Seasonal Paradise

Cheeky Gregory's Coffee in New York

Gregorys Coffee in New York are very cheeky.  When they saw my Starbucks mug they pointed it out to me, and then after I left, I noticed the cheeky buggers had put a Gregory's sticker on my mug.  Outrageous.  Love it!  Good for them.  How can your company breed that kind of brand-pride amongst its employees?




They're the yin to Starbucks yang.  They've effectively looked at the flaws in Starbucks business and out-Starbucked them.  Here's the main things I've noticed.

Walk-in Experience
Starbucks: Long line.  Wait, kick heels, feel slightly neglected.
Gregory's: Long line, but crazy fast service.  Within 5 seconds of walking in the door someone has taken my order.  Definitely not feeling at all neglected here, and the people are a little more perky and happy, and enjoying the busy-ness.

Coffee
Starbucks: Consistently good.
Gregorys: Consistently great!

Look n Feel
Starbucks:  Green and brown.  Armchairs, wood chairs.  
Gregorys:  Gray, dark purple, black, bright lights. Benches and steel chairs.  Not necessarily better, just a contrast to Starbucks.

Baristas
Starbucks:  Sometimes a little tired. 
Gregorys:  They seem a bit more involved, fun and irreverant.

Food
Starbucks:  Caged, refrigerated and packaged.  
Gregorys:  Fresh baked, not packaged or refrigerated.  The one on 46th Avenue and 5th even has a bakery in the back...



Here's an example of how Gregory's one-ups employee morale.  Over Valentines they ran a promotion.  Bring in a Valentines card or gift for the baristas, and get a free coffee.  Showing the love.  Nice!  

Gregorys tagline is we 'see coffee differently.'  I think they do.  

 

Exohiker

Dear Santa, I've been a good boy all year, and would like one of these for Xmas so I can carry Sasha on my back to school each day.  She's getting a little heavy now.

Kindle DX Review

The NY Times review of the Kindle DX griped about the weight of the Kindle DX being a bit heavy for long term reading. However it weighs nothing perched in it's jacket. See photo below. The Kindle DX stands quite happily on its own and is perfectly readable at 18 inches or so away.

The Kindle DX is worth the extra money just to be able to have the larger screen real estate in landscape mode, and have text large enough that I can stand it up and not hold it.

The single row of buttons is fine in the orientation shown. NY Times also griped about the elimination of the second row. I like the slightly more minimalist style, in favor of maximal viewing area.

The Kindle has quite simply, completely revolutionized my reading habits. I love this thing. I'm devouring books. Irena has one now an so does Richard, my nephew, who is an avid reader of biographies. So now we can share one library. The devices all synch up so we can pick up any device on the same account an pick up where we left off.

Now if only they just had a color version. I'd gladly dispense with my hard copy magazine subscriptions to be able to read them on a large screen color Kindle. Or perhaps Apple will beat Amazon to the punch on that one.

Lessons For Living Longer

Dan Buettner's featured in this months National Geographic Adventure issue. Dan is an endurance cyclist who has taken to living in parts of the world that have an uncanny number of centenarians. Okinawa, Sardinia, The Greek island of Ikaria, Costa Rica, California, are pretty good places to be if you want to extend your youth, and your life expectancy.

Apparently, booze is ok, in moderation. Pork is good, because pigs are close to humans genetically there may be proteins in the meat that help repair arterial damage. In short, his rules are... Move and stay active. Have a purpose in life. Take breaks. Don't overeat, eat till you're 80% full and then stop. Eat greens. Drink a glass of red wine a day, preferably Sardinian. Stay social and surround yourself with family, and people you love. Wise words. Noted.

I just picked up his book, The Blue Zones: Lessons for living longer from the people who've lived the longest.  It would be nice to have the wherewithall to be able to to converse with my great great grandkids, and be in good enough physical condition to not drool while talking with them.  

Bacchus Restaurant Review

Bacchus is the best deal in Mdina. We passed by this restaurant when we took a guided tour of Malta which included Mdina, back in May 2008. It was built in 1650 but the outer walls date back 2000 years. The food was great and the house wine mediocre. The surroundings were very much in keeping with the entire feel of Mdina. Dark, old, quite and underground. We had two appetizers which were more than enough food for us, a bottle of wine and a tea and the bill came to less than 30 Euro all in.

The Other Wozniak, Supermemo and Pimsleur

  
You all know Woz, but do you know Piotr Wozniak, the Polish memory whizz?  Piotr Wozniak created the program Supermemo which is a handy little piece of software that helps people remember things.  i.e. new languages.  Its not very user friendly, but I'm buying a copy anyway.  He has discovered that there's a certain optimal time delay for reviewing things that you want to memorize.  Ideally, you should review an item that you want to remember just around the time you're about to forget it.  Who knew?  If you review an item that you want to remember at that optimal point in time, you'll be more likely to remember it longer.  

This explains why the Pimsleur language system works, I think.  I can't recommend Pimsleur enough. The Pimsleur language system consists of CD/mp3's that you listen to.  As you listen, you repeat back sentences.  One new sentence, two sentences that you've heard before.  One new sentence, three or four that you've heard before.  One step forward, a couple back.  All the time, something new mixed in with older items.  The review sequences seem quite optimal because provided you repeat things back, you learn.   

Anyway, Piotr Wozniak gives this piece of good advice in this excellent article in Wired magazine written by Gary Wolf.  "You must clarify your goals, gain knowledge through spaced repetition, preserve health, work steadily, minimize stress, refuse interruption, and never resist sleep when tired. This should lead to radically improved intelligence and creativity."

 

If you're interested in learning a new language, check out these sites...

VoxSwap, LiveMocha, Busuu, Myngle and Babbel 

Snoozing In The uSpace

The Brookstone uSpace massage chair is cozy for one and a third.

We sat in this chair about a year ago and thought it was quite unique with its sensory deprivation approach to massage.  The hood comes over, the chairs slides down, and a light band provides a hypnotic effect in combination to music piped in from an ipod or alternative music device.  I like the calf massage, although one of the air bags has broken already, which results in my foot being pressed against in the wrong direction and hurting.  

My bad, I bought a recondition unit for $3100 instead of the $6k list price.  Its under warranty and we have an extended warranty so it will be fixed shortly.

I used the excuse of a tweaked back, and a post Xmas treat to buy the uSpace.  Alas, my back is still tweaked and the massager hasn't helped.  Now I'm using a Chinese masseuse and heat lamps to get the tweaked ligament in my back fixed.  Its not the fault of the chair.  The ligament needs rest, not pounding by mechanical massage balls.  And thats a key difference between massage au naturelle and these automated machines.  The machine is great for routine massage, but if you need something fixing or have a particularly achey back, you'll probably need a more authentic touch by a trained masseuse.  Don't count on these machines for your sports injury recuperation.  They'll probably do more harm than good.  

The massage routines are varied and thorough, yet we can set the machine to work a particular zone in a number of ways.  Vibrating, kneading, pounding, warming.  There's lots of options with this machine.  The foot massage is surprisingly hard, but not varied.  Air bags simply press the foot into a fixed ball.  The calves get a good squeeze.  I'm not sure what the bags under my derrier are supposed to do.  They're kinda useless.  But the back massager is top notch, as best an automoton can deliver.  I'd recommend picking up a reconditioned unit with ane extended warranty, but don't pay the $6k list for a uSpace.

Kindle Review

I bought a Kindle on eBay and it was delivered this week, on the very same day the Kindle 2 was announced. Damn-und-blast! Having had a chance to look over the Kindle 1, and the reviews of the new one I think the first iteration might suit me better. I actually like the little scroll wheel selector. It's been replaced on the new version with a pointer. But there's something appealingly retro about the wheel. It's simple and easy to work with. The weight of the first and second version Kindle are pretty similar, despite the Kindle 2 being a lot thinner. So no advantage there. The screen refreshes 20% faster on the new one, apparently. Thats nice. But they removed the SD card slot. The SD card slot in my Kindle 1 will come in handy for the Audible.com books I plan on loading into it. Beyond that, the Kindle 1 just has a look that is pleasing to me. I like the little slanted keys, and prefer a sizable next page button to the Kindle 2 characterless keys and smaller next page buttons. I also like the rubber back on the Kindle 1, to the metal back of the Kindle 2. All in all, I'm a fan of Kindle and would highly recommend it. The whispernet works great. I also looked at the Sony book reader but was put off by the jacked up prices of the books. eBooks should cost less, and Amazon's $10 pricing on most books hits the mark. Still, what were they thing charging for access to blogs like TechCrunch. That just doesn't compute.