Yesterday evening, before leaving for LEGOLAND Florida, we made “hotel” reservations at Holiday Villas in Kissimmee, a place we’ve stayed at before when travelling with a large group to the Orlando area. We got a 4-bedroom/3-bathroom villa for the 8 of us for a very good price. We got a confirmation e-mail and our credit card was charged accordingly for the reservation. Can you guess where this is going?
Continue reading ‘We won’t be staying at Holiday Villas anymore!’ »
We had friends from Ohio visiting after Christmas who wanted to hit some of the Orlando theme parks during their stay. Their primary target was Disney World, but having younger children they also wanted to scope out LEGOLAND. We had always meant to go check it out, and I had recently received a flyer in the mail about the new Star Wars Miniland grand opening, so we were (I was) more than happy to spend a day at the (relatively) new theme park.
The Raspberry Pi is a credit card-sized ARM-based Linux computer that costs just $25. It’s intended to be used as an educational device and instantly appealed to my inner tinkerer (and gadget freak).
I ordered the Model B (256mb RAM, 2 USB ports, HDMI/composite video/audio jacks, and Ethernet) from Allied Electronics back in late September but ended up getting the newer revision with 512mb instead (nice!) by the time it arrived the first week of December. Considering my first Linux server was an old 486 with 16mb of RAM, the Model B’s 700MHz ARM1176JZFS CPU in a Broadcom SoC (system on a chip) is a powerhouse! Per the FAQ: “The graphics capabilities are roughly equivalent to Xbox 1 level of performance. Overall real world performance is something like a 300MHz Pentium 2, only with much, much swankier graphics.”
Two weeks ago I came across this post on The Verge that talked about using CardDAV and CalDAV to sync Google information to iOS devices which, along with the new GMail app promised better synchronization and better battery life and a break from the current ActiveSync/Exchange method I had been using. I’ve been using multiple Google Calendars for personal and family items but my personal contacts were all in my Outlook account at work. I decided it was probably a good idea to clean all of that out and move it elsewhere.
Last month I picked up a 32gb Microsoft Surface RT tablet as a combined birthday/Christmas present for my daughter. In a bit of pre-planning I upgraded her laptop to Windows 8 so she had time to get familiar with the new OS before she finally got the tablet last week. So far, it’s been a hit, despite some of the setbacks of WinRT, but I’ll get into those later.
No sleeping in today! We woke up early (6:30am) to find the ship already docked back in Port Canaveral. Since we were using the Express Walk-Off service we decided to skip breakfast on the ship and just debark and get through customs. In hindsight, we should have not been in such a rush to leave, but being one of the first families to debark meant no lines at all. In fact, by 7:15am we were through customs and 15 minutes later we were in the car and on the road home.
After turning in late (early) last night I ended up sleeping in a bit this morning. When I woke up around 8:00am my daughter had just woken up herself and my wife had gone to exercise in the fitness center. At some point overnight (or earlier that morning) the Dream had docked at Castaway Cay, Disney’s private island in the Bahamas.
This morning we awoke to a beautiful sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean in the Bahamas.
Hard to have a bad day starting off with a view like that …
Well, a ship, actually. For the next three days we’re on the Disney Dream, cruising to the Bahamas on a short family vacation for Thanksgiving.
The GoalZero Rock Out portable rechargeable speaker, which I received as a recent birthday present, is the latest addition to my solar-chargeable gadget collection.
The Rock Out unzips around its edges (like a suitcase) to reveal the on/off switch, mini-USB port for charging, audio input jack, and audio output cable. The other half contains a mesh pocket just the right size to hold your smartphone. Fire up your favorite music app, plug in the cable, turn on the speakers, zip up the package, and you’re ready for music on the go. A set of elastic straps along the back make it relatively easy to attach the Rock Out to the handlebars of your bike or just about anywhere. The sound quality is excellent and the speakers are loud, although there are no external volume controls: you have to use the volume on your phone which is a bit of a pain since it involves having to unzip the pouch to access the device (not an easy feat while riding a bike!).
While the Rock Out isn’t a formal part of our hurricane evacuation kit, the fact that it can be charged via the solar panels I already have means it will definitely come with us should that time ever come. For now, though, the Rock Out (plus iHeartRadio on my iPhone) is serving its primary purpose as an entertainment device on our family bike rides.