Sunday, March 19, 2006
Blogging from the lounge room
The 4 month anniversary of moving in to the new house was celebrated by two events: our house-warming party (which was great fun) and the installation of a wireless network. Not only am I never going to be stuck on dial-up again, but I am now blogging on my new Fujitsu Lifebook from the living room while watching "Australia's Brainiest Musician" (I guess I just assumed that Human Nature had broken up years ago).
I never really considered it before - but having Wikipedia handy while watching television is quite useful. I can also watch some gems like this during the ads.
One problem the laptop had given me was that I had wanted to start reading blogs whilst sitting around the house. I originally used Sharp Reader as my RSS aggregator (feed-reader) but I think I stopped using because it was crashing frequently. I have since used Sauce Reader (even after it was up for sale and stopped updating) and been very happy. But now I need to switch to a web-based feed-reader to synch my "read" blogs between my two computers. It was around this time that I discovered that Google had released Google Reader.
Easy to use (it allowed me to import the OPML from my current bloglist), nice keyboard shortcuts (good for laptops) and Google - suits me sir. And I've just now read an entry about C# jobs in New York - hmmm, I guess it's close to Pittsburgh!
I never really considered it before - but having Wikipedia handy while watching television is quite useful. I can also watch some gems like this during the ads.
One problem the laptop had given me was that I had wanted to start reading blogs whilst sitting around the house. I originally used Sharp Reader as my RSS aggregator (feed-reader) but I think I stopped using because it was crashing frequently. I have since used Sauce Reader (even after it was up for sale and stopped updating) and been very happy. But now I need to switch to a web-based feed-reader to synch my "read" blogs between my two computers. It was around this time that I discovered that Google had released Google Reader.
Easy to use (it allowed me to import the OPML from my current bloglist), nice keyboard shortcuts (good for laptops) and Google - suits me sir. And I've just now read an entry about C# jobs in New York - hmmm, I guess it's close to Pittsburgh!
Monday, March 13, 2006
Travel Log - Day 5 (J-Dix on the six)
The travel notes I took while on our trip tell me that we slept in again on Day 5 - and I'm not about to dispute it. A few weeks before our wedding I had planned on mapping out every day of our trip in detail. I didn't want to do a whole movie dad thing and map out every single minute of a "vacation", but I thought that, while we didn't have to stick to our plan - we'd have a good starting point. Of course, I never got around to finishing it - so we ended up waiting for a bus to Bronx for an hour before giving up and catching an (expensive) train (but it took us through Grand Central Station, which was nice).
Arriving in Bronx, the first thing we noticed was the complete lack of taxi cabs. Coming from the crazy taxi cab archon-board that is New York it was odd to not see any of the hacks around - and meant we had to walk about 2 kilometers to the entrance of Bronx Zoo.
Bronx Zoo - you can barely make out the ad for the "Holiday Lights" display on the left - man, that was as lame as the sign suggests
The zoo was ok - but definitely had an off-season feel to it (I couldn't go on my first monorail - D'oh!). We saw lots of animals but of course, I was more interested in enjoying my chocolate taco (whoever thought of making a chocolate / ice cream taco is a genius!).
He looks sad, but I assume it's just because he is thirsty
He thinks he's people
Contenders ... READY!!!
Gladiators ... READY!!!
Tapirs are the animal world's equivalent of James Carville
Feeding time for the giraffe's (yes, they're licking the walls)
Here kitty, kitty
I think I had three of these, and they weren't really that good. I was probably just impressed that I was eating an ice cream taco (there was a period I started to eat my broccoli when a brother suggested they looked a little like trees)
One thing that Belinda got a pretty good shot of was a tormented lion. They had a lion in one cage, and some prey (I don't know animals, I assume they're gazelle or impala) in the adjoining area - separated by a wooden fence. The lion was just stalking the fence trying to figure out how to get into the other cell - kind of sad really.
I like how one of them appears to be trying to poke their head under the fence
After another 2k walk and hour train ride we got ourselves back to our New York hotel room. We packed our bags as the next day we were off to Niagara Falls. I think I had a cookie from Grand Central Station for dinner - nutritious!
Arriving in Bronx, the first thing we noticed was the complete lack of taxi cabs. Coming from the crazy taxi cab archon-board that is New York it was odd to not see any of the hacks around - and meant we had to walk about 2 kilometers to the entrance of Bronx Zoo.
Bronx Zoo - you can barely make out the ad for the "Holiday Lights" display on the left - man, that was as lame as the sign suggests
The zoo was ok - but definitely had an off-season feel to it (I couldn't go on my first monorail - D'oh!). We saw lots of animals but of course, I was more interested in enjoying my chocolate taco (whoever thought of making a chocolate / ice cream taco is a genius!).
He looks sad, but I assume it's just because he is thirsty
He thinks he's people
Contenders ... READY!!!
Gladiators ... READY!!!
Tapirs are the animal world's equivalent of James Carville
Feeding time for the giraffe's (yes, they're licking the walls)
Here kitty, kitty
I think I had three of these, and they weren't really that good. I was probably just impressed that I was eating an ice cream taco (there was a period I started to eat my broccoli when a brother suggested they looked a little like trees)
One thing that Belinda got a pretty good shot of was a tormented lion. They had a lion in one cage, and some prey (I don't know animals, I assume they're gazelle or impala) in the adjoining area - separated by a wooden fence. The lion was just stalking the fence trying to figure out how to get into the other cell - kind of sad really.
I like how one of them appears to be trying to poke their head under the fence
After another 2k walk and hour train ride we got ourselves back to our New York hotel room. We packed our bags as the next day we were off to Niagara Falls. I think I had a cookie from Grand Central Station for dinner - nutritious!
