22 January 2013
23 August 2010
And now for something "completely different", er controversial
I came across this on Facebook today (thanks Chris)!!
After spending a good 15 years making and supporting vaccine quality at Merck, I got a little tired of the anti-vaccination movements supported by charlatans like Andrew Wakefield. This british gastroentreologist conducted some poorly designed "research" showing linkages between autism and administration of childhood vaccines containing thimerosal, a mercury containing preservative since banned.
The studies were flawed, an outbreak of measles and other controllable diseases were easily attributable to the anti vaccine movement, but none speak how I feel better than Penn and Teller!
31 July 2010
Ride to Hellertown
Ran into some friends on a different route 30 miles from home and then a second time (Steve and Michele). A great time. still working out kinks for vibration from camera.
30 July 2010
Where is my iPad?
Ok.
So for a self-proclaimed gadgetophile, I reacted slowly...
But now my friends are rubbing it in. By the time I decided I had to have one (acting like the South Park characters in the famous Best Buy video). Is it a big iPhone? "I don't care."
So I start my search. Realize that Best Buy's online inventory isn't worth a hill of beans and make 40 calls for a 16 or 32 gig wifi..to no avail. I dismiss the 3G versions as more than I want to pay and, of course, I knew then about the Library of Congress ruling to make jailbreaking legal :)
So why pay 2 data plans. Jailbreak the phone, make it a 3G hotspot and connect the WIFI iPad!
Easy if you can find one.
So I continue my quest at the local Apple retailer Mac Outfitters, locally in beautiful Doylestown. I put myself on waiting lists for 2 models, 23 and 8-deep respectively. After a week, they get no shipments!
I go to Apple online and place my order for a 32 gig WIFI with protection plan and a camera adaptor to attach camera via USB.
Then the idea for a Doylestown Bar Camp comes together. On the 22nd of July, I attend a planning meeting and am subjected to the scene below.
Yesterday, my friend Angela at Bucks Happening tweets "I got an IPAD!!!!". This is the final straw! Where did she get one, I ask. "Oh, I planned a friends wedding and she gave it to me as a gift!" Here I am turning over every blessed rock on the East Coast and some one drops one on her door step and says "enjoy!"
The fina straw today was when the item below arrived from China (on a slow boat, I presume). Great, I can really find a use for this!
So I wait until August 9th to get mine. How much more angst by then?
27 July 2010
M.O.M.'s Beer tasting Dinner
Attended a 4 course beer tasting meal at Maxwell's on Main (M.O.M.'s) last night. Some intersting beers including some California microbrews and a local one infused with tea from Prism Brewery in North Wales, PA. Second and third course served with Coronado's Idiot IPA and the Bruery's Trade Wind Tripel.
All in all, company was good, beers were interesting and food and service was great. My only opportunity for improvement would be that they had 8-10 oz pours and the portions of food were miniscule (main course served on a saucer size plate).
Given the volume of beer and the hour, the expecation was a normal size meal!
some of the group of beer aficionados
friends Geoff and Chris
a pan of the 20 or so attendees
25 July 2010
Patriot Triathlon - near Wind Gap, PA
This morning I cycled up to see my CyclePA traning partners Joanna and Jerry race in this race. It was about 8 miles north of Bath, PA. Even though I left at 5 am, I didnt make it for the swim leg. Arrived just in time to change and see my friends finishing the cycle leg
a mile south of the race. shooting toward Blue Mountain
Jerry coming in after the cycle leg
Jerry sprinted toward the finish. 13th overall!
Joanna gets 3rd overall despite injury
Joanna and Ginny (3rd and 2nd respectively)
Team Nutrition in Motion
24 July 2010
River to River Ride
This ride benefits the Heritage Conservancy, a great cause to preserve our area. This was our first year doing the ride with my CyclePA bud, Mike Rubillo and beau of my friend Angela Giovine of Bucks Happening and LimeEvents. His name was Sal and he's a great guy.
We wrangled with the ride organizers about the sanity of doing the 50 mile Bucks loop first followed by the 50 mile Montgomery loop (Its set up as 25,50 and 100 miles). We were going to ride the 100, but due to the less shady and more trafficked Montgomery loop being second in the heat of the day, we opted for the 50.
It was a very nice route, but one of the rest stops at mile 13 was well secreted or missing. Consensus was the latter. Though we had fun (see above), the rudeness of the organizers when both my friend and I asked questions will leave me looking to find another way to support the Conservancy in the future!
22 July 2010
Bucks County on Two Wheels (in motion)
After two tries, I found a mount for my newest gadget: my waterproof 1080p videocam the Kodak ZX3 (Playsport). I hope to be able to continue my Bucks County on Two Wheels series from Facebook and Flickr.
A few of these are below.
Cutalossa Farm, Solebury
Cabin Run Covered Bridge
So I hope to be able to add video to this now that I have found a safe way to ride shoot video. A first raw clip is below.
20 July 2010
Jerry We miss you!
My cycling bud and engineer extraordinaire Jerry had the nerve to send me this photo today at WORK. I believe he is playing hookie as this does not look like a PENNDOT civil engineering job but more like an all inclusive spot in Jamaica... YA MON. rest up, J, I will be at your tri this Sunday, even if I have to ride 50 miles in the dark to get there. You supported me in CyclePA2010, bud!
18 July 2010
Frenchtown Bastille Fête 2010
The 12th annual celebration to celebrate Bastille Day in Frenchtown, NJ. Though the only thing about it that's French is the name. We did have a nice time though. Lots of nice merchants, live music and food. And I maintained my mayoralty on Foursquare of two local venues!!
National Inn
Flags everywhere
Lisa browsing in CB studio
Elizabeth Gilbert's store Two Buttons (author of Eat Pray Love). It was Buddha Central
Panorama of Main Street
These kids were playing at CB studio, where Lisa minced up her wallet. Nice stuff though!
13 July 2010
Now that CyclePA 2010 is Over...
Our campaign to hit our fundraising goal for Make a Wish still continues. You can find our page here to make a tax deductible contribution! The great memories from the trip are located on the CyclePA blog.
Mike Rubillo and I appreciate your support!
Much of our trip followed the PA South route shown below, which was a total accident! Working with PennDot to gain one of these sign as a momento.
We are hoping to do another fundraising effort next year and hope we can solicit your participation then!
04 July 2010
25 June 2010
Open Lands on Martha's Vineyards
We explored this one on foot today since it was a gloriously clear and moderately warm Friday in June. No one was there. Located on North road about .7 miles west of Tabor House Rd, it is marked by a small sign.
Some spectacular vistas and beautiful land. Believe its about 211 acres. Learn more about it on the Trustees website here. You can find it on a Google map here!
24 June 2010
Cycling on Martha's Vineyard
I live in Bucks County, PA, which has some of the most beautiful countryside with untravelled roads. I am moving to Greenville, SC in the next year which has more of the same, especially north of town toward the NC border.
I come to Martha's Vineyard each year of the last 12 to relax in June. the cycling and countryside here is superb (at least this time of year). Count all the cars in the video below!
17 April 2010
Spring in the Northeast
Each year I look forward to April and May. Moderate temperatures, beautiful colors and nature comes alive once more. As much as I love to vacation and dive in tropical climates, living in an area where we can experience all four seasons and the wonderful annual cycle of nature is hard to beat!
Click for large Flickr image.
02 April 2010
Welcome to Googleville?
By Dan Fletcher / Greenville Monday, Apr. 12, 2010 (via TIME magazine)
It would have been easy to mistake the thousands of people assembled in Greenville clutching their colored glow sticks and chanting the name of an all-knowing entity for worshippers at some sort of kooky New Age outdoor revival. But it wasn't God who inspired this crowd of 2,200 to gather on a recent Saturday night. It was Google — and the chance that this South Carolina city might be able to coax down the manna of super-high-speed Internet from tech-giant heaven. (See 10 tech trends for 2010.)
Since Google unveiled plans in February to build — for free — an ultra-fast fiber-optic network in one or more U.S. cities, local officials across the land have been engaged in quirky battles of one-upmanship to get their hometown chosen as a demo site. Topeka, Kans., renamed itself Google for the month of March. The mayor of Sarasota, Fla., went swimming in a shark tank as a publicity stunt. And Greenville organized a "We Are Feeling Lucky" campaign — a play on Google's second most famous search button — with enough glow sticks to form a massive Google logo in a downtown park. (See historical photos on Google Earth.)
How much speed does it take to inspire such fervor? The broadband network that Google is offering may cost as much as $1 billion to build and will be able to transmit 1 gigabit per second. That's fast enough to download a feature-length DVD movie in about 70 seconds — and more than 100 times as fast as the typical connection available in the U.S., which ranks 22nd in the world in network speed, according to Akamai, an Internet-analytics firm. The Google guys are doing this to help spur the U.S. to overtake Romania and other we-can't-believe-we're-slower-than-they-are countries.
Greenville's geek-savvy campaign was a fast operation too; it came together in less than 14 days. Highlights included a YouTube channel and a cartoon with instructions on how to participate in the glow-stick event (plus a tout for the town as the birthplace of a co-inventor of the laser, which gave rise to fiber optics). "We're a city in the midst of reinventing itself as a tech community, and we think Google Fiber could really help," says Aaron von Frank, the baby-faced 31-year-old tech developer who spearheaded the effort to get Google's attention as local officials completed the documentation necessary to keep the city in the running. (See the story of Google's doodles.)
Competition is stiff: as of March 26, the deadline for cities to submit information, Google said it had received more than 1,100 applications. It will analyze each city's demographics and infrastructure before deciding on one or more locations by the end of the year. "One of the top things we're looking for is to develop the network as quickly and efficiently as possible," spokesman Dan Martin says. "We're not looking for special treatment, but we do want to find a community that wants to work with us."
If efficiency is Google's main criterion, von Frank says he likes Greenville's chances. "It's a tight-knit community that comes together to get things done," he says. In short order, thousands of people formed a Google chain. Now Greenville has to wait to see whether faster connections will follow.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1977123,00.html#ixzz0jyVKHUfj
21 March 2010
#GoogleonMain Celebration: Greenville, SC
A brief video clip from my iPhone taken from the "e" as 2,000 of us spelled out G-o-o-g-l-e in Reedy Park on the first day of spring. Electric, er battery-powered experience
19 March 2010
Dogs of the Vineyard
In 2006, snapped these goldens while waiting for the ferry from Woods Hole to MV
Dogs of the Vineyard
In 2006, snapped these goldens while waiting for the ferry from Woods Hole to MV
