So, I may have a headphone problem the way some people have shoe problems.[footnote]though my wife swears I have a shoe problem, too…[/footnote] It's not quite as bad as what I see with hard core audiophiles, but still, it's bad. Headphone addiction is kind of like they way people get hooked on …
A year ago, I wrote that the Twelve South SurfacePad was my favorite iPhone case. After a year, I'm still very happy I bought the case. I love knowing that I can leave the house with just my phone knowing I have the two most important cards with it.[footnote]Interestingly, in the US, that's my …
In my previous post, I mentioned that I was looking at reducing my dependence on free services as an experiment to see if I can improve my privacy. That post was about changing my behavior as a consumer. This time, I’m looking at the services I use in my personal development work, especially those …
I recently moved nearly all of my email off of Google’s services over to Fastmail, with MailRoute in front of it to block spam. [footnote]My @gmail.com address can’t be moved, and I’m keeping it. While I'm shifting most of that email to my main address, I'll still use it for some things.[/footnote] …
I’ve been using the new MacBook as a personal travel laptop for the last month or so. I’ve been coding and writing blog posts with it and I wanted to share my experiences. If you care about these sorts of things, I’m sure you’ve read countless reviews of the device. So I won’t try to cover …
Living in India has given me a new perspective on a lot of things. Professionally, I’m constantly learning a lot just by seeing how differently people use their phones, and how different the market and ecosystem around mobile is here. Intex? Karbonn? Spice Mobile? Oppo? The biggest eye opener has …
I can't believe I'm recommending this, being a Bose-hater for most of my adult life, but the Bose QuietComfort 25 Headphones are now my favorite travel accessory. Overpriced, yes. Average-ish sound quality, sure. But the noise canceling is uncanny. Flip the switch and the silence is surprising. …
We're flooded with fitness oriented wearable devices from the step/activity trackers like the Fitbit and Up to smartwatches like, of course, the Apple Watch. Some phones even have dedicated activity tracking chips. The sad reality, though, is that most of devices are basically the same. They do step …
I found myself watching some players on Twitch.tv this weekend playing Vainglory. It's pretty much the only game I play these days and has been for months. This was the first time that I could remember actually watching Twitch streams naturally - not checking it out because it was in the news or …
One of my recent obsessions has been RC flying. So far, I've played with relatively cheap quadcopters and helicopters, but I've managed to crash every single one enough times to end up with a pile of damaged copters. So, I basically gave up on the hobby thinking I didn't have the time (or budget) to …
For the last two years, I didn’t use a case for my iPhone. I really love the look of the 5 & 5S, and didn’t want anything to cover it up. Of course, by the end of the year, the screens had dozens of fine (and one or two not-so-fine) scratches. Really annoying. So, for the iPhone 6, I decided I’d …
(Note: This will likely only be of interest to my local friends and social network buddies. It's a response to Concerning The Suburbs, Their Raison D’etre, And How It Is Reflected In Their Planned Public Spaces, prompted by a discussion on Twitter earlier today. If you're curious, or want the …
I tweeted this earlier … we’ve stopped using @trello at @fanzter, but I still love the product. The new board view looks great: http://t.co/fhvRuFN87X #fb — Sujal Shah (@sujal) June 18, 2013 … which prompted a few people to ask, "Why'd you stop using Trello?" The answer is pretty specific to us …
I was a guest on today's episode of Where We Live on WNPR. The topic was on Connecticut Startup Culture. Give it a listen, and let the mocking commence ("Check it out, it's awesome!" groan). One thing we didn't get to on the show (and, let's be honest, there are probably a dozen conversations …
Over Christmas, I hacked together my first hardware/software project. It's been a long time since I've picked up a soldering iron, let alone built something worthy of sharing. It turned out to be a fun little project. Cause, effect, agency I got the idea to do a project over Christmas while looking …
On a normal Friday of a normal December, a bunch of families said goodbye to their kids and sent them off to school. Announcements. Meetings for the Principal. A normal Friday. Then the abnormal sound of gunfire. Of violence. Of death. And now, the sound of tears, of sadness, of remembering and …
Like many towns, West Hartford has a advertising supported, free weekly paper that's mailed to everyone. The latest issue arrived today with this as the front page article: Fire, police overtime nears $3 million in 2010 The Town of West Hartford paid nearly $3 million in overtime compensation in …
You can now pull in photos from your Facebook account. Right now, it grabs everything, but I have controls in the works to let you choose privacy settings or hide individual photos. There's pseudo realtime support, too. Proxigram should update basically as soon as you upload the photo. As always, …
Quick update on Proxigram: it now supports Flickr, Yahoo's popular photo sharing service. If you're a Pro account holder, it will even get realtime updates from Flickr, just like Instagram provides. The "point" of the app has changed, too. The goal is to build a single API endpoint for all of your …
I'm happy to share a little experiment I played with this week. I needed to take a look at Node.js & it's family of technology for a project but found it hard to find good explanations of best practices, etc. There are a half-dozen competing boilerplate/template samples that have very little in …
Where We Live ran a show today on why younger people (25-34) are leaving the state. I ended up missing the show (listening to it now!), but caught a very lively discussion on Twitter. One side conversation (you can see it on storify here) that I joined in on was about how hard it is to convince …
(I should point out, coincidently, and in testament to how obvious the headline choice is, the Courant chose a similar headline. I started writing this before I saw the Courant article, for the record. :-) ) I had a rather animated conversation with a friend today about CL&P's performance during …
That mouthful is my one sentence description of Google I/O. The demo floors and tonight's After Hours party are full of whimsy and wonder, literal playgrounds for technology geeks of all stripes. The atmosphere at I/O is all about the possible, the future, and the fanciful. There are companies …
As most of my friends and coworkers know, I've lost a whole lot of weight over the last year. Folks that see me for the first time ask me a lot of the same questions, so consider this my attempt to answer the most common ones. 1. How much weight have you lost? As of this morning, just under 60 …
I attend each Connecticut Forum event hoping to leave smarter than when I arrive. This is usually a slam dunk, no doubt it’ll happen thing for any given Forum event. Except, that is, for last night. The topic was Our Great Education Challenge. The panel consisted of: Davis Guggenheim, the …