November 2007 Entries
Notches has a handshake agreement for some shared office space in SOHO! I'm very excited. I wanted to get a sense for what's around there, and I used a nice mashup from WalkScore.com which builds an index for any address that computes a value for how walkable the area is. And while it makes me feel great that we got a 100 for the new corporate headquarters, I get a 100 at my home address too, and most of the other Manhattan addresses I tried. This makes sense since no-place in America can match Manhattan for walkability,...
Since I wrote my Etymotic earphone review way back in December of 2004, I've worn them nearly every working day on the subway, on the streets, on airplanes, trains and treadmills. I'm forever spoiled on sound isolating earphones and until we all get brain-implanted Bluetooth modules I'll continue using them. I only have two problems with this setup. 1) Fragility. Etymotic has been pretty excellent about fixing them for me so far, I hope this continues. 2) Not being able to hear outside sounds when you need to. I'm embarrassed to say how many times I've been riding...
One of the holes in my todo system is recurring tasks. These are things that need to be done on some kind of recurrent schedule and don't fit well in most tools out there. Here's a tool that does just recurring tasks. The visualization is just great for getting a real sense of when things need to happen. I just set it up so I expect I'll be tweaking it heavily as I go, but so far it is helping quell that sense that there's stuff out there that I need to be doing and it isn't already...
Here's a really useful tool for runners. McMillan Running, a run coaching company put this together. You enter in a recent race result and it will spit back this table with equivalent performance times for all sorts of race distances and optimal training zones. I have found it to be very accurate and I try follow it precisely for my training paces. Similarly you can calculate your VO2max from racing performance here: http://runningforfitness.org/calc/vo2.php del.icio.us Tags: running, vo2max, calculator
I help my father's company with their IT stuffs and work (on Notches) out of their office. The room next door to my office is the server room. We control the environment completely. To keep things cool there is a standard window air conditioner, which the building facilities people cut power to once the cooler weather set in, and a giant APC NetworkAIR PA unit like the one pictured at the right. It has a network interface with all the alarms and whatnot you'd ever need and works fine. Except it is nearly winter time here in New...
Green stuff excites me. It appeals to my innate desire for optimization. I'd be doing this even if the Earth wasn't in trouble. It feels too good to be true, but my carbon profile is getting damn near neutral these days. One change I made a couple of months ago was to switch my home electricity to 100% renewable. I think most New Yorkers would be surprised to find out this option even exists. With the deregulation of power, Con Ed is forced to allow customers to choose their own electricity supplier. If you look at your current...
I blogged my medical fiasco this past summer race report good then real bad and since I'm a pre-money startup guy, I have no health insurance. I was dreading the bill for an ambulance ride and ER visit, but was actually somewhat relieved when I got the bills. Ambulance ride - $626 St Vincent's hospital - $438 St Vincent's was originally $1,250 or nearabouts and had a "self-pay" adjustment. Fine, it sucked big-time, but they let you put this stuff on credit cards and I kicked that can down the road. I grumbled a bit,...