Rack 'em Up: Bikes that is

So our first state has plans drawn up to build a bike parking facility instead of having your regular municipal lot for cars. It's cool because:

• Less space will be used compared to the parking lot
• It encourages people to get active and cycle to work as they'll have a place to park their bikes
• It will create an urban green space aka a park in the city

One think I found odd though was that the parking lot was only one level. I feel like in cities there are multilevel parking garages to get the most out of the base space they have. Also, how use full will this be during the brutal northeast winter? I mean Delaware can get snow right? And lots of rain too right? It's not Arizona where it's sunny and dry out 99% of the time. I wouldn't want to bike to work in the rain or snow - I'd want to drive! Actually, I'd never want to ride a bike...flipping over the handle bars of my bike as a kid has traumatized me for life. I'd rather walk than ride a bike!

One last thought - will bike theft go up if they build it? On ABC's What Would You Do? they had different people cutting the chain off the bike. Of course the white guy got away with it, people called the cops on the black guy in the same scenario, and people helped the pretty blond girl steal the bike! Maybe I should try "stealing" a bike and see what happens...

~emy

Not Your Average Sectional

Think about sectional sofas. What do you see? I'm guessing you're seeing those standard L shaped couches that sometimes recline or have secret coolers in the arms. Now feast your eyes on the Oi Sofa by these designers from the Great White North:

Pretty interesting huh? Lots more sections to move around and a lot more configuration to make. It'll even look good if you use one section as a chair - sometimes I find normal sectional couches look weird when they are not together. Granted this one doesn't recline, and I don't see a secret cooler for my fizzy beverage of choice, but look at this feature...

It fits into a box! How great is that? I've known plenty of people (well just one, and you know who you are) who has mis-measured their houses and buy a sofa that can't fit through the door or up the stairs. So they have to saw the legs off, or give it away. I really think it's a frequent occurrence - I mean if Ross from Friends can't get his couch up the stairs, it must happen to a lot of people right? It look like you'd be more likely to fit it in your car - so you won't need pay that huge delivery fee or rent a uhaul or something of the sorts.

The only think I'm questioning - is how comfy is it? It's boxy looking so I can't really tell. Has anyone had the please of seeing/sitting on one of the Oi Sofas? Also thanks to the Dieline this find!

~emy

8 Year Old Little Girl Climber

The little Asian girl climber in this video is insane! You kind of need to go past the teenage girl talking - but actually all of the athletes in this video are pretty great. The two guys who do moves that put them upside down - WOW!

This was filmed at Central Rock Gym by BigUp Productions. I kind of wonder how they got all of the shots...maybe they used the scissors lift they have at the gym. Or one of those fancy cameras on a big arm like you see on movie sets at such.

I wish I was half as good as Ashima. Then again she's got a lot less weight to haul up the side of the wall/rocks, little kids tend to be more fearless, and I personally don't have that much upper body strength (it's all in the legs from 16+ years of dance). My favorite part is at the end when she owns the campus board and the guy there has a WTF expression on his face

~emy

Worms + Allergies = Cured?

So I think I have some of the worst spring allergies of all time. Sometimes I sneeze just looking outside and seeing all the pollen swirling around. Going to San Diego last week was heaven because I didn't have allergies there! I'm guessing it's because it's warm there all year long so the trees don't pollinate all at once. Also they don't really have the same kind of trees there like the do on the east coast.

Anyways I'm walking along with some friends sneezing my brains out and we get on the topic of hook worms. Apparently some guy went out, and put hook worms on his arm and it got rid of his allergies. Kind of freaky right?

I think I'd just suffer through my allergies than get hookworms for the following reasons:

1. Hookworms are scary looking
   
2. You get them by letting the suckers crawl through your skin
3. Hookworms have been known to kill people
4. They stay in your system until you take the worm treatment pill and poop them out
   
5. If worms aren't okay for my dog, why are they okay for me?
6. It just sounds really yucky

So I'll pass on the hookworms and have allergies for 3 months.

~emy

Tech Time: Smoosh-able Batteries

So site that I've added to my Google Reader is Treehugger - and you might have gotten from the name but it's about being green, ecofriendly and so on. This is an older design they got from another site and posted recently and I thought it looked pretty cool. It's basically a battery that you can resize to fit any device that needs an AAA-D. The idea is that you don't need to keep all different kinds of batteries around, it's more all purpose and you won't be screwed when it's midnight your taxes are due the next day, you calculator is dead and you only have D batteries.

Thinking about it more it's not a super great:

1. You'd probably need to shove that thing into the battery spot before it expanded back, because memory foam doesn't keep its shape that long
2. It might pop out once you get it in
3. If it's a device where you "drop" the battery in, like a digital camera, you might never get that sucker out if it expands
4. Heat + Plastic Foam --> not so good things
5. It only has the power of an AA, so it probably wouldn't last long in a device needing D's
6. You would probably need a lot of them if you wanted to replace ALL the batteries in your house with them

It's definitely an interesting idea but not super realistic. Treehugger talks about a removeable foam sleeve- but that doesn't really solve the problem related to the heat the battery would endure. Maybe they just need to develop some kind of heat resistant eco-polymer to make a wrap out of? Or maybe we can just standardize battery size more...yea like that'll happen any time soon. Wishful thinking on my part

~emy

Reflection of Roy's in San Diego

So we had a big family dinner at Roy's in San Diego, which is one of the many Roy's Hawaiian Fusion restuarants owned by of course Roy Yamaguchi - who was on the first season of Top Chef Masters. Upon getting there we actually had to sit at 2 different tables, because apparently they could not seat more than 10 people at a table due to the fire code. So of course I end up at the "kids" table with my cousins. I used "kids" because the age range for the 7 of us goes from 6 to 30. Maybe we should have called it the grand kids table, because most of us are technically adults.

So because there were so many of us, and it was a special event, we got a special menu:



I didn't get pictures of all the food, but the dim sum appetizers came in a long canoe shaped dishes and my 2 little cousins (6&9 yrs old) pretty much devoured the platter on their side, and then ate the stuff left over from ours. I really don't know where it all goes, they must have hollow legs. Here's the food I did snap pictures of, although they are a little blurry because the flash actually made them come out worse:


Boiled Edamame with some kind of spicy salt


Butterfish - literally melted in your mouth like butter


Dessert: Chocolate ganache and toasted macadamia covered chocolate cake and truffle, coconut biscuit type thing and nut/fruit pie a la mode

It was a really great meal, I would recommend going to a Roy's if you're out west, where most of his restaurants are. I thought there was one in NYC, but I didn't see it listed on the website. Any recommendation, on where to try next?

~emy

8 Reasons Why I Think You Should Go To Brazilian BBQ

So as some of you might know I went to San Diego this past weekend. Others of you might be thinking "what the heck? why didn't she tell me?" but it was only a weekend trip so I tried not making such a big deal about it.

Anyways one of the restaurants we went to was Rei Do Gado, which is a Brazilian barbecue place, and after the experience I've come up with the following reasons to go to Brazilian BBQ:

1. Gauchos bring meat to you continuously - and on swords!
2. You get your own set of tongs to grab the meat as they slice if off for you
3. Exotic meats such as hump of the brahman bull - granted when they told me it was hump of the brahmen bull I thought the server was saying braminbal. Since I didn't know what that is I thought it was camel, because what other animal has a hump? We eventually figured it out and it was pretty delicious
4. Grilled chicken hearts - sounds gross, but tastes good
5. Buffet of sides - this place has a pretty extensive spread, other places I've been to only have a regular salad bar
6. Caipirinhas - this place had a girl in a cage mixing them up
7. It's impossible to leave hungry unless you're a vegetarian or vegan - in that case you shouldn't have gone
   
8. DELICIOUSNESS!!!!

Here are a few pictures I took of my plates:

From the top right hand corner going clockwise: king crab leg, fried banana, spinach salad with mushrooms and bacon, haricots verts, hump of the brahman bull, scalloped potatoes, and mussels that had a kick to them.

Mixing it up and starting from the top right hand corner and going counter clockwise: tortilla chips, guacamole, mango, chicken drumstick, mushroom salad, olives, spinach salad with apples and walnuts, cucumber , smoked salmon, and prosciutto.

Not pictured: garlic steak, skirt steak, filet mignon wrapped in bacon, grilled pineapple, lamb and chicken hearts. Gosh, thinking about this meal again is making me hungry any one up for Brazilian BBQ?

~emy

The Start of Becoming a Digital Citezen

On my recent trip to San Diego and back I read this book:

The book was co-written by the founders of Hubspot.com, whose services are related to inbound marketing. Outbound Marketing are things that interrupt the consumer like commercials, junk mail and spam. Inbound Marketing includes things like search engine optimization, creating viral content to create buzz - basically things the consumer wants to find, not ignore. It was pretty interesting, a pretty quick read, and what I've learned from it has prompted me to make some changes

1. Better/more descriptive & Unique post titles - this way content is more likely to be found in a key word search
2. Increase traffic to this blog by expanding my social network
3. Trying to create remarkable content that will get people to share what I write
4. Become a digital citizen to build internet credibility and hopefully a following
   
5. Make a call to action to engage readers

If anyone is interesting in marketing this is a great read. It's also good if you're part of a start up or thinking of starting one. Inbound Marketing can be much more cost effective than the more traditional outbound marketing and it seems like more fun too.

So any suggestions on what content would make my blog more remarkable? What makes you sign up for a site's RSS feed or follow them?

~emy

10th Post - Season Finale of SNL

So it's 11:30pm in San Diego right now - and I should be working my case study for school, although it is due in 2 weeks, but instead I'm watching Alec Baldwin on SNL. It's kind of weird because it's obviously not live when you're watching it in California, otherwise it would be on at 8:30pm because the show is taped at 30 Rock.

Since the SNL isn't live here I wonder if they would beep anything bad out if someone swore by accident, or if they would fix something if there was a technical difficulty. Now-a-days they have the digital shorts as part of the show, and I'm fairly sure those are pre-taped. So that must cut down on mess ups a lot. It would have been nice if they could have cut out all the times Jimmy Fallon started laughing and held up a sketch. Granted, it is pretty funny to watch a cast member crack up once in a blue moon, but it seemed like Fallon laughed and broke character more of then then others.

Also it's very odd that I'm watching SNL 2 weeks in a row, but I guess it can be explained via the following:

1. Last week Betty White was the host - how could I not have stayed up to watch
2. I'm up now, we only get a limited number of channels in the hotel, and nothing else is on

Sorry for a kinda bland post - more to come about the trip out west.

~emy

9th Post - Fast Food Boxes Saving the Environment

Once again I'm reading The Dieline and come across this cool new packaging idea for fast food.

What makes it awesome? Well I'll tell you:

1. It's made out of eco-friendly cardboard making it "green"
   
2. There are no adhesives that hold it together - it's just folded and hooked into itself
3. No leaks! A thin coat of polyethylene ensures this - unlike the non-coated containers or paper fast food is traditionally wrapped in
4. It's modular, so your dessert won't get mixed in with the main course
5. It's got a handle so you can tote it around

I believe this package is from a European design company, and I've actually seen something in London - except a lot simpler, meaning no handle, compartments or utensil holder. It would be really cool if it would catch on over here in the states, because it makes eating on public transportation easier. Instead of trying to juggle your wrapped up burger and fries in a bag, all the food is in this convenient tray.

The boxes remind of little purses too. I would if McDonald's etc could capitalize on the purse look and put the golden arches all over the box like how Louis Vuitton and Coach do with their bags. Food could be the next fashion accessory! I wouldn't mind that at all - YUM!

~emy

8th Post - Color Me Glad

Back in the 1st grade I participated in the school's science fair and did a project about how rainbows are formed. Ever since then I've been obsessed with color, and lots of it! For instance, I like color coding thing, putting objects in ROYGBV order, and back in the day I had to have the biggest Crayola set out there. I think I even used to refer to some colors by their Crayola name...actually I still do that sometimes. Another example of my relationship with color is in my wardrobe. One snowy day back in college my roommates and I assembled a coat rack and put all of our jackets on it. All of theirs were black, and mine were red, yellow, and blue.

So if you haven't figured it out by now I kinda love color and came across this video about Pantone while surfing the net:


It's pretty crazy how many colors Pantone makes. Oddly enough, when coordinating the Tufts University orientation, I had a guy at a silk screening company ask me "what's the Pantone? Gimme that and I'll match it." It was actually really important to get the right color on the t-shirts because Tufts had just changed its word mark making school branding especially important that year, so we had to use the university approved Pantone colors. I understand why we had to be so particular with the printing more today than I did back then. Think about it - if one day you're watching tv and a the Jolly Green Giant comes on to sell you peas, and he's not the right shade of green you're going to be like "huh?". There's a lot of color recognition out there so it's important for a brand to keep it consistent overtime. Otherwise the consumer might start scratching his head in confusion. Ah! -- and in case you were wondering, my favorite Pantone color is 16-4427-TCX. Well favorite out of the hundred i looked at, I didn't have time to go through 5,000+ colors!

~emy

7th Post - Despicable

Has anyone else seen those teaser ads for Disney/Pixar's summer movie Despicable Me? It's the ones with those little pill shaped yellow dudes running around jibber-jabbering in some language that you can't understand. Then at the end they go "despicable me" and then you still have no idea what the movie is about. In case you're wondering, here's what the yellow pills guys (yells? maybe pillows?) look like...they've kinda got creepy-cute thing going on like the Rayman Rabbids:


So Disney & Pixar got me hook, line and sinker with these commercial clips and I had to go look up Despicable Me. I always fall for these marketing schemes because I hate not knowing and being left in suspense. Anyways - Apparently the storyline is about some mad and bitter scientist, voiced by Steve Carell that wants to steal the moon with the help of his minions i.e. the yellow pill dudes. However, a wrench is thrown into his plan when three orphan girls show up and want the evil scientist to be their dad.

To me it sounds like a pretty weird plot line, but then again Wall-E was about a trash compacting robot with fat people in space, and UP was about an grumpy old man, his floating house, a chubby Asian kid, and a weird bird -- and those movies ended up being damn good. Despicable Me opens July 9th in regular 2D and digital 3D, but I'll probably see it without the 3D because you pay a lot more to see only a few minutes of the special effects; and I could care less about things popping out of the screen.

I'll let you know how it is once I see it!

~emy

6th Post - Schmoo-ve Over!

So I'm perusing The Dieline and come across this drink, found in the UK, called Schmoo that had been re-branded/package redesigned.
Now before you scroll down and look at the product packaging ask yourself the following: "What kind of drink is Schmoo?" From just the name alone it could be the combination of these things

• Schwepps + Milk
• Schnitzel + Milk
  
• Schnapps + Moon Pies

Yea, none of those sound too great - so the name isn't that descriptive. Schmoo is actually an organic lassi drink, which (for all of you going "huh? that doesn't help") is like an Indian smoothie. It looks pretty delicious though:

The bottle reminds me a little bit of an old school milk bottle. You know, like the glass ones the milk man used to deliver. It makes a lot of sense because the drink base is yogurt, which is of course dairy. So maybe the packaging helps to tell the consumer what they are getting and not the name.

I bet if you said "Schmoo" some people might this of this fellow:
Shmoo! He's a odd creature who knows Lil' Abner and the Flintstones. You also might have noticed that Shmoo is oddly armless and doesn't look like something good to drink at all either. I wonder if this will confuse people because in terms of pronunciation Schmoo = Shmoo. Although, in all honesty, I when I think schmoo, I just think of people trying to be cute and pronouncing "you" incorrectly when they see someone they like. But that's just me...and now I'm thirsty and wanting to watch Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

~emy

5th Post - This is Blogging!

Apparently this commercial for Sports Center has been around for at least 3 years (because that's when it says it was uploaded), but I definitely recently saw it for the first time last week and actually laughed out loud at it. Maybe they only show it around baseball season - which is seven months long soooo not sure where I've been.

Anyways, in case you don't follow baseball, and have no clue what's going on at all here's a breakdown of people in the vid:

• Guy on the left in the NY Yankees' uniform = Jorge Posada the Yanks' catcher and sometimes a DH
• Guy in the middle in the Red Sox Uniform = David Ortiz aka "Big Papi" the Sox DH
• Guy on the right = Stan Verrett a Sports Center Anchor
• Green thing walking by = Wally the Green Monster and Boston Red Sox Mascot

I think it's clever that ESPN is capitalizing on the Yankees/Red Sox rivalry, or even just the two clubs in general. If you ever go see these teams not in their home parks, you'll know that tickets for Sox & Yanks games have a premium for them. So if I live in Houston and the Astros are playing the Phillies my tickets might cost $35. However, those same seats are $55 if the 'Stros are facing the Sox/Yanks!

I'm thinking the other clubs can get away with charging the premium for one or both of the following reasons:

1. The Yankees and Red Sox are not only popular in their respective states/regions, they are also extremely popular across the nation
2. Yankee and Red Sox fans are the craziest and will follow their team anywhere. I've known people who couldn't get tickets @ Fenway that bought tickets @ Camden Yards and Nationals Park just to get their Sox fix for the season.
   

How did these two franchises get so popular? For Boston I'm guessing it's the "dirty water", and for NY those pinstripes are mesmerizing... Thoughts? Theories?

~emy

4th Post - Mother's Day

Last night, thanks to a Facebook movement, Betty White was the host of SNL. What also made it special was many former female cast members came back as guests on the show. I thought that of the better sketches featuring White was with Ana Gasteyer and Molly Shannon, who brought back the old favorite of "NPR's The Delicious Dish". I wish I could embed a Youtube video of it, but NBC is pretty good at policing and removing the clips that are infringing the copyright. Basic overview of the sketch - White played baker Florence Dusty who was showing off her "muffin" to Shannon and Gasteyer and revealed her latest creation - The Dusty Muffin. I think it might rival the Schweddy Balls of Alec Baldwin, but mainly because of the SNL alumnae, but White played her part well.

Anyway...today is Mother's Day and I didn't take my mom out because I'm on-call for work. I don't think she minded though. As long as no one is annoying her or asking her for something she's pretty much set. Also, she normally doesn't like the gifts I get her. I only buy what she tells me to get, and this time she didn't tell me anything.

One great thing about my mom is she always took care of me when I was sick - bringing me meds, lots of oj, chicken noodle soup and of course tissues. And it's kind of a stretch as being a relevant transition - but look at this cool packaging design that Kimberly-Clark came up for Kleenex:

It's wedged slices of watermelon, orange and lime! Yes, it's definitely kind of weird pulling tissues from what looks like food, but what a good marketing strategy for the summer.

I'm guessing summer is the season with the lowest revenues for facial tissue use because in the winter people are likely to be sick with the flu and in the spring and fall people have allergies. In the summer sickness and allergies aren't really a factor so they need to something to boost sales - and these just scream "buy me as part of your summer decor!". A box of Kleenex is fairly inexpensive too, so the consumer probably doesn't feel that bad buying primarily for decorative purposes. Pretty smart Kimberly-Clark, pretty smart indeed.

~emy

3rd Post - TV Thoughts for the Week

If you know me, than you know that I love tv. Mainly reality tv and sitcoms with a few dramas thrown in. So here are some thoughts on shows I watched this week (warning there maybe spoilers so proceed with caution):

Monday - Chuck on NBC
First of all, it seems like Fred Willard has been everywhere lately! Modern Family, Castle and now Chuck - how does he have the time to do it all? Must be nice to still be booking so many jobs after so many years in the "biz".

Second, I've been pleasantly surprised that the show is still pretty entertaining. I thought at with Chuck becoming a full blown spy and getting the girl that the show would just get gimmicky, but the writers have done a good job putting in plot twists and highlighting other members in the ensemble. This makes me wonder why NBC hasn't decided/announced to pick up the show for another season. I guess a lot of other fans thought the same thing as some have been organizing flash mobs in cities across the US to get the show attention. It's kind of along the line of when people sent peanuts to CBS to get them to bring back Jericho. But what really matters is ratings so tune in Mondays @8pm EST because it's sweeps!

Wednesday - Top Chef Masters on Bravo
This week was wedding wars and boy was that one lucky couple. Normally the bride and groom have no-name chefs stumbling their way through the mean, but this couple got 8 highly regarded chefs to cater their wedding! I wonder if it was free...

This season I think I'll be rooting for Susur Lee, because he's damn entertaining to watch, and Jody Adams because her restaurant Rialto is in Cambridge.



While I knew of Rialto before the show, I have never been - and I bet getting a reservation there now is going to be pretty tough. Top Chef Masters must be a marketing gold mine for these chefs because for the average person like me, I have never heard of them before. Now I'm looking at my calendar to see when I'll be heading to NYC next so I can reserve a table at Lee's Shang. Although the one time I've been to a celebrity chef's restaurant it wasn't such a great experience. We went for my dad's bday and the chef was actually there and going around talking to patrons. Sounds great right? Except he didn't come to our table - he just said hi to everyone around it. Also the food was only eh and quite expensive. Oh well, that just means we'll never go back there again.

Thursday - Survivor: Heroes vs Villains on CBS
Short and sweet: I liked Russell better last season than in this one. Last time you loved to hate him; this time you just hate him. Danielle shot herself in the foot by saying she was super close to Parvati and Jeri was smart to vote her out. I hope Sandra blindsides someone with the hidden immunity idol next week!

Sunday - The Amazing Race on CBS
Season Finale this weekend - I hope team cowboy wins!


In the beginning I really didn't like them because they just seemed blah. But throughout the show they've been nice guys and are pretty funny so I hope they end up winning. I'm glad Miss Teen SC didn't U-Turn them. Who cares if she U-turned Carol and Brandy because they were mean to her and she didn't like them? That's part of the game! Would you rather have a good competitor win, or people you don't like at all? I'm guessing End City is going to be Seattle.
It stinks the season is ending because it's one of my favorites..if only I could get my bf to apply for it with me!

~emy

2nd Post - You're not gonna reach my telephone

With the cell phone I have now, you actually might not reach me, but that's besides the point.

I'll admit that I think Lady Gaga is pretty awesome, but I don't always like her songs to begin with. Just Dance and Poker Face were songs I liked right away. But I got hooked on Paparazzi and Bad Romance because I let the radio go for about 20minutes before I actually get out of bed and these songs were always on. They weren't offensive enough to jump up and turn off like Nickleback songs so they stuck. With her latest hit Telephone neither one of these was the case. I actually disliked the song (probably because of the Beyonce part) until I saw the video, and fell in love with the simple choreography.



Something about the dance is infectious. Probably because all you need to do is move your shoulders meaning you can do it in you car, at your desk, in the shower etc. The one thing I don't get is what the heck is this video about. They sing about a club and drinking bub, but those things are nowhere to be found in the mv. Maybe it's just for publicity and to get people talking, because it doesn't really match the lyrics at all.

Keeping on the phone and dancing theme, I wonder if Callo - a gadget that turns your cellphone into a robot - could learn the Lady Gaga dance. If he could I would totally make Telephone my ringtone so Callo could bust a move right out of the video when I got a call. Check him out in action...although the demo isn't super exciting:




He definitely breaks it down better than some people I have seen, but in terms of usefulness I don't see it as much more than a novelty. Callo might get you to notice calls more often, if you're back at keeping track of your phone, but lugging an entire robot around probably wouldn't be worth it. To each his own though.

~emy

First Post - Breaking Ground

Hi There! Welcome to my blog about random junk! What does that mean exactly? Basically it's going to be about all the things I find cool/interesting and the adventures I go on. The short list of common topics will be:

• Movies & TV
• Food
• Pop Culture
• Music
• Technology

So why start a blog about things tons of people already write about? Well, I reading about different SaaS companies at Startable and realized that internet marketing isn't just for companies - it's for individuals too. I'm always looking for new opportunity to grow and learn, so I started evaluating what I've been doing to market myself. The answer to that was "not much".

I have Facebook and a different blog but those are just for fun. I read a great post by Mike Volpe about using Twitter to get a job and market yourself, but for me that was out due to the junkiness of my phone and not seeing the point of tweeting from a laptop. I finally jumped on the LinkedIn band wagon about 2 years late, but thought that wasn't enough - thus the creation of this blog. I hope this blog ends up being entertaining as wells a platform to market my personality and other non-resume characteristics. Not a very interesting first post, but you gotta start somewhere!

~emy