Yoga Room Opens at SFO

Yoga Before You Fly at SFO

San Francisco International Airport (SFO) has opened a yoga room, which it claims is the first in the world*.

This is a brilliant idea, as anyone who has flown coach-class will tell you. Personally, I always get funny looks when I use the departure-lounge floor as a carpeted stretching mat, so the idea of a dedicated yoga room makes me smile.

Hopefully they have a strict regimen for cleaning the free mats.

The best part: the infographic for “Yoga Room”, depicting a serene figure (dare I say Buddha-like?) in the lotus position.

(*I have a tough time believing that SFO invented yoga rooms, considering how Singapore’s mega-airport featured a cinema, serenity garden, and free internet-enabled computers back in 2003: surely one of the massive Asian airports has a yoga room already?)

(via SFist)

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Photos: Icy Pool in Kitsilano

Ice and Snow in Vancouver: Kits Pool Frozen

It’s unusually cold in Vancouver at the moment: -6C. (Of course, that’s unusually warm by Canadian winter standards.)

I took some photos of Kits Pool, which was partially frozen over and dusted with snow. These close-ups of the exposed ice have an abstract look to them.

Frozen Kitsilano Pool: Cracked Ice

Icy Pool: Cracked Ice

Frozen Kitsilano Pool

Icy Pool 1

Frozen Kitsilano Pool, Fence

Icy Pool, Fence

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Roll’s-Eye View of Sushi Conveyor Belt

What It’s Like for Sushi: Conveyor-Belt Cam in Japan

YouTuber MJRecession uploaded this video of a shi conveyor belt in Japan, shot from the point of view of a roll. Or sashimi. You get the idea.

I love the reactions of the other customers.

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Chromatic Typewriter: Type Up a Painting

Tyree Callahan’s Chromatic Typewriter is a vintage typewriter hacked to type colors instead of characters. The ribbon is “a slice of a stellar spectrum analysis of the sun”.

So simple. So brilliant.

Tyree Callahan: Studio E

(via Boing Boing)

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Epic Hip Hop Dragons

These Dragons are Hip Hop Fans

There’s something very old-school hip hop about these two dragons. They should be in the video for Ain’t Nothin’ but a G Thang, in my opinion.

They’re throwing their arms in the air, as if they just don’t care. I don’t know what the shop owner was going for, but these guys seem so musical and celebratory. These dragons aren’t just fantastical… they’re fantastic.

I encountered these fine fellows on West Hastings Street in Vancouver, BC.

These dragons should be in a Dr. Dre Video


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Name That City Skyline: Test Your Travel Knowledge

Do You Recognize These Skylines?

Buzzfeed has a fun little quiz called Can You Guess The City Skyline?. You won’t see New York, Rio, or Hong Kong; only cities whose skylines aren’t as immediately recognizable.

I only got five out of 10 right. Number four really threw me.

It’s fantastic how these cities, which, if named, you may write off as “boring” or “ugly”, take on a new life when photographed lovingly. See your own city as a stranger would, and interesting things happen.

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Showshoe Hike to Elfin Lake, BC: Whiskey Jacks, Goon Bags, and Clean Mountain Air

New Year’s Celebration 2012: No Electricity

Clubbing on New Year’s Eve is played out. Now it’s all about a 22-km snowshoe hike to a secluded hut in British Columbia.

A few of us ducked out of the traditional New Year’s Eve partying to leave for Squamish, BC for coffee. After that, we had to hike nearly 2km to the Diamond Head parking lot (we didn’t have snow chains), from which point we began the 22km hike to Elfin Lake.

Elfin Hut can host 30-odd snowshoe hikers and ski-tourers, though overflow arrivals can crash on the floor or in tents outside. The hut and its toilet facility are supposed to be lit with solar-powered lights, but some dumbass (or dumbasses) broke the timing systems, so it was all about propane lights, candles, and headlamps.

The hut is equipped with four propane burners, and guests take turns melting and boiling fresh snow for cooking/cleaning/drinking water.

Before adding some of our communal food to my pack, I noticed that the bottle of sparkling wine I had packed weighed more than the rest of my gear combined. At least I’d only be carrying the empty bottle back down.

Speaking of which…

Goon Bag!

One of our crew had the foresight to pack a box of wine: she then made use of the goon bag pillow when faced with a bare wooden bunk. I had only seen the goon bag as a pillow once before, when noticing a hipster asleep near Melbourne’s Smith Street the other month. I had no idea it was a national (and international) phenomenon.

(Downside: the toilets were a study in stench. A mingin’ masterclass, in fact. The dianoga that lived in the middle pit toilet was dead, floating face-down in the fecal froth. Be advised: your gag reflex will be challenged.)

The view from Elfin HutWhiskey Jacks: Birds Eating SeedsHowe Sound from the Trail
The view from Elfin Hut

The view from Elfin Hut

Whiskey Jacks: Birds Eating Seeds

Whiskey Jacks Feasting on Seeds

Howe Sound from the Trail

Howe Sound from the Trail


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(I have my own snowshoes, complete with climbing platforms. The others hired theirs from Sigge’s, that cross-country skiing scene on 4th Ave in Vancouver.)

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Building the World of Tomorrow: A Retro-Futurist New Year

2012: Looking to the Future

Happy New year, everybody. Wishing you all the best in 2012.

 

See more at Imaging the Future: the art of Arthur Radebaugh.

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The Journey of Checked Baggage: Suitcase with Built-In Cameras

A Day in the Life of a Suitcase

If you’re wondering what happens to your precious suitcase once you check it in, have a look at the Journey of Checked Baggage.

You’ll notice quite a few cuts in the video, and not only in the TSA screening area. Real-life suitcases get tossed around quite a bit more than this.

The takeaway from the video below, which Delta Airlines posted to its YouTube channel, is to show you that, when you check in your luggage, it becomes an item that gets shipped. There is not a crew of smiling, gentle staffers standing by to make sure that your irreplaceable snowglobe gets back home intact.

Best case scenario: baggage handlers are indifferent to your suitcase; after all, it’s one of thousands that they’ll handle in a day. Worst case scenario: it gets tossed around, and, yes, this happens.

As always, my suggestion is to do your trip with carry-on only. It’s surprisingly easy to do, and oyr handy Packing Light section will get you started.

Also, the last level in Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow had a luggage-conveyor section in the LAX level, but that’s a bit different.

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Just a quick question: does anyone know why Air Canada insists that, while their in-flight entertainment system runs during takeoff and landing, passengers using non-earbud headphones (i.e. most noise-cancelling headphones) must remove them? [Note: only the in-flight entertainment system can be used during takeoff-landing, and iPods/personal DVD players/laptops/etc are disallowed as per just about every other airline.]

I’ve asked a few Air Canada flight attendants and none of them knew for sure. One posited that the policy may have to do with risk of strangulation, but I cannot figure out how such a thing could happen, especially since the headband portion of a set of headphones goes, well, over the head and not anywhere near the neck.

As it stands, the policy seems weirdly arbitrary, and it’s not a good sign that even Air Canada’s own staff have no idea why it’s in place.

(Please don’t get up in your flight attendant’s face over this sort of thing: it’s not his/her own personal policy, and he/she is probably as sick of defending it as you are of arguing about it.)

(Another note: I routinely lambast Air Canada for their planes’ deficit of hygiene and punctuality, but I love that they let you watch your movie until you roll into the gate. Also, the Vancouver-Sydney flight is like a whole different airline: AC needs to make its domestic flights a bit more like this, and a bit less like the normal shit-show that is North American flying.)

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