. It comes with all the cables you could possibly need. Plug it into the DVR, plug it into the TV, plug it into the network, install the software on my PowerBook, run the [...]
PiP + ethernet = Slingbox
A consequence of using my HDTV as a monitor for my email/webgoofing computer is that while I’m on the computer I don’t have access to television. I’m not (yet) a big TV junkie, so this is usually not an issue, but occasionally it’s nice to have weekend news and interview programs going in the [...]
Mac Mini or MacBook?
Sometime early this year, I will give my mother my PowerBook 17 and replace it with either a Mac Mini or a MacBook. Either way, I plan to at least wait until this month’s product announcements. I may wait until OS X 10.5 is released.
I’m thinking Mini, since I keep the machine hooked [...]
Driving and running
I’m spending Christmas at my parents’, which means time in the car. The long drive was made somewhat shorter by catching up on many .NET Rocks! episodes. I was disappointed to discover the audio was much too low on the This American Life podcasts for me to catch up on those.
Three weeks until [...]
My take on HDTV
For the past two months I’ve started a few different exposés on my new experiences with HDTV, and all have ended up centering around my (admittedly) weird TV watching preferences and habits. To summarize:
LCD television technology has progressed enormously in the past two years. There is no compelling reason to get a plasma [...]
Multiple things
I’m considering selling my Canon Digital Rebel to a friend and upgrading to the 30D. It’s likely I’ll do this, but I’m still hesistant to cough up the extra cash.
I have all but decided to move Uptown Charlotte in a few months. It’s almost time to begin dreading the move, but I am [...]