I feature a lot of T-Shirts on this site that fall under the category of “geek”, however, I don’t think I’ve featured one as geeky as this email counting tee. The shirt, which was designed by software designer Chris Bell, keeps an up-to-date count of the number of unread emails in your email inbox. Think that I’m kidding? Watch the video. It’s kind of unbelievable and all kinds of awesome.
The shirt is a one-off so don’t even try to look for a “buy now” link. The shirt is open source (ever thought you’d hear the term open source in reference to a T-Shirt?) so that means if you pick up the same components from Spark Fun Electronics you could theoretically make your own. The shirt makes use of LilyPad Arduino on the software side of things. The script needed to run the T-Shirt can be found here.
If you’re a regular reader of this blog then you know about my passion for all things … MacGyver. And so I was excited to see that the newest tee printed at Glennz Tees was Mac’s Mailbox, a nice homage to the 80′s duct tape making icon. Ever wondered what MacGyver’s mailbox would look like? Well, this is probably the best depiction of said mailbox that you’ll find in InternetLAND. And the best part is that you can buy it and wear it! Mac’s Mailbox is available now from Glennz tees for $19.95.
Traveling does not have to hinder your blogging. Instead, you can use this time as an opportunity to engage and interact with your community even more. There are many tools available to you and with the prolification of wifi hotspots in major cities, getting on the web while on the road is as easy as ever. Your next vacation might be just what your blog needed.
Disclaimer: I’m a very Mac-centric kind of guy and because of these you’ll notice that a few of my tips make use of making use of the iPhone. I’m sure the same tips would also apply for any other smartphone, such as an Android, Palm Pre or BlackBerry.
1. Use location based social networks to keep track of where you’ve been.
I’ve been using Gowalla for a few months now and just started using Foursquare at the beginning of my last trip. Both of these location based social networks allow you to “check-in” and ultimately track where you’ve visited during your trip. In my opinion, Foursquare is the better option of the two and I will tell you why.
The great thing about Foursquare is that often times special deals will appear when you check-in to certain places. For instance, after I checked-in at a small cafe on Powell Street in San Francisco during my last trip, a little icon popped up on my screeen mentioning that another establishment nearby had a special deal waiting for me if i checked in there as well. Gowalla recently announced that it has partnered with the likes of Adobe and Chipotle to hand out special offers, but why wait, take advantage of what Foursquare has to offer now.
Here’s another example: When we did the Napa Valley Wine Train, I was awarded with a physcial voucher for eight free glasses of wine on board the wine tasting train. The “mayor” of the wine train, who was there at the time, actually greeted me and handed me a voucher. How awesome is that? Pretty awesome, I think.
Use Foursquare to keep track of where you’ve been (because you know you’ll blog about it later) and to score some awesome deals.
2. Use Google Docs To Store Your Itinerary.
Google Docs is a life saver. Why? Because even when your laptop is not available, your documents still are (give that you’ve got a computer with Internet access available). That’s the beauty of cloud computing. Even when you need to rely on the dreaded hotel computer running some argaic version of Windows, you’ll still be able to access your itinerary by simply logging into Google Docs.
Keep your travel itinerary safely stored in Google Docs.
3. Bring An Extra Media Card.
This tip is a no brainer. I always bring along an extra media card for whatever camera I am using. I typically take enough pictures during the day to fill my memory card up to the max. To make room for the next day of photo filled sightseeing, I upload my photos to my Mac.
But what if I forget to upload my photos before I leave the hotel? The last thing you want is to have to spend time flipping through your photos on your camera trying to decide which ones to delete just so you can take even more photos. Have an extra media card ready and this will be a non-issue.
Bring an extra media card just in case you forget to upload the photos from your camera.
4. The iPhone Makes For The Perfect Travel Companion.
The built in GPS on the iPhone and the plethora of apps make it a powerful travelling companion. Lost? Use Maps on the iPhone to help you find your way to your destination.
For instance, during my 2008 visit to San Francisco, despite having pre-printed Google directions, road changes and sign removals ultimately caused me to get lost in the middle of wine country. The solution? We found a Wal-Mart that was nearby, used the GPS in the iPhone to track our location, and then input the address of our destination. The iPhone got us out of that little pickle in no time.
The built in GPS on the iPhone makes getting lost a thing of the past.
5. Yelp Can Be Very Handy.
Bloggers need to eat. And for those times when you need to deviate from your itinerary, the Yelp app is a real lifesaver. We spent an afternoon during our most recent trip to San Francisco exploring the Mission District. And although we had planned to eat at a certain restaurant beforehand, it unexpectedly closed just as we arrived there.
With the Yelp app for the iPhone, we were able to find our location and got suggestions as to what other places around the area were highly recommended by other Yelp users.
And if you blog about food, Yelp comes in handy since you can draft a review of you experience right into the app itself. Neat!
Use Yelp for times when you need to deviate from your itinerary or when you’re feeling spontaneous.
Draft reviews of your experience directly within the Yelp app.
6. Use Notes and Voice Memos To Capture Ideas On The Go.
When it comes to capturing a passing thought in your head, you don’t need a fancy app. The apps you really need come built right into the iPhone. I recommend both Notes or Voice Memos to document any ideas you have while on the go.
Most of this post was written on my iPhone using notepad (and then edited later in my browser) while I waited for the Urban Outfitters on Powell St. to open. I was killing time before my shuttle was scheduled to pick me up and drop me to the airport. The idea for this post came to my head and so I started typing, errr, tapping away.
Capture passing thoughts, ideas or concepts using Notes or Voice Memos on the iPhone.
7. Make Sure Your Hotel Offers Some Form of Free Internet.
If you’re a blogger then you live and breathe the Internet. It might be practical to find a hotel with free Internet access. You’ll often have to pay to use the internet from the comfort of your room but a hotel that has free wifi access in the lobby makes life that much easier (and cheaper).
When booking your hotel, search for ones that provide free Internet access.
8. Backup While On The Go.
We all know tht we should back up our most important files (and probably even the not so important ones). Sometimes, uploading your travel photos to iPhoto is not enough. After all, hard drives do fail. An easy backup solution is to use Flickr to upload your full-sized and high resolution files.
If you plan on uploading a lot of photos to Flickr then I recommend that you invest in a pro account. Regular Flickr accounts limit you to 200 “viewable” photo uploads. Worried about other people viewing your more raunchy travel photos? Set your privacy to private and you’ll have nothing to worry about.
Alternatively, you could use cloud backup services like the Mozy Unlimited Backup and Backblaze to back up your stuff on the fly whenever you have Internet access on your computer.
If you have a Flickr Pro account then use it to back up your travel photos.
If you rather keep your previous travel photos private then set your privacy setting accordingly.
9. Don’t Let Your Blog Go Postless.
The savvy traveling blogger does not let his/her blog go postless for the duration of their vacation. That would be a mean thing to do to your dedicated readers! Have a few posts prepared and have them autopost while you’re gone. You can do this easily in WordPress by changing the date of post. I recommend at least one autopost a day, especially during weekdays.
Prevent a blog dry spell during your vacation by preparing a few posts beforehand and having them set to autopost.
10. Keep Your Community Involved While You’re Gone.
To do this, I use a combination of Twitter and Foursquare/Gowalla. Keep your community in the loop and they’ll feel like they’re on vacation with you.You might also receive a few vacation tips from locals or tweeps who have lived in the area you are visiting.
Also, you can automate your WordPress blog so that it sends out a tweet each time one of your automated posts are published. With this set up, it’s like you’re not even gone.
Use a combination of Twitter and location based social networks to keep your community involved while you’re gone.
Twitter Tools will allow full integration between your WordPress blog and Twitter.
I’d love to hear what tips you have when it comes to blogging on the go! Leave a comment below in the comments section and let me know!
If you enjoyed this post then please, please, please, tell you’re friends about it! A simple Tweet or post on your Facebook page will help to get the word out, and a link back on your blog would be greatly appreciated!
Our last full day in San Francisco was unintentionally the day that we did the most of our shopping. We decided to check out a few parts of the City by the Bay that we hadn’t seen before. This meant a trip to Japantown, South of Market (SOMA) and the Mission District. We started the day off with a visit to Japantown, which ended up being a great time. This area of San Francisco, which is located about 15 minutes from Union Square, is home to scores of Japanese shops and restaurants.
Instead of a big breakfast, we decided to pick up some pastries from Yasukochi’s Sweet Stop, a Japanese family-run bakery in the heart of Japantown. Everything in this very small bakery looked so good, but we both decided on the Chocolate and Strawberry Roll. And let me tell you, this was probably the most delicious piece of pastry that I’ve had in a very long time. The roll itself was very soft but the strawberry filling tasted like strawberry ice cream. I wish I could have tried more pastries from Yasukochi’s, but alas, there’s always next time. Make Yasukochi’s a must stop if you ever find yourself in San Francisco.
Japantown had so many little shops to offer. Michelle spent a considerable amount of time in the largest Sanrio store that I’ve ever seen. Talk about Hello Kitty overload. I’ve never been in a room with more pink in my entire life. Wow.
While Michelle indulged in her shopping, I decided to stop by a little food stand called May’s Coffee Shop. They specialize in these little fish-shaped pastries that are filled with sweet red beans. I picked up one of those as well as a spam musubi. It almost felt like I was back in Hawaii (spam musubis are huge in Hawaii). And for the uninitiated, spam musubis is a rectangular block of rice topped with a slice of spam and wrapped in nori (seaweed). The red bean pastry was good, the musubi was ok, but more interesting than that, I was sitting next to the owner of May’s Coffee Shop. I struck up a conversation with this 75ish looking Japanese lady and she mentioned to me that she had just returned from vacationing in Hawaii. How neat!
Nippon-Ya is a great place to pick up Japanese candies and mochi. I picked up a box of strawberry and chocolate mochi as well as a box of banana and chocolate mochi. I can’t wait to try them!
The most exciting part of our journey to Japantown was the experience known as PikaPika. PikaPika is a shop filled with tons of Japanese photo booths. And we are talking authentic Japanese photo booths that speak to you in Japanese! Luckily, they provide English directions on these large cardboard slabs. What makes the PikaPika fun is that it’s timed so you have to move quickly when figuring out your different poses. Some booths also have monkey bars for those who want to try out some outrageous poses! Once you’ve taken all of your photos, you can then design them with borders and different designs. Apparently, these photo booths are all the rage in Japan. It was a super fun experience!
After Japantown, we headed toward the area of San Francisco known as SOMA, which is short for South of Market Street. Our main mission in SOMA was to stop by the Gama-Go store. T-Shirt fans will probably be familiar with Gama-Go. They are an independent T-Shirt brand based out of San Francisco. I’ll give Gama-Go their own post here on the blog with photos taken at the shop, so, be on the lookout for that.
Things got interesting when we left SOMA for the Mission District of San Francisco. The Mission District has a very large Latino population, so much so, that it caught us a little bit by surprise. We had planned to stop by a restaurant known as The Sandwich Place for lunch, but unfortunately they had just closed for the day. So, we decided to go straight to our next stop on the day’s itinerary which was Goldilocks Bakery, a bakery deep in the Mission District. Michelle ended up buying an insane amount of Filipino pastries to take home for her mom.
We wrapped up the afternoon by eating lunch in a Chinese hole in the wall across the street from the Goldilocks Bakery. It was called Chop Sticks Fast Food Restaurant. Chinese Fast Food Restaurant. We ended up there after we saw that it had a very high ranking on Yelp. It was a one man run pit stop for very cheap Chinese food. In this case, cheap also meant very good Chinese food. We each got large plates for $4 a piece. How insane is that?
After heading back to the hotel to freshen up, we decided to catch a movie at the Westfield Mall, which was conveniently located across our hotel on Market Street. We saw the new Ben Stiller flick, Greenberg. It was an odd little indie type flick. I enjoyed it; Michelle, not so much.
For dinner we stopped by Cafe Bellini on Powell Street for some pasta. I had the spaghetti with meatballs and Michelle had the penne pesto pasta. The food was ok and we were just happy to find something open for dinner that late in the night.
And so the journey back home begins. But not just yet. We still had a few hours left in lovely San Francisco so we decided to make the most of it. We had breakfast at one of our favorite breakfast spots in the city, Sear’s Fine Foods. If you watch either the Travel Channel or the Food Channel then chances are that you’re familiar with Sear’s. The thing to get at Sear’s is their World Famous 18 Swedish Pancakes. We of course ordered that as well as the usual breakfast fare of eggs, bacon, hash browns and toast.
After breakfast we crossed the street to Union Square–home to the famous San Francisco Hearts. These large heart structures can be found throughout the city, but the ones in Union Square are definitely the most famous. “Hearts in San Francisco began in 2004 as a fundraiser for the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation. Like the famous painted cows, the painted hearts, created from uniform molds and painted by individual artists, decorate the city in areas like Union Square, until they are auctioned off at a benefit for the charity. New hearts are unveiled each year.”
And with that final sightseeing session, our vacation was officially over. As we prepared for the daunting 8 hour trip back home, we reflected a bit about the last 9 days. We both realized that we genuinely loved the city of San Francisco. We also both realized that we absolutely hated flights that involve stop-overs. Philadelphia undoubtedly has some of the best eating spots on the planet. San Francisco’s eclectic and diverse culture never gets old.
We both began brainstorming ideas for our next trip, and the one after that. One thing is for sure, we both love traveling and food. And the best way to experience one or the other is to do them both at the same time. I could have a cheesesteak anywhere in the world, but it would never be as good as a cheesesteak eaten in the heart of south Philadelphia. I look forward to my next trip, wherever that may be. I just hope that it is as good as this one has been, filled with just as many memories, and involves lots and lots of great food.
And here’s a little video slideshow for you to enjoy!
Check out this neat tee from Public Domain Clothing called Earth-Rise. Tired of the basic skeleton tee? Well, this one sort of the Sixth Sense of skeleton tees. It’s got a twist. They’ve fused a pair of astronauts and the planet earth to make on disturbing (and rather cool) skeleton tee. I dig.
Earth-Rise is available now from Public Domain Clothing for $25 and if you use the coupon code TAKE40 you can score 40% off your entire purchase.
The superheroes that descended upon the San Francisco’s Moscone Center this past weekend for WonderCon 2010 have returned to their simple and ordinary lives. Nonetheless, their costumes live on! Check out 45 of my favorite costumes from WonderCon 2010. If you’ve been following my daily costume spottings then you’ll notice that this is simply one big chunky posts with all of my faves. I hope you enjoy. I can’t wait for ComicCon 2010!
*All photos belong to their respective owners.
I’d love to hear which one of these are your favorites! Leave a comment below in the comments section and let me know!
If you enjoyed this post then please, please, please, tell you’re friends about it! A simple Tweet or post on your Facebook page will help to get the word out, and a link back on your blog would be greatly appreciated!
If you stumbled on this blog via Twitter, Facebook or elsewhere then welcome! Please feel free to peruse the site and if you like what you see then I’d recommend adding Co-Tee TV as a friend on Facebook so that you can stay up-to-date on future posts!
Day 1 WonderCon 2010 Costume Spotting:
1. Cobra Commander, photo by mchulin. Hey look, it’s Cobra Commander! By the way, I think it’s time for me to confess that I haven’t seen G.I. Joe the live action movie yet. Is that so wrong?
2. Deadpool, photo by Official Star Wars Blog. I object to the upcoming Deadpool movie. I really do. Visit Star Wars.
6. Stormtroopers, photo by mchulin. I know these aren’t Stormtroopers. Problem is, I have no idea what they are dressed up as!
7. Packaging Tape Clone Trooper, photo by Official Star Wars Blog. Neato! I wonder how many rolls of tape he went through to make this costume! VisitStar Wars.
Day 3 of WonderCon marked the last day of the convention and I’ve got my 15 favorite costumes all picked out for you. The best photograph has got to go to Ryu Vs. Alien (see #3) by Thomas Levinson (Montauk beach).
*All photos belong to their respective owners.
If you stumbled on this blog via Twitter, Facebook or elsewhere then welcome! Please feel free to peruse the site and if you like what you see then I’d recommend adding Co-Tee TV as a friend on Facebook so that you can stay up-to-date on future posts!
Day 3 WonderCon 2010 Costume Spotting:
1. The Spirit, photo by itsklepperx. Denny Colt looks like he’s ready to fight some crime!
3. Ryu vs. Alien, photo by Montauk Beach. I love this photo. Aliens Vs. Predators? Pfft. How about Aliens vs. Street Fighter! Now that would be an awesome movie! Visit Thomas Levinson’s site.
4. Wonder Woman, photo by BilRW3. Awww, the pleasures of being Wonder Woman! Visit Stamaria.
5. Batgirl, photo by calanimephotos. Why hello there, Barbara Gordon. Visit Conpix.
It’s Day 2 of WonderCon and we’ve got even more crazy costumes! Kudos to the photographers for snapping some amazing shots. My favorite has got to be the candid Captain America photos by Erik Wilson (Generik11) of Pixels at an Exhibition.
*All photos belong to their respective owners.
If you stumbled on this blog via Twitter, Facebook or elsewhere then welcome! Please feel free to peruse the site and if you like what you see then I’d recommend adding Co-Tee TV as a friend on Facebook so that you can stay up-to-date on future posts!
Day 2 WonderCon 2010 Costume Spotting:
1. Captain America, photo by Generik11. Two excellent photos here. It’s Captain American in real life. And look, he even uses a cell phone like s regular people. Visit Pixels at an Exhibition.
WonderCon 2010 is being held from April 2-4 this year and as with any comic book convention, there are some amazingly wacky costumes to be seen! I’ll be tracking the best costume spottings from Wondercon 2010 because I always get a kick at seeing what people decide to dress up as. My favorite from the first days batch has got to be the simple and elegant Marty McFly costume!
*All photos belong to their respective owners.
If you stumbled on this blog via Twitter, Facebook or elsewhere then welcome! Please feel free to peruse the site and if you like what you see then I’d recommend adding Co-Tee TV as a friend on Facebook so that you can stay up-to-date on future posts!
Day 1 Wondercon 2010 Costume Spotting:
1. Marty McFly, photo by jovino. Hey look, it’s Marty McFly in the classic Marty McFly pose and equipped with his futuristic hoverboard! Visit BunnyWarez.
2. Cosplay, photo by I Heart Cool Stuff. I’m not sure who this guy is, but he does look like he’s ready for some foreplay. Visit I Heart Cool Stuff.
3. Squirtle, photo by I Heart Cool Stuff. Apparently it’s Squirtle, the bipedle turtle from the Pokemon universe. Visit I Heart Cool Stuff.
4. Unknown, photo by mchulin. These guys kind of look like something from The Rocketeer, but I think I might be wrong about that. Any thoughts?
5. The Evil Cheerleaders, photo by I Heart Cool Stuff. If you’re gonna die from someone (or something) evil, why not let that someone be evil cheerleaders. Visit I Heart Cool Stuff.
6. Superman, photo by jovino. Do you think this sloppy version of Superman is equipped with matching Superman Underoos? Visit BunnyWarez.
Our good friend David Murray of Seibei just released two new (and awesome) tees! I’m a big fan of Seibei and will probably be ordering at least one of these tees in the near future. My navy and white Sandwich Dinosaur tee is getting a little worn out so I think it might be time to upgrade to the brand spanking new Zombie Dinosaur design.
Although I never grew up as the prototypical fat kid, there was a time when I was referred to as being husky. Husky, hmmmmmm. Is that code for fat? Probably. And as such, I’d be proud to wear the new I’m Fat Let’s Party Shirt.
Both of the new tees are available now for sale at Seibei for $22. Also, word on the street is that Seibei will be unleashing a brand spanking website redesign. I’m excited to see what he has in store for us.
ready and this will be a non-issue.
