I Can Only Imagine This Is How It Happened

1:47 PM, Friday, A Design Studio

"Man, this is great cake. Who's birthday is it, anyway? Enh, must be celebrating some big account like General Mills. Who knows."

"Oh, hey Hans. What food photography? The cakes. We'll just bake a couple of new ones, sorry about the misunderstanding."

"Dudes, dudes, dudes, I can't bake to save my life. Can you? You're such a trust fund baby, your parents sent a nanny with you to college? Damn, that is harsh."

"Okay, well, we still have a — Karenohmygoddonoteatthat — slice of cake. Good gravy, she has a forkful in her hand, she has mauled the one perfect piece remaining."

"Um, just hold that fork in front of the slice, we'll light it, shoot it, and call it a day. Yeah, we'll use the same picture for all of the cake boxes. It's not like anyone is going to notice."

Air Native

Seriously, "heritage callouts"?

Palm Reading

Look, I'm a pretty big fan of Apple's technology. I have a Newton and a stash of six color logo stickers. My first Mac was beige, and it's name didn't start with an i. Regardless of what loyalties these facts might imply, the phone I'm interested in doesn't have an i in its name either. It's the Palm Centro.

[image from Gizmodo]

The Centro is an easy enough phone to disregard, especially if you're under the impression (like I was) that it runs Windows Mobile (it doesn't). I don't know anyone who has nice things to say about WinMobile, although I'm sure there are some masochists out there who do. It is an Astro Van of an operating system that tries to cram its retrofitted self into a space intended for compact cars. PalmOS, on the other hand, is well tailored for the devices it runs on. It also has the added bonus of being the only platform the game 'Space Trader' supports.

I've been extremely pleased with the performance of my Palm Treo 650 (and not just because my prior phone was a Sony Ericsson). Here's what I like about it:

• QWERTY keyboard
• Threaded SMS conversations
  
• Nice OS - intuitive and rock solid
  
• I can hear the people I talk to, they can hear me
• Touchscreen (the color is also a bonus)
  
• Bluetooth (I use it for syncing, not with a headset)
• Full-size SD slot
  
• Mute on/off slider on the top of the phone
• Awesome battery life
  
• Space Trader (of course), SSH, and a whole slew of other third party applications

Here's what I don't like about the Treo 650:

• The web browser is kind of crappy (although Universe 3 seems like a viable solution)
  
• The default sync software for OS X is also somewhat crappy (I use Missing Sync)
  
• No Graffiti

The Treo's a chunky phone, and I do appreciate when I can use my gadgets as weapons in street fighting, but there's also something to be said for phones that can comfortably fit in pockets. Hence my interest in upgrading to the slimmer Centro. The only things I'd really be losing are weight, a full-size SD slot, and a visible antenna.

Why not an iPhone? Well, the lovely web browser, decent data plan, and impeccable design are not enough. It's not that I don't want to switch carriers — I'm already on AT&T.

The iPhone is a 1.0 product, not to mention Apple's first real foray into the cellular market (the sorry implementation of iTunes on Motorola's ROKR doesn't count). I am quite happy to let the 1 million (and counting) beta testers who bought the iPhone identify the device's flaws, and give Apple the time to fix the problems. I often have the capacity to be a patient woman, and in the case of the problematic iPhone 1.1.1 firmware update, it seems to have paid off.

The Centro has a microSD slot as well, so when Moore's Law kicks into high gear, capacity beyond 8GB is feasible. No tactile Bluetooth QWERTY keyboard has a design that does the iPhone justice, while the Centro has keyboard buttons built in.

The iPhone also costs $399 — nearly four times the cost of the $99 Centro (although I expect the price will drop further by the time Centros are available on AT&T). I like bargains.

Local Yum

Fruit and vegetables were not making their way into our house often enough.

Eventually, I remembered the local organic produce delivery service in Toronto, and it turned out there was similar one here: Door to Door Organics. Hooray!

$25* gets you a box of 4 kinds of fruit and 5 kinds of veggies, including delivery. The produce is seasonal and random, which is nice: seasonal food is tasty, and random food is sometimes a challenge to prepare ("chard... sure, let's see what we can do with this!").

I told my eco-literate friend about the service — and as per usual, he rebutted with something cooler that I had never heard about.

Community-Supported Agriculture depends on local shareholders to raise capital for the upcoming growing season — you buy a share, and you get fresh local produce for the duration of the season. Big M puts it into more interesting terms, saying something along the lines of "money to support urban mad scientists!"

According to PASA's farm locator, I've got two nearby CSAs to choose from:

• Somerton Tanks Farm, and
  
• the super-local to me Greensgrow Farm (makers of Honey from the Hood)
  

Greensgrow also runs a market stand on Thurdsay and Saturday afternoons. Since they're so close (and CSAs don't typically deliver produce), I'm likeliest to buy CSA shares from them when the next growing season starts.

Philadelphians interested in local agriculture can also check out the cooking workshop at Weaver's Way Farm, on Saturday, September 29th.

For the record, no, I'm not a "localvore." I'm not saying you can't eat entirely of local sustenance (and if that's what you want to do, get down with your bad self). I'm just saying, way back when people used to eat strictly local organic produce, and they were often *hungry.*

But supporting the local economy, ensuring I eat my vegetables, and making sure urban mad scientists can do their thing? I'm all about that.


*Yeah, I know that those $25 could be either USD or CAD at the moment.

Impossible Places

Niihau jumped out at me as I was looking at the map of Hawaii,. It was then that I realized this was the island I had to stay on when I visited.

When I got home from Borders, I headed to the Internet to see what I could find out about this place - none of the travel guides made mention of anything you could do in Niihau. It turns out there's a good reason for that.

It's the Forbidden Isle.

You aren't allowed to stay there unless you're invited by the family that owns the island, or are in the US military. The 300 or so natives are isolated from the outside world (8 years ago there was a 100% unemployment rate among them). There are supervised tours of the beaches. I think I would be okay with that - or at least I would certainly take it if it was all I could get.

I have a backup, though. The Near Islands, the island chain furthest west (so much so it's technically east) in the Alaskan Aleutian Islands. More specifically, Attu Island. It's got snow and ocean, aurora borealis in a sky devoid of light pollution. There's even a travel agency specifically providing trips to the island, because of all the crazy rare birds that show up. Perfect.

Their last trip was in 2006.

They're not planning another.

That makes things a little more difficult.

There's always Unalaska Island, in the Fox Islands group of the Aleutians (I love the name Unalaska). That one is easier to get to, by an order of magnitude. Sure, Southwest won't fly to it, but at least the Alaskan Tourism Board representatives know where it is.

Foodstuffs

This past week or so has been a roller coaster of food quality:

Tiffin is amazing. This Indian food is delicious, they don't use trans fats, they deliver to our house, and they mix up the menu every month with different specials. Anyone who knows me well knows I love a menu with a bunch of unique dishes. If you find yourself in Philadelphia, you must find your way to 710 West Girard (especially if you're vegetarian).

New China has been our reliable local Chinese food delivery restaurant for almost two years. It has recently rescinded its duties by delivering a few meals that... weren't very good. I could understand if it was just the ma po tofu that was mediocre (and pretty bland, considering that they said they'd make it extra spicy), but the beef ho fun wasn't good either (and I thought it was near impossible to mess up). I'm now on the lookout for another local Chinese restaurant (suggestions are very much welcome).

Voila! meals are pretty damn good, considering that they start frozen in a bag, take about two minutes of prep, and are ready in ten minutes. I thought they would be a little boring, but they're not. Bits that should be moist are moist, pieces that should be crisp are crisp. Nom, nom, nom.

Wawa was recently written up at uwishunu. When I first heard the name about five years ago it was charmingly perplexing, when I was introduced to the first of many products (the 'Magnum' — a 44 ounce/1.3 liter cup whose intended use is to hold that much soda and ice) I was somewhat taken aback by the American egregiousness of it. Since then, I have grown to love Wawa. Not for its cups of soda as large as my head, but for its hoagies and salads made-to-order, its coffee, and its macaroni and cheese. I am a particular fan of the computerized made-to-order ordering system. The name, interestingly enough, is Ojibwe for Canada goose.

Oh, Philadelphia... How Are You So Awesome When Your Transit System Is So Awful?

While we're on the subject of public transit, does anyone know anyone who thinks SEPTA's elimination of paper transfers is a good idea?

I'd be all for eliminating the transfers if they were replaced with something else (DC's Metro, for example, has a fairly sophisticated transfer system), but they're simply disappearing. If you need to take more than one SEPTA vehicle — be it trolley, el train, subway, or bus — you'll need to pay an additional fare for each one (unless one of your transfers is through the subterranean routes at City Hall/15th St. Station, these will remain free).

While I never thought it made much sense to charge $0.60 per transfer to each additional vehicle, paying an extra $2 ($1.30 if you can get tokens) per route just seems ludicrous.