I had forgotten just how much I love working in downtown Seattle. For the past year or so, I’ve been working primarily with clients outside of the downtown business district. This has meant driving to work to ugly and unfriendly places North and East. Today, I complete my first (almost) full week of working with a new client right in the thick of things here, and I love it.
Today, as with yesterday, I walked the two blocks down to 5th & Pike to get my morning coffee at Monorail Espresso, which has got to be among the city’s best coffee peddlers. Seattle coffee drinkers, I beg you, WALK the extra few blocks for good coffee! I pass by two Starbucks and a Tullys en route to this place without batting an eye. Hell, I even have an unused Starbucks gift-card in my wallet from work.
Mrs. fall-line came through in a big way this week with a killer birthday present. I now find myself as the proud owner of a shiny new 8gb Apple iPhone. I’m not going to pretend to write a full fledged review of the device, as there are about 1.3 million (really, I checked) others out there which you can read until your eyes fall out.
After using it for a few days, I do have a few thought’s I’d like to share for the curious among you.
Most importantly, I love it. It’s a real joy to use. Day to day operation is smooth and beautiful in a way that makes you appreciate the mundane stuff like listening to voicemail. As long as I’m not thinking about he purchase price ($600), or one of the troubles I mention below, I’m filled with a warm fuzzy feeling from using it.
The good:
Contrary to some pre-launch speculation, it’s actually the easiest to use phone I’ve ever owned.
SMS messaging is a breeze. I’ve never been a texter. This device has changed that. I can write entire sentences in the time it took me to write the first word on a traditional phone.
Google maps is handy. No GPS unfortunately, but it’s still very useful to have such a responsive and powerful map interface in your pocket
E-mail, web browsing, calendar, alarm clock, etc all work well (though leaving room for a little improvement in some areas.)
It’s the best iPod I’ve ever used. Full stop. It’s awesome. I would like to have more than 8gb in storage sure, but I’m happy to sacrifice storage for the other (phone) functionality.
The bad:
It makes me nervous. I feel like I’m going to scratch it, drop it, or loose it. One big downside to carrying such an expensive device with you all day is that you create a relatively high risk of damage. I feel the need to protect it with a case.
The battery life isn’t tremendous. It’s not terrible, in fact it’ll go longer than most smart phones do. I’m accustomed to not having to charge my mobile phone for 2-3 days at a time though, so it’s a little disappointing to get a low battery warning after one day of heavy use.
I don’t like that the only apps available are web apps. True, it’s easy to develop handy apps for the device, but there needs to be a way of accessing some of these tools when not connected, or without having to wait for..
EDGE, it’s no 3g. ~59kps of data speed is enough, but we could do better.
Despite the complaints, I’m a satisfied iPhone owner. In case I wasn’t clear in my introduction, the good far outweighs the bad in my opinion. Is it worth $600? Well, I can’t answer that for you. I still struggle with this question for myself in fact. I’m very glad to have received it as a present, but I’m not sure if I would have bought it under other circumstances. I got one though, and I’m very glad to have it.
Here is an elegant solution to a common problem which has troubled a large number of otherwise happy Macbook, and Macbook Pro users over the past few years. The scenario is this: you use your shiny apple laptop both at the office and at home. At the office, you use whatever accessories the friendly IT staff has provided you. This generally includes a generic windows based keyboard, cute little windows key and all. For those not familiar with the problem this creates, don’t bother reading the rest of this - I promise it will be boring. If this is something you have encountered on the other hand, I don’t need to tell you that the switching of Apple key and Option key (alt key and windows key on a windows keyboard) is enough to drive a mac user crazy.
Ken Griffey jr. said this during an interview aired on FSN tonight in Seattle:
Would I [come back]? Yeah. For the simple reason that this is the place where I grew up. And I think I owe it to the people of Seattle and to myself to retire as a Mariner.
Holy Sh*t!
So Mr. Bavasi, you want a little more respect from your home town fans? Make it happen… just make it happen.
I have often wondered why Washington state wasn’t dotted with small craft whisky and other spirit distilleries of the sort that are found in so many similar climates throughout the world. While traveling through Scotland this spring I couldn’t help but imagine the potential for such a business to thrive in the fair northwest climate, and relatively liberal political landscape. I had always assumed that there was a provision in the (uncharacteristically considering the local politics) strict Washington State liquor control laws forbidding the production of any spirits. Well, two men by he name of Don Poffenroth and Kent Fleischmann have investigate the subject in more detail and clearly found no such provision.
Poffenroth and Fleischmann have both resigned management roles in well established food processing and distribution companies to pursue their passion for the drink by founding what will be the state’s only operating spirits distillery in Spokane. Construction on the new Dry Fly Distilling facility is well under-way, with spirit production scheduled to begin in ernest in August of 2007.
While my interest in venture is predominately whisky (whiskey in this case) related, I’m thrilled to see any kind of quality craft distillery operation giving it a go in the state. Needless to say, I will be watching their progress with a great deal of interest in the coming months and years. If production begins as scheduled, we should be able to get our hands on a bottle of their vodka or gin late this summer. Our whiskey palates will have to wait for the spirit to come of age in 2009 at the earliest.
I was browsing my iTunes today, looking for some hidden gems which might buried deep in the under explored corners of my library. I cam across a track which I had automatically downloaded from a great MP3 blog called Said the Gramophone sometime during the summer of 2006.It was a pretty catchy, somewhat airy little piece of indy-folk-rock-stuff called Grass Stains by a fellow from Portland named Jacob Borshard.
Music:
Grass Stains, from the Album The Last Brontosaurus (2006)
After noticing it about half way through the song, I restarted and took a good listen. It’s cute.. kinda cheesy, but good. Good in a way that if you don’t take yourself too seriously as a music critic, you can really enjoy.. for a little while. Since it had my attention, I took a closer look at the track in iTunes. It was then that I saw something that will endear this track to me for a long time. Someone, at some point, when creating the mp3 of this song had assigned the song’s genre as (and quote) “pantywaist pop”.
After a short fit of barely controllable laughter while sitting at my desk at work, I thought about this designation a bit more. It’s right on. I’ve decided to go through my iTunes collection now and reassign about half of the stuff in there currently classified as “Indie” to match. Don’t get me wrong, I still like the stuff (in moderation) I just like it more having called it what it is.
Listen to the mp3 (above) and judge for yourself.
You can learn more about Jacob Borshard and listen to more of his music at his website: http://www.creebobby.com/
He’s really quite talented in his own way. I dig the ukulele! Come to think of it, I think I recall hearing a track from his earlier album Songs for a Small Stereo (2004) on KEXP a few years back.
