Daniel R.

Maybe my glasses prescription needs to get updated but I've been having a hard time finding backgrounds or wallpapers related to the current Tour de France. I'm talking about 1600x1200 sized images of the Tour de France logo, a detailed image of this year's route, or even photos from the various stages. I would have thought from a promotional standpoint the official Tour de France would have a bunch, but my quick glances at that site have turned up nothing. I'm more than happy to have just missed something obvious on this one and if so please let me know.

Tags: tdf

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 9:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I think inline skating is all but dead in Boston. During a recent night of heavy blading I managed to lose a couple of bolts holding my wheels on while out blading. Thankfully I didn't notice this until a couple of days later when I was rotating my wheels. I have no chance of retracing my route to find the missing bolts. My long time use of a hop-up kit saved me from having the wheel fall completely off.

Being without blades makes short little mid-day excursions a little more tedious so I went out in search of replacement parts. I've been blading around Boston since I got here. Things have changed since then. Eric Flaim's Motion Sports on Newbury used to be the place to go. Long since gone and replaced by a Blades Board and Skate. They even had a couple of locations around the city including Harvard Square. Alas they are also gone. A place I never went to but looked promising was Beacon Hill Skate Shop. A phone call to them and they seemed to have moved way south of the city.
True East Skate Shop in downtown Boston is for skateboarders only. Orchard Skateshop looks to be the same. Those are the specialty shops, either gone or not for inline.

There is always City Sports, but they are more about the simple gear not cross pull hop-up kits or a dozen plus wheel variations with different hardnesses, composites, and diameters. Even some of the online specialty shops I used to buy in bulk from when I was going through a set of wheels a month, seemed to have moved on. And forget the fact that I contemplated getting news blades. Maybe I'm old fashioned but Rollerblade's ABT system is still tops in my book for being able to break hard while in traffic, keep all your wheels on the ground, and not rip your wheels to shreds. Very few if any models out there offer anything like that. Maybe I could learn new techniques but too many years of certain habits are hard to break :)

Tags: life

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 8:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

About half way through reading "The Undercover Economist" by Tim Hardford I lost interest. The book is well written and approaches the topic of economics in a very layman friendly way. I just personally wasn't interested in reading more about economics at the time. With that said I slowly came back to the book and recently finished it. Each chapter addresses a different fundamental economic concept and builds well on the previous topics. Most importantly the book is filled with many anecdotes which help convey the underlying principle.

My favorite quote out of the book "Growing them in Iowa makes use of a special technology that turns wheat into Toyotas: simply put the wheat onto ships and send them out into the Pacific ocean. The ships come back a short while later with Toyotas on them. The technology used to turn wheat into Toyotas out in the Pacific is called 'Japan', but it could just as easily be a futuristic biofactory floating off the cost of Hawaii." [213]

Tags: books economics

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 5:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Since 1999 I've been a devote fan of Cirque du Soleil. However, last night maybe one of the last shows of theirs I see ([Update: I lied, I just needed a break :)]). I took a trip down memory lane and since that first show in 1999 I've seen many others and have watched them in multiple countries. For my own posterity (and I still think I'm missing one) I believe these are the shows I've seen:

Why after so many years and so many shows am I having a change of heart? Maybe its a passing thing but the price to value ratio has gone out of whack. For what it is, Delirium tickets felt like they cost twice as much as they should have. I did go the VIP route for a couple of shows and with the free swag, program, and food/drinks it felt more like I was getting good value for my money. I didn't have that feeling last night while watching Delirium.

The show itself is visually stunning, makes fabulous use of video technology, and continues in CdS fashion with memorable music. Like the book I'm reading now, CdS has scarcity going for it. I don't know of another brand (although I'm sure one exists) that produces similar shows. As such they can drive the price up and still manage to sell tickets, although there were quite a few empty seats last night.

Tags: cds life

Posted by Daniel Rinehart at 10:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)