It's been a while since I posted anything here.  Been meaning to for a long time, but have just been so busy that I haven't found the time to take care of it…. hopefully that will change.

Strangely enough, there is a decent amount of traffic that still traverses the blog every day, mostly on old pages and reference information.

I'd like to write more about the tools and software that I use to make my life easier.  God knows that I spend enough time playing with them in my spare time that I could probably do nothing but that

Look for some more posts coming soon!

I'm back in London for work, and it looks like great weather this week.   Today I spent the day wandering around Southbank, where my hotel is, and then crossed the river and wandered through Westminster, Trafalgar Square, and other places.  

I also found an awesome spot on a bench near St. Thomas's hospital about 100 feet from my hotel to sit and read a book.  You can't beat the view!

I'm here to finish selecting a contractor for a work project and will be here all week.  The rest of the week will be spent at work during the day, but hopefully I'll be able to explore a bit more in the evenings.  I fly back on Saturday – a long week ahead!

I'm surprised at the quality of the coffee available in London – when I was last here in 2004 it was a big challenge.  Now, it seems that there is a small shop on every corner.  Of course the ubiquitous Starbucks are everywhere, but that's not real coffee IMHO.

The best one I've come across so far is Taylor St Baristas – it's very much like Macrina or Fiore back in Seattle, including the wonderful pastries and fresh food available, as well as the ambiance, free large seating areas, and wifi access.  The closest one to my hotel and the office is here – literally 2 minutes from the office – you can see it down the road.

The picture above includes some wonderful banana bread, lightly toasted with butter.  They were out of the porridge and honey, or otherwise that would have been present

For the longest time I have been plagued by motion sickness doing various things. Sailing, one of my favorite things to do, makes me sick if I go belowdecks when there are even moderate waves.
Riding in a car and trying to look at a map, or reading will end up making me terribly sick.
Flying on airplanes is just as bad.
For the last few years, I've been using the ReliefBand which is a watch style device that uses two small metal contacts to send a shock into the nerve cluster near your wrist. This has worked amazingly well.
I'm still very tired when I fly, even a short 2 hour flight. The worst time is when we slow down to land and my body realizes that things aren't as fast as they had been. The ReliefBand helps. The second worst part is the car/taxi/bus ride afterwards since its another speed to adapt to.
One great thing is how much easier this has made actual in flight experiences. For instance, right now I am writing this from my iPad, on a plane from Burbank to Seattle via gogo inflight wireless. A year ago if I tried this, I would have made some very unhappy seat mates.
There are exercises that I used to do a year or two ago that helped with inner ear development (yes k I know I owe you these) and I want to reconstitute those as well in the hopes that I might be even better when flying.
Oh yeah, and the in flight wireless is sure fun to play with. Crazy how it can work…

A while ago I wrote about my first impressions with the Macbook Air – after 3 months of using it constantly, I can say it's my most favorite computing platform in at least the last 5 years, if not longer.  

The two biggest things that it has going for it long-term are size and battery life.  Not only is it so light that I don't even notice it in my bag, but it lasts so long that most of the time it only sees the charger when I am done for the day.

I don't seem to have any issues with the lack of a backlit keyboard, and I absolutely love the speed that the SSD's bring to the platform.   I'm using Boot Camp with Windows 7 for a couple of apps I can't run under OSX, and it seems to work there just fine as well, albeit slightly less efficiently (just like all of the other Macbooks).

I think the Air is a great system for anyone who needs portability and moderate power in a small, well designed system.  It's well worth the money.

I love snow, bad weather, long dramatic newscasts, and everything around it.  I was at home all day today making sure a puppy was well cared for, and was able to take some pictures of the snow up on Queen Anne in Seattle.

The wind is now blowing so hard that the light poles outside and in the Safeway parking lot across the road are making horrible noises, and the snow is blowing vertically.  I wish photos would capture the snow in the lights, but it never seems to work…

My short walk home tonight was so cold because of the wind – at points I had to stop and turn away from the wind it was so powerful and full of stinging snow.  I hope it keeps snowing and blowing so I don't have to go into work tomorrow …

Full set of pictures is here on Flickr.

This is a test post – a bunch of folks have let me know that my link to Google Reader (provided by FeedBurner) isn't working.  I'm trying to test that out …