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Did I Not Blog the LunarEclipse?

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Looks like I completely missed blogging about my Nike LunarEclipse+ 2 running shoes.

I got them in March after reading rave reviews online. Sadly, these just ain’t for me. They do feel hella good, but there isn’t enough support for my fallen arches. I tried changing up my running style, using the balls of my feet and reducing my heel strikes, but I’m not quite there. I can feel how the LunarEclipse is more suited to this gait, but it doesn’t come natural to me. When I’m not concentrating, I can feel my heel striking the pavement. Overtime, this shock is starting to affect my knees and shins. The discomfort comes and goes, but I think prolonged running in these will eventually lead to persistent pain. I may split my runs with different shoes to see if that helps.

I do like walking in them as with the original LunarEclipse. I gotta say that there are improvements in the LunarEclipse 2. There’s less wiggle room with a smaller toebox. The FlyWire didn’t do enough to shape the LE1 to my foot. The customized fit system and its “fingers” in the LE2 do a much better job. BUT, it’s odd to feel the fingers. I noticed that recent Nike Free Run shoes feature the customized fit system but covers up the fingers so they don’t directly touch your feet. The floaty-ness of the heel cup is no longer noticeable in the LE2. I kinda like and don’t like the floating cup in the LE1.

Style wise, the LunarEclipse 2 is eye-popping and beats the look of the LunarEclipse 1 any day. And for that, I’ll keep these LunarEclipses around.

Intrigued by the Sony HDR PJ260V Camcorder

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I’m thinking of going back to a traditional camcorder to capture videos more easily than using a DSLR and more capable than my iPhone 4. After some quick research, this Sony HDR PJ260V camcorder caught my eye. For starters, this camcorder comes with a built-in projector! You know how kids like to see pictures right after you’ve snapped them with a digital camera? Same philosophy here. Instead of connecting the camcorder to a TV or computer to view freshly captured footage, you can view them on a wall or any flat surface. I thought this small projector would be more of a gimmick, but most of reviews state that the projector is usable (but keep your lofty expectations in check).

Besides the built-in projector is the 30x optical zoom. While only beginning my research, most HD camcorders feature a 10x or 15x optical zoom. I pretty much discount digital zoom stats.

Everything else in this little camcorder sounds on the mark too. Good low light shooting, image stabilization, good audio pickup, external mic capable, touch screen, SD card expansion, a wind noise filter, and even GPS tagging of pictures and video – all for about $500.

So what’s stopping this no-brainer buy? Since I like my Canon digital cameras, I have an affinity to Canon products. But, I didn’t really care for the video quality of my old (and stolen) Canon ZR. I still remember being wowed by the video quality of an even older Sony camcorder I had way back in the day. So I’m open to getting Sony for video and sticking with Canon for stills.

The biggest hurdle? The funky format of the video files. Ever heard of the 1080-60p AVCHD format? I haven’t. For Mac users, you have to know that 1080-60p isn’t natively compatibile with iMovie ’11. So if you can’t edit the video from this camcorder on a Mac, what’s the use?

Well, fortunately, there are workarounds. You can always record in other, lesser-quality video formats that iMovie does understand. You can convert the video as described here using a variety of tools. ClipWrap, VoltaicHD, and Aunsoft’s MTS Converter for Mac seem to be mentioned a lot. There’s also Movist and Rewrap2m4v. If the video import can be overcome somewhat easily, then this camcorder looks like a solid purchase.

Oh, you may want to consider getting an SD card and a higher capacity battery (NP-FV70, but not the huge FV100).

Featured on Dwellable

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It started with a simple email from Jane from Dwellable.com. What’s Dwellable? That’s what I wondered too, but quickly I learned that Dwellable is a vacation rental service helping you find choice spots in a variety of locales.

To help customers understand their vacation areas better, Dwellable draws upon local bloggers to tell their stories, and that’s where Pulpconnection fits in. Over the years, I’ve documented stuff from around Oahu, exactly what Dwellable is looking for. At least for now, me and Pulpconnection lead Dwellable’s blog leaderboard. Yay!

Here’s the announcement on Twitter.

So if you’re hunting for great places for a vacation, be sure to check out what Dwellable has to offer. You can also follow them on Twitter and Facebook and use their iPad app.

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Whole Foods Kailua Mixup

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If you’re planning on taking your kids to the Whole Foods Market Kailua ice cream making activity, there’s been a mistake. This event was published in the Advertiser’s Saturday paper, but when we called to RSVP, they said the event was an exotic fruit tasting. The WFM Kailua web page describes the event correctly.

This month’s Keiki in the Kitchen explores the wonderful flavors of exotic fruit, courtesy of Frankies Nursery! For keiki ages 3-10. Free; RSVP required. Email sp.kao.marketing to reserve your spot.

The Advertiser’s (premium) web site says:

July 7, 11:30 a.m.: Whole Foods Market Kailua teaches keiki how to make their favorite ice creams.

Hmmm… not sure what happened, but I don’t think I could convince my kids that a rambutan is ice cream. Hopefully, this gets cleared up before the event.

Adding a Subdomain for a CDN

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Since I’ll be doing some housecleaning re-associating images with old posts, I might as well head towards a cookieless domain to act as a self hosted CDN. Here’s what I did in Dreamhost.

  1. Under Manage Domains, I created a subdomain called static.pulpconnection.net. I set the option to remove www from the URL.
  2. I picked a user to run this subdomain.
  3. For the Web Directory field, I mapped it to the location of the WordPress uploads home/username/domain/wp-content/uploads

Hope this is right. Now to test…

Ooops. So that the file directory isn’t displayed if you open static.pulpconnection.net in a browser, I added an index.php file to the location that redirects visitors to pulpconnection.net.

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MobileMe Is Shutdown

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Yes, Apple’s MobileMe is shutdown as of the end of June. Going to any MobileMe link, you’ll see this.

Interestingly though, it appears former users still have the opportunity to log in to retrieve files and photos on this defunct service.

For me, this shutdown means I have to go through old posts and fix all the busted images that pointed to my iDisk on MobileMe. Yikes!

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Could You Have Imagined?

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Back in May of 2005, when Nike joined forces with Apple, could you have imagined this?

In 2005, the Nike+ system debuted strictly to track running. Back then you had to use the Sports Kit with a shoe sensor and a receiver for your iPod Nano. The iPhone did not exist in 2005. In his third year in the NBA, a 21-year old LeBron James averaged a personal best 31.4 ppg with the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Forward to 2012 and look at this. Nike+ continued its evolution with more Nike+ products, the FuelBand, and the ability to track workouts and basketball activities. A key component continues to be Apple products such as the iPhone and iPods. Now 27-years old, LeBron James is a NBA champion and Finals MVP for the Miami Heat. Could you have imagined this trio of champions?

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Refrigerator Pet Peeve

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Along with my running pet peeve, here’s another thing that irritates me. Check out the refrigerator at work.

Why, oh why are there so many insulated lunch bags inside of the refrigerated refrigerator? Um, it is cold inside the refrigerator, so that insulation doesn’t do much inside the refrigerator. I really hate those bags that are big and puffy and take up so much space, but inside the bag is a small flat sandwich or a can of juice. People, can’t you take your food stuff out of these space eaters and only store the necessities inside the refrigerator?

Now, I take the initiative and rearrange the bags so that stuff actually fits. I’ve gently crushed a bag or two that has a plastic container or tupperware inside of them. I have to take a cue from @abaggy and bring in my Igloo cooler and jam it in the refrigerator to make a point.

MobileMe Shutting Down Today

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Today’s the end of June which marks the official end of MobileMe. By now, you should have migrated to iCloud if possible, but there’s some stuff that can’t migrate over. And this non-migratable stuff will have an impact on Pulpconnection.

In the early days of pulp, I used Blogger as my blogging platform and .Mac’s iDisk to serve up image and movie files. But iDisk won’t make the transition to iCloud effectively busting majority of images on posts prior to January 2009.

I downloaded the megabytes of images but now have to figure out how to import them easily into the WordPress Media Library. The Grab & Save plugin could work if I had more time to go through each post. Add from Server seems like a better way to import a bulk of files. Regardless, tuning each post one by one is inevitable to re-associate the images unless there’s a plugin to redirect URL paths (at least as a temporary workaround).

I would like to create a static CDN setup – redirecting a subdomain to my media library and using W3 Total Cache to point there. Until then, that’s why older posts will have busted images.

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