As you may have noticed, I really like Crumpler’s products. I just found out that a store that sells nothing but Crumpler products just opened in downtown Vancouver (corner of Richards & Cordova).
Check them out in person or online if you’re looking for a cool new messenger bag or backpack - especially for your laptop or camera gear as they have shapes and colours to fit just about anything you’d want to carry. They also have cool, Crumpler branded shopping bags, purses, wallets and even camera straps.
Today, I had the pleasure of seeing Dr. Lawrence Lessig give the keynote for the Privacy & Security conference I’m attending in Victoria (albeit from the back of the room due to a huge coffee lineup). I’ve been aware of Dr. Lessig’s work for a long time now as he is one of the original ‘copyfighters’ and founder of Creative Commons among other things.
I almost got to see/meet him in person a number of years ago while I was in San Francisco. While visiting a friend, we made plans to be in the studio audience of “The Screensavers” on TechTV. I was excited to hear that the guest on the show the day of our taping was Dr. Lessig but unfortunately, it was a taped interview so I didn’t actually get to see him in person.
That changed today when I got to watch his keynote and also finally see the ‘Lessig method‘ of giving a presentation. He truly sets the bar high for giving a great, compelling presentation. Dick Hardt of SXIP (and fellow iPhone user) has also used the Lessig method to give a very engaging presentation (and a great topic in it’s own right).
In his presentation, he talked about privacy and how it’s similar to copyright. He started with a little bit of history, followed by a story (or two) and finished with an argument. I hope it’s made available in some form as I’m not even going to try to paraphrase it. It was that good and I couldn’t do it justice.
I decided to pick up his “The Future of Ideas” book after the presentation and he signed it for me which is pretty cool. Of course, I found out while gathering info for this post that the book is available for free to download now. At least mine is signed.
While today’s presentation isn’t online (yet) and I don’t think it was recorded on video, I was able to find a presentation he gave at TED that captures his style very well and is also a great topic:
It’s a 20 minute presentation so you may want to download it to watch later (plus you can get it for your iPod as well).
Another highlight of the keynote was Dr. Lessig playing the following mashup video to illustrate copyrights:
Imagine a room full of suits watching this. Yeah, it was awesome.
Is it weird for a guy to like gadget bags? I think I have a bag/pouch/container for just about everything gadget I own. I guess I like to protect my stuff. I especially like Crumpler bags.
The latest one I bought a few months back was the Crumpler Keystone which is a laptop and camera bag. It’s very light, small, heavily padded and perfect for running around taking pictures at geek events.
What else can I say, I love the bags that Crumpler makes and keep getting them anytime I see a new one (or get something that needs a bag). I wish there were more companies that cared this much about their products and had such a unique way of marketing them.
Sometimes they send me stuff too (I highly recommend you sign up for their newsletter):
Totally irreverent marketing (who else takes beer in trade for their products?), completely unusable but fun flash website and awesome containers/protectors for geek tech - what more could you want?
After picking up a new ginormous hard drive on boxing day (think Black Friday in the US, only much lamer), I went about adding it to my Powermac G5 tower (aka my server).
For some reason, Apple always does things different than other computer manufacturers and the process of upgrading the hard drive is no different. Fortunately, they tend to do amazingly beautiful documentation on everything so after opening up the tower, it was pretty easy to get down to business.
Small problem though - since this was an additional hard drive, I needed to use Apple’s little rubber coated screws as guides to hold it in place. Since this PowerMac was given to me by a client after upgrading, I didn’t have the original box or anything that might contain the screws needed to install the hard drive.
Of course, Apple thought about that and actually installed four extra screws inside the chassis (green arrow in the image above which I added), right where you’d see them when upgrading your hard drive.
With a tip of the hat to Mark Hurst, I thought I’d post the ‘good experience’ I just had with Alaska Airlines.
When I was coming home from San Francisco last week, I got in fairly late to YVR and waited for my checked bag to come down the conveyor belt. Surprisingly it was the first one down the chute and I grabbed it quickly thinking I’d be on my way home that much sooner.
Then, as I was wheeling it away, another passenger asked if my bag ‘was supposed to be like that’:
It had come down the belt face down and I just picked it up and extended the handle and started towards the exit without looking at the front of it….obviously it wasn’t supposed to look like that. At some point in it’s journey from San Francisco to Vancouver, it appeared to have had the front main pocket ripped cleanly off along with the contents of that pocket.
Once I realized what had happened, and put the hanging threads and fabric back inside what was left of the pouch, I quickly thought that my speedy trip home just got a lot longer. Fortunately the Alaska Airlines counter was only a short distance from where I was and there was no lineup.
I wheeled up to the counter and showed the person behind the counter my luggage and that I thought it wasn’t supposed to be like that. She seemed genuinely concerned about the situation and asked if I had anything in there that might have been lost. I was pretty tired and couldn’t remember what I had in there as I had also shuffled everything around in SFO so that I wouldn’t have to lug too much around in my carryon bag which already had my laptop and a bunch of other stuff.
She told me the airline had a local repair shop that would either repair or replace my bag. I laughed at the thought of repairing the missing pocket - I had searched out for this particular suitcase for awhile and because I have a thing for green, combined with the ease of spotting it in a sea of black luggage figured it would be hard for them to patch the gaping hole. At least the rip was very clean and on the pocket’s seam.
I was then given a local number to call back once I had figured out what was missing and they would arrange to replace the items. She also gave me a claim form to take to the repair shop and I was on my weary way.
Given the circumstances, I couldn’t think of a better way for them to handle my situation. The woman that helped me seemed to really care about what had happened and wanted to ensure that I was taken care of. If only more companies had these kind of people working for them.
Once I got home and got everything sorted a few days later, realized I was only missing a couple of books and some magazines….I did have some gifts for Stacie in there at one point but decided they were too fragile for checked baggage and ended up swapping my reading material with them in my carryon.
All told about $70 worth of books is probably clogging up a conveyor belt somewhere underneath YVR or SFO. When I called back to tell them of the ‘damage’ I ended up speaking with the same woman who remembered my green bag. She told me I could simply rebuy the missing items and bring the receipts to the airport and they would reimburse me on the spot…or I could mail them in. The mail in option wasn’t that appealing since it’s a little too much like a mail in rebate so I opted to drop the bag off at the repair shop, pickup the missing items and head to the airport in one trip (a 60km roundtrip from my house). I figured it was worth the hassle and time to get it all sorted right away as we’re planning on going away in a few weeks and wanted usable luggage.
So I headed to a book store to replace the items, then to the repair shop. They determined pretty quickly that a repair would be too involved and opted to replace my bag with a similar one. Unfortunately it wasn’t green and so I now have a bright blue suitcase - so leave it alone if you see it on the conveyor belt - I’m talking to the old man that I always seem to see manhandling every bag that comes down thinking it’s his….going so far as to open the bag! At least the replacement is the same brand and a slightly better model than I had before - according to the repair shop staff.
Next stop was the airport. Of course the ticket counter I had to go to was at the opposite end of the airport from where you have to park. I swear it took 20 minutes to walk from my car to the counter.
Once I got to the counter, I was taken care of quickly and they even reimbursed me for parking which was nice. I was surprised they were able to just cut me a cheque on the spot and not have to go through head office or some insurance company. Of course, it was a relatively small amount of money. As before, the person that helped me seemed to actually care about my ‘loss’.
All things considered I thought the entire situation was handled great. Considering the hassles involved, it was very smooth. Kudos to Alaska Airlines and their helpful staff!
I didn’t even get to mention that the flight(s) were great as well…but I’ve rambled enough for one post so I’ll leave you with one word and photo: Legroom!
