1TO10REVIEWS

On a scale of 1 to 10, Patagonia probably is worth the money.

Patagonia is expensive.  We call them Patagucci.  The gear costs a lot of money.  However, I think it’s worth it for two reasons:

1. The gear is of super-high quality, and lasts a long time.

2. If for some reason you decide that you need to exchange, return, or otherwise change your mind about a product, they have the best warranty policy of all time. No questions, no arguments, no discussion.  Give them the old one, and they’ll give you the new one.

I had a piece of capilene long underwear that split a seam.  I brought it in and showed it to the retail employee. They put it on the counter, checked the size, grabbed a new shirt in the same size and color, snipped the tags, and handed it to me.  That was it.

If pressed for a numeric rating, I’d give them a 10 out of 10 for customer satisfaction and warranty policy.

On a scale of 1 to 10, this watch is orange.     And it’s bitchin’.

I bought a Suunto Core watch, in orange.  I like climbing, and being in the mountains, so a watch with an altimeter makes at least some sense, which helps me justify the purchase of this rather expensive watch wristop computer.

Suunto is probably best known for their dive computers, both wristop computers, and the kind that attach to a SCUBA diver’s regulator.  However, they also make several lines of outdoor / mountain oriented wristop computers.  And they have a long history of excellence in manufacturing compasses.

An outdoor, mountain-oriented watch / wristop computer should include a couple of important features:

1. It should tell time
2. Effective alarm(s)
3. Luminescence (push button, generally) for night time use
4. Altimeter (this tells your elevation)
5. Barometer (for monitoring changes in air pressure, a good signal of impending stormy weather)
6. Compass
7. And a bunch of other things like difference measurements, logbooks, “start from zero,” depth measurements (for when you go under water), rotating bezel, button lock, etc.

There’s a cool video that shows a bunch of the neater features. Check it out.

Truthfully, what initially caught my eye was the look and style of this watch.  Many would call it garish.  I call it me.  I love the color orange, and I think the palette and style of the face itself is magnificent.  My affection for the rubbery orange band ebbs and flows, but that’s easy to change.  There’s a high-quality double hinge on both the top and bottom bands, which is an incredibly strong mechanism, and a good sign of quality.

If you’re not as into orange as I am, Suunto sells this watch in a number of different guises, both plainer and more grandiose than my selection.  (See choices to the left.)

Aside from the aesthetics, this watch packs a lot of impressive features into a small package.  Aside from telling time, my favorite feature is the altimeter.  It’s necessary to calibrate it correctly; this can be accomplished either by knowing your current elevation and setting it accordingly, or by a trickier method involving the calibration of the barometer function (which is also very cool.)  Truthfully, the manual on this sucker is extensive, and I have not quite waded through all of it yet.  However, the watch, alarm, calendar, stopwatch, light, button lock, and basic altimeter have all fallen before my wily charms.  I also had some help from my wife who is usually cleverer than me when it comes to gadgets, buttons, sequences, and other things requiring both patience and logic.  Those are not my strong suits.

It’s fairly large compared to an average wrist watch, though not excessively so.  It’s very comfortable, and not overly heavy in spite of its bulk.  Sometimes if it slides forward and when I bend my wrist it gets in the way.  Also, if I’m resting my hands on the edge of my laptop to type, the band can interfere with my personal ergonomics.  Small price to pay  for fortune and glory, but it’s an issue nonetheless.  It’s also waterproof to 30 meters, which is not diving depth, but certainly has you covered for showers, swimming, or even most snorkeling.  For more extensive water activities (like SCUBA) you might look at some of their other products.

This device is not cheap.  The retail on the orange model is around $350.  The least expensive Core model is $250 (in black and yellow.) You can purchase it through any number of online retailers, including Backountry.com.  If you want to see one in person, REI carries them, and many high-end, well stocked outdoor retailers will also probably carry them.

If you’re looking for a distinctive looking and expensive wrist watch, or for an extremely feature-rich, mountain-focused wristop computer, this is an outstanding purchase.  I highly reccomend, and if I were forced to give it a numeric rating I’d call it an 8 out of 10.  I will update this review after my next big outdoor trip.

Here’s a video review of the Suunto Core in twelve seconds:

Suunto Core Wristop Computer on 12seconds.tv

This review is also posted on LIVEdigitally.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I’m excited about the new blog.

(And BTW - the title of this post?  That’s a paraphrase from National Lampoon’s Vacation.  Clark Griswold says something along the lines of: “I can’t believe it.  I’m on a pilgrimage to see a moose.  Praise Marty Moose!  Hallelujah, holy shit!”) 

In case you hadn’t noticed, some things have changed.  I started this blog in March of 2007, wondering what this whole “blogging” thing was really about.  I’m still not actually sure.  But I’m having fun, and that’s what’s important.

For more than a year friends and acquaintances have been espousing the advantages of switching from a Wordpress.com blog, to a self-hosted blog using the software from Wordpress.org.  More customization options, more control, and a better overall experience.  I dragged my feet, hesitated, waffled, experienced anxiety coupled with ambivalence, generally procrastinated the switch.  Then, one Wednesday night, I decided to just do it.  I contacted GoDaddy, bought a hosting plan, set up a Linux server, installed a database, and installed Wordpress 2.6.  I would have gone with 2.5 because I’ve heard it’s more stable, but there was a one-click install for 2.6.  So there you have it.  I changed my DNS, and re-set my MX records.   I exported my Wordpress.com posts in an XML file.  I imported that same file into my new blog.  And guess what… fail.

Much to my consternation, my posts failed to transfer.  I only got about 3 months worth, taking me through to June of 2007.  Not acceptable.  I re-imported, and more posts showed up.  I repeated that process 6 or 7 times, and got more posts imported each time.  But then I hit a wall.  After around December 2007, I couldn’t import any more posts.  I emailed for help, checked the forums, no luck. I started manually recreating my posts, which truly sucked.  The posts themselves were not so hard, though I had to remember a lot of details (trackbacks, tags, date/time stamps, etc).  But the worst part was recreating all the comments.  Ughh.

However, last week I caught a break.  Nick, one of the AWESOME people in the Wordpress.com support group responded to my request for help.  He offered a number of suggestions, and then actually did some testing himself.  We decided that the import was timing out for some reason, and that the XML file was too big.  He helped me split the file into four smaller chunks, and when I tried to import the most recent posts, we finally met with great success.  So let me say it now, loud and clear, for the world to hear:

Thank You Nick, from Wordpress.com on 12seconds.tv

So, here we are.  My buddy Justin is helping me to learn a teeny bit of CSS, and I am trying to customize the sweet theme I picked.  (Simplish 1.7.3 by Simplish Project, K. Pitt, J.A. Hardy)  I want to develop a logo / header soon too, but I am a terrible designer.  So I am trying to figure out how to get something put together.  But, I am enjoying playing with the new setup, and I hope you enjoy it too.

thanks for reading,

David

On a scale of 1 to 10, I think Blippr is pretty cool.

Blippr is a review service; you write short-form reviews of all kinds of things (books, movies, etc.)  In an oxymoronic set of circumstances that only the Internet can enable, “micro” services are becoming huge.  Twitter started a couple of years ago, and has become a popular (in the Valley, not in Kansas) “micro-blogging” service.  In 140 characters or less you give your followers a status update.  Some people use this for life-casting (i.e. I’m going to get a burrito) and others for starting conversations (i.e. what are the chances that Vista will stop sucking?).  In my opinion, the latter is a much more interesting use for the service.

Twitter is about “micro-blogging” because they have a strict limitation on your content - all posts must be 140 characters or less.  That’s as opposed to say Wordpress, which is unlimited blogging (gurgitate to your heart’s content).   12seconds (which we’re involved in directly and which we posted about last month) also imposes a user constraint (twelve seconds, in case that wasn’t obvious.)  Blippr follows suit with a constraint of their own, 160 characters or less.

Erick Schonfeld at Techcrunch wrote an article about Blippr a couple of weeks ago, which offers a fine summary of the product.  I just signed up for an account myself - want to be friends?  So far I’ve reviewed a couple of movies, Dark Knight and 300.  Blippr encourages reviews for all kinds of products, including movies, music, games, books, and more.  The restraints force you to be choosy with your words and even your characters.  (Might want to start liking the ampersand.)

I see lots of opportunities in this product to link out to other products and services, whether amazon book and music purchases, netflix movie rentals, booksfree book rentals, social networks likes Shelfari, Facebook, and more… the list is more or less never-ending.  Some of those deals could include affiliate deals that might even generate revenue, which is always a nice little bonus in an internet company.

I like the UI in Blippr.  When you type out a review, a blue bar below the text window indicates how much space you have left.  Where Twitter uses a numeric counter (which turns red and features a minus sign when you pass 140), I think the visualization of the blue bar is effective and more interesting to watch.

Blippr’s also done a great job of integrating other services; it’s quite easy to link your blips to your Twitter stream, to your FriendFeed, and to a myriad of other services.

There are a number of things I think BLippr could improve upon - doubtless they’ve considered these already, but I’ll voice them anyway.  I think it would be cool if you could embed blips, make a widget out of all my blips, specific genres of blips, etc.  It’d be nice to have the option to embed them directly on my blog, on a profile page, etc.

Also, SMS integration makes a lot of sense.  According to tehir Get Satisfaction page, that’s coming soon.  I can see a great deal of utility to that feature, especially in regards to a spontaneous interaction with something or other (i.e. I just walked out of Indiana Jones 4, and I’m so offended by the refrigerator scene that I want to tell the world RIGHT NOW!)  I get it, they don’t have the money / resources / infrastructure / developers etc.  yet.  But they need to add SMS soon.

I also think this is an appropriate complement to Yelp, and other restaurant / business review services.  I’d like to see them expand their focus (or create a sister service) that is dedicated to that market.   And lastly, outside access seems really important to me.  How can I dip into the Blippr-o-sphere on my mobile handset when I’m in line at the movie theater and the movie I wanted to see is sold out?  Or I am at Green Apple Books (Clement and 6th in San Francisco, check ‘em out) and I want someone’s opinion on a book.  A short, to-the-point opinion.

Overall, I think this service shows more promise than most “web 2.0″ (god I hate that term) companies.  I’m interested to see where it goes.  To the right I’ve embedded a screenshot of my (considerably) shorter review of Blippr, using Blippr.  Neat.

This is also posted at LIVEdigitally.