Palm Pre: First Impressions

Last night, I spent 3 hours trying to sync the old Centro w/ the Mac Address Book without success. My master plan was to sync the Centro, then somehow sync that w/ my Yahoo! contacts, then finally export the whole mess to Google. I ad-libbed instead, in the process discovering that iSync has the built-in ability to sync with both Yahoo! and GMail. The second discovery was realizing I could just send all my Centro contacts (via Bluetooth) to the MacBook Pro. From there, I imported them into Address Book, synced up with Yahoo! (10.4 doesn't support GMail), then went to the Power Mac to sync Yahoo! & GMail w/ the Mac's address book. Got all that? Bottom line, I got all 3 address books synced up and sent to the 4th service that I needed.



So I journeyed down to the local Sprint Store this morning to get the Pre. I was ready to leave at 8:45, but spent 10 minutes furiously searching for my keys. Got them, and made it in 5 minutes flat, enough time to catch the line just before they opened the doors. Of course I took a few photos of the Sprint Store waiting for the Pre to go on sale and then buying it. After about 1.5 hours in line I got in. After another 20-30 minutes, I had a Pre in hand and was on my way home. Review follows.



I've been tweeting about the Pre all day, but here's the bottom line: the Palm Pre is fantastic, and lives up to and perhaps even exceeds the hype in many ways. First, as everyone has noted, it feels great in the hand. It took about 2 minutes to set it up, just put in my GMail account information and BOOM! Contacts. Put in my Facebook ifnormation, and BOOM! Contacts. Integrated as advertised, no hitches. Then I went to set up Yahoo! Mail, and it downloaded all my folders. Pretty cool, making it easier than ever to organize my email. Apparently Palm/Yahoo! have worked together to enable IMAP.

Web browser-- works very well. Well enough that I may just have to ditch the iPod Touch... what do I need that for now? Downloaded a few Twitter apps, of course, and while bother Tweed and Spaz show promise, both have a few quirks that are keeping them from being uber Twitter clients. Oh, and I tested the turn-by-turn directions and they worked quite well. I definitely won't be bringing the GPS on the road anymore, the Pre is perfectly fine. Downside is that I couldn't set up hands-free w/ the car. I'll have time to troubleshoot that later.

Next, I used Media Sync to add tunes. It worked completely seamlessly, added several hundred songs and dozens of podcasts with no problem. Brought the Pre to the gym, and it sounded very good using my standard $10 Sony headphones. But I know that wouldn't last... So I wandered over to Best Buy and bought a pair of Bluetooth headphones, the Motorola Rokr S9-HD. Charged them up, worked perfect, even had a very noticeable bass boost. Haven't tested the call quality yet, but will soon enough. I figure these will be perfect for cycling, where I can just stick the Pre in a backpack or bag and enjoy the tunes. The Nano might be one good armband from being sent packing.

Downloaded a few apps already, not many available. FlightView seems like a good flight tracker, and Pandora is REAL nice. Classic is fun, just to see how well the simulate the crappy PalmOS fonts. The NY Times app is useless, might as well just use the webpage.

What else, what else? Amazon MP3 store seemed good in the store demo, haven't tried it yet. No problem getting WiFi working. The card metaphor is very intuitive, haven't cracked open the manual yet and I think I've got it figure out. All too simple to use any song as a ringtone. Now, a lot of this stuff I could have been using the Centro for, and in the past I did use some features. But it was always a project. Nothing on the Pre feels like a project. Very intuitive, easy, etc. The camera seems decent enough based on a couple snaps. More time for that later.

I do think it's a little sneaky that, and very Big Brother, that the Pre asks for permission to provide "anonymous" GPS data to Google-- letting them track the owner's movements. And really, there's no way to anonymize location data. But that's a whole 'nother can of beans. Another minor quibble is the LCD screen light leak, which may or may not lead to me making a return trip to get a replacement. I like the keyboard, but it's not quite as easy to type one handed as on the Centro, since it's so thin when the keyboard is extended. But I'm getting used to it.

This wasn't much of a review. So I'll just close with my favorite Tweet of the day. "The Pre is great. It's everything that it was cracked to be & has exceeded my expectations in many ways. Not perfect. Outstanding."

Palos Verdes Marathon, 2009 Edition

On Saturday, I woke up before 5 AM and prepared to run my 7th Palos Verdes Half Marathon. I've only missed 2 races since 2001, and since I ran the full in 2003 I think it's fair I skipped the whole thing in 2004. The Palos Verdes Half Marathon is easily the best race in the South Bay, and is my one can't-miss event. Well, maybe the Catalina Marathon will qualify, too, but I've only run 3 there. The race itself went well for me, mostly. I finished only marginally faster than last year (2:01:30 vs. 2:02:02), but since I had run 21.5 miles a week earlier, and my average heart rate was 5 bpm lower, I think it's fair to say that I'm in better shape than a year ago. I ran solid negative splits (1:02:30/59:00), and had lots of energy left at the end. The major bother was my knee, which HURT a bit, following a minor trip & fall I had while walking to my morning rollerblade session a week sooner. Ugh.



My knee hurt all day yesterday, and I was depressed as I was certain my running career was over; today I feel better, and now I only worry about missing the Rock 'n Roll Marathon in 4 weeks. I think 2 weeks of no running will be smart-- lots of biking, rollerblading, elliptical, weights & sand dune repeats in my future! After the race, I made the short walk back to my car (I got there early just to get a good spot!), and grabbed the camera for some post-race shots. Sadly, my autofocus was temporarily messed up. So I still took a lot of shots, and some came out well enough. but... well, I wish the autofocus worked! After the race, I met a couple peeps from the Runners World forum where I chill. My favorite moment was cheering a runner set to finish in just over 4 hours. About 200 yards from the finish, huskydon & I started cheering as soon as we saw the runner & the clock. I didn't think he'd make it, but as we told him to RUN!!!, Chan Mitchell accelerated to make it close, and then EXPLODED to finish with seconds to spare. That was exciting. Check it out.



So check out all the Palos Verdes Marathon & Palos Verdes Half Marathon photos on Flickr. Here's one more shot.

Palos Verdes Marathon, part 1: Photo #10,000

10,000, originally uploaded by jakerome.

So this is my 10,000th public item on Flickr. While I appreciated the many suggestions (holding a sign & photo of a white square seemed to be the top 2), I decided to go in another direction. I decided to take some great photos after I ran the Palos Verdes Half Marathon this morning and upload the best. Somewhere, my plan went awry. Mostly, there seemed to be some minor electrical connection issue b/w the 50-135mm lens (which I bought specifically fot race photos... ugh!) & the camera. Everything worked except the autofocus. Which is really a pain when shooting moving subjects from a variety of vantage points and distances.

So I did my best to use manual focus, and about 1/3 of the shots are even usable. Along the way, I discovered a few gems, and this is my favorite so far. This marathoner was finishing somewhere under 4 hours, and headed straight for me when he saw the camera, probably thinking I was an "official" race photographer. He reminded me of myself-- I often run straight at the photogs if I want a good shot. This guy, he seemed to have a lot of energy left for having run 26+ miles, nice relaxed form, confident, moving briskly. I can tell he's a Nike fan from the hat & shirt, but if I had to guess, I'd say he's wearing Saucony. Go figure. Meanwhile, the gentelman trailing looks more like a guy who just ran 26.2. Grimacing, fighting to complete the race. Behind them both, you can see the orange cones that marked the course, the Palos Verdes peninsula and sky, as the clouds are beginning to burn off.

So that's it. Number 10,000. Nothing gimmicky, not even a great shot. Ignores the rule of thirds and probably every other guideline for composition. But it captures the moment; it's authentic and it's real. It's solid, and fits my style to a T-- I like to take shots that make people happy, and I bet if either of these guys find the shot, they'll be glad I took it.

[I'll add many more photos and a more complete race recap soon.]

Diamond Valley Lake redux

About 3 months ago, I entered the Diamond Valley Lake Half Marathon, and hung around to take a lot of photos afterward of the Diamond Valley Lake Marathon. So yesterday I went back to run there again, and this time I decided to run a full loop-- advertised as somewhere between 21 & 21.8 miles. I didn't take any shots yesterday, so I'll scatter a few photos from January around the post.



So I woke up "bright & early" at 8:30, and "quickly" headed to the door, managing to get out of the house by 9 AM. After one quick stop at the Kwik-E-Mart to buy 3 24-ounce bottles of Gatorade, I was on my way! When I got to the Lake, I paid the $7 for parking and asked if there were any drinking fountains on the trail. Nope! Looks like I'd be lugging my fluids. I had already drank 24 ounces, so I laced up, got my electronics (GPS watch, heart-rate monitor, iPod) ready and I was good to go. I don't own a fuel belt, so I held one bottle in each hand. I thought it was just annoying, but I would later learn it was more than annoying.

So I began, and almost immediately I took a short dead-end, which tacked on about a quarter-mile to my journey. I knew that would not be helpful in the long run! The weather was not too warm, not too cool, I'd say 60-70 for the whole run, with a light breeze ranging from 5-20mph. The sun was in & out, so overall it was a good, not great, running day. Now, 48 ounces is probably about half of what I would've liked to drink on a run that long, but I figured it'd be enough. One thing I decided early on was that since I was running late for Tommy's 4th birthday party, that I didn't have the luxury of taking breaks. Normally, I stop 1-2 minutes for water every 2 miles or so, with occasional longer breaks to buy a bottle of Gatorade, stretch or use the restrooms. In contrast, today I never stopped. I would walk for about 1 minute while drinking or consuming GU, and I'd keep my stopwatch running to discourage me from resting too long. This worked for breaks at mile 2, 5, 7.5, 10 & 12.5. At 15, 17 & 19, I needed some rest, so I would walk and drink but stop my watch so I could relax.



I had contemplated carrying my little camera, but I knew there'd be no time to dilly. It was a nice place to run, about 16 miles of trails and 5-6 miles of asphalt road. The scenery was very nice, and you could contemplate some nice landscape photos taken there, but I only saw one very odd thing. I'll get to that. On the route, I passed a half-dozen bikers in the first 5 miles, then saw basically no one for nearly 10 miles. Then a few more cyclists. I didn't think anyone else was nuts enough to run around, until I saw one lady. But she was walking. Not only was she walking, she had a rope tied to her waste and she was dragging a tire behind her! Wish I had the camera for that.

Now you can see my route on a map, and if you're observant you'll see I went on a completely unnecessary 1/4-mile detour. D'oh! Those extra bits at the start & finish really suck! The run itself was good. A slow & steady 10:14/mile pace, slowing a bit in the end, but never quite crashing. I was dying for water near the finish, and I sucked down 32 ounces within minutes of finishing. You can see all the run details here. Oh, about those Gatorade bottles. I noticed during the run that the back of my neck was getting sore. Which isn't unheard of. But it kept getting worse & worse. By mile 16, it really hurt. I think by carrying those bottles for so long, it affected my stride and I must have pitched my neck forward. So yeah, last time I'm carrying 48 ounces of fluids in my hands. Live & learn.



Lori chasing Sam

The Day of the Donut II

Who woulda thunk it? Just over a year after the first, groundbreaking Day of the Donut,, it's time for version 2.0! Flickr caved again, and will provide free donuts to folks at Embarcadero Plaza Thursday at 4PM.

So please join in the fun. Meet up at local donut shops with friends, bring in a dozen for the office, or just enjoy one in the peace & quiet of your home. Also, be sure to photograph and video the day's event. Enjoy your donuts!

Ode to DMU

Ode to DMU, originally uploaded by jakerome.

It either makes perfect sense or it's completely inexplicable. That's just the way it is.

20 Hats

20 Hats, originally uploaded by jakerome.

I wear many hats.

1. Gift from SWAT team member, 2. Received at Super Bowl pre-party, 3. In goodie bag from 1st marathon, 4. Benefit as Boston Beer Company stockholder, 5. Freebie via Mom, 6. Corporate swag, 7. From mom or stepdad, 8. Free hat from hotter-than-heck marathon that was a training run, so I bailed at 20, 9. Bought at local running store, 10. Bought after epic Catalina Marathon performance, 11. Bought as back-up running hat, 12. Found floating in lake while kayaking, 13. Bought at family camp, 14. Freebie after Palos Verdes Marathon, 15. Purchased at Wrigley Field, 16. Abandoned by dad after he visited, 17. Finally replaced white fabric hat, 18. Bought at Lids in Redondo Beach, 19. Gift from mom to replace sadly lost famous cap, 20. Giveaway from the LA Clippers

The Day of the Donut is April 23.