This past weekend Alena and I were walking around Manhattan and stumbled upon an official LEGO store near the Rockefeller Plaza. We went inside and I was overwhelmed by a strong urge to get something for myself and build it. Of course the prices on Amazon were better, so I ordered myself a set when we got home.

About a year ago I spent a bit of time playing Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG and I actually has reactivated my account recently. So I decided that building something from that familiar setting would be nice — Sith Fury-class Interceptor which comes with Darth Malgus and a pair of Imperial troopers. The set consists of 748 pieces.

I must say that I haven’t played with something like this in ages. I loved to build things out of Soviet LEGO imitations when I was a kid, but they kits and were nowhere as elaborate and even those were nowhere to be found. I had a few very simple sets. I was worried that I would find it too hard to put everything together, but the instructions were very exact and easy to follow.

I think I’m a LEGO fan now. Arosha was “helping” me through some parts of the process. I see a lot of LEGO sets in Arosha’s future.

I’m happy to report that I’ve become an owner of a portrait lens that I coveted for several years now — Nikon AF-S Nikkor 85mm f/1.4G. Over the years I’ve read multiple reviews and saw a lot of images taken with this lens. But the price is quite steep, so we waited, pretty much since its release in August of 2010.

Portraiture is what this lens was made for. The focal length of 85mm is great for rendering faces in a flattering way and the maximum aperture of f/1.4 is perfect for separating the subject from the background and washing out said background into a milky smooth blur. This is my first 85mm prime lens and my first f/1.4 lens. I think it will solve a number of issues for me in certain situations.

I have a great manual 50mm that I love, but it’s not always ideal. First of all manual focus limits the number of quality shots I can take of Arosha — he is too quick. Also it makes me uncomfortable asking to take somebody else’s photo knowing that I’ll have to fiddle with focus for too long. Another issue is that it measures the exposure only at the center, making explaining to other people how to properly take a shot is close to impossible and is also a time constraint on when I’m using it.

All in all, I got the lens from B&H fairly quickly and had to exercise a great deal of patience before getting my hands on it — it was my New Year gift from Alena and my parents. The lens itself is quite a lot bigger than my 50mm is. It also is quite heavy as it turns out. I saw the technical specifications on the lens beforehand, but it’s hard to know how it will feel until you actually touch it. It does pair up quite well with my trusty Nikon D700.

However nothing comes easy. Soon after I had a bit of a disappointment. When looking through some experimental shots I took I noticed that the lens exhibits an obvious front focusing issue. In simple terms when you try to focus on the eye you end with focus plain falling on the nose and eyes are not sharp. The issue becomes quite a bit less noticeable by stopping down to f/1.8, but if I wanted to shoot at f/1.8 I would’ve gotten a lens that costs 1/3 of the price of this one.

Luckily D700 allows one to performing auto-focus fine tuning. And while it’s something that becomes quite complicated for a zoom lens a prime is much easier and more practical. I did some quite unscientific testing and arrived to +9 adjustment on the scale of -20 to +20 with 0 being default. But to make a final decision of whether to keep it or try to exchange it I placed an order for LensAlign kit — something that I wanted to get for some time now anyhow. I also bought of copy of their FocusTune software. FocusTune¹ in itself is a great tool allowing one to tune the lens not by eye and not from a single sample, but from a bulk of shots.

I took a large number of test sets — each set consisting of 100+ shots and actually ended up with fairly consistent test results². The recommended value that I arrived at on multiple instances is +6. I also read that pretty much everyone of these lenses will need to be tuned due to variations between the bodies and lenses — which in reality are extremely small, so exchanging the lens is as much of a gamble as anything. On most lenses it will just not be noticeable, but when you deal with a long and bright lens — you want it to be very precise.

Either way — our testing at +9 produced some nice shots and we won’t know how well +6 does until we go out on the upcoming weekend and do some testing in the wild. But if practice agrees with theory — and I don’t see why it wouldn’t — the lens is a keeper.

Last Saturday we did an important thing — my parents bought and picked up a new car — 2013 Nissan Altima SV — to replace their beloved Sonata that drowned in the flood caused by Hurricane Sandy.

It was a hard loss for them to deal with. My mom did her share of crying and my dad spent weeks worrying and wondering why he had parked the car where he did. He understood that nobody expected such major floods to happen, but he kept replaying the scenario — what if he only parked it 2 blocks in other directions.

Either way, we can now happily put it all behind and hopefully they can enjoy their new car. Geico came through for them and did what they were supposed to. In fact it was a pleasure dealing with a company that handled everything professionally and didn’t give us any hard time about anything.

As far as the new car goes, my cousin, Arsen did all the hard work. He did a lot of research on a good replacement, spoke with multiple Nissan dealers when my parents decided that Altima was the best option, and found a great price for them. He also arranged all the financing and made sure that there are no extra hidden fees that dealers love to throw in. If it wouldn’t be for his help I would have to go through all that myself and even though I can do that it always gives me tons of stress. So I’m grateful to him for his help as much as my parents are.

The new car is more expensive than the “old” Sonata was, but it it’s a higher class car. It has a new body for 2013 and this time my parents decided to get a navigation system, which I think is a great decision. I never understood how useful a built in system can be until I actually ended up with one in my own car. We also corrected a mistake we made with the last purchase — no more low profile tires and sports suspension. My parents prefer the car to feel softer and don’t really care much about it’s cornering abilities.

Anyhow, the new Altima is great. I hope they enjoy it for many more years to come. By the way, they also picked a non-silver color this time. I think it looks much better and richer than boring silver that every other car seems to be painted in.

I’m a big fan of nice things. I like having them just for the sake of having them. I want to write a couple of way overdue words about a pair of such things.

Even though these two are becoming obsolete in our modern smart phone and computer filled lives sometimes it just feels nice to write with a pen on paper instead of typing. It’s just like flipping through the pages of a real book instead of using a Kindle.

First there was a nice custom crafted leather journal that Alena got me for the New Year of 2012. It has a laural leaf embedded under it’s leather cover. It feels like an antique book with a nice hardcover and great paper. Sometimes I like to scribble things down when planning a trip or do some math and it’s a pleasure to use this journal.

Another such thing is a finely precision crafted pen done by a pair of Brooklyn designers — Pen Type-A. I founded it on Kickstarter in August of 2011 and it took them over the year to actually get all the pens out to people — the projected ended up being much more successful than they expected.

A lot of people whined about the length of development. Those folks had an expectation of funding something as if they were buying a product, while in fact you’re just investing in the idea. I had reasonable expectation going in and a year of development time wasn’t any kind of shock. For me it was well worth the wait — the pen is great and the struggle that they had to go through is worth writing a book about.

The pen itself takes Hi-Tec-C cartridges or can easily accommodate one from a Pilot G-2 pen. I have a very pleasant association with Hi-Tec-C on its own — those pens being the only physical gift that I brought for myself from Japan.

Pen Type-A is made of a precision crafted stainless steel and comes with a sleeve. When the pen is inserted into it — it forms a vacuum inside the sleeve. As a result it comes out with a loud pop when you pull it out as well as it slides in very slowly while pushing the air out.

In the background you see my good, old (not really that old) leather bag from WaterField which is a piece of art in its own right. But I wrote at length about it before. As I said — I just love nice things.

P.S. When I came into a meeting with 6 other people and unsheathed my pen — every single person noted and complimented it.

On September 21st at 3 AM Eastern time Apple started a pre-order process for iPhone 5. I, as opposed to my friends, was sound asleep. During all previous years one had a whole full day to place an order and assure oneself and new phone delivered on the first day of release. This year was different. An initial batch of new iPhones has sold out within an hour of going up for sale.

I decided not to do a pre-order at all and try my luck at a local store(s) on the first day of release and so I did. I woke up at 6 AM. My original plan was to go to Apple Store Staten Island, but I dreaded going there knowing that the line would be enormous. So I figured I’ll make a slight detour through Brighton Beach Avenue and see if an AT&T store there has a long line.

The line was short enough that I decided to find parking and take my chances here. Store opened at 8 and in 15 minutes AT&T rep came out and proclaimed that 32GB phones were gone. Fine, that works for me, though I, as I wanted to get 16GB version. However 15 minutes later the same thing happened again, only this time for 16GB phones. So much time wasted for nothing. I got into the car and started driving towards Staten Island.

But I didn’t get there. I made another detour and stopped by our local Best Buy. There were people inside, but I was told that they will start letting buyers in at 9 AM, so I had to wait 30 minutes. I was first in line. However soon people started showing up and most of them had pre-orders at Best Buy. Soon a Best Buy rep showed up and said that they had a good bunch of phones for those who didn’t have a pre-order with the exception of those who needed an AT&T phone. More time wasted.

Back to the car. This time I did get to Staten Island Mall. It also had a Best Buy, which also had spare phones, but only for Sprint customer. At this point I figured I’ll just have to bite a bullet and stand in line at the Apple Store. When I got there the line wasn’t as long as I thought it would be. And at the end of the line there were Apple reps handing out cards, so you would know for sure that you’re not standing in line for nothing. One small problem — no more AT&T phones left!

At this point I kind of lost hope for getting iPhone 5 on the first day or any time soon at all. I decided to check AT&T store located inside the mall as my last stop before calling it a day. And to my dismay the store had no line:
– No line, no phones? — I asked a rep.
– If were you to pick a size, which one would you get?
– 16GB!
– And the color?
– At this point I’ll take any!
– But if you could pick?
– Black.

And what do you know? She yells at someone and they bring out a brand new unopened 16GB black iPhone 5 box. She processes my upgrade right there and then and hands me an activated iPhone 5. That was not expected.

First thing you notice is that the phone is noticeably thinner and even more noticeably lighter. It is so light in fact that it feels fake. Like there is nothing inside. And even though multiple tests other people have done show it to be much sturdier than previous version it just feels very delicate to me. A perfect piece of engineering.

It doesn’t stay that way for a long time. The black paint covering the aluminum back and sides scuffs up way too easily. Knowing that now I would probably go with a white version as I did with all my previous iPhones when I could choose. I treated it very gently and it already has two scuffs on the back exposing the natural color of aluminum. I imagine after a year of use it will look pretty bad and what’s the point of having a thin phone I’m going to put a case on it? I will not.

I’m really happy with their decision to keep the screen the same width — it is perfect for me to be able to use the phone with one hand. If they had to increase the screen they choose the least annoying way to do it. And after some use I actually enjoy the added height, but having an iPad I still will do most of my reading on it, not the phone.

I never really looked into LTE before and as a result I was quite amazed how much it clocked in on speed test — 30 Mbps downlink in Connecticut, and half of that in Brooklyn. Either number is bigger than my WiFi connection. But since we fit just fine in 200MB per month and since it costs us $15 per month I plan to use cellular data connection as much as I did before and will continue to rely mostly on WiFi.

The new connector is much better designed than the old one. It turned out to be a lot smaller than I imagined from the images that I saw online. I didn’t really have any gear that relied on the old port, but I do have a slew of wires that I can no longer use on this phone. This wire can be plugged in either side into the phone, so it makes it easy in the dark. All my old wires I have marked with a knife on one side to make it easy in the dark as well — don’t know why Apple never did.

Overall it’s a nice next step for iPhone. The only real exception is Apple Maps. They really are as bad as everyone says. Although it doesn’t really upset me all that much since I can do something as radically as open Google Maps in a browser and that works just fine. Not as convenient, but does everything it used to do in the app.



One last topic on my mind in all of this is AT&T. I really hate the fact that AT&T refuses to unlock phones while their under contract. It means that on my trip to Italy I will not be able to use my new phone. I started looking into switching to Verizon and came to a conclusion that it’s even a bigger ripoff than AT&T. Even though they are willing to unlock the phones in 60 days their plans are just outright theft.

Old family plans are gone, new plans stick you with unlimited minutes which nobody needs (we do just fine with 700 minutes AT&T gives us on the cheapest family plan) and end up charging you through the roof. If you have an old family plan — stay with it and don’t switch to the new data share. That’s what my parents are going to do. Also even on the old family share plans the cheapest data plan is $30. On AT&T I pay $15 for 200MB which as I stated works just fine for us. On top of that we would have to cancel a contract on one of our AT&T lines and buy a 2nd phone.

It just was adding up to too much and having an unlocked phone was just not worth it. And then 2 days later I found out that my whole unlocking debacle is easily solved with a $13 through eBay. No jail-breaking, no nothing — a clean unlock through Apple’s database. I don’t know how I didn’t know about this before.

And in conclusion here is a pair of iPhone 5 wallpapers that I’ve made and am currently using on my phone.

I’m a lucky new owner of a brand-new Nikon AF-S Nikkor 16-35mm f/4G ED VR lens. I want to share a couple of thoughts on how that came about, choice, acquisition and planned use.

Wide-Angle Decision

I mentioned earlier that there exists a possibility of us taking a trip to Grand Canyon in the near future. As I was looking through my old shots of the canyon taken with my old D70 camera — a lot of them were taken at 18mm (the widest I had — 27mm equivalent on full frame) and a lot of them feel kind of crammed — like there just wasn’t any more room left in the frame. Landscapes are the primary reason why I would want to own a good wide-angle lens.

There is always an alternative to using wide-angle lenses that could work in a lot of cases for landscapes. Just take several shots with a normal lens and then stitch them together in a panorama. However there are certain problems with that approach — taking an HDR shot for example would be much more complex. Using a long exposure filter such as Big Stopper would be it impossible.

And then there is a number of other types of photography that can be done with a wide-angle lens forcing a photographer to get much closer to the subject, thus changing the perspective — an interaction of the subject with the background.

Budget

I had my eye set on a prime Nikon lens for portraiture — 85mm f/1.4G — for a long time now. The problem of course is the fact that this particular lens costs $1,700, however all the reviews confirm that the lens is worth it. Or at least that was the case until Nikon released a new 85mm f/1.8G lens.

I read a number of reviews on the new lens and a lot of them show that it performs as well as its big brother in a lot of cases. It doesn’t have nano-coating which reduces the flares and it loses 2/3 of a stop as far as aperture goes. But the kicker is that it costs $499. Now that’s is a huge difference. For a professional photographer that 2/3 of a stop might be worth it, but I as an amateur just cannot justify paying an extra $1,200 for something that would be simply a nice-to-have at my level. I just can’t.

By settling with a f/1.8 lens I was able to free up a large chunk of change from the budget that was allocated for 85mm purchase towards the New Year.

Wide-Angle Lens Options

Choosing an actual lens from the available options was surprisingly easy. I was not considering any 3rd party choices as I am extremely happy with all my Nikkors. Out of available Nikon option there were really only two lenses that were in the final “competition” — 16-35mm f/4G and 14-24mm f/2.8G lenses. The older 17-35mm f/2.8D lens has been bested and at this point doesn’t make much sense.

To break it up I ended up picking out 16-35mm lens over 14-25mm lens for the following reasons:

• It has filter thread, while the other one does not. Even thought 14-24mm can be outfitted with filter it becomes a huge expense on its own with the need of a special and expensive mounting bracket and much larger filters.
• Cost — $1,139 vs $1,996.
• Better flare control — the other one has a very spherical front element.
• Not as wide, but bigger range — really nice thing to have for walking around, without constantly swapping lenses out.
• Weight — 680g vs 969g for 14-24mm and 900g for 24-70mm.
• VR II — Nikon’s lens stabilization system that promises 4 extra stops. Not really a factor for me, but I guess it’s nice to have.

The lens doesn’t let in as much light at f/4 as the other one does at f/2.8, but as far as landscape photography goes this is a non-issue at all, since most of landscape shots will be taken at least at f/8 and on a tripod. Even though 14-24mm is a superb lens and 16-35mm has a lot of distortion at 16mm (easily fixed in post), 16-35mm was clearly the best choice for me that offers great sharp results with a lot of versatility.

Buying The Lens

These days it seems that after doing all the research and making a decision, actually buying a Nikon lens is the hardest task of it all. There was no stock at B&H, Adorama, Amazon or any other vendors that I’m familiar with. The price at Adroma was at $1,159, at B&H it went up to $1,179 and there was still no stock and Amazon kept getting them 1 item at a time (returns?) and was pricing them at $1,259.

I saw a mention on one of the forums that Samy’s Camera has them in stock, but since I was unfamiliar with that store I decided not to risk it. Meanwhile I kept checking all the verified sources and ended up stumbling on a seller offering these up for sale through Amazon for $1,139. And what do you know? It was Samy’s Camera. They had 4.8 out of 5 stars rating with more than 2,800 votes in the past year.

Considering that it was the best price that I’ve seen and having the safety of ordering through Amazon I placed an order. The lens was shipped to me the same day and I received it soon after. I’ve done some minor testing within the confines of our apartment and I like how it handles and performs so far very much. Here is another good vote for Samy’s from this happy customer.

Now I just need to get outside an do more shooting and start learning to work with a wide-angle lens — I didn’t have one in a long time and for some reason I never used the one I did have for my DX camera. We’ll see how I do with this one.

It’s been almost exactly a year since I’ve printed out my Empire State photograph on canvas to hang in my office. Today I picked up another print that I’ve been thinking of doing for quite some time — Tokyo.

The first one I took from the Top of The Rock observation deck and the second one I took from the top of Roppongi Hills Tower. I think it came out really well and Costco¹ did a really nice job again. I think these look really good hanging side by side. What city comes next?

About two months ago I was bombarded by reviews of mechanical keyboards — Das Keyboard specifically — on a lot of blogs that I frequent. The opinions were all over the scale as far as the looks go, but where they all seemed to converge was the performance. Everyone seemed to be in a certain kind of awe.

I started thinking that maybe I should invest in one of these, since I do spend a lot of hours sitting in front of a keyboard. What really pushed me over the edge was the fact that Geoff bought it right when I was considering the purchase and I had a chance to actually try typing on one myself. Now there are several different versions that one can order — different type of switches. Geoff opted to go with a less loud setup and ordered a keyboard with Cherry MX Brown switches.

After trying those I decided to go all the way and went¹ for louder Cherry MX Blue² switches that provide even more tactile feedback. And now after using it for over two month I have to say that it is significantly more pleasant to type on than on a standard membrane keyboard. The decibel level does not bother me in the least and it makes blind typing much more easy. There is never a doubt if the key press has registered or not thanks to the tactile feedback.

If you are thinking of making the jump I can wholeheartedly recommend it.

We’ve been on the topic of shoes a couple of months ago on here and at about that time we took some more shots of dress shoes as well, but I never got around to posting anything about that. There really isn’t much to say except for the fact that I’ve developed an appreciation for stylish good looking fashionable shoes.

I never used to wear sneakers to begin with and much preferred to wear dress shoes for a long time already. However they never were anything special. This new pair is moderately priced, but was on the edge of my comfort zone. Now after owning it for a while they are not as edge as I thought they were when we bought them and my comfort zone has expanded.

These are called cap-toe because of the broguing separating the toe of the shoe. These are made by Cole Haan, but I seem to be in between the sizes for the shoes that these guys make, so they are not as comfortable as they could be. But I like the way they look. They go with a lot of things — something casual and something formal as well.

For a stage two of our simple sporty shoe experiment we ordered a matching pair of Converse Chuck Taylor All Star shoes in black.

Never before did I imagine that I would pay for these willingly until a week ago. The thing is that the last time I wore this type of shoes was when I was around 10 for a gym class back in USSR. They were considered to be the cheapest shoe out there and so most kids ended up with them for their physical education classes.

All the while on this side of the ocean they have been pretty popular and are still popular to this day. One can put together a nice casual retro look and totally fit in some chic neighborhood of Brooklyn such as Williamsburg.

I also was quite pleasantly surprised by their hefty weight. I imagined them have a thin rubber sole — just like my USSR pair had, but these are a whole different kind of animal and are much more solid. Although they still are not to be worn during the cold days — even yesterday during our “test drive” the cold earth could be very well felt.

And as the last time we added a bit of a personal touch by redoing the lacing on them. This is also how we can easily tell them apart.

We decided to keep them. During the summer they should be great for all kinds of picnic type of activities and because they are so cheap I would not be terribly upset if they were to get ruined. But they probably start looking even better with age. As you can see — Arosha approves.

Since there is nothing really important going on lately I figured I’ll post a little bit about something unimportant. Currently we’re in the process of upgrading our summer shoes to something less formal. Oxfords are nice, but sometimes one does not feel like wearing dress shoes.

I’m also not a huge fan of sneakers, although sneakers are irreplaceable while hiking in the mountains and doing other non-city-bound activities — dress shoes do not work well for that, trust me — so we wanted something a bit more trendy — something in between hardcore sneakers and no less hardcore dress shoes.

We started out with a pair of Adidas Originals Dragon¹ shoes, but didn’t end up liking the style and the quality, so they are going back to Zappos. Next on the list is a pair of good old Chuck Taylors. We’ll see how we will like those in person somewhere next week.

Last time I posted pictures of my office (quite a while ago) it looked really bland, since we just moved in back than. Over the time I added some color and a bunch of trinkets¹ and accessories. Beside the landscape print-outs I also have a cool black & white photograph of Alena and Arosha on my desk — the “UFO” one from my film series.

With an imminent arrival of iPad 3 tomorrow (barring any FedEx screw ups) I decided to write down some of my thoughts on the past year of my “relationship” with iPad 2.

The most important thing that stands out is the fact that there really haven’t been a single day (with very rare exceptions) when I have not used it. I use it at work, I use it at home and I use it for travel. This last vacation was the first in 10 years when I finally felt brave enough to leave my laptop at home.

At this point I can state without any hesitation that it was money well spent and the only thing that can and did make me give this device up is the arrival of the new model of the same very thing. And I did stop using iPhone at home for anything but phone calls because it feels so tiny in comparison, but it still is the best on the go.

Software

Obviously iPad is nothing without its software. Good, quality software is what makes this device so addictively useful. Below is a list of my favorite and most used applications.

Reeder is my by far the most used application. I do a lot of reading on my iPad and most of it happens inside this app. Reeder is a great RSS client which actually made me love and use RSS. Beautiful and simple design makes it a pleasure to use. This is the best Google Reader client out there.

New York Times is my favorite news source on iPad. I read it every morning before going to work. After their subscription wall went into effect the app has been very limited, but I’m happy to report that I have subscribed to a print version of the paper which comes with all digital access — much more economical way to go than their actual digital plans. As of today I have full access to all the sections.

Tweetbot is my Twitter client of choice for both iPad and iPhone. I’m not a heavy Twitter user, but after the iPhone version of Tweetbot came out I just could no longer stand using the official app — it’s been getting progressively worse since it has been aquired by Twitter. I liked Tweetbot so much that I started using the iPhone version on my iPad. Needless to say I was very happy to learn that Tapbots came out with an iPad version of their Twitter client a couple of weeks ago. Beautiful UI and UX. Has everything that I want from a client and more.

Instapaper is another one of my favorite reading apps. I don’t often have need for it as I’m always on Wi-Fi, but for those times when I do not have Wi-Fi — planes, vacations — it’s amazing. Just find a bunch of articles that you’d like to read, hit Instapaper bookmarklet, sync Instapaper and go. Now you can read all those in a nice streamlined and cleaned up format offline.

Portfolio is the way to showcase one’s photography work. When I was buying an iPad having my photographic portfolio on it was one of the reasons. The app could use some polish around the corners, but it has a lot of functionality — it lets me create as many albums as I want, give those albums a cover and arrange the photos in any order I want among other things. Photos can be loaded from numerous sources — Dropbox being my preferred one. And then it just lets you let anybody browse your portfolio with photos showing up in full screen.

iA Writer is one of many minimalistic writing apps available for iPad, but iA Writer is an especially beautiful one. I do not use it very often, but it’s really nice to write in when on vacation. It also has Dropbox and iCloud support and it works especially well with a wireless Bluetooth keyboard which I plan to carry with me when I travel.

1Password is an app that I bought to replace SplashData — an app I used to use during Palm days. Initially I was quite unimpressed with 1Password because at that point they just came out with an iPad version and it was full of bugs. It all got sorted out by now and I keep all my data that needs to be secured inside of it now. I also use an iPhone companion app with it. SplashData has been long retired — good riddance.

Calcbot is another beautifully designed app from Tapbots. Since iPad comes with no built-in calculator app I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Calcbot for iPhone that I already had turned out to be a universal app. It is convenient to do “math” on a large screen of iPad.

Prompt is a really nice SSH client. I tried a good number of them and when Prompt came out I couldn’t resist. At first it had a few issues, but they all had been worked out a long time ago and rather quickly by Prompt’s creators. This one also works very well with a Bluetooth keyboard and some actual coding can be done pretty comfortably in Vim or Emacs. By now I have deleted all the rest of SSH clients I had and Prompt is my client of choice.

The apps that I didn’t list and still use pretty often are — Zagat, Dropbox, IMDb, Articles, OffMaps 2, Facebook, Skype, BeejiveIM, Magical Weather, 500px and many others.

I also have a couple of magazine subscriptions that I read primarily or only on iPad — Popular Photography, The New Yorker, Time Magazine and The Economist. I’ll probably add a couple more in a near future. But some of these guys have to figure out a better format for serving their content or the files will get extremely huge for retina display of iPad 3. And I wish they would all update their apps to support Newsstand too.

I also play some games on my iPad sometimes. I actually have a whole bunch of them installed on it — taking up 2 full folders, but I usually get bored with them quickly and rarely revisit. They are just sitting there for the most part.

Well, there you have it. An amazing device and an amazing set of apps. Hopefully somebody will find this useful and discover a new good app or two for themselves. I certainly am a big fan of all of the apps featured above and am thankful to those developers for making iPad so useful and pleasant to use.

Yesterday was a big day. My parents have been talking about replacing their old 1997 Pontiac Grand Prix with over 130,000 miles with something new. They wanted something reliable, but didn’t want anything fancy — they just need to get from point A to point B in relative comfort and don’t want to worry about parts falling off like the Pontiac started having a tendency to do.

Hyundai seemed like a good candidate from the start. The company has been working on their reputation lately and we ourselves considered Genesis when we were looking for a new car. They give good warranty, make good quality reliable cars that are inexpensive which overall results in good value for the money.

That’s how our Saturday started. We went to a local dealership to look and test drive 3 models — Elantra, Sonata and Tucson. What nobody of us expected was coming back home in a new car. I originally though that Elantra would be a good fit for them. During the test drive my dad started saying that the engine feels too week. Coming from my dad that really means something. He doesn’t care about HP, but when the car doesn’t pull — it doesn’t pull. So 1.8 litter 4 cylinder engine was no good. It also felt somewhat cheap inside.

Next up was Sonata. A bigger 2.4 litter engine was what my dad wanted. He was happy with it. It felt nicer inside and it was quite a bit bigger too. The low end model — GLS — lacked certain features like auto-headlights, power seats and it had steel wheels with plastic hubcaps. My dad liked having auto-headlights and wanted good wheels instead, but they figured they can live without it. Then it turned out that they only had black and red cars in stock in that configuration which ended up being a deal breaker for them. They wanted something light and neutral.

At this point they were offered a step up SE model which they had in light silver color. This car came with sports suspension, 18 inch low profile wheels — which my parents weren’t very happy about, but it also had auto-headlights, fog lights, key-less start button, power seats and a bunch of small niceties like that. It also came with a built-in bluetooth phone system which I’m happy about, since my dad never could talk in the car and we sometimes worried that he wasn’t answering. We hooked up his phone to it already.

We never got to testing anything else. The rest of the day we were working on the price. I think we got a good deal which I’m even more sure of after doing the research online. It’s not as stellar as deals used to be in 2008 when everything was falling apart, but by today’s standards they came away with a very nice car for a good amount of money. We also ended up redoing my dad’s insurance with a different company which came out a little bit more for full coverage than my dad was paying for liability alone. Geico rules.

The old car ended up getting donated. My parents felt very sad letting it go. They also felt extremely nervous ending up with a new purchase, but I remember that I went through the same very thing. I didn’t want to leave my new car outside alone. But it will pass. I wish them many years of enjoyment of their new purchase. Let the new car bring them only happiness.