Laptop recommendations for 2012 based on what I’ve read in reviews (in the following order):

• MacBook Air 13″
• Samsung Series 9
• Dell XPS 13″ Ultrabook
• Lenovo IdeaPad U300

Spec wise I guess you’re supposed to look for Core i5/i7 processors with 256GB SSD hard drives and  4 to 8GB of memory and 6-7 hours of battery life. SD card slot, back lit keyboards, nice screens, a couple USB slots pretty much rounds things out.

For tablets, there’s really only the iPad. For smart phones, either the iPhone 4S or the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and probably the next generation of both is the safer (and more expensive) bet.

My current setup (and will be through 2012 and a good part of 2013) is 13″ MacBook Pro from a few years ago and a Nexus S that I upgraded with a better battery that can last me a day or two between charges. And no tablets.

I love learning about really cool Oakland based companies — Roy Denim has got to be one of the cooler ones.

Roy makes raw denim jeans for men (for now).  And he makes these jeans all by himself on vintage machines that he collected over several years.  From what I’ve read, he gets his denim from special mills in either Japan (Nihon Menpu) or North Carolina (Cone Mills) that take just as special care in making their denim as Roy does in putting it all together.

Cool video showing Roy making his jeans.

He has a philosophy page which reads “There is one” and I guess it’s meant to read that he does have ‘a’ philosophy.  I read it as ‘there is one… pair of jeans’ you should wear and that’s Roy’s.  Or it could also be, ‘there is one guy’ that made these jeans for you.  Anyway, easily my favorite pair of jeans in just a few wears, and even sweeter that Roy is from Oakland.  It’s going to be cool breaking these in.

**Update**

I learned some more about jeans…If I could recommend one pair of jeans, I’d recommend the one in the picture, Roy’s RS2.  His RS1 look nice too.  I think these are the ultimate pair of jeans and it’s great that they’re made in Oakland across the way from where jeans were originally founded.

Since these are likely not going to be available, raw selvedge denim, made in America Levi’s with denim that comes from Nihon Menpu or Cone Mills are what I’d recommend next.  They’re Levi’s after all.

I hear APC makes good jeans and then maybe Japanese jean makers like Evisu, Pure Blue Japan, several others.  I hear Nudie Jeans are good and Rogue Territory seems pretty cool too.  While I own a pair of True Religion and 7 For All Mankind jeans, it just shows I got caught up in the marketing since everyone’s got those jeans these days.  Small business, higher quality denim, great fit, great looking like Roy’s is really the way to go.

I prefer the Oakland marathon that I ran earlier this year.  I like the warts and all course through Oakland much better.  There’s more people cheering at the Oakland marathon and the runners seem a little more laid back and a little more entertaining.  Whatever.  Just being cranky/Oakland prideful.

Anyway, SF marathon should be pretty fun.  Weather is always great, overcast, not too cold and not too hot and not windy, perfect running conditions.  The hills are tough though.

This candy bar — jour et nuit by Bernachon –  my sister brought back from Paris was pretty darn great.  I need to figure out how to get more of this, might be the best chocolate bar I’ve ever had.

The other chocolates and pate de fruits from Patrick Roger were pretty good too.

Just goes to show that “caviar taste on a beer budget” is genetic.

This is our box for the week from Eatwell Farm.  We’ve got apples, oranges, lemons, strawberries, lemon balm, parsley, sugar snap peas, green garlic, spring onions, spinach, carrots, mixed greens.

We’re on the 12 week program (13th week is free) w/ a half dozen eggs, which comes to about $29 a box.  Considering we get our box next door, the fruits and vegetables are organic AND they’re picked the week of delivery, it’s a no brainer value — and ridiculous from a freshness standpoint.

You also get things you might not normally buy at the store like romanesco, daikon, rainbow chard, jerusalem artichokes, rutabagas, and watermelon radish.  And you learn to eat seasonally, which makes you realize we actually do have seasons in Northern California.

There are a few drawbacks.  It’s not always easy to eat everything in a week, and you do have to cook.  You might get weeks of weeks of something you might not like for example red cabbage or kale.  You might not have enough of something to finish a recipe — need one more eggplant or one more onion, so you’ll have to supplement that at the store.  You’ll also never get bananas (obviously) and probably some other “non-standard” vegetable.

Sign up with Eatwell if you’re in the Bay Area or I’d encourage signing up for another Community Support Agriculture (CSA) program like Eatwell Farm.  A lot of them are popping up all over California and the rest of the United States.

—

* Hard to say whether or not CSA is scalable, I’m sure less than 1% of the country subscribes to a CSA.  But it would be great to see because in practice we feel healthier and feel better knowing where our  food comes from and the knowing the people who farm it.

]]> http://www.rebron.org/2011/04/28/eatwell-farm/feed/ 3 http://www.rebron.org/2011/04/27/acai-bowls/ http://www.rebron.org/2011/04/27/acai-bowls/#comments Wed, 27 Apr 2011 19:07:08 +0000 rebron http://www.rebron.org/?p=2576

I’ve been making these Acai bowls for breakfast or lunch and they’re delicious.  First had these at Lanikai Juice in Kailua and then had them again when I was in Los Angeles at a couple places.

Really simple to make, just need to buy or order the frozen Acai pulp, I get mine from Berkeley Bowl but can also get from Amazon.com.  The fuzion is good but I like the original blend.

To make it, just two of the smoothie packets, some soy milk (or apple juice but I like soy milk) in the blender and blend away.  Put it in a bowl, add fruit like: blueberries, raspberries, bananas, strawberries, and then add some granola.  I’ve seen some with a little bit of yogurt too but maybe too much.  I like Cafe Fanny’s granola but also Blue Bottle’s granola.  It takes at most five minutes to put it all together, which is great too.

This bowl is maybe 300+ calories but if it’s breakfast or lunch it’s not bad.  I like eating it post workout too — just tastes good and looks pretty too.

Nice infographic from Transition Four

I’m #813, for this second year of Ironman St. George.  While I swore never again to do this race — it’s that hard and miserable, I ended up signing up again.

A few reasons:

• I really liked the finisher’s shirt and I want another one
• The coach we work with is doing the race, among other friends
• the Utah bike course is gorgeous
• this course kicked my butt last year and I didn’t like that
• it’s drivable although this year I’m breaking up the drive into two, first LA and then Las Vegas
• needed a race to stay in shape

We’ll see how it goes.  Last year I did this race in 15:42:17 (fifteen hours and 42 minutes).  I’m going to see if I can do it in under 14 hours, but I’ll be happy to just finish and get my t-shirt.

Oakland has some pretty good drinks.  A few that I really like:

• Gin and Tonic from Pizzaiolo; the tonic is a house made tonic by Cate Whalen
• As good as the gin and tonic is, I like their whiskey cocktail better.  It’s made with Buffalo Trace bourbon whiskey (my favorite liquor)
• Linden St. Black Lager or their Common Lager are really nice, can only be found on tap at just a few places.
• Blue Bottle’s Bella Donovan coffee is what I normally drink for coffee (daily basis)

Haven’t really tried Numi tea, another Oakland company.  We want to but just haven’t pulled the trigger we have so much tea in the house.  I get tea from Teance in Berkeley, their ba bao chao and pu-erh teas and we also get tea from Republic of Tea, Ginseng peppermint and several other kinds.  We’ve got a lot of tea.  We’ll try Numi eventually.

I ran the Oakland Marathon last Sunday and I had a few notes:

• What a great event!  A challenging “warts and all” route through Oakland — from City Hall to Rockridge to Montclair to the Mormon Temple to International Boulevard to Jack London Square to West Oakland to Lake Merritt and back to City Hall.
• Great crowd throughout the whole course.  Very “homey/welcome” feeling, not like running the San Francisco marathon.
• There was no rain despite the threat of rain, it was pretty good running conditions.  Hoping next year will be the same.
• I used the day as a “training day” if that makes any sense.  I was strong through 20 miles, slowed down a little bit for the next two, and then put it into recovery mode.  Starting a marathon on tired legs is definitely an interesting feeling.
• A marathon is still a marathon.  I was hoping it was going to be easy but I was getting antsy around mile 17.
• The event was well run, some areas could be improved but not bad for their second time around.
• The Expo the day before was a little meager.  Could use some more vendors but the ones that were there were pretty good.
• The medal is nice.
• The shirt, long sleeve again, could’ve been better.  Needed a better graphic design and maybe a slightly higher quality shirt.
• The massage tent could have been managed better.

I’m hoping to get more people signed up for the race.  I’ll likely going to do it again next year.  It was definitely a lot of fun and it’s great to have a running event like this in Oakland.

These are the sites I visit almost everyday:

• Google News, Google Finance, WSJ.com, Economist.com, SFGate.com, NYTimes.com, ESPN, News.com (I open these all at once in a Tab, and I’ve been visiting these sites for years)
• The most interesting/entertaining: Facebook, Twitter, HuffingtonPost
• New to me: Groupon (group coupons), Pandora (web radio, w/ a great music recommendation engine, Oakland company) – knew about them but was hesitant to sign up

I access Gmail via Thunderbird so only go to Gmail every once in a while to check out new features.

The other sites I visit are only through a quick scan of their feeds, i.e. Lifehacker, Engadget, All Things Digital, Oakland North, Oakland Local, etc.

Would love recommendations on other sites to check out.

Power Dessert – Tofu w/ Chia Seeds and Maple Syrup

In a cup, add the following:

• 3 tablespoons of chia seeds (after soaked in water for 10 minutes)
• 2/3 cup of silken tofu (I like Hodo Soy’s from Berkeley Bowl)
• 2 – 3 tablespoons of maple syrup (real maple syrup not pancake syrup)

That’s it.  I’ve been eating this a lot lately, instead of ice cream and other desserts.

Emergency Dessert – Castella

My other go to dessert is Castella or Kasutera, a simple slight honey flavored sponge cake brought to Japan from Portugal.  They have these in the freezer section of Berkeley Bowl.  I like to keep it in the freezer and I like it as an emergency dessert for myself (as in if we’ve got nothing else) or in case we have guests over.  It’s good with tea, coffee, morning, afternoon, late evening.

]]> http://www.rebron.org/2011/02/13/power-emergency-dessert/feed/ 0 http://www.rebron.org/2011/02/03/chicken-chow-mein-recipe/ http://www.rebron.org/2011/02/03/chicken-chow-mein-recipe/#comments Fri, 04 Feb 2011 04:51:01 +0000 rebron http://www.rebron.org/?p=2520 For my reference, adapted from here.  Easier than I thought

• 1 lb of fresh chow mein noodles
• 1/4 cup, plus 2 tablespoons peanut oil
• kosher salt
• 1/2 cup chicken broth, homemade or low-sodium canned
• 3 tablespoons oyster sauce
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 2 teaspoons cornstarch cornstarch
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 lb of chicken thighs sliced or small cube (or breast or shrimp or pork)
• 1/2 cup of carrots, small dice
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon minced ginger (out of tube or fresh)
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 scallion white and green minced
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 medium yellow onion, thinly sliced or 1 cup of leeks
• 10 shittake mushrooms

Directions

Boil/cook the noodles, pat them dry.  Heat 1/4 cup of the peanut oil in a wok.  Fry the noodles until they’re fried to your liking.  Transfer noodles to a paper towel-lined plate. Set aside. Discard any excess oil and wipe out the pan.

Mix the chicken broth, oyster sauce, soy sauce, cornstarch, and sugar in a small bowl, and set aside. Season the chicken with the sesame oil, salt, and pepper, and set aside.

• March 27 -  Oakland 1/2 or Full Marathon
• May 7 – Ironman St George
• July 30 San Francisco Marathon
• October 1 – Levi’s Gran Fondo
• December  3 – NorthFace 50k

I’d like to keep the Summer and Fall open for things other than races but may consider some races depending on who’s in.

My base workout locations are: my house in North Oakland near Children’s Hospital (bike/run), Temescal Pool, Sports Basement in San Francisco (bike/run), Mike’s Bikes Sausalito (bike/run), Tam High School (swim/bike/run), Lunardi’s (bike/run).

Will also be doing some trail runs in the East Bay hills (Skyline 50k routes) and in Marin (NorthFace 50k routes).

My fitness goals for 2011 are to maintain my fitness levels from last year, drop some weight, improve my core strength and flexibility, and become a stronger runner.  I’d also like to reconnect with friends/training partners and just have some fun on the road.

General Happenings

• Chilean Miners rescued after 69 days trapped in a mine
• Earthquake in Haiti
• Volcanic ash from Eyjafjallajökull
• Deepwater Horizon Oil spill
• Wikileaks releases cables/documents
• Republican’s win control of House of Representatives
• Slow recovery Dow at 11,000.

Tech

• Apple releases iPad (and an updated MacBook Air)
• Android making gains, Nexus One and Nexus S released
• Rise of the App stores
• Facebook/Twitter continue to grain traction

Sports

• Winter Olympics in Vancouver/Whistler
• FIFA World Cup won by Spain
• Saints over Colts to win Super Bowl
• Lakers beat Celtics NBA Finals
• SF Giants beat Texas Rangers to win World Series

Obits

• JD Salinger, President of Poland, Gary Coleman, Dennis Hopper, Manute Bol, Robert Byrd

Personal

• General: Attic insulation w/ new attic ladder, other home energy work
• Travel: Kirkwood/NorthStar (good snow), Whistler, Turks & Caicos
• Races: Oakland 1/2 Marathon, Ironman St. George, Ironman Canada, NorthFace 50k
• Work: Thunderbird 3.x releases
• Restaurants: Commis and Rikyu mostly
• Too many purchases.

Parlee Z5 stock

My dream bike is a Parlee Z5 — an all carbon fiber bike that can be built as a complete bike at around 13lbs.  My current bike is not heavy at a little over 17lbs and bikes for racing have to weigh at a minimum 15lbs (thankfully I don’t race).  Shaving 2 to 4lbs off a bike would be really great though.  I could also just eat less and lose some weight.

Anyway, for the build I’d go with the SRAM Red group with ENVE seat post, stem, and bar, Fizik seat, Look pedals, and TRP brakes.  I’d also go with the Dura Ace 7850 50cm wheels because they’re carbon wheels with an alloy braking surface, otherwise would go with Lightweight or ENVE clincher wheels.

If all goes well, maybe in 2012?  I could use the time to think of a nice paint job, though will probably end up with something like the first picture above — a solid blue bike.

I’m in the camp of people believing that carbon fiber is the best material for road bikes.  Carbon fiber just sucks up the bumpiness in roads that it makes for really comfortable riding.  I’ve ridden maybe 10,000+ miles on my road bike and can’t complain — stiff, durable, comfortable, just solid riding.

Above Category bike shop in Mill Valley is teasing me with some of their current bike builds of the Parlee.  Here, here, and here.

Picture above is from Above Category.  The bike is a Moots RSL titanium road bike with SRAM Red and Lightweight wheels.  If I had room  and money for several bikes, a Moots titanium road, cross, or mountain bike would be one of those bikes.  Titanium bikes are super light, durable, strong, and they’re considered lifetime bikes.  They’re just pretty looking bikes.

There are lots of other bike companies that make titanium bikes like Lynskey, Litespeed, Seven, and Serotta.  These companies sometimes mix titanium and carbon fiber parts into the frame, it’s a cool but a bit frankenstein-ish for my taste.  In any case, if you’re shopping for a titanium road bike, this Moots RSL is what I would get.  I’d actually get a mountain bike from Moots, I prefer carbon fiber for road bikes.

This 13″ MacBook Air is now “production” as the primary home computer as of 12/15/2010.  It’s pretty cool, loads up fast with the 256SSD.  Everything was transferred from the Mac Mini which was put in production starting in April 2006.  The Mac Mini held up pretty well, there were some issues with the hard drive and then started acting up again.  I still need to load up some software onto the new MacBook and that should do it.

I have a 13″ MacBook Pro that I’ve been using for work since 6/17/2009.  It has a 256SSD and love it as well but the MacBook Air at under 3lbs is pretty sweet.  I don’t think I’ve used the DVD drive on my MacBook for a long time but I do appreciate the solid 3-4 hr battery life.

*Updated*

As far as PC laptops go, I’d probably go with the Samsung 9 Series

I needed a new pair of prescription sunglasses (my prescription changed) for working out and I finally ended up getting the Daddy-O square Ray Bans — very comfortable and great lenses.  It’s darker than I’m used to and it’s just been a great frame for working out and cycling than what I’ve had in the past.

I was wearing Oakleys but my prescription got too high and none of their really nice (overpriced) frames would allow my prescription.  The ones I have now lean towards being normal glasses with sun glass lenses versus actual sunglasses.  It’s too bad because I really like Oakley.  Thankfully Ray Bans are just as stylish and they’re cheaper too.

I did a bunch of research as I usually do and ended up getting the glasses from SportRX Prescription Eyewear.  Rob T. hooked me up and was very patient with me as he made the initial suggestion.  I eventually emailed him my prescription and glasses came in soon after.  It was a very nice experience.

Anyway, it’s funny that I’m sporting Ray Bans since it seems like the wayfarers have made a come back.  Maybe us ’80s kids are on the attack.

Chia seeds

I finally finished the Born to Run book that everyone I workout with seems to cite so I figured I’d get in on the references.  One of the things I thought was interesting was the chia seed talk as well as pinole — which seems to be toasted cornmeal with sugar and cinnamon.  So chia seeds are supposed to be good for you and doesn’t taste like anything.  These two I guess are the super foods for the super athlete Tarahumara Indians.  Thought I’d give it a shot.

I bought some chia seeds from Amazon.  They’re not expensive and I’ve been taking 3 tablespoons, 3 times a day of chia seeds.  You’re supposed to put the chia seeds in water first to expand.  And then the seeds soak up the water and forms a jelly looking barrier around the seed.

Anyhow, I just add more water or pineapple juice (or any juice) to the seeds and drink it up.  I’ve also added it to soft tofu (taho) with maple syrup.

The health benefits are supposed to be pretty good, lowers blood pressure, helps with diet, high levels of omega-3.  We’ll see how it goes.  So far so good, energy is up and food cravings have been down.  In a month or two, will see if it actually helps with the diet and blood pressure bit.

One bike is good but if I could have three, one would be a steel bike from Sacha White of Vanilla Bicycles, their alter ego of Speedvagen, or a Dario Pegoretti bike from Italy.  (The second one would be a titanium bike from Moots and the third one would be a Parlee carbon fiber bike…ok, fine, and a fourth Parlee triathlon bike).

The bikes from these two guys are well built and just pretty — construction, paint job, geometry.  Steel isn’t the lightest frame material but can be made pretty light and supposedly the ride is fast, responsive, and fantastic.  Steel is also supposed to be pretty durable and easy to repair.

Oh, well.

I have a few silly product posts coming up, going to start with soap.  I honestly can’t tell you why soap to start, but one day just wanted to get the *one* soap, one scent and just stick with that for the rest of my life and not think about it anymore.  Maybe I watched another rerun of Fight Club or too many Old Spice commercials.

I guess I was using Dove and Ivory bar soap and then at some point switched to a Kiehl’s body scrub soap for men which was nice.  I started experimenting with Caswell & Massey soap and I liked their Jockey Club, Oatmeal, Verbena, and Number Six soaps.

Now, I’m sticking with a soap that’s been around for ages, savon de Marseille.  Basically a soap made in Marseille mostly out of olive oil and they’ve been doing it for over 500 years.  It lathers really well so I use it instead of shampoo and there’s not much of a scent and it doesn’t dry my skin either.  It comes in a big block so I have to cut it to size and that’s about all there is to it.  One less thing to think about.

If there’s a place I’d love to visit again, it would be Marseille.  It sounds silly but Marseille is a little bit like Oakland, a port city, diverse, edgy, hip hop, and great weather.  Our food story is getting better in Oakland too.

(There is an Oakland soap, Cal Ben Pure Soap, but haven’t gotten the urge to try it yet, supposed to be good though)

Here’s my pair of Pure Blue Japan AI-001 in a size 34 made of natural indigo and washed once.  They’re absolutely awesome.  They feel great to wear and the denim is very unusual, rough, soft, irregular.  I guess the term is slub, these jeans are very slubby.  I grabbed them from Blue in Green.

 They’re my second favorite pair of jeans second only to a pair of Roy Denims (RS2).

It’s obvious the majority of my friends aren’t reading my blog posts but I can probably do a better job of linking Facebook and Twitter to this blog.

Anyhow, short update:

• We’re on version 3.1.4 for Thunderbird, working on Thunderbird 3.2 due out later this year;
• Working through updating Mozilla Messaging to coincide with mozilla.org/.com updates;
• Wrapped up Ironman Canada in August (and Ironman St George last May), signed up for Ironman St George for next year;
• Starting up trail running and doing a lot of it in the East Bay hills, which is neat, this is in place of road running which is super high impact;
• Might be re-upping to be an Executive Board Member for Alameda Council, BSA;
• Doing some more Boy Scout related stuff this year mainly driving and camp outs (local program is good, National politics not so good);
• We have a 10 year wedding anniversary trip in November to Turks and Caicos;
• Starting to plan for snowboarding outings, hopefully will be another good snow year;
• and then we’re in 2011.  That was quick.

I’ll post some race reports and photos soon from Canada, and a few things I’ve stumbled upon and like.  Turns out at the age of 34 and male and married, I’m in the very desirable target market for a lot of companies and I’m obviously observant of the advertising being thrown at me/us.  Some of the marketing does make it through unfortunately.

The other next up is figuring out how to integrate blog, Twitter, Facebook, email a little better.  It’s not as cohesive as I’d like.

True Burger

We ate at  True Burger, in Oakland, last weekend and have to say that True Burger is now my new burger place — post workout reward, post Tahoe/road trip meal.  It’s a small restaurant and they do burgers, fries, milkshakes, and that’s about it and they do it really well.

In comparison to In N’ Out, True Burger’s burgers have much better flavor, better bun, slightly larger, and less greasy.  In N’ Out’s fries aren’t very good, True Burger fries are crispy and tasty.  The milk shakes are tastier too, it’s vanilla or chocolate or with fill-ins like vanilla with strawberry, peanut butter, coffee, etc.  You could say that True Burger is looking to create reference, by the book best versions of the American burger, fries, and milk shake and they do a ridiculously great job.  Here’s a much better review but essentially, no more trips to In N’ Out.

red velvet cup cake, from Cupkates Bakery

Cupkates Bakery

The other “best thing I’ve eaten” moment was a week or so ago when I was gifted with a Key Lime pie cupcake from Cupkates Bakery.  If you see the Cupkates cupcake truck, wave them down and buy the $3 Key Lime pie cupcake.  It’s just crazy good.  I guess they drive around Oakland and San Francisco. 

Key Lime Pie $3/ea
A graham cracker crust, key lime cake, curd filled, and topped with meringue frosting. Available with or without toasted coconut.