Month: April 2010

Rollin’ on the river

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
The bike path down around Fountain.
The bike path down around Fountain.

Nice day. I abdicated all professional duties and rode the creekside trail south until it dead-ended at someone’s pasture, just east of the Fort Carson exit off Interstate 25. It made for a rolling, 36-mile round trip from the DogHaus. Headwind out, tailwind back. Doesn’t get any better than that.

By the way, in case I haven’t mentioned it, my Nobilette cyclo-cross bike rocks. Sucker flat disappeared under me as I was riding it today. I felt as though I’d copped a ride on Aladdin’s magic carpet.

Herself and I had a couple buddies over for snacks and wine afterward and as usual we agreed that the body politic is afflicted with boils in dire need of lancing. But none of us has health care that’s worth a shit, and we can’t afford to catch anything, so we’ll leave the doctoring to someone else.

Hey, look, a shiny object! Is that iPhone 4.0 or Steve Jobs’ wiener in my ear?

Scrambled Easter eggs

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments

Up from the grave he arose,

With a mighty triumph o’er his foes

And a corncob pipe and a button nose

And two eyes made out of coal.

Hm. I seem to have scrambled my religious holidays again. No wonder the Easter Bunny didn’t leave an iPad under my pillow in exchange for that tooth.

OK, ’fess up, now — how many of you crazy kids rushed out to score iPads yesterday? I won’t make fun of you, I promise. You can trust me; I’m in the media.

If you had one and were able to figure it out in time for the Tour of Flanders this morning, you’d know that Fabian Cancellara crushed Tom Boonen to win the cobbled classic. Dropped him like a used syringe on the Muur, he did. But you might not have been able to watch any of the live video feeds ’cause they’re probably Flash-based, which makes the iPad hork. Pray for the rapid expansion of HTML5.

Launching (i)Pad

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments

In comments Steve O’ is placing bets as to whether I’ll be buying an iPad. Sad to say, if any Dog-catchers are staking out the Briargate Apple Store in hopes of throwing a net over me, they’ll be disappointed.

I’m pretty much in agreement with former Apple marketing guy Guy Kawasaki, who told The New York Times: “The first 5 million will be sold in a heartbeat. But let’s see: You can’t make a phone call with it, you can’t take a picture with it, and you have to buy content that before now you were not willing to pay for. That seems tough to me.”

Well said. I think the iPad is a nifty little toy with a wealth of possibilities, but in its infancy it’s clearly more about consumption than creation, and I already feel a tad overwhelmed by the wonders of the digital world, thanks all the same.

If I were to spring for some new technology in the iPad’s price range, I might go for a netbook Hackintosh, if only to drive myself further around the bend with technical problems. A guy can write and edit on the run with one of those.

Meanwhile, the NYT is live-blogging today’s iPad mania. That’s about as close to one as I intend to get. For now, anyway.

• Late update: Jesus, Apple’s marketing department must love the media foofaraw over the company’s every product release. Every major daily and most of the minors sent the troops out to cover today’s iPad feeding frenzy. Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray, told the NYT that he estimates Apple will spend $77 million promoting the iPad. Uh, why, exactly? Why buy what everyone’s giving away?

Tour de farce

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments
Editor of a new touring magazine? No, just another April fool. Photo: Herself
Editor of a new touring magazine? No, just another April fool. Photo: Herself

It was April Fool’s Day at VeloNews.com yesterday, and as usual we managed to snooker a few people.

My contribution — an entirely bogus item about VeloNews launching a touring magazine, headed by yours truly, with accompanying website and online store — apparently caused a minor stir among some folks in that niche. It was a calculated risk, since I’m writing a piece for Adventure Cyclist magazine about my tour of southern Arizona and really don’t need to piss off anyone holding a checkbook. Happily, editor Michael Deme was a good sport about it, having published his share of April Fool gags over the years.

I can’t remember how long VN’s been pulling these pranks. They date back to the newsprint edition of the magazine, and Charles Pelkey guesstimates the tradition to be 17 years old at least.

My favorite gag remains the time we “fired” me and posted the news online. I still can’t decide whose letters were funnier — the outraged readers who were canceling their subscriptions or the O’Grady-haters who were saying, “About damn’ time!”

On an unrelated note, I stumbled across a Rick Bayless recipe for tacos de papas con chorizo y salsa de aguacate last night and cooked the sumbitch right up. It was both easy and delicious, and that’s no joke.