Evanalyze

I am a sucker for a nice data visualization and personal data, weeplaces nails it with this Foursquare data animation.

Evan Solomon’s Foursquare by WeePlaces.com.

0 greens on the front, 7 on the back. Oops.

A few weeks ago I spent an incredible day in Augusta watching the Masters Par 3 Tournament.

I’ve never seen anything as curated as Augusta National. From the obvious (the golf course) to the detailed (the staff) to the unbelievable (if you leave your folding chair somewhere, no matter how long, your seat is saved–no one will ever take it), the entire thing was unreal.

If Apple and Disney teamed up to make a golf course, it would be Augusta National. If they ran a tournament, it would be The Masters.

Now all I can think about is how to play the course…

Steve Jobs is clearly a genius, but it continues to surprise me when he gets otherwise reasonable people to say and believe demonstrably unreasonable things.

Today we talk about “getting on the Internet,” but with iPad you can have a persistent online connection

Yesterday Dan Lyons wrote that in Newsweek. The iPad may be an undisputed success and it may happen very soon–personally I think it will be a let down and have a bet that it will sell fewer than 4m units in the first year–but if that happens, it will certainly not be because it changed the idea of “getting on the internet.”

I do not believe that anyone who buys or otherwise acquires an iPad will have their idea of the steps needed to access the internet changed. Normal people aren’t dialing up to AOL anymore, much less people interested in a $500 computer without a keyboard or any of “their programs.”

The iPhone and the App Store are great and I sincerely love them both. I’m willing to believe that on an issue as passionately debated as yet-unreleased technology products from Apple, there are valid ideas that don’t fall in line with my own. But alleviating the actions needed to “get on the internet” isn’t one of them.

Departed San Francisco at 4:30 last Saturday, landed back here 94 hours later. Some very brief notes…

• I had a LOT of trouble understanding the accent, which was petty surprising. Literally had to guess what half the people I talked to were saying.
• The currency, specifically coins being worth nearly $3, was confusing. I accidentally tipped more than $4 for a coffee.
• The food was overall bad to neutral, with a couple standouts that were actually good.
• Every form of internet I encountered-hotel wifi, conference wifi, 3g–was nearly useless. I’m convinced the country hates the internet.

I’ve never been into new year resolutions. They always seemed too concocted to be interesting. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me, I’ve decided to make a couple this year. I think these are things I’ve been wanting to do anyway, so perhaps they’re only resolutions due to coincidental timing. Regardless, on with it!

Cook more

I really enjoy cooking but have barely done any of it since starting at Justin.tv in May. It doesn’t help my cause that they feed me 9 meals/week. I want to cook more though, so I just bought a bunch of new stuff (knives, pans, etc) and I’m hoping to cook one interesting thing per week in 2010. I’ll leave “interesting” to my own subjective judgment, but suffice to say that boiling a hot dog won’t qualify.

Exercise more

Pretty straightforward. I bought a bike earlier this year (and promptly injured myself falling off). If I had any idea what was reasonable, I would set some kind of goal for miles ridden, but I don’t. I do have a cool iPhone app that will track my rides via GPS though, so hopefully it will come out to a big number. Goal here is to feel more energetic and active…mostly I want to look better naked.

Organize more

My apartment is perpetually a mess. Same goes for my desk, my desktop (the only on my computer) and various other things that waste time and annoy me. My goal here is to never feel like I need to spend time cleaning up–I’m told that being organized on an ongoing basis can do this! Step 1 here is to hire a house cleaner.

Sleep more

I am too often inclined to sacrifice sleep for short term gain, which just results in long term loss. It’s probably not reasonable to avoid sleep deprivation all together, but I’m going to try hard to raise my threshold for what justifies it.

I’m keeping the goals pretty personal and intentionally excluding things that I want pretty much every year, like to do the best work of my life and play better golf.

Yesterday, on the way to dinner, I was introduced to Cranberry Raisinets. Ignoring the poor naming scheme for a moment, I conducted a double blind (aka not blind at all) scientific experiment at lunch today.

My first observation, corroborated by the photo below, was that the cranberry variety suffered from a significant size disadvantage.

I was able to obtain statistical confirmation that the Cranberry Raisinets are, in fact, nearly 50% smaller.

All problems weren’t with the cranberries though. You’ll see that the normal Raisinets suffered from poorly aligned opening instructions, with the “Tear Here” prompt nowhere near the actual pre-torn location.

Onto the science, I developed a fool-proof system for conducting a fair and unbiased test.

I did two rounds of testing, but first a palette cleanser.

Verdict? While the Cranberry Raisinets offer a sweet, more acidic experience, the traditional Raisinets really knock it out of the park with a creamy chocolate goodness. In the end, both are delicious–since they are priced equally, I’m forced to conclude that traditional Raisinets, at twice the size, offer significantly more value, while the new (I think?) Cranberry Raisinets are benefiting for a demand bubble and limited supply due to back ordered cranberry packing machines (completely made this up). Regardless, they are both tasty.

The title says it all. It’s good and it’s good for you. Now enjoy some (kind of lame) pictures.

Shrimp!

Delicious shrimp and spaghetti

Mussels!

Also delicious mussels and spaghetti

With sweet potatoes pan fried in clarified butter and garlic (and steak bits left in the pan).

Steak cooking

Sweet potatoes cooking

Finished steak and sweet potatoes

The guy on the right.