sean.blog

So it’s snowing in DC, this is what the roads look like after 2 inches on the ground (preceded with some slush):

It’s a lazy Sunday here in Northern Virginia.  Winter is finally here, early this morning the temps got down to 33f :).

I stopped by REI to pickup a special ordered compass and was surprised by the number of patrons.  It’s downright crowded today.  The popularity of outdoor sports clothing as casual wear seems to have no end :).  Then again, it’s hard to argue with the warmth of Primaloft or 800 fill power down on a cold morning.

Across the street at Caribou Coffee, all the tables are taken.  A couple sits across from me, retelling funny stories and flirting in between sips of coffee.  A table of Arab immigrants sit nearby, squeezed together and chicly dressed in thick sweaters, large sunglasses and a few tweed jackets.  A few tables down two girls work diligently with their laptops and open text books.  When space is limited, everyone huddles a little closer.

I’m stoked to try out this new compass, a Brunton 54LU, a uniquely accurate, small and light sighting compass.

While hiking today I noticed something bright off in the distance.  I left the trail and after some walking found these wild flowers, growing over a decent sized area.  Such a nice find :).

Ah, old floppies, these bring back memories :)

Thanks to the popularity of social networking platforms, up-to-date contact information is only a few clicks away.  But for iPhone users, digging through social networking applications or using the iPhone web browser to get a contact phone number can become tedious.  The Mac Address Book, and its syncing capability with the iPhone offer a great alternative.  I’ve found a few tricks and tools to sync Facebook and Linkedin to my Mac Address Book, and from there to my iPhone:

1. Facebook Phonebook Exporter Greasemonkey script: This script will export phone numbers from a Facebook friend list.  WARNING: This script currently uses a remote service to process contact information.  So unless you plan to host the web app portion on your own server (code available on github), you will be sending some potentially private information to a remote server.  Instructions on how to use this script are available.

2. Linkedin VCF file export: Linkedin offers VCF exporting of all contacts through the standard web interface.

3. AddressBook Sync: This Mac app will synchronize Facebook and Address Book contact pictures, birthdays and locations.

After running these tools, the Address Book had a few duplicates, and more then a few contacts that needed minor editing (usually involving moving firstnames and lastnames to their respective fields).  Overall this is a huge time saver for a Mac/iPhone user since all contact information is now in one easy to access place.

Rain on a hot virginia summer night.