Archive for Personal

DC Weekend In Review

May 20, 2007 Design and Technology, Food, Personal 6 comments

I had a great weekend taking in 5 really great DC destinations and events.

1) Tech Cocktail

Tech Cocktail is a meet up for tech folk to hang out and make connections in a fun venue. It was started by Eric Olson and Frank Gruber. I had the pleasure of meeting Eric. He told me the event was started in Chicago mainly because there was no event like it to have an excuse for the tech community gather. They also made the decision to let the event promote itself through blogs and word of mouth. That decision paid off well because the crowd there turned out to be a wonderful mix of designers, developers, strategists, and startup owners. Most I talked to were really on the cutting edge of new media. It was cool to see such a strong tech community turnout in DC.

2) Fogo De Chao

We had a birthday celebration for my friend, Eugene, at the infamous Fogo De Chao. This restaurant is a Brazilian style meat house. They give you a disc with a green and red side. When green us up you better make sure you are ready. A barrage of waiters carrying large swords with hunks of meat come at you ready to cut fresh pieces right onto your plate. I think I’m still digesting that dinner.

3) Artomatic

Artomatic is yearly event where hundreds of artists install their work in an old DC building. There are performances, too. The art was great. The few music acts I went to weren’t my cup of tea, but there was a great drama group.

4) Dupont Circle Farmers Market

I’m on a farmers market kick. I think buying locally is the way to go. Fortunately, the Dupont Circle Farmers Market has meats, cheeses, and produce galore. And, I ran into Giada De Laurentiis! You know how cooking shows always have the chef walk around checking out outdoor markets? Well I was walking behind Giada from Everyday Italian on the Food Network as she filmed her segment. I followed her around and tried to get some pictures, she probably thought I was pretty sketchy. Oh yea, I also bought at quart of lard from the pig guy! I’m gonna have some tasty veggies!

Oh yea, if you are freaked out by the lard, give this article a read first.

5) Taste of Arlington

Finally, Arlington has its annual Taste of Arlington celebration where all the local restaurants put up a stand and let you sample food. They have a great system where you buy a ticket book that lets you get 6 things at the food fair. I almost couldn’t finish all 6 because of how much food that was. It’s a great way to sample a lot of really different foods. The musical acts there were great, too. Bobby T and the Magic Voyagers, a great Jimi Hendrixish jam band and The Taylor Carson Band, a super fun acoustic rock group, were my favorites.

Revolution Health Launches!

May 15, 2007 All, Design and Technology, Health, Personal No comments

So this is a bit late, partly due to being away at a conference and other stuff. But just wanted to make the official announcement that my company’s site, RevolutionHealth.com has had its official version 1.0 launch a few weeks ago.

There’s been quite a design overhaul from our preview site that launched in January. Most of the effort went into cleaning up the navigation and visual design. Check it out and let me know what you think!

Back from CHI2007

May 9, 2007 All, Design and Technology, Personal No comments

I got back from CHI2007 a couple days ago and I must say it was a blast! It was my second conference and my 3D Dental Records project from senior year got in as a poster presentation.

CHI was held in San Jose, CA, the heart of Silicon Valley. Yes, I got to visit the Googleplex (got a 1-on-1 tour from the best tour guide ever), got to eat lunch there, and sit on their heated toilets (I didn’t have the nerve to turn on the auto wash/dry feature). Their party was off the hook! I also got to visit Yahoo, Nokia, IBM, and Stanford through complimentary tours the day after the trip.

I went about this conference much differently from last year’s CHI. Last year I pretty much stayed with a few people I knew well and quietly went from session to session. I got a decent amount of value, but somewhere in the year between I realized the really important learning and value from a conference goes on in the hallways and lunch tables that fill the gaps between talks. I had the honor of meeting some really great people and forging new relationships.

I discovered SIG’s at this conference, Special Interest Groups. These are sessions where you sit in smaller circles and discuss a topic with people really passionate on the subject. There’s no better place to meet people with similar interests and get fully engaged in a topic rather than passively watching a speaker.

CHI2008 is taking place in Florence next year. That should be really exciting. However, I’m also considering trying a new conference that has more of a design and industry focus since that is more applicable to what I do. CHI is very heavy on methods and research. I’ve heard good things about SXSW. I’m also interested in checking out BJ Fogg’s Persuasive Technology conference as well as Usability Week. So many choices…

CHI 2007 Reach Beyond Logo

I got on TV!

April 16, 2007 All, Design and Technology, Personal, User experience design No comments

Some of the pages and tools I designed at Revolution Health got on to TV! See below for the video.

NBC news in New York, I believe, was talking about online health sites they like. The two sites reviewed were the Toolkit landing page and the calculators. The medical guy actually ran through the Lose One Pound calculator. They talk start talking about Revolution Health about 2 minutes in. I’m quite flattered. Thanks Sree at NBC!

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Link to video

Keep an eye on RevolutionHealth.com this week as we’re going into our version 1.0 launch!

Jose Andre rocks my taste buds

April 3, 2007 All, Food One comment

What a weekend for food this weekend.  My sister was in town which is always a great excuse go out on the town and try some DC restaurants. It turned out to be a weekend of grazing over tapas and cheering on our new favorite chef.

The big hit was Latino Dim Sum Brunch at Cafe Atlantico.  Oh my goodness!  One of the most ridiculously amazing meals I’ve had in a while.  The chef, Jose Andres, makes these crazy ‘molecular gastronomy’ dishes which combines chemistry and art with regular old cooking creating unbelievable flavor experiences for the mouth and eyes.  We got the tasting menu for around $35 and you get around 20 small dishes and is quite filling.  Even plain old guacamole is served with style being made from scratch by the waiter right beside your table.

Jose also does an even crazier 6 person dinner twice a night called Minibar.   This decadent meal will set you back $95.  I’ll have to save that one for a special occasion.

Later that night, Jose battled on Iron Chef (perfect timing).  The best part was he and his assistant Chef Katsuya (who cooked for use earlier that day) absolutely DEMOLISHED iron chef Flay.  It was quite possibly the best beat down I’ve ever seen on the show.  He showed some of his unique molecular gastronomy techniques with flavored foams, flavor syringes, and trapping smoke in large glass domes over the final dishes.  The man is a true flavor and food technician and I’m honored to have eaten his food.

Jose Andres minibar

Vanilla potato foam with American caviar

Ipacak songs posted

March 26, 2007 All, Music, Personal One comment

So it looks like my high school band, Ipacak, has finally thrown in the towel.  I was the lead guitarist of the band for 4 years and it was a pretty good run with two albums released and a battle of the bands win under our belts.
As a result, I’ve posted the songs from my band’s two albums to my music page.  The Ipacak songs are further down below my personal recordings.  I did all the sound recording and mixing for these songs.  Enjoy!

PS. Talking about music, here’s a link to my college a cappella group, Joyful Noise.  Recordings from when I was in there aren’t up yet, but they have some older albums on the site.

Door gym

January 31, 2007 All, Health, Personal One comment

So we just got the wicked cool Door Gym in our apartment. This has got to have one of the highest cool-to-complexity ratios ever (ie very cool and so simple). You literally just put it through your door frame and once in position you can hang your whole weight from it. The device just stays there on its own weight and it’s shape. I’ve been slacking off on the physical activity side lately, but I think having this thing right on my door will be great motivation.

Oh yea, it also is great for pushups and situps when you put it on the floor.

Door gym

GotVoice?

January 7, 2007 All, Design and Technology, Personal, Productivity, User experience design 2 comments

Have you ever had an awesome voicemail you’ve wanted to download? Or maybe you just wished you could keep better track of your messages from multiple phones all in one place. Well, those were both me and I found an amazing free service called GotVoice. You basically enter you phone’s information, and automagically the site checks for messages up to 3 times a day, downloads the messages into mp3s, and e-mails you with any messages you’ve gotten.

This solves the three problems above very well. 1) You can download any of those “keeper messages” to your hard drive 2) If you have an organized e-mail system, you can simply treat your voice messages as part of your inbox and track them like you do your e-mails 3) If you have multiple phones, you no longer need to keep checking multiple phones.

The service is ad supported. They do ask for some marketing info and they include an ad in the e-mail (pretty smart) they send as well as put ads on the site. They also have premium service levels if you want them to check your messages more times per day and get some other cool features.

I’m excited. One of the most useful sites I’ve found in a while.

GotVoice

What does it mean to ‘support the troops’

December 25, 2006 All, Politics One comment

We’ve heard the words “Support the troops” almost everyday since the war started. One of the main contexts in which you hear this powerful little phrase is in response to criticism of the war and plans to get troops home. This is probably the most irresponsible and harmful possible use of this phrase. When we say this, we are not saying it in support of troops at all but rather the continuation of the war. To truly support the troops, we need to first make the judgment about whether they are being necessarily put in harm’s way.

If you had a child that went into a war due to some false premises or bad intelligence, then you are in a situation where you must make this distinction about what “supporting” them means.  Do you support them by a) doing whatever you can do to get them out of harms way sooner or b) blindly keep them there and tell anyone who is criticizing plans to get troops out that they are not ‘supporting’ your kids.
Unfortunately, option B is what you are doing if you use the phrase “Support the troops” to discourage criticism of the war. Let’s support the troops by helping them get out of harms way as soon as we can rather than trying to make ourselves look patriotic by shutting down discussions that can really help.
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New York Bans Transfat

December 25, 2006 All, Food, Health, News 2 comments

I’m so glad to see New York City looking out for their citizens and cutting out transfat from restaurant foods. Transfat is a terribly unhealthy substance used as a cheap substitute for natural saturated fat sources, and a large part of the cause for the unhealthy image saturated fats have gotten.
Some argue that banning transfat is going too far and is really paternalistic. I believe this move is more clearly warranted than antismoking bills due to the relatively undetectable nature of transfat. While smoking does harm the health of others around the smoker, at least they are aware and can make the choice to move. When restaurants sneak transfat substitutes into food, it hurts everyone in the restaurant (unfortunately there’s no ‘transfat free’ seating area in most restaurants) and it is difficult for the consumers to avoid the substance short of not eating out.

This is a case that I think it is good to have the government intervention. Free market competition is forcing restauranteurs to use the cheapest health harming substances to compete.
The consumer side of the market is unable to demand transfat free food through their eating choices and purchasing decisions because they are unable to discern who is using transfat substitutes. The government’s action here is good to provide protection of consumer health where the consumer market is not able to do so effectively.

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The price of safety

December 24, 2006 All, Politics No comments

I’m tired of hearing claims that the Bush administration’s war has been victorious in keeping us safe because we haven’t had a single death in the US since 9/11. To me, this is just insulting to the Americans in Iraq. We’re celebrating the fact that we haven’t had any deaths on American soil when in fact we’ve let almost as many American’s die on the terrorist’s own land.

It’s really sad what we mean by ‘safety’ in this context for those of us on American soil. ‘Safety’ is really just knowing that others (not you) will die to reduce the already very remote chance that you’ll ever get hit by an attack. And even that reduction in risk is questionable. By sending troops there, we’ve basically just relocated the target of attacks off our own soil.

How staunch supporters of the war can call the thousands of 9/11 deaths a tragedy and the thousands of troop deaths (plus tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths) a victory is beyond me. It’s amazing what we’ll convince ourselves of so that we can feel ‘safe’.

Bush and troops

Moved server, intial GoDaddy impressions

December 4, 2006 All, Design and Technology, Personal One comment

Just moved my site and blog over to a new server.  I took the plunge and got some hosting at GoDaddy.com for pretty darn cheap.  It seems like it meets most of my needs so far like php support which is needed for this blog and decent storage and speed.  Their e-mail forwarding is great, too.  I had been running my e-mail through zone edit before which gave my forwarded e-mails a roughly 30 minute delay.  Godaddy’s e-mail forwarding is very snappy.

I’ve only noticed one issue with running wordpress on GoDaddy which is I can’t seem to be able to use pretty urls for my post addresses.  The other thing is support for Ruby isn’t included until the next higher purchase level (I got the economy hosting), which I was looking at learning eventually.  Besides that I’m quite pleased with the hosting so far and from past experience, their service has been quite good.

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