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New York: Day Two

If I’d have to sum up Day Two, I’d have to say it was a day filled with highs and lows.

I woke up late and watched on as a valiant South Korea fell to Uruguay, and then headed out into Manhattan to meet up with Arvind and watch the USA v Ghana game.

I found this Mexican restaurant / bar off 42nd Street, which was pretty darn packed with World Cup supporters and a fantastic atmosphere, from the initial disappointment of the first goal, to the equaliser, greeted with absolutely raucous applause [it did take a while to get drinks since most of the bar staff were fixated on the game the whole time, and occasionally turned around to serve customers], and then the final blow in extra time, after which the bar turned into a ghost town.

More drinking at a place named the Rum House [!] followed by dinner and then dessert, which was both glorious and tragic at the same time.

We went to Carnegie Deli. Now, I had no idea how popular this place was, and it looked innocuous from the outside, even with the large queue snaking around the corner, but to then wander in and see the Wall of Fame, good lord! Thousands upon thousands of photos of celebrities that have eaten at this place, and they’re famous for their cheesecakes!

So we sat down, somewhat full from dinner, but more than ready for dessert, and out it came, a New York Baked Cheesecake with blueberries. It tasted absolutely amazing. For the first 15 minutes that I was eating it. Then, Struggletown… It was the biggest slice of cheesecake I’ve had, and I know that I haven’t been in cheesecake training lately, but the sad realisation that I’m so out of cheesecake eating shape [I ate a whole Cheesecake Shop cheesecake back in the day] kicked in when I had to retire my spoon, with cheesecake still residing on the plate. Sigh.

I couldn’t move for the next half hour, and it took an hour walking around Central Park [Arvind summed it up nicely, calling it “Centennial Park on steroids”] to somewhat reduce the bloatedness, but I am damn well going back to Carnegie Deli and finishing that cheesecake, dammit! And this time, without so much food beforehand >.<

On a totally unrelated note, checking the scales when I get back home should be fun…

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New York: Day One

I know I’m setting a terrible precedent with “Day One”, because more than likely, “Day Two” might not be tomorrow, or if it is, “Day Three” won’t be the day after, but anyway, enough of my sequential insecurities, just go with it.

Day One, and I went into Manhattan with the parents [I thought I’d go with them ONE day at least], and about 15 minutes in, told them that as much as I enjoy their version of being tourists [carrying around a giant map and strictly and speedily visiting tourist attractions that they’ve marked while taking a token photo [it was almost like the Amazing Race]], I’ll meet them back home in the night. I then proceeded to wander the streets of Manhattan in no particular order, with no map and no plan, and I kinda really enjoyed it!

I’m not quite sure where my wandering took me exactly, but I remember walking past Wall Street, then it was a blur until I got to Seaport, which seemed like a little hub for the World Cup, with quite a few peeps knockin’ about Puma City. They had Human Fusbal [Google keeps telling me that it’s Foosball, but it lies I tell you] there!

It’s like, a netted, outdoor, smallish indoor soccer field, and the horizontal bars are there like there are in a normal Fusbal table, spread out evenly across the field [2-3-3] and everyone is tied quite tightly to the horizontal bars, and yeh, fun ensues! It was perfect because it was ridiculously hot, and the coolish breeze near Seaport coupled with some kind of 2000 calorie milkshake [it really did feel like that] and cheering onlookers made for a fun experience.

More wandering, and I eventually jumped back on the ferry to Staten Island [an awesome way to travel in this heat] and then the train home.

Oh, I also ended up getting a T-Mobile “plan” that gives me data access [although it’s still not activated…] and a crapload of calls for $60 that I can cancel at any time. @laurenbugeja mentioned Boingo in her post, in her comment in response to my post yesterday, but I’ll stick with this for now, and hope the data kicks in.

Did I mention how overly nice the people are here?! Doubly surprising considering my sole taste of New York before this was @zander1979.

And to directly contradict that statement, hi American Airlines; you suck. So, the luggage has been found apparently, and they left a message early this morning saying that it’ll be picked up around 6am by some delivery company and sent to us by noon. We got up late anyway, waited around, no one arrived by 1pm, gave them another call and they said the luggage was picked up at 9am, and that it’ll be there shortly. We decided not to wait since there were others at home anyway, and I arrive home at night to see that it STILL hasn’t arrived. Call ’em, and they tell us that no more deliveries are being made today, and that we can expect it tomorrow… assholes.

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The long commute to New York

25+ hours of travelling and no luggage later, oh hai, New York!

LAX sucks! I’m assuming that’s where the luggage went missing, amidst the rest of the chaos we encountered there. The arrival was delayed by a bit, and by the time we got through the TSA checkpoint that extended outside the doors of the airport, we barely made boarding time, to then find out that the flight had been delayed by an hour.

Speaking of the TSA security check, I got through unscaved [not quite sure how [damn my racial prejudices failing me]], but just as I was putting my shoes back on and some other dude went through the scanner gate thingi, the guards just started shouting “EVERYBODY STAND STILL! NOBODY MOVE!”. Three minutes later with no one knowing what the hell was going on, through the scrambled walkie talkie comes “Bravo, you’re all clear”, and then everyone just started cheering and moved on o_O

Then we get to New York after being put on some other flight that stood still on the runway for an hour, and then waited another hour to find our luggage is MIA -_- Oh, and no one got headsets on the American Airlines flight from LAX to JFK either! Do you have to pay for ’em or something? Then again, watching Old Dogs on a communal screen minus the sound probably made for a more enjoyable experience anyway.

In comparison, god bless Qantas [unless they were the ones that misplaced said luggage] and the A380! I got through a Lady Gaga concert and four movies; The Ghost Writer, Five Minutes of Heaven, The Silence of the Lambs and The Godfather: Part I. Yes, I know, I really should have seen the last two, but, the former, I was always too scared to watch during high school, and the latter, I have no idea why… suffice it to say, they were both pretty frakn fantastic, and I’m looking forward to watching Part II on the way back. The first two weren’t too shabby either.

One thing that did annoy me about the inflight entertainment system was, anytime there was an announcement from the cabin crew or pilots, it wouldn’t pause what was currently playing >.< You just get this overlay you can’t do anything about and you’re forced to jump back using the terribly laggy rewind function. It makes no sense, is plain silly, and should be corrected.

And the thing I am most saddened about at the moment is the lack of free WiFi; I haven’t been able to check in anywhere on Foursquare! *cry* I need a SIM and data plan, STAT!

Signing out at 4am with a very messed up sleep clock and looking forward to some exploring tomorrow.

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I’m a serialized drama kinda guy

It’s been a while [save those two weekends a few months ago where @drumonastick and I consumed ~80 LOST episodes] since I’ve had a decent day of TV watching, but after completely ruining my weekend with the World Cup, alcohol and not sleeping in my own bed, I sat slouched in anticipation of some new TV blood. 

And now, a summary of said “new” blood. Yes, I say “new”, because two of the three shows are old, but I haven’t had the chance to get into ’em.

Community – Started very poorly, and the main dude and dudette are for the most part, terribly yawnworthy, but Ken Jeong, Chevy Chase and Danny Pudi are becoming increasingly funnier, with the Mexican Halloween episode taking the show to a new level. One thing I particularly like about Community is the fine job it does with its race-based humour

Modern Family – Only two episodes in, but I’m already in love with most of the characters, and some fine zingers already!

Rubicon – This is a new conspiracy thriller on AMC [the fine folks that bring us Mad Men and Breaking Bad], and only the pilot is out as of now, but can count me in for the ride

All of this of course has nothing to do with the real point of this post, but I thought I’d tell you a little about my weekend, and well, I’m not sure where this is going anymore, but let me try and reset the focus to this fantastic discussion by Noel and Scott of The AV Club, on how the culture of TV and TV-watching has changed. It was filled with paragraphs of glorious sentiment that I vehemently agree and disagree with, so I’m just going to pull some of that out.

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Foursquare app: Badge and mayorship finder

Random thought that crossed my mind while I was wandering the CBD at lunch for all the Foursquare addicts out there. 

Wouldn’t it be great to have an app, that, checks your location, and then says something like…

Badges

There are 3 badges that you can acquire within 500m of your location!

[List badges, their descriptions and how to acquire them]

[Insert Google Map with markers for each location, with markers being the actual badges]

Mayorships

There are 2 potential mayorships within 500m of your location!

[List venues and how many check-ins are required to obtain mayorship]

[Insert Google Map with markers for each location]

Does an app like this already exist? Does anyone want it? Am I talking absolute shit? Well, this is my blog, dammit, so deal with it!

This post was inspired by a discussion with @kazwalla last week around having a badge night; a night dedicated to acquiring Foursquare badges.

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AudioSurf

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Did you ever play Grand Theft Auto on PC, load the mp3 directory with all your music, and just drive around for hours on end? Well, I sure did, and probably spent more time doing that in-game than anything else. I’ve missed that feeling, and I’ve missed my PC’s music library, while I’ve not-so-secretly been gettin’ comfortable with The Cloud servicing my musical needs. 

Well, no longer! I’ve just rediscovered my music library tonight, and fallen in love with it all over again thanks to AudioSurf!

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Upgrading an HTC Magic to CyanogenMod 5.0.7

I’ve got a HTC Magic [Australian, through Vodafone, 32B]. I’ve had it for a year now. It’s old, the hardware is somewhat antiquated, but I still love it to bits, and thanks to crazy kids like @cyanogen, it can stay up to date, OS wise.

I recently switched from 4.2.15 to 5.0.7, but the switch was not without its hiccups, so I thought I may as well try and simplify the XDA instructions [as they’re somewhat overwhelming for n00bs like me], and add in some additional steps/information that they might take for granted.

I’ll repeat it again, I was rocking CyanogenMod 4.2.15 before this, meaning that I’ve already rooted my phone. Surprisingly, it was an absolute bitch to get back to 1.5 since I’d upgraded to vanilla 1.6.

Oh, and I should probably add in a disclaimer. There’s a chance you’ll brick your phone, and I refuse to take no responsibility for it! Having said that, it’s pretty safe. “You gotta risk it to get the biscuit”

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LOST – The End [spoilers, duh]

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LOST began with the black credits fading into Jack Shephard’s right eye opening, while he lay there in the bamboo field, and it ended with Jack Shephard’s right eye closing, lying in that same bamboo field, fading into those same black credits. Why not just call the show ‘Full Circle’ or ‘Mirrors’? I’ve watched the last 30 seconds several times now, and the finale twice, and the whole series twice, and I’m satisfied with the end.

I’ve slowly come to a realisation over the years that The Island and the mythology that came along with it was just a backdrop for a show about people, and that more than came through in the finale. Sure I want answers, and I feel I’ve got more than enough of them, but for the diehards that watched LOST until the very end hoping that every answer would be presented in a box, nicely tied with a ribbon, I’m sorry, you probably didn’t get what you wanted out of the finale.

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You can test your streaming video speeds on YouTube now?!

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Since when did this get introduced?! Maybe it was part of the new video player that started showing up a month ago? I accidentally right-clicked the YouTube video [Gym Class Heroes – On My Own Time [great song, btw]] I was watching and one of the options was ‘Take speed test’. Who am I to refuse The Google? I took the test and was then directed to a page with some funky graphs and benchmarks of how my speed holds up against the average speed of my ISP, city, state, country and globally! Not sure how big the sample size is for the comparison data or anything, but nifty nonetheless.

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You can even click ‘Show Test Video’ and see your streaming information in real time. If that’s your thing, that is… /shrug

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Anyway, it was geeky and cool to see, and between this and the interactive Pac-Man Google logo, my love for Google continues to increase. Take the test and let me know what you get!

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