C’mon guys. Cookie sheets and dustbusters?
Going backpacking
I’ll be backpacking starting Thursday the 24th and returning Tuesday the 29th. I’m joining a few friends and we’re heading down to Big Sur. It’ s my first backpacking trip, and I’m really excited. A bit nervous, but excited. Looking forward to lots of good hikes, great pictures, and fun times. I can’t imagine being away from the internets for that long, so wish me luck. 
Training for a marathon
My brother Andy and I have decided to run in the San Diego Rock ‘n Roll Marathon on June 1st. We’re going to run in a half-marathon this weekend in Santa Cruz. This will be his third marathon and my first. It’ll be a good chance for me to get acclimated to running with a large group of people and the atmosphere that comes along with it. I’m feeling good about the half-marathon, as we’ve already done a 13 mile run recently, and we’ve been training fairly regularly at the gym as well.
I went to Roadrunners and had the stride analysis to see what kind of running shoe I need to get. I have a slight pronation so I ended up getting a pair of Asics Gel Kayano 14′s, and so far they’re pretty great. Other things I’ve got so far:
- Superfeet insoles
- blended wicking socks
- runner’s shirts and shorts
- runner’s glide – no chafing!
- gatorade, powerbars, jelly beans
- sun block
I’ll post some pics from this weekend’s marathon.
Bring the pain
The first game of the season for the San Francisco Giants was yesterday. They lost 5-0. Unfortunately, I think the season opener will be indicative of the rest of the season for the Giants; not getting blown up, but getting beat, and not scoring much if at all. A 100 loss season? Damn I hope not, but with the way the N.L. West is looking, it’s entirely possible.
I’m certainly no baseball scout, but why aren’t the Giants starting some of the young prospects? There are few to be excited about, but still – how about these guys:
- Eugenio Velez
- Fred Lewis
- Rajai Davis
All of them are young, blazing fast, and have more upside or potential. And they can be put in for the following:
- Rich Aurilia
- Ray Durham
- Dave Roberts
It’s no secret the Giants are bad. Let’s clean house and start re-building. Management has said they’re taking a team in a new direction, so it’s time to put your money where your mouth is. And by that, I don’t mean dropping 128 million on Zito.
Oh, and I realize I haven’t really been posting about sports; there may be a few more sports and baseball-related posts in the future.
2 seconds of fame on the Discovery channel
What? Oh, that’s me playing foosball at work.
The Discovery channel filmed us a few months back during a friendly game of foosball.
The show itself was pretty good; they covered the history of search, which was mostly about Google and Yahoo. I haven’t been able to find a link to the video anywhere online yet. Let me know if you come across it.
And if you don’t already know, that’s me in the black and gray shirt, on the far right.
Census Taker
Now that hulu is finally open to the public, and they surprisingly have a large selection of SNL skits to watch, I can start linking to some of my favorite all-time skits.
I give you Census Taker.
Christopher Walken rules.
Update: I forgot to include the embedded video the first time.
domain name and blog platform
So I got a new domain name – http://www.nathanjohns.net. I’ve decided I’d like to use a more powerful blogging platform than blogger, and it seems wordpress is pretty much the way to go. I guess I just have to decide if I’m willing to put up with paying for hosting and staying up-to-date with software updates and whatnot.
My round-up of cool audio services on the web
Two of my favorite things are music and technology, so naturally when I come across a product or website which combines the two in a new and useful way, I’m interested. There have been quite a few good sites recently; here’s a quick summary of the ones I like.
1. Pandora
You go to http://www.pandora.com and enter a band or song that you like. Pandora uses the Music Genome Project to figure out similar artists and streams those songs for you to listen to. You then train Pandora by giving those songs a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. After a while, it’s pretty amazing how well it gets at recommending music you like. It all works through a web browser, no downloads necessary. Here’s my profile page.
2. Last.fm
Last.fm has lots of great features; if you enable the scrobbler, it will track what you listen to on itunes and windows media player, and import that into your profile online. Then, it shows your friends what you’ve been listening too. And they just recently opened up on-demand streaming of any song up to 3 times a day. I like last.fm, even if I feel a bit overwhelmed by the site. There are so many things to click on and so many links, but that’s ok. It makes me feel like I still have lots to discover on the site, so it keeps me interested. If you choose not to download the last.fm client, you can still use the browser to stream songs.
3. Seeqpod
Seeqpod.com is basically a music file search engine. You search for songs or artists, and it returns locations on the web, and lets you stream that file through the browser. It’s great; I’m constantly using it to get a quick listen of a song or artist, especially when I’m with friends and we’re talking music.
4. Amie Street
At Amie Street, you can purchase songs based on how popular they are. The newer a song, the cheaper it is. As it gains popularity and purchases, it climbs in price. A pretty cool idea, it’s starting to gain some following and getting more artists.
5. Songbird
Songbird is a web browser which has been modified to play music, and make it much easier to locate and download music files on web pages. When it finds mp3s on a web page, for example, it will provide download links in a special section below the browser. Songbird is a great idea, something I’ll be using more and more. It’s also open source.
Feel free to mention one of your favorite music services in the comments.
My beautiful HDTV is busted
I was elated when I purchased a 42″ plasma HDTV just under two years ago. We had just moved into our first house(condo), and Melissa agreed to let me get the tv when we moved in. So after a fair amount of research on options in the HDTV arena at the time, I’d narrowed it down to the Panasonic plasma and the Samsung plasma. Unfortunately the Panasonic was sold out and on backorder everywhere, so I went with the Samsung; specifically, the model was the Samsung HP-R4252, the 42″ 720p plasma.
Next, I stopped by the local Comcast office and picked up the digital HD receiver with DVR. After an activation call to Comcast and a few tweaks to the settings, I was in HD heaven. And we’ve been very happy with the picture – until it broke a few weeks ago.
I was watching football(one of the college bowl games I think) a couple days before the new year, when all of the sudden a 3 to 4 inch wide rectangle, which I highlighted with red border in the above picture, just went black. I tried changing the source of the picture, tried turning the tv off and on, but nothing was working. After some searching around on the web, I’ve concluded that a plasma cell went out – I think. At any rate, it’s going to cost more to fix the tv than it would to buy a new one. So that’s a bummer.
The tv is out of warranty – I didn’t purchase an extended warranty or service protection plan. I’ll be sure to get one of those next time. I called Samsung for support; they referred me to a local authorized Samsung repair center, TV unlimited in Sunnyvale. I’d need to bring the tv in to them, and it would be $150 upfront just to diagnose the problem. No thanks.
So now we’re stuck with a tv that shows all of a standard definition picture, but only about 85% of a high definition picture. If you’re interested, it’s officially for sale. I’ll make you a really good offer. We have begun to look around for a replacement, but haven’t quite decided on which one yet. I’d like to get it before the super bowl; there are some very good sales going on for tv’s right now before the big game.
My takeaway: get an extended warranty, especially for relatively new technology.