Maniacal Rage

For Stacey’s 32nd birthday we went roller skating at...

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:51:35 -0800

For Stacey’s 32nd birthday we went roller skating at Moonlight Rollerway in Glendale. For the next five months, she’ll be two years older than me, but we both felt like teenagers doing 200 loops on a Saturday night to the tune of terrible pop music.

What made you choose the 27" iMac over the Mac Pro?

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:35:31 -0800

Convenience, cost and environment. The iMac is an extremely convenient computer—one cable, one piece of hardware, a relatively small footprint. It fits well on my desk and looks very nice.

It’s also very affordable for what it offers. I got the top of the line 27-inch model with the 2TB HDD + SSD option, bumped it to 16GB of RAM (not through Apple) and I still paid less than $3,000 USD before shipping. That price includes a lightning-fast computer with tons of storage space and an insane amount of memory, plus a beautiful 27-inch LED display. Mac Pros start at $2,499 USD without a display. Now, you can build an insane Mac Pro, but I don’t need that kind of raw computing power. My iMac is the fastest computer I’ve ever owned by leaps and bounds. Cost-wise, it just doesn’t make much sense to buy a Mac Pro any more (for me).

One complaint I’ve heard in the past is about the iMac’s lack of user-replaceable drives or that the limit of two is a problem, but I mostly disagree. If you have a very extreme need for storage I could see you having to buy many external hard drives. But I have 2.5TB built in, and with Thunderbolt (which the Mac Pro doesn’t have) I added two 1TB Thunderbolt drives that are lightning fast, and I have hundreds of GB to spare right now. I shoot lots of video and photos, have thousands of Photoshop files, et cetera, and I’m not at all worried about space. With Thunderbolt and the larger built-in disk options, this isn’t an issue so much these days.

The iMac also uses only 25% of the power the Mac Pro uses. Even at peak activity, the iMac with a built-in display uses 40% less power a Mac Pro uses. This might not be an important aspect for everyone, but it’s something I think about.

Our first “winter” in LA has been pretty great.

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:14:00 -0800

Our first “winter” in LA has been pretty great.

Given your experience with the Jawbone up (of which I had similar), what are your thoughts about the Nike Fuelband? Bullish or Bearish?

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:10:00 -0800

I’d say bullish in general—Nike makes excellent products around its Nike+ line. I’ve been using Nike+ to track running since 2006, starting with an iPod Nano, then moving to the SportBand, and eventually switching recently to the SportWatch GPS (which I love). The service is great and without it I would probably never run.

That said, the FuelBand isn’t exactly what I’m looking for in this kind of product. It looks very nice (and significantly better than the UP), but it looks like Nike is targeting this more at “active” folks in action. You can set goals and try to achieve them, which is nice, but I want to track things like sleep habits as well, which the FuelBand doesn’t do. While it seems entirely possible they could add that feature later with software, I doubt they will given the branding of the device is highly skewed toward activity.

There are some huge pluses, though. Perhaps the biggest is that it uses Bluetooth to communicate with the app. Also, it has a built-in display and really nice design elements. I’ll definitely keep my eye on the FuelBand when it’s released and see what people think.

Monday Night

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:59:43 -0800

Me: Would you rather... read all of the Harry Potter books, back to back... or eat a Subway Philly Cheesesteak three times a day every day for two weeks?
Stacey: Oh god. Harry Potter. Can I eat just one per day?
Me: No, you have to eat three. Just three cheesesteaks and water, nothing else. Two weeks.
Stacey: Yeah, Harry Potter.
Me: Okay. Would you rather eat Subway Philly Cheesesteaks three times a day for two weeks or... drink a cup of urine?
Stacey: Urine.
Me: But you don't know whose urine it is. The only guarantee is that it's human and disease-free.
Stacey: Urine.
Me: But it could be some dirty old homeless man's urine!
Stacey: Yeah but it's disease free... oh, god. Ugh. Is that Harry Potter offer still on the table?
Me: No.
Stacey: Just as well, I think I'd still choose the urine.

Photo

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 16:50:04 -0800

Photo

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 10:47:42 -0800

Why don't you ever credit yourself with authoring Uncrate? It seems like a pretty popular site.

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 10:47:14 -0800

This is one of the best questions I’ve received because it’s so thoroughly incorrect and bizarre. I don’t author Uncrate at all, though I’d love to take credit for it anyway. I think the confusion probably stems from the fact that I did a few videos for Uncrate years back, and the fact that Karbon designed and developed their popular iPhone app. But I don’t have anything to do with the site itself, that’s all Larry Angell and his crew. And they do a great job. But again, I’ll gladly take credit for it.

You are soooooo funnyyyyy!~~~ Marry me?

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 10:39:39 -0800

I DO!!! I’ll get divorced immediately~~~ Okay?

Photo

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 15:08:03 -0800

Did you bring your CR-Z with you to LA? How are you liking it after owning it for a while? I'm looking into getting a small hybrid myself, and everything is just too big. I don't need 4 doors. I want something as small and economical as possible. What kind of gas mileage do you get? I'm excited to see how the Prius C turns out this year, seeing as it'll get somewhere around 50-55 mpg.

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 15:39:05 -0800

We did bring the CR-Z, yes. In fact, it’s the car we drove cross-country when we moved out. After owning it for a year or so, I still really like it—though I do have a few complaints: Road noise is a bit louder than I’d prefer and the ride isn’t as smooth as I’d like either (especially in LA where there are lots of shitty roads and potholes everywhere). Before we owned the Prius, these things weren’t as noticeable to me, but going back and forth between the two highlights it. I also wish the stereo supported Bluetooth audio streaming for music so I didn’t have to plug in my iPhone (again, the Prius supports this, so now I’m spoiled).

Mileage-wise, I’ve averaged 31 MPG with the car in the entirety of its life, which isn’t terrible (especially compared to nearly any non-hybrid car) but isn’t as high as I had hoped. By comparison, we’ve averaged 42 MPG in the first few months with the Prius. The difference, of course, is that the CR-Z does not have an electric-only mode—no matter what, you’ll use gas.

The CR-Z is powerful, small and very nice inside, and I would definitely recommend it for anyone who doesn’t need to drive more than one additional passenger (ever), who wants a more affordable hybrid but is aware they won’t approach Prius-level fuel economy, and who likes the sportier look. I’m definitely excited about the Prius C, and depending on what it ends up looking like, I may trade the CR-Z for it when it comes out in the spring.

Do you use a Remote Desktop app on your iPhone? If so, which app do your recommend and why?

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 15:14:00 -0800

I use Screens on both my iPhone and iPad. It’s fast, works really well, and has great UI design. The first two are requirements, the last one is icing.

I also use TouchPad when I don’t need VNC but want to control a Mac from my iOS devices, such as when I’m using my Mac Mini in the living room and want to change what’s playing.

After living in LA for a couple months, thoughts on the differences between the West Coast and East Coast?

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 10:54:22 -0800

The most notable differences are the weather and the general attitude. It was 84°F yesterday, on January 4. We went rollerblading on the beach the day before Halloween. After coming back from visiting family in New Jersey over the holidays, where it was in the 20s, we went hiking on January 1 in Topanga State Park in t-shirts. I grew up in Seattle, where it was drizzle and gray every day for the first 16 years of my life, and then spent more than a decade on the east coast where it was snowing and windy and freezing for half of the year and humid as all hell for the other half, so Los Angeles has been a godsend.

Attitude-wise, this place is the polar opposite of New York. People are almost too nice. They say hello to you on the street, they know how to stand in lines without cutting you off, no one is trying to screw you out of something at any moment, it’s pretty clean and everyone seems fairly genuine. It was hard to get used to at first.

2011 Was a Whirlwind Year

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 09:59:05 -0800

In just twelve short months:

I moved in with Stacey and then we got married and celebrated with friends and family by renting out the Montclair Art Museum for the night
Traveled to LA to find an apartment and then moved here in August, which included a week-long cross-country drive adventure
Spent a week in Sydney, Australia
My sister visited us in Los Angeles and we ran around doing ridiculous tourist stuff for a week
Traveled back to NY/NJ twice and up to Seattle and Portland once for a long weekend
In July, I was lucky enough to hire another friend and Karbon grew to three. We completed more than a dozen projects for the most amazing clients I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with
We began exploring Los Angeles and put together an amazing home for ourselves here

Personally, professionally, and by just about every other metric, 2011 was the best year of my life. I can’t wait to see what 2012 has in store.

You can view all 264 photos I posted in 2011 on Flickr. For those of you who want even more photographic fun, subscribe on Facebook, where I post more (albeit less polished) photos of us and our adventures.

Wife, my glasses, mom’s puppy. Christmas, 2011.

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 20:35:11 -0800

Wife, my glasses, mom’s puppy. Christmas, 2011.

Google has been adding a lot of features to Hangouts that make...

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 12:51:32 -0800

Google has been adding a lot of features to Hangouts that make our weekly status meetings more enjoyable.

I read that you use the Withings weighing scale. Are you happy with the accuracy that it provides?

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 11:01:20 -0800

I love the Withings Scale. It’s accurate, fast, well-designed and simple. Once you set it up to use your WiFi network, from that point on you just stand on it whenever you want and it reports your weight, BMI and fat percentage and then invisibly uploads that data to your Withings account where you can view all of your data charted in one place.

You can also sync your data to Weightbot and have it with you, if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

Seattle, Day One Part one of a weekend trip up to Seattle a few...

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 09:48:00 -0800

Seattle, Day One

Part one of a weekend trip up to Seattle a few weeks back.

Music is “Breakneck Speed” from the album Champ by Tokyo Police Club. Shot with Canon 5D Mark II, edited in Final Cut Pro X.

Mount Saint Helens from the air, from our flight back to LA a...

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 12:07:18 -0800

Mount Saint Helens from the air, from our flight back to LA a few weeks back.

"I hope I’m wrong, but I think this is just the difference between putting your dog down and letting..."

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 11:34:38 -0800

“I hope I’m wrong, but I think this is just the difference between putting your dog down and letting it free on a distant mountain road.”

- John Gruber on HP’s announcement they’re making WebOS open source.