[Nature Is Nurture] This Friday, Green Is The New Black

November 22, 2016Leave a comment

Dear 2016, there might only be five weeks left of you but I have a feeling these are going to be the longest five weeks ever. Despite the fact I have my first true health diagnosis in three months, the icecaps aren’t melting, the world feels slightly post-apocalyptic and our president-elect is #notmypresident. It can’t just be me that feels an extrasensory burden of the cosmic consciousness, wrapped around life like a wet blanket; sometimes, it really did feel like David Bowie, Prince and Alan Rickman held together the fabric of the cosmos.

In just a few days, Thanksgiving will be here – but this year feels so very different feel than other years. Whether it’s the post-election depression that the country has seemingly been swimming in, the horrific actions against the protestors at Standing Rock, or the lack of chill between your neighbors tearing down their Halloween decorations and fast-forwarding right to the Christmas cheer – this moment, this moment right now feels different; it feels manufactured and store-bought instead of well-loved and handed down gently. And in a sense, that’s all Black Friday truly is: a day of fabricated happiness and discounted opulence masquerading as necessities for people who, no less than 12 hours before, were proclaiming how thankful they were for all that they had. Instead of rushing to the mall this Friday – think outside of the box and into the great outdoors where Green is the new Black, especially for you California locals out there. Spearheaded by the Save The Redwoods League and in conjunction with the California State Parks and the California State Parks foundation, the Green Friday initiative invites Californians near and far to venture to the state’s wonderful parks with their loved ones and enjoy themselves some nature.

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Spearheaded by the Save The Redwoods League and in conjunction with the California State Parks and the California State Parks foundation, the Green Friday initiative invites Californians near and far to venture to the state’s wonderful parks with their loved ones and enjoy themselves some nature. Enjoy high-quality time and high caliber conversations surrounded by the epic beauty and dramatic landscapes from the coast to the mountains of California. Green Friday supplies access to one of California’s 116 state parks with a free day use pass so you don’t have to pay the $12 fee – instead, think of donating that $12 to a worthy cause like Standing Rock, the World Wildlife Fund or any number amazing organizations. The parking passes are first come first serve, and many parks are selling out – meaning you might even make a new best friend! To get your green on in California this Friday, simply head to the Green Friday website and get down on that web search. If you’re not located in California, never fear – REI is continuing their #OptOutside campaign, this time with a little bit of help from the folks at Subaru and Google.

For more information on the California State Parks + Foundation, Save The Redwoods and Green Friday, head to their socials:

Sequoia BK-32

[Traveling Tales] Plan Your Next Vacation With Google Destinations

March 9, 2016March 9, 2016Leave a comment

“We travel, some of us forever, to seek other places, other lives, other souls.”
– Anais Nin

The last few days have ushered in the pitter-patter of rain like cats nimbly playing on our roof, while the sun has chosen to haphazardly break through the clouds, reveling down onto our atmosphere and warming the land bits by bit. Yes, you guessed it – Spring is just around the corner and we just had some “real weather” in Southern California, providing a fresh layer of powder in the mountains and a stunning ‘Super Bloom’ out in the middle of Desert Valley. Over the last few days, we’ve been itching to plan another quick weekend getaway similar to the Sequoias and it’s gotten me all antsy with anticipation for another adventure in the great outdoors.

The more I travel, the more I realize that though we can all enjoy a vacation -between determining the destination, booking the room, exploring extracurricular activities in the area and finding some fabulous food options- planning them certainly isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. With the assistance of any number of websites that coagulate travel data across the hotel and transportation markets like Travelocity, CheapTickets and Kayak, a host of easibly maliable and managable mobile apps, and my uncanny ability to have way too many tabs open and organized in my browser window, it’s gotten a wee bit easier. But let’s face it, it’s still not streamlined – so leave it to the geniuses at Google to revolutionize the online travel game.

Click Through For Google’s Official Blog Statement!

Just yesterday morning, Google announced a new component to its mobile vertical – Google Destinations. It’s an easy, breezy one stop shop of a vacation application that’s sure to take the stress out of your search and get you into some fun on the double. As the worlds premiere online search engine, Google claims that in the last few years it’s seen a 50% increase in travel related questions and queries generating on the site. After putting their heads together, they coagulates the metadata from Google Flights and Hotel Search to provide instant travel relief in the form of easy to browse itineraries and quick buy bookings from reputable sites. If you haven’t taken Google Flights for a spin, I’ll be honest – you’re missing out. The algorithms they’ve developed do a wonderful job of forecasting the best times for flights, not to mention it’ll link you with any number of other travel providers.

Unlike many other large internet travel providers like Kayak, Air BnB and Cheaptickets which offer multiple ways to access their data, Google Destinations is only available on your mobile device. Though this move could be construed as an attempt to drive traffic to their mobile site, maybe it’s also a silent hint that we should be prepared for a mobile app from Google Labs. Either way, though, I’m into it -. If you want to take it for a spin yourself, grab that smart phone and let’s play along.

First, head to your native Google or Google Chrome app (and if you don’t have either, I would recommend downloading them immediately.) And now, let’s just dream a little and plan a hypothetical dream vacation. From tinkering around this morning, it looks like you can either use a State from the United States or a Country from around the world, paired with the word “destinations” – meaning queries like “California destinations”, “Canada destinations”, “Italy destinations” and the like. Now, the real fun begins!

Once you have your general location in mind, there are three ways to manipulate the data. First, you can filter by date – and if you don’t know the exact dates you want to travel, the ‘Flexible Dates’ let’s you just pick the months you’re considering. Next, you can refine your search by the type of activity; or you can even include the keywords in your search with hobby terms + [Location] + “Destination”, like “California Surfing”, “Colorado Hiking” or “Spain Skiing.” If you don’t know what you want, let Google do some thinking for you and choose from the options are as below. And last, but certainly not least – you can adjust the end price which takes into account 7 nights away; as of now, it’s only available for 1 or 2 travelers.

If you click through to your dream spot from the first search, you’ll be presented with a window with two tabs. ‘Explore’ gives a little bit of background on the area – including the most sought after locations in the area, various itineraries based on past searches, a birds eye view of the topography and annual meteorology of the area letting you know when the best time of year to go is and a variety of additional locations to enjoy based on your search. Currently, Google only has itineraries for roughly 201 locations but I’m sure that number will increase exponentially with the use of the application.

If you don’t have your phone handy, don’t have a destination in mind or simply would rather watch someone else do it – take a gander at the video below.

[Tech Tuesday] TomNod – How To Crowd Source a Crisis

March 11, 2014March 12, 2014Leave a comment

Innovative, creative, addictive, mind-boggling, problem-solving and social; modern technology has come a long way over the last quarter century – if not justwithin this past decade. After Nevada voted to allow autonomous automobiles in 2011, Google has been feverishly developing a self-driving car technology adorably named ‘Google Chauffeur’. Championed by the brilliant Sebastian Thrun – director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab, expert Google Engineer and last but certainly not least the co-inventor of Google Street View, the project is still in closed beta testing mode up at their Mountain View campus. Since the inception of the application, 3 more states (Florida, California and Michigan) have all put laws into effect allowing self-driving vehicles on the roads. Two years ago, the ‘One Laptop Per Child‘ experiment oversaw the distribution dozens of iPads to a pair of remote villages in Ethiopia. Five months later – without instructions, assistance and only themselves to trouble shoot with- children had learned how to read and write English, and even hack the machines. And now, thanks to TomNod – even the most disastrous of a crisis is transformed into a resourceful and useful technological tool.

TomNod

TomNod first made headway back in November during Super Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines and were soon acquired by Digital Globe; using Digital Globe’s satellite imaging technology, thousands of users from around the world explore real-time maps to solve real-world issues.As of right now, Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 has been missing from sight, sound and radar since this past Sunday morning. Until resolved, this event will be the first thing on every flight attendant and pilots mind, an unnerving thought of every conscientious traveler and while every news station, outlet and blog tries to make sense of the calamity. My first reaction was (and still is) two-fold: (a) I still (at 29) plug my ears while the flight attendants breeze through the security pamphlet; which means the empath inside is shaking in her boots and (b) want to help; somehow, someway. In the past few years, whenever a global crisis has hit I’ve managed to donate a small bit of what I make; it isn’t much, but it’s more than nothing – and to me, that’s something. So, when my boyfriend leaned over this morning to show me a great way to use, and crowd-source, data – I was all eyes, ears and heart.

The application is fairly simple – head over to the TomNod page and you’ll get a quick description of the program and a bit of background on the types of anomalies you might come across. It takes a bit of time to load, but quadrants satellite imagery over the Gulf of Thailand will populate right in front of you. If you think you’ve found something questionable, click one of the neon stamped circles on the left of your screen. You’ll then be taken to a new window, where you’ll essentially take your cursor and drop a tag onto the map and don’t forget to add a description. On the right side of your screen, you’ll see three metrics: the first is the number of quadrants searched, second is how many objects you’ve tagged and finally, how many other sources agree with your tags. Below, you’ll see a map of how the quadrants you’ve searched stack up in the grand scheme of things. If you have a few moments to spare, please lend your eyes to the TomNod team and the families of those affected; you never know what kind of a difference you can make until you try.

Wednesday Watercooler

September 26, 2012September 26, 20124 Comments

Time is seemingly just skipping on by this year. I swear just a few weeks ago I was lamenting how it was already summer and now – all of a sudden, fall is upon us. If you take the time and think about it, the older you get the faster time respectively seems to fly -when we’re younger, we have a lot of ‘novel‘ first experiences that stick their roots in us as monumental; as we get older, there are less and less of those unique milestones in our lives. Think about the first long drive you took – I bet it took forever, but on the way back didn’t it seem like a breeze? But if you’re one of those people that’s dragging their cute butt through the week, keep reading and maybe this will kick things into a higher gear.

Science

Amidst a considerable amount of controversy, UK based Channel 4 made a daring (and entertaining) move by observing participants under the effect of the recreational club drug MDMA. The study was designed by David Nutt and Valerie Curran – respectively professors of neuropsychopharmacology (say that five times fast) at Imperial College London and psychology at University College London. This study, much like a previous study on psilocybin, was conducted both in hopes of observing brain changes via fMRI and in the treatment of mental illnesses like depression and PTSD. Though not all volunteers will be shown on television, amongst the 26 were Evan Harris, a former member of Parliament, Lionel Shriver, a writer, and actor Keith Allen. If you’re like me, you won’t want to miss this – watch live this today (9/26) and Thursday (9/27) here.

Football

I can’t say that I’m a huge football fan, actually it’s one of my least favorite sports – next to the nonsports of professional golf and cheerleading. How-to-the-ever, I know enough football fanatics – including my best friends and parents, that I definitely can empathize with the current referee situation. On Monday, the Green Bay Packers faced off with the Seattle Seahawks in what ended up being an unfortunate loss by the CheeseHeads due to some Bone Headed officiating by replacement referees.

The NFL Officials are currently on strike – asking the league to provide thousands of dollars a year toward their pension plan. Per usual, the owners are being obstinate – hiring abysmal replacement referees and doing the best they can to keep the 2012-13 season in play. Also to note, the less clothed and talented Lingerie Football League had apparently fired some of the same replacement referees from their own league.

Entertainment

Following in the stellar footsteps of Daft Punk, Skrillex is venturing out of his dubstepbox and doing huge things for himself. Currently on his plate is the score for the upcoming James Franco movie the Spring Breakers as well as the upcoming Disney movie, Wreck It Ralph. He’s catching some considerable flack from parts of the EDM world but I think it’s actually pretty neat. I can’t think of many DJs, beyond Feed Me and potentially the ‘Mau5, that would excel at doing the score for the movie so major Kudos to Skrillex. And to boot, he gets his own cameo alongside John C Reilly and Sarah Silverman; the cameo isn’t in the trailer below but no matter -it still gets me excited!

Technology

Google Maps is at it again; no, this isn’t an anti-iPhone post – rather, it’s me getting excited about an innovative look at geography. They’ve paired up with the Catlin Seaview Survey to provide amazing underwater maps like the one below. We all could use a vacation, and now you don’t have to leave your desk to take one – head on over right now to take a gander at sea turtles, coral, schools of fish and sunsets from exotic locations like Australia, the Philippines, and Hawaii.

Tech Tuesday: An App a Day keeps the Doctor Away

September 4, 2012September 4, 20121 Comment

I’ve always been an Android lover; in fact, I can’t recall ever wanting an iPhone….granted, I’ve also had Verizon Wireless for my entire life so I didn’t exactly have the option of getting an iPhone when it came out…but, I digress. I’ve watched the Android market evolve and expand over the past few years, and I’m almost in love with what I’ve seen. The OS has gotten sleeker, potentially even sexier – if you could call an OS sexy, that is. Though the phones have gotten larger in height x length dimension, they’ve also become thinner, lighter and with better quality resolution on the display. Not to toot the horn for the HTC Rezound, but beepbeep: it boasts the first HD screen for a carried branded phone in the United States. How you like them apples, Apple?

Now, originally – one of the great things about the Android phones is the fact that unlike the iPhone – it contains(-ed) Adobe Flash. I have to phrase it that way because Adobe has decided to discontinue its use after this November, and has started with devices that have already upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich 4.1 One of the draws of having Flash was that you could view any web page in its full entirety. But who needs fully supported web browsing when there are so many fantastic applications for the Droid?!

Sometimes, it can feel overwhelming figuring out which ones you should download. Not to mention, how to handle re-downloading applications after upgrading to a new device. Well, first things first -in the Google Play Store you have the option to view every single application you’ve ever downloaded on your phone. Simply go to the Play Store, toggle the Menu button (the middle left button on the bottom of your phone) to access the pop-up menu and you’ll have an option at the top called “My Apps“. Click through and swipe your finger from right to left to see “All Applications.”

The pink oval represents an application that was downloaded in the past, paid for even, yet not reinstalled when I upgraded my phone. The blue oval is an application that’s currently on my Droid.

Now – onto the fun part, the applications. Some of these are pretty straight forward, especially ones for social media and some deserve a little bit of an explanation. The great thing about the Google Play store, is once your Google account is linked to your phone you can actually pick your applications out online in a more hunt and peck friendly atmosphere, and then send them to download on your phone. It’s pure genius.

Hit the jump for my should have applications, and anything that is in italic or bold is a “must-have” – enjoy!

Continue reading →

Tech Tuesday: Can You Find Me Now?

August 21, 2012August 21, 2012Leave a comment

The Ice Cream Sandwich update for my Rezound has mostly been a good thing; my phone boots faster, applications load quickly, Facebook doesn’t force quit in the middle of loading pictures and the OS is a lot sexier.

But the other day, as I was trying to use Verizon Navigator – I noticed a small hiccup with the update.

Any time I attempted to load a ‘Map‘ related application (e.g. Verizon Navigator, Google Maps, Latitude, Places), my phone restart itself. On the plus side, it’s challenged me to actually know directions instead of being super dependent on technology to lead the way. Conversely, it’s been pretty damn frustrating because I realized I might not know Los Angeles quite as well as I thought I did.

I did some research on the interwebz and realized that this isn’t a unique issue; quite to the contrary, there have been quite a few complaints and forum threads dedicated to this very issue.

The Bug:

Open Map or Navigation App
Select Destination
System Reboot

The Fix:

Unfortunately, there isn’t a long term fix for this problem. According to Google’s forums, this issue has elevated status and was given to the product development team.

In the mean time, there is a short term solution:

Uninstall Google Maps 6.10 and revert to old version of application (6.9 or 6.3)
Toggle the “Automatic Update” button
Go ahead and try the app again

And voilà, problem solved!

Tech Tuesdays: Comparing Apples to Ice Cream

August 14, 2012August 14, 2012Leave a comment

Technology and I go way, way back.

From a young age, I was immersed in and surrounded by some of the newest, geekiest tech toys available. My mom would lean towards function over form while my dad was a fan of having the latest and greatest of everything – from new Movie formats, an upgraded OS, the latest in cordless Home Phone and cell phone technology.

I grew up on the Mac II, playing around with MineSweeper, Creative Writer, KidPix, Pipe Dreams and Lemmings when most kids were playing with dolls.At the age of 7, my dad brought home our first – and only – Laser Disc player. In middle school, I was lucky enough to get an iMac. I got my first mp3 player soon after and essentially played hotpotato with various iPods into my college life. When the iMac was scrapped for parts, I inherited a Mac Sawtooth G4 and after that the shiny new iMac that I have today but I couldn’t fully escape the grasp of the PC. In college, I honed in on my love of numbers, data and code and eventually switched my major to Statistical Science. My new coursework relied heavily on applications that were PC only, so eventually I became proficient in both operating systems.

I got my first cell phone before I got my first car; it was an ugly brick of a phone but it did the trick. It maybe had a game on it, six obnoxious stock ringtones and limited, if any, texting capabilities. When I was 17 I upgraded to a smaller brick – and slowly, but surely I started climbing that magical cell phone ladder. In college, I upgraded to an LG Flip Phone that changed color on the front panel; it might not seem so cool now, but back then it was the business. I had a Chocolate until it fell apart on me, literally. I thought about getting an iPhone but I have to be honest – at the time it seemed like a glorified, overpriced iPhone and I wanted nothing to do with it. So when HTC started rolling out Android phones, I was thrilled. I started with an Incredible, then the Incredible 2 and finally – my precious Rezound. One of the best things about this model is the sleek GUI and design interface.

A few days ago, the Ice Cream Sandwich update was pushed through to my phone; I was stoked! It was honestly like having a brand new phone to play around with. Here are some of the changes that I noticed, and a helpful little trick.

The best aspect of the Ice Cream update is the locked dock at the bottom of the screen. Before the update, I had my favorite applications on the lock menu and the rest posted all over the home screen for easy reference. The new dock not only lets you keep those precious applications at your fingertips, but you can choose between having one or many in one location by simply dragging and dropping one over the other.

Trick: To take screen shots on older HTC models, you either had do download and pay for a 3rd party application or go through the painstaking task of rooting your Droid. One of the things I absolutely about the Rezound is being able to take screen shots on the fly. If you didn’t know you had this feature and wanted to test it out, follow these super simple steps:

Go to the main screen of the Rezound
Press gently on the Power Button, holding it halfway down
Tap the Home Icon

Your screen should immediately flash to white and a text box saying “Screenshot saved to Camera shots” will pop up on the bottom of the screen.

Tip:

Toggling this button may seem like a good idea:

I’ll save battery life! My applications will boot faster! WRONG.

I’ve had issues with previous phones and what happened seemed like a horrible flashback: every time I closed out of an application the HTC Menu would reboot. Being the proud owner of now several HTC phones, I thought I was starting an infinite Boot Loop.

Thank goodness I wasn’t, but I got scared for a second! I’d much rather use this Advanced Task Killer application and save myself the heart attacks.