…via nytimes.com via unclutterer.com, an extremely useful article on how to pack from pilots and flight attendants, who should know a thing or two about travelling. The slideshow, also from the same site, also shows you how to do the packing.

I knew folding each item individually added to the bloat, but didn’t know rolling up each item instead seems to really cut it down. Truly a “well why didn’t I think of that?” moment.

photo credit: John Carleton

I started running back in mid-November of last year. It wasn’t my idea initially and I had my reservations about starting up because we were heading into cold, wet, wintry season.

We started the Learn to Run clinic through the local Running Room store. The weather, true to prediction, was crappy. We ran in the wind, rain and in some cases the snow, 3, sometimes 4 times a week. We finished the Learn to Run clinic, and then made the jump to the 10K clinic. And finally, almost 4 months to the day we started to run, we finished running our first 10K distance…followed by completing the Sun Run 10K run with 51,000 other people last Sunday.

What really struck me about running as a sport is that there’s a lot of time and money invested in the technology; in the running shoes, the clothing, the post-workout drinks and of course in the gadgets runners use to keep track of their runs.

It didn’t take me too long to get interested in the gadgetry specifically; that’s the kind of stuff I am really interested in. Looking at the various GPS watches and Nike doodads, all of it seems really cool, but seeing as how I have an iPhone that I take with me for playing music while I run, I figured, there had to be some kind of running app that would work with my playlists.

After trying a few apps, I settled on RunKeeper. RunKeeper is fantastic. It has all the features I’ve been looking for in an app…it allows me to:

1. associate any of my playlists to the run (aka activity)
2. set up the workout duration if I want to do interval runs or not
3. review after the run the pace I ran, by the minute
4. view the route I ran plotted against Google maps
5. call out, if I want, the average pace by kilometre or mile
6. report the number of calories burned

For $9.99 for the Pro version gives you the above features and if you also sign up for a user account with RunKeeper you can also view your completed activities over time. RunKeeper is a fantastic investment if you’re looking to utilize your iPhone or Android-powered phone and you don’t want to plunk down the extra cash for a dedicated running watch or workout-tracking device.

So are we still going to continue running? We sure are, but we’re just not sure if we want to go and make the jump to the half-marathon or the duathalon/triathalon route. We’ll see

photo credit: Dave Heuts

This year I travelled a lot back east and a bit in the southwest. I was on the road for several days a month every month from March to October. So I think I can safely say I’ve spent my fair share at airports, car rental lineups and in hotels.

Here’s what I found that really helped me save a bit of time, money and get around from point A to B more efficiently:

1. Packing just enough for carry-on luggage. There are several benefits here:

• Saving time waiting at the airline counter to check in your bags, and at the baggage carousel to pick them up.

• Most airlines are beginning to charge fees for checking in bags. Having carry-on baggage bypasses this. Make sure you check with the airline to find out what the carry-on luggage limits are. If you’re not sure what to pack and you’re going to the US, make sure to check out the tsa.gov website for more information.

2. Making up a packing checklist, for work and personal items.

3. Checking in online at the airline website the day before the flight. This also allows you in some cases to change your seating assignment or purchase a seat upgrade and bypass standing at the airline counter.

4. Printing out the boarding pass at home or at the airport kiosk. Again, another way to avoid lining up to go to the airline counter.

5. Carrying all your paperwork in one place (flight boarding passes, travel itinerary and passport) in a 2 pocket folder.

6. Bringing a GPS unit for driving. Saves having to fumble with a map and speeding down the highway!

7. Having printouts of directions from the airport to the hotel and back, as well as to the customer site as a backup for the GPS unit. Because technology can be fallible.

8. Asking around for good places to eat. The best places I’ve gone to eat on the road this year I wouldn’t have ever thought to give a second thought to trying out if I didn’t get a recommendation from a local from the area.

9. Signing up for memberships with airlines, hotels and car rental places. Even if you don’t think you will plan to travel much in the near future, having a membership allows you to take immediate advantage of perks like later hotel check-out times and faster car rental lineups.

   Many airlines, hotels and car rental places also have affiliations with sister companies or alliances with competitors. Examples of this are the Star Alliance for airlines and the Priority Club for hotels. By doing this you can consolidate the points or miles accumulated in one spot so if you do travel a lot you can start racking up the nicer rewards such as free flights with the airlines or nights at the hotels. As always, read the fine print before signing up.

10. Looking for hotels that offer complimentary wi-fi access. Most offer this, but don’t expect lightning-fast speeds you may be used to at the office.

11. Staying hydrated. Get yourself a couple of water bottles to have with you at the hotel and on-site. Or if you want to be more economical, pick up a gallon of water plus a single bottle of water, and just refill the bottle whenever it runs low. A gallon of water will usually last me 5 days.

And without further adieu, the here’s the last half of my favorite iPhone apps of the moment. If you missed my first post, you can find it here.

Flickr for iPhone – The official iPhone app from Flickr, allowing you to upload your iPhone photos directly to your Flickr photostream. The app contains a good subset of features that should take care of about 80% of what you’d normally see on the main website, such as setting privacy settings, viewing your photostream, contacts, sets and tags.

Facebook for iPhone – A similar concept as with the Flickr for iPhone app, Facebook for iPhone contains a good subset of features that allows you to perform most functions like viewing your news feed, adding friends and sending messages to your friends.

Evernote for iPhone – Detect a trend yet with the apps reviewed so far? Yep, this app allows you to upload photos, record memos, jot down notes and view contents of your Evernote account.

In the year and a bit that I’ve had my iPhone it’s become pretty indispensible for me. I don’t need to use an alarm clock anymore, Clock does it for me. I don’t need to check my e-mail on a computer anymore, Mail does it for me. Maps acts as a great backup GPS device if my Magellan GPS unit doesn’t cut it (or if I forgot it at home)

Alongside the standard iPhone apps I’ve been trying out a bunch of apps from the Apps Store. I’m a “if I don’t get it in 5 or 10 minutes I’m getting rid of it” type of app user. So if something passes muster, and has stayed on the iPhone for a couple of months, it gets my stamp of approval.

Here’s a couple that are on my favorites list at the moment…this is part 1 of 2, the second part will be coming next week…

CardStar – Tired of carrying all your discount or membership cards? CardStar allows you to enter your membership card information from airlines, retailers, libraries and other businesses and where it can, creates bar codes so it can be scanned through, all through one app.

Echofon – Formerly Twitterfon, this is a Twitter client application. I like it because it does exactly what I need it to do and nothing more…view tweets, posts tweets, shortens URL links and block or follow users.

Flixster – What’s new or coming soon in the theatres, or on DVD this week? Want to know what the movie times are at your preferred theatre? What’s Rottentomatoes.com say about the movie? Want to review a movie and share it with friends on Facebook, Flixster or Netflix and vice versa? It’s all integrated into the app.

Flashlight – Need to find your way up to the cabin in the middle of nowhere? Need to get under the office desk to plug in a cord? Flashlight does it and allows you to pick colors and brightness. Again, it’s not fancy but it does exactly what I want it to do.

Scoremobile – Need to find out what the score is for your favorite team? Scoremobile provides that and live blog posts as games occur.

…has it been that long since I last posted? Seemed like yesterday…but between March and now, I’ve been on the road at least a week every month. Add the days leading up to a trip prepping and the days after catching up, and well, here we are in November.

Got lots of topics I’ve jotted down, and plan to be updating here more regularly. Look for posts on podcasts, travelling for work, Twitter, e-book readers and more…

I’m a big fan of open source software. What I’m an even bigger fan of is finding websites that help consolidate open source application information, like osalt.com, and more recently, OpenDisc.

With OpenDisc, they go beyond listing links of open source applications available for download. In fact, the folks at OpenDisc actually create .iso image files of several popular open source applications that you can download and burn to CD. They have a regular and an educational .iso image to choose from.

This will definitely come in handy the next time I have to re-format a computer for the parents.

photo credit: Michele Catania

Looks a bit different around here doesn’t it? It’s a step up from the default Kubrick Wordpress theme.

It’s also the answer to a question I’ve been asking myself the past month—should I go out and get a pre-made Wordpress theme or go for broke and build one from scratch? After thinking about the pros and cons, and how much spare time I was going to be having in the next little while, I settled for a hybrid solution. I went out and got a pre-made blog theme called Thesis, from diythemes.com. Something that can run “right out of the box”, that looks good by default, that offers a lot of customizable options, and yet still give me room for some PHP hacking and some CSS tweaking.

It’s one of several steps that I’m taking to get this blog to where I’d like it to be. As clean and minimalist the blog looks now, it’ll be changing again soon, hopefully to a more colorful palette. So stay tuned!

It seems like in the past few weeks Twitter is everywhere. The local newspaper covered it. Online media sites and businesses are suddenly offering Twitter feeds in lieu of e-mail alerts. 3 people I know have signed up for it in the last week.

What gives? At its very heart Twitter allows you to let the your friends know what you’re doing, in 140 characters or less. The beauty of Twitter is that it allows you to follow and participate multiple conversation threads with you and your friends, organized as a simple list of “tweets”. You don’t have to send a text message to each and every one of your friends, you can just send out a “tweet” and your friends will know what’s going on.

But what I think allowed Twitter to really take off in the past few months is the fact that people are finding other uses for it. People are using it to report the news as it occurs and to mobilize groups of people into action. Businesses and media outlets are realizing they can reach more people on their cell phones and tailor their content into bite-sized chunks, perfect for those on the go.

It will be interesting to see what the future will hold with Twitter. Will it have the same staying power as Facebook, who recently celebrated their 5th anniversary?

(Twitter bird icon via productivedreams.com)

photo credit: cybertoad

I think it’s the “it’s a new year it’s time for new beginnings, cleaning up” sentiment that’s gotten me doing some maintenance work on my laptop tonight.

It’s been a little sluggish of late, and it’s been long overdue for some TLC.

So far:

1. Uninstall unnecessary programs – Done
2. Run CCleaner to get rid of unused temporary files, registry keys and disable unnecessary startup program entries – Done
3. Defrag the hard drive – Underway
4. Back up and offload files to network drive – To do