Up the Tree

  • I’m not the best when it comes to booking plane flights and hotels. I get all sorts of nervous that I will book the wrong days, or the wrong place, or the wrong country. While some might say this is irrational, also let it be known in the past I have gone to JFK airport, instead of La Guardia and inadvertently booked 1 less day for an all-inclusive resort in the Dominican Republic. Both stories turned out ok, but it has instilled in me a terror of pushing the submit buttons on travel websites.

    This brings me to today where I had to book a hotel for the 2 days Julia and I are spending in Mexico City. Julia, being the wonderful girlfriend she is, called me up and literally just listened to me nervously check credit card information and travel days. True to form the travel website on 2 occasions listed our stay for 1 day, rather than 2. But the good news is the hotel, Galeria Plaza Reforma, is booked and all the plane tickets are sorted… wait, it’s not 2013 right? crap.

    In any case, I hope it is a good hotel and we do not contract any ‘Chinche’ (bedbugs). Los crossed fingers.

    Update

    After spending 3 days at the Galeria Plaza Reforma, I can honestly say this is a great hotel. The service was outstanding, the staff were very helpful in directing us to locations around Mexico City, and the location is great for food, bars, and sights. The area is not touristy and very walkable. Added bonus there are lots of little stores nearby to buy water, beer, bandaids, etc. The pool on the roof has seen better days, but is perfectly fine for a quick swim in the morning.

    My only complaint were the beds which are very firm, but that was definitely doable. I would heartily recommend this hotel to anyone wanting good value.

    Hamburgo 195 Col Juarez, Mexico City, DF, 06600 Mexico 1-866-599-6674

    Links

    expedia

  • This is my new favorite album cover, although the music is… not as great.

  • In a week and a half, I am taking two weeks and exploring LA and Mexico with Julia. I’m pretty excited as I haven’t been on a real vacation in over 2 years (the last time I visited Mexico). My only problem is the feeling that everything at work will melt down and my life will be a hell of returning phone calls while drinking margaritas, but I could imagine worst things to do with my time.

    I will be visting Mexico City for the first time and San Miguel del Allende for a second time. I can’t wait to get away, even if for a few weeks.

    The last time I was in San Miguel – December 2009.

  • When Apple purchased LaLa last year, my favorite music streaming service ever, I have to say I was upset. LaLa had a wonderful model which put their users and the music they liked into a wonderfully social system. Unfortunately for LaLa, that system didn’t make much sense from a money-making standpoint and Apple bought them for the technology and the experience they had with streaming media.

    I figured with such an accomplished head start, Apple could flip a music streaming service in no time. They had the people who created the ideal, just do more of that? Not so fast mister, this is Apple we are talking about and nothing at Apple gets released without being perfect.

    Cut-to more than a year later

    Last week Amazon released 2 free products, Amazon Cloud Player & Amazon Cloud Drive. The basic gist of both is storage online for all your media — in the cloud. Cloud Player is all about audio (at the moment) and Cloud Drive is all about all other files. Confused? Maybe this video will help.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_5h5vSlhHE

    Sounds pretty incredible right? So how does it stack up against all the other cloud based storage systems out there? For files it is pretty good, it is definitely not as easy to use as DropBox, but that may change rapidly as Amazon figures out what they have. The major advantage of DropBox over Cloud Drive is finder integration on both Mac & Win computers. Not having to keep a web browser window open or download some strange “uploader” is a real advantage.

    Amazon Cloud Drive

    For music, the service is basically unmatched at the time of this writing. Being able to upload mp3s and have them instantly available for playing online or to be downloaded on another computer is wonderful. The Amazon Cloud Player itself is relatively simple in its design. It has a big yellow play button and does a fantastic job at streaming audio files smoothly. The sound quality is the same as you would expect from a desktop application.

    Amazon Cloud Player

    But what about all us people who have bought lots of songs from iTunes? We’re out in the cold, right? Amazon Cloud Player uploads and plays those flawlessly too! What?! You heard me. As long as the AAC track isn’t copy protected (ie – not a 128kbps .m4a file you downloaded from iTunes 2 years ago or earlier) it will upload, play, and have all its tags. This is wonderful functionality for all the folks like me who drift from one music service to another. Amazon has smartly not excluded its competitors users.

    Unfortunately if you rip your music into FLAC, APE, Apple Lossless, OGG, or any other formats; you are going to have to convert them to MP3 or M4A if you want to listen to them online. If you just want to upload them, they can be uploaded and accessed through Cloud Drive, but Amazon Cloud Player will not recognize them as audio.

    Time to give up on Apple?

    So is Apple so late to the party that it will be impossible to catch up? Far from it. Apple will release their cloud music service soon and it will be a game changer, of that I have no doubt. For all of us iPhone and iPod users, the service will also be compatible with our devices (Amazon’s Mobile Cloud Player is not yet available for Apple products). But what Amazon’s service does do, is offer a glimpse in to the future of cloud based services. It may not be perfect yet, but it does change how we store and consume media. Best of all this gives Apple a high bar to jump over — competition is never a bad thing.

  • Last month I tried something called Sober February to see how it made me feel to cut out alcohol and meat. At the end of the shortest month, I admitted that it really didn’t make me feel any better health-wise. Sure, I felt a bit lighter, but it didn’t make a huge impact on my well-being. I still had aches and pains. Still felt gross sometimes.

    This is normal right?

    It was then I said, “I think I might make April the day I go to the gym every day and see how that affects my health.”

    April is here, and I have decided to make it The Month of Gym. Every day I will exercise for a minimum of 30 minutes, but I plan to work out more than that most days. During this time, I’m going to be measuring my weight and see if I feel better with some old-fashioned physical labor. I’ll keep an updated page with all my stats and how I’m doing with it — if you want pictures of my guns, that’ll cost extra!

    I’m hoping that after the month, it will become a habit, and I will continue to go to the gym after my challenge.

    Any words of encouragement would most defiantly be appreciated.