I’m also starting to realize more and more that this project is becoming an exploration of my everyday life. My photos come more from the things around me than they do from my attempts to branch out into the world in the name of photography. For the most part, I think this is a good thing. This is more in line with my goal, which is to be able to see the world around me more photographically. Though, that being said, I do want to also explore more beyond what is naturally around me and find new things that I would haven’t experienced otherwise.

The second shirt comes from RIPT Apparel and is called “Doctorama.” This shirt isn’t specifically a Doctor Who shirt, but it does feature four of the doctors along with a mess of other famous pop culture doctors. It’s pretty great and the best part is that they are all presented as Futurama-styled heads-in-a-jar. The only thing I don’t like about the shirt is Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory. I could do without him.

The last photo is of my sister-in-law who hates when I take photos of her. Naturally, this means I try to take as many as possible. This one was at a big family dinner at my wife’s parents’ house. They were sitting on stools next to each other and she put her head on my wife’s shoulder for moment. I happened to have my camera in my hand already and snapped the shot real quickly.

If you had asked me a year and a few days ago if I thought I’d ever run a marathon and a half marathon in the same weekend, there’s no way you would have gotten a yes out of me. No way. I wouldn’t have even giving you a yes for running a marathon by itself. But, last year, my wife and I ran the Disney World Half Marathon and spent the rest of our trip in Disney seeing plenty of other people walking around with three medals around their necks, I call them “clankers.” It was at that point that we realized if they could do it, we could do it. It took months and some going back and forth before we finally committed and signed up for the Goofy Challenge, but we went for it.

Now, my wife and I aren’t always the smartest people in the world. We hadn’t run a full marathon at the time and were currently beginning our training for the Philadelphia Marathon, which fell just a month and a half before the Goofy Challenge. That’s not a lot of time to recover from your first marathon and then up the training for an even bigger challenge. But we signed up and booked a trip to Disney, we had to do it…or at least try.

Training didn’t go as well as it could of, in fact, between Philly and Disney, the longest run either of us did was 16 miles. Things could have been worse, but I really didn’t feel like either of us had built up enough stamina for the challenge. Time was hard to come by and the tendinitis that used to be in my left ankle had moved over to my right one, not to mention the fact that my knees hadn’t felt right since Philly. And to top off the fact that we had signed up to run 39.3 miles in one weekend, we also had to have enough left in our legs to walk around Disney for a few days and enjoy a “vacation.”

However, for as stupid as we were in signing up for this thing in the first place, we were smart in setting our goals. This was just for the sake of doing it. We weren’t going to try to run for time and we were going to run both races together. My wife and I don’t normally run races together, so this was going to be new for both of us, but we figured we could help each other through.

Half Marathon

The plan for the half marathon was to take things super slow and just get to the finish without working our legs too much. By this point, we’ve had a few half marathons under our belts and having just spent the last six months training for a marathon, 13.1 miles wasn’t worrisome at all. Plus, we knew the course from last year. Our biggest worry was just trying to keep ourselves slow. Very slow.

We woke up at 2:45am and got ourselves ready and out the door to catch the bus over to the start area. The weather was chilly, and still getting colder, but we knew it would be like this from last year. As we made our way over to our starting corral, we tried to prepare ourselves mentally for what we were about to start. We had no idea how our bodies were going to respond to such a goofy challenge.

The race kicked off with a blast of fireworks and we were on our way, trying to keep a slow pace. The start was very crowded and trying to find our own space to run wasn’t easy. On top of that, I had to pee right off the bat. I stopped at a porta potty and told my wife to continue without me, I’d catch up. This seemed like the longest pee of my life as I stood there thinking about how much extra energy I was going to burn trying to catch up to my wife. As soon as I was done, I sprinted down the course to catch up to my wife. The people around must have thought I was an idiot running that fast that early in the race, but since I’m used to running a half marathon at a pace three or four minutes per mile faster than we were planning on doing, it wasn’t a problem for me to run at my normal pace to catch up. In fact, my legs loved it, they wanted to keep it up, but I didn’t give in. I caught up to my wife and we continued on our way.

From there, we spent most of the race just trying to slow ourselves down. No matter how much we tried, our pace kept creeping faster and we’d have to make a strong effort to slow ourselves. down. The worst area of the course for this, without a doubt, was Magic Kingdom. This is the most exciting part of the course. There’s a ton of energy as you come down Main Street, through Tomorrowland and Fantasyland, and through Cinderella’s Castle. We picked up a little speed, but for the most part we were able to keep it under control.

After Magic Kingdom, the half marathon course gets pretty boring for a while. You run down a back street and a highway for a while as you make your way back to Epcot. We lost a few minutes when my wife needed to take a quick bathroom break in one of the porta potties, but she was quick. As we made our way into Epcot for the last mile, things felt pretty good. Once the finish line was in site, we grabbed hands and crossed together at 2:15:54. Almost a minute per mile slower than my wife’s slowest time, so we were both feeling pretty good and knew we hadn’t burned up too much energy or stamina.

Marathon

The marathon, the biggie. With just one marathon under our belts, we didn’t know how we were going to hold up through 26.2 miles after having put 13.1 miles on our legs just 24 hours prior. Again, we got up around 3am to make our way over to the starting area. The temperature was a little bit warmer feeling, but not by much. We sat for a few minutes in the corral to rest our legs while other runners were stretching and warming up. Saving the energy seemed more important than anything else at this point. Since I moved back to start in the C corral (there were eight total corrals) with my wife, we had a bit of a walk anyway when it was time for our corral to move up to starting line so that served as our warm up.

This time when the race started, we tried to take it even easier. We were on the other side of the road this time which had a little more room on it. I, again, had to stop and pee within the first mile, but this time I didn’t use a porta potty, I just ran off into the woods. Unlike for the half marathon, I didn’t burn energy sprinting back up to my wife. I picked up my pace a little and just slowly and steadily caught back up to her.

The marathon course quickly differentiates itself from the half marathon by taking runners right into Epcot after just a couple miles. At this point, my wife needed to make her first bathroom stop. There was a bit of a line this time, but again, she was quick in there and we were on our way having only lost a few minutes.

We entered the park at the front and ran around Spaceship Earth with the course separating into two halves, allowing runners to go down either side. From there, the course makes a left turn into the World Showcase and exits down a back road just after passing Mexico. After exiting around the back, the course loops back around near the starting line, which was already halfway broken down, and heads towards Magic Kingdom on the same roads the half marathon comes back on. Instead of going to the right of the Speedyway, though, the full marathon took us along the left. This section, between Epcot and Magic Kingdom, is a bit boring, but Disney tries to keep an ample amount of entertainment going on the sides of the course.

At this point, we had hit the halfway point for the Goofy Challenge. All downhill from here, or so I tried to reason.

As we made our way towards Magic Kingdom, we were feeling okay, but weary about the big distance between Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom. But for now, we had a good pace going and were just a bit faster than we wanted to be. I feared that coming down Main Street in Magic Kingdom would pick us up a bit more than we wanted, but that was still a couple miles away.

As we made our way towards Magic Kingdom, the course eventually merged back with where the half marathon had taken us through the park. We entered down Main Street and did our best to keep things steady and find our space to run in the massive crowd of runners that bottleneck coming through the park. After following through Tomorrowland, Fantasyland, Cinderella’s Castle, Liberty Square, and Frontierland, we made our way out of the park to the left of Splash Mountain. We escaped without picking up our pace and burning excess energy.

This was the part we dreaded, probably even more than the part of the race after mile 20. This was the start of the roughly six mile trek to Animal Kingdom. This portion of the course doesn’t have much to see other than the few characters Disney had out to take photos with. By the time we hit the marathon halfway point, I was feeling good, but my wife was starting to fatigue. I tried encouraging her as much as I could, but as we kept getting closer to Animal Kingdom, she kept getting more and more worried. As we came along miles 14 and 15, I started to feel some fatigue in my legs, but things were still manageable.

As we started to get closer to Animal Kingdom, some of the animals were out on the side of the course and this started off the boost that we needed from the park. Once we made our way into the park, the energy grew and carried us through Asia and DinoLand USA to the front of the park.

Three parks done and I was actually feeling pretty monster now.

We just had a few miles to go until Hollywood Studios. As we curved around the Animal Kingdom bus stops, we hit mile 17 and then 18 came quickly. By this time in Philly, I was fatiguing hard and working out my strategy to make it to the finish line. I was weighing the best time to drop off from the pacer I was running with and that time happened by mile 18.5. But things were different this time, my legs felt great and I had energy, lots of it. I knew we were approaching the point in the race where things can fall apart in the blink of an eye, but I knew I was feeling good now and that was all that mattered. I don’t know what the time was at this point, but I’m pretty sure by now I had been running for longer (time-wise) than I ever had in my life.

Unfortunately, my wife was not in the same kind of shape I was in. Since running with her is already a much slower pace for me, I wasn’t putting my body through as much, but we were only running a little slower than she’s used to for a long race like this so it was much harder on her body. These were dark times for her. She had a blister on her toe pop that nearly took her down. She screamed in pain and seemed like she was about to throw in the towel. I’ve never seen her in pain like that before, but she soldiered on as I did my best to reassure her that she could and would make it. Still, I could tell that she was tiring quickly. I had been gulping down energy gels and sport beans for the last five miles, but she didn’t want them. By now, I knew she needed something so I convinced her to eat the chocolate gel she had in her SPI belt. With eight more miles to go, I knew it would kick in when she really needed it.

Unfortunately, the temperature was rising quickly now. We had been taking water at almost every stop since the halfway point so we were hydrated enough, but we were starting to feel the effect of the sun on us.

Mile 21 got a bit rough for my wife and she started feeling the need for another bathroom stop. We, luckily, weren’t far from a porta potty and she was able to stop. Now, she was really fighting to keep things going, but once she was able to hit the bathroom, things started to pick up a little for her.

As we turned into Hollywood Studios, we hit the 22nd mile marker, which pretty much marked the homestretch. From now on, the rest of the course was lined with people, no more dead zones.

There was a huge burst of energy as we entered into the park. Both of us sucked this energy in and picked things up massively. We dropped from around an 11:10 mile to closer to an 8:30-9 minute mile. The combination of the bathroom break, the energy gel finally kicking in, and all the energy from the park transformed my wife from struggling to keep it going all to a running machine. She looked fresh, like she had just started the race. As we made our way through Hollywood Studios, we started passing other runners like nobody’s business. Runners that had been near us all race or had passed us a while back quickly ended up behind us.

We both were feeling great and reaping the reward for keeping things so slow in the 35 miles behind us. Hollywood Studios was over in a flash. We entered in the back of the park and ran through part of the Backlot Tour, down Streets of America, up Commissary Lane, and turned right onto Hollywood Boulevard towards the front of the park. After exiting the park, we made the sharp left to head down along the river to the Boardwalk Resort. Again, tons of people lining the side of the course. Things got tight here, but we squeezed our way through.

As we made our way onto the Boardwalk, we had tons of momentum and we were flying as we passed the marker for mile 24. We were almost there and nothing was going to stop us now.

We followed the course back into Epcot by the UK pavilion. All that was left was a lap around the World Showcase and then to make our way to the front of the park. The counties were flying by us and it felt like we were running on fresh legs. By the time we exited into Future World, we’d passed hundreds of runners since marker for mile 22. It was like we were fast-forwarding the end of the race.

Finally, after wrapping around Spaceship Earth again, we could see the finish line. We stopped passing people, grabbed hands, and made our way across the line at 4:58:16. We were only 21 minutes slower than my wife’s time in Philly and considering we had run a half marathon the day before and stopped for two bathroom breaks, that’s not bad.

Overall stuff

The Goofy Challenge sounds intense. And it is, it’s a lot of miles, but what I learned this weekend is that if you take it easy, really easy, you can do it. And you can still enjoy a vacation after doing it. Of all the long races I’ve done (1 marathon and 3 half marathons before this), I felt the best after this. My legs weren’t very sore and my ankles didn’t hurt. I could walk pretty well. My biggest issue after finishing was just that my feet were sore (that continued for two days). Other than that, I really felt great. Even my ankles, which have been constant problems for me for almost a year and a half now, were completely fine. I did some preemptive icing on them right after finishing, but they never started to hurt.

Throughout the course of the rest of the day and trip, I really didn’t feel like I had just run a marathon and a half. I was impressed with us.

For me, the biggest change from any other races I’ve run is just the difference in running at a slower pace. It’s a really different experience. At a 10-11 minute mile, the course is much more crowded. Things only cleared out so much for us throughout the entire 39.3 miles. At any given point, there were always a few people within a 10 foot radius. At a 7-8 minute pace, races are much different, they clear out. Unless you have someone running with you, you’re much more alone, with the nearest people 15-20 feet away from you. There’s also a lot more conversation from the people around when you’re running slower. Maybe it’s because more people run with friends at that pace, but there were groups of people all over the place that seemed to be running together. At this pace, water stops are a complete mess, there are people and cups everywhere.

Additionally, running at a slower pace gives you time to enjoy the course. I’m used to flying through courses as fast as I can while focusing on breathing properly, keeping an eye on the condition of my body, and keeping myself right at the upper limit of a sustainable pace. I don’t normally notice much going on around me aside from what I need to in order to protect my safety. At an 11-minute mile, I was taking in all the things Disney had on the sides of the course. There were dozens of characters out, marching bands, etc. I even got to enjoy the parks in a different way.

I find the Marathon Weekend events to be a great experience from beginning to end. The races are fun and the courses are unlike any other courses you’ll ever run. Not to mention the fact that, despite the races starting at 5:40am, they’re very well organized. The Goofy Challenge is definitely something I want to do again, but I think I’d also throw in the 5k as well. I don’t know if my wife and I want to make a trip down next year for our fourth January Disney trip in a row, but it’s the 20th anniversary of the marathon, so I’d really like to. If she does both races again, I think I’d do them with her again, but if she decides not to do Goofy again, I might try running for a time. Maybe both races in under five hours combined.

The biggest downside to doing something like Goofy is if you’re trying to also do a full trip to the parks as well. You lose a lot of time because of the races. You have to get to bed before the parks even close on both nights and by the time you’re showered and ready to hit the parks after each race, you’ve lost a good portion of your day, especially after the marathon. We thought we could do four days in the parks, including the race days, but we really felt pressed for time. In the end, we did all the highlights and the things we wanted, but adding an extra day would have made the trip more enjoyable as a whole.

Now what

Now, with the Goofy Challenge done and two marathons under my belt, what are my goals? First thing I’m doing is taking a couple weeks off to rest my ankles. They don’t hurt now, but I want to make sure they’re in decent shape. After that, it’s time to start training again. I’ve got the RU Unite Half Marathon at Rutgers in April, but as long as training goes well, I’ll be doing another marathon after that. I’m looking to qualify for Boston in the Spring so I can run next year. It’s going to mean a lot of training, but as long as my ankles feel good in two weeks, I won’t have lost much from where I am right now. If training is going well, I’m going to shoot for a time closer to 1:25:00 at the half marathon and a marathon for May or June.

Running the Boston Marathon is my main goal right now, but after I qualify for that, my next goal is to get under three hours. Since I have to run under 3:05:00 to qualify for Boston, getting under three hours, at that point, should be attainable. You’d think.

UPDATE: My wife posted her recap as well.

Already, I can see that some days will be easy and others are going to be a struggle. At least with the struggle days, I’m motivated to get my camera out and try new things. The photos of the rubber duckies and the magazines would have never happened without this project. Some days, I find that I try a bunch of things to get something cool and when I look at the photos on the computer, I have a bunch of photos I really like, in addition to the one photo I pick for the day.

The second half of this first week included a trip to Disney World so that helped make things a bit easier, but because we were making it a short trip, I didn’t have the luxury of spending a lot of time thinking about photos and setting them up. Most of them had to be snapped quickly while running from ride to ride.

Introducing the Kindle Fire as I just have implies that it competes with the iPad, but I would say with some level of confidence that I don’t think it does. And that’s an odd thing because the Kindle Fire does compete with other Android tablets who, in turn, do compete with the iPad. Apple’s iPad represents an end-to-end ecosystem. You buy your hardware from Apple and then Apple continues to be your one-stop shop for music, movies, books, games, magazines, and apps (they are not the only source for music, movies, books, or magazines, but they want to be and they have the ecosystem to pull it off). This is an experience very different from Android tablets where you buy the hardware from one company and get your content from a smattering of other vendors. And this is where the Kindle Fire comes in and bests other Android tablets in a way that only Amazon can pull off right now. It provides the same kind of end-to-end ecosystem that users can get from Apple. This and a $200 price tag are what will make the Amazon Kindle Fire the first truly successful Android tablet (unless you want to include the Nook Color as a true Android tablet).

So yes, on that front, it seems like the Kindle Fire is an iPad competitor, but the difference comes from company philosophy. Amazon is a retailer. They sell you the Kindle Fire very cheaply because they don’t see it as their product, they see it as a conduit through which they can sell you the content and items they already love to sell you. Apple, on the other hand, is a hardware company, they use software and content as selling points to get their hardware into your hands. These different approaches are what really set the two devices apart.

If you keep up with technology at all or read any tech blogs or sites, you already know this and have read it over and over again. But if that’s not you, then this may be the kind of thing you don’t think about. In terms of what I’m going to go on to say, I’m not sure how much it matters, but it is something that’s been in the back of my mind for the past week and a half and it creeps to the foreground almost every time I pick up the Fire.

What good is a Kindle Fire for an iPad user?

Before I go into the device further, frequent readers of this blog may wonder why I would want a Kindle Fire if I have an iPad already. It may appear that I’m an Apple fanboy, as they say. I have an iPad, iPhone, and MacBook Pro. I love these devices and right now, for my money, Apple delivers what I want from a device that I’m going to rely on day in and day out. However, I’m not an Apple fanboy, I’m just an all-around gadget-nerd. As such, I’ve been feeling, for a long time, like it’s ridiculous that there hasn’t been anything Android in my home. I’ve been keeping my eyes on Craigslist for a while, looking for something that was just right to pick up. That something had to be cheap enough that I could justify spending the money since it would be nothing more than a toy for me. The Kindle Fire has been the first good (and not generations old) Android product that has come along with a price tag reasonable enough to justify its purchase.

Additionally, my wife and I share our iPad, but usually I just hog it. She is the one that really wanted it in the first place and I justified our purchase of it by figuring we’d use it enough between the two of us. I never thought that I’d use it for a couple hours a day myself. A second iPad seems like overkill for us, but the Kindle Fire is, again, cheap enough that it makes for a nice complement to our iPad. I can use the Kindle Fire when my wife wants to read on the iPad or bring it into the kitchen with her to read recipes from.

*Note: This thing was a bitch to photograph because of its glossiness, otherwise I would have taken a lot more photos of both the hardware and software. I had to choose between just posting this with what I had or waiting until next weekend when I’d be able to photograph with natural light.

Hardware

For the most part, I like the hardware. It looks like a BlackBerry Playbook and is uninspired in design, but it’s simple all black exterior is aesthetically pleasing. The Kindle Fire feels solid, but isn’t heavy. The weight is nice for holding in one hand and your arm doesn’t tire out as quickly as it does with the iPad.

The 7″ size makes for a completely different physical experience than the 9.7″ iPad. Holding the Kindle Fire feels more like holding a big phone, you can wrap your hand around it. Sometimes, this is really nice and kind of preferred to the larger iPad. Over the last week and a half, I’ve found myself reaching for the Kindle Fire for looking things up while watching TV. It seems well suited to being used as a secondary point of focus while you’re doing something else. In other words, the 7″ size makes it much less of an immersive experience than a 10″ table can offer. Sometimes this is good, sometimes it’s not what you want.

The quality of the Kindle Fire display was surprisingly good to me. It’s decently bright and sharp enough that you shouldn’t have any problems. The colors and viewing angles are good enough that I didn’t take special notice to either one. The only knock against it is its crazy level of glossiness. You can get some serious glare coming off the screen. Plus, it’s a big fingerprint magnet.

Unfortunately, there is no physical volume control, but volume is just a single tap away so it’s tolerable.

While the hardware and design are mostly a positive, there is one insanely stupid aspect to the Kindle Fire. The power button is on the bottom of the device, right where you’ll often have a finger while you’re holding it. Or right where the weight of the device is going to fall when you’re resting it on your chest while laying in bed. I knew this going in, but I had no idea how annoying this would turn out to be. Even after a week and a half, I still find myself hitting this by accident all the time. Sometimes, my finger even holds the button down long enough that I get prompted with the device shut-down dialog. For apps that rotate a full 180°, I turn the device so the button is on the top, but not all apps rotate like that. This was such a stupid design decision that it almost feels as though the person responsible for it should be fighting to keep their job at Amazon.

Software

There are two things worth noting right off the bat before I go on about the software. One, the latest update that Amazon pushed out to fix the big complaints came down automatically for me on the first day and seems to do a decent job of fixing the complaints others have had. The second thing of note, is that I rooted my Kindle Fire two days after opening it. I installed the Android Market and GO Launcher EX. With that being said, my software experience is a little different than most would have, but I bought the Kindle Fire with every intention of rooting it and, when it becomes available in a stable form, installing CyanogenMod on it.

As is very plain to see, Amazon has heavily skinned Android on the Kindle Fire. In fact, they’ve actually completely forked Android, from what I understand. The Amazon skin creates an experience that ties you right into Amazon’s ecosystem. You’ve got all your media front and center and purchasing new content from Amazon is right there. It’s so easy to buy new content that you can almost accidentally do it.

The Amazon skin looks decent enough, but if you want to do anything more than reading or some casual browsing, you may be left wanting more from it.

Amazon’s app store has a decent selection of apps, but I quickly found that many of the apps I immediately wanted to install weren’t there. The Kindle Fire allows sideloading of apps, but I find the process to be a pain in the ass. However, once I rooted the Fire and installed the Android Market, most of the apps I wanted were there and ready to go for me. Unfortunately though, I found some of the apps I wanted were incompatible and could not be installed through the Android Market. Annoyingly, many of them were apps that should be able to run on the Kindle Fire (i.e. they aren’t apps that require hardware the Fire doesn’t have). This was annoying. To this day, I still can’t get the Facebook app to run without crashing at login. Being a primarily iOS user, this whole experience seemed bonkers to me.

The apps themselves are mostly lacking in feel to me. There are many good apps, but it seems that for every app I’ve installed on the Kindle Fire, a better alternative exists for iOS. It may be that I need to spend more time with the Android Market to figure out how to better find the apps I need, but in reality, the big issue seems to be…

The overwhelming majority of Android apps for the Kindle Fire just feel like over-sized smartphone apps. Mainly, that’s because they are just smartphone apps since the Kindle Fire runs off Android 2.3 instead of 3.x or 4.0. This feels like a major problem to me, but again, I come at this with an iOS perspective. The extra physical size over a phone feels wasted without tablet-class apps. On the iPad, developers tailor their apps to make use of the extra screen real estate and it makes the experience substantially better. It’s more engaging and more productive. iPad apps have multiple panes and feel natural to use, these apps just blow everything up as if I’m a senior citizen with crappy eyesight. This is something you will want to keep in mind if you are thinking about a Kindle Fire, you won’t get tablet apps, you’ll get glorified smartphone apps. If that’s not okay with you, you’ll want to look elsewhere, either a Honeycomb/Ice Cream Sandwich Android tablet or the iPad.

I actually almost forgot to even mention the Silk Browser which is designed to offload the heavily lifting of web browsing onto Amazon’s servers. Ideally, this should help pages load faster. In practice, I found page loads to be painfully slow. I’m going to leave it at that.

Performance

For the most part, I’ve found that the Kindle Fire is slightly snappier than I expected. Scrolling isn’t smooth, but it keeps up with your finger and touch response is usually good. That doesn’t come without some caveats though. Zooming in the browser works, but is very jerky and jarring. I’ve also found that clicking URLs, more of than not, takes many taps before doing anything. This goes for all links, even results from a Google search or those from apps other than the browser. I don’t find this same issue when tapping buttons or other elements on the screen. What exacerbates this is that Android and its apps often provide no immediate acknowledgement of your actions. If your action is registered and quickly carried out (in say, less than .5 seconds) , you don’t really notice that much, but when the system takes longer to process what it needs to, you’re left there wondering if your tap was recognized or if the system is just taking a while to work on it. When this happens once in a while, it’s not that big of a deal, but constantly having to guess if my taps are being recognize can be maddening. Some simple indication that your interaction was registered would go a long way.

Overall, the Kindle Fire feels like a car that has plenty of horsepower, but is being slowed down by not having enough air in the tires. If the software cared more about the user experience, the Kindle Fire could be a significantly better device.

Battery life is fine. I can’t say I’ve done any scientific tests, but I’ve only had to charge it three times since I’ve gotten it. It’s not quite as good as the iPad 2, but you won’t have to worry about taking it with you for a weekend trip while leaving your charger at home.

Wrap up

As a whole, the Kindle Fire isn’t a bad gadget, especially for $200. In some ways, the device feels like a low-end product, but for the most part, the Kindle Fire feels like a steal at $200.

The Kindle Fire isn’t an iPad-killer or anything of the sort. As I mentioned in the beginning, it doesn’t really feel like it competes with the iPad. Even though I made many comparisons to the iPad throughout this review, it was mostly to drive home the point that this isn’t iPad competition.

What it comes down to is this, if you want an eReader that you can check email on and occasionally browse the web here and there or read some tweets, this is a must-buy. If you are sure that you only want to consume content, the Kindle Fire is worth a serious look. However, if you at all think you might want to use a tablet to get work done or even use it as your primary browsing/tweeting/Facebooking device, the Kindle Fire is not the right purchase for you. The end result would be a $200 purchase that talks you into a future $500 purchase of a 10″ tablet. If you have been telling yourself that you really “want an iPad,” don’t cheap out and get a Kindle Fire.

I’m happy with my Kindle Fire, but only because I have an iPad 2 for the big boy stuff.

That’s it! That’s all I have to say!

Happy New Year!

The first is titled “The Happiest Place in Middle Earth” and came from The Yetee. Very simply, this shirt combines two things I am a huge fan of, Disney World and Lord of the Rings.

Second, we have a Night Birds shirt from when I saw them in the beginning of this month. I didn’t have much of a choice with which design to go with if I wanted to stay with am SFW one, so I went with the plain one.

Next up, we have “Troy and Abed in the Morning,” from TeeRaiders. This is not my first Community shirt, but I couldn’t resist this one. Unfortunately, TeeRaiders prints their shirts on Gildan Heavy Cotton which kind of sucks, but at least their shirts are only $10.

Fourth, is “The Original Zombie Walk” from TeeFury. I already have a ton of zombie shirts and generally try to hold back on buying more, but a 5k inspired one (even if it’s specifically a walk and not a run) nicely set itself apart from the others out there.

Lastly, we have “Tennant’s Timepiece Repair” from ShirtPunch. I couldn’t hold back on wearing this shirt a few weeks ago so I snapped a few quick photos on my phone which is why these are of lower quality. Anyway, this is my first Doctor Who shirt, but I can already say it won’t be my last as I have another one on the way. Somehow, I’ve yet to post anything around here about Doctor Who, but it’s something I’ve gotten myself very obsessed with over the last few months. I got into it at the end of the Summer and blew through the Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Doctors pretty quickly. Now I’m working on Torchwood and then I plan to start with the First Doctor and move my way up from there. My wife hates how into this I’ve gotten. But, back to the shirt. I chose this as my first because it showcases my favorite Doctor (so far), David Tennant, plus it’s a design that keeps a good sense of humor is doesn’t scream “Doctor Who” to those who aren’t into the show.

My wife had suggested getting headlamps last year, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Unfortunately, this year, we’ve got too much training to do to ignore the problem. I spent some time trying to pick out the right headlamp for me, but the idea never seemed right to me. I can’t imagine running with something on my head like that and I couldn’t find one online that didn’t have almost as many negative reviews as it did positive ones. While much of the negativity for the better overall rated headlamps seemed to be somewhat subjective and a matter of preference for the reviewer, I couldn’t help feeling that I would run into the same issues.

Enter Knuckle Lights!

Knuckle Lights take the idea of a headlamp and run with it (pun intended), while trying to improve on the idea. Instead of having a single light on your head, they move the light to your hands. One in each hand. Knuckle Lights are specifically designed for runners, whereas most headlamps are more general purpose or more geared toward hiking.

I decided to give these a try, they seemed to be the best option for my wife and I so I bought us each a pair ($40 each). I was impressed by the free shipping which got them to us in two days (via USPS, nonetheless). When the lights showed up earlier today, I opened up the box and found that not only did we get the lights, but they also threw in two stickers, two reflector strips, and two red flashing clip-on reflector light dealies. Not bad.

Since I was scheduled for a run today anyway, I grabbed them and ran right out the door to give them a try. I purposely ran past my normal nighttime loop and down a dark road that I would normally never run down at night. I quickly found that while the Knuckle Lights didn’t provide massive amounts of light, they certainly provided enough light for comfort. The lights provided me with about ten feet of good visibility in front of me. Not a lot, but enough that you can run safely. From the perspective of an oncoming car, I’m sure they could see me quite a ways away, as well.

If you take a second to head over to their site, you’ll see that the makers of Knuckle Lights mention the wide beams over and over to try to convince you that the motion of your hands won’t cause the light to be all over the place. I have to admit, this was a small concern of mine, but they were right, you don’t see the light bouncing all over. You can see the movement of the lights in your peripheral vision, but that’s it. In front of you, the light appears steady and unmoving as long as you have both lights turned on. Completely distraction-free.

Something I didn’t think about beforehand, but I quickly realized while using the Knuckle Lights was that having two separate lights that could move independently of not only each other, but also your eyes and head is extremely useful. You don’t have to move your whole head to light in a slightly different direction. As I was running by cross-streets, I started pointing one light down the street so that any cars coming down could see me easily. I kept the other light forward so I could still see where I was going. I also found it useful sometimes to point one light down as I was running over sections of sidewalk that were in extra bad shape. This allowed me to place each step strategically to not trip while also allowing me to keep an eye on what was coming up.

The biggest issue I have with running in the dark is with the headlights of oncoming cars blinding me. Knuckle Lights can’t stop that, but I found that the effect was greatly reduced. I could look down and away from the light, but still give myself at least a little light to be able to see where I was going.

My biggest concern with the Knuckle Lights before buying them was having to have them in my hands, but in reality, I didn’t find that to be an issue for a single second. The lights are very light and they strap onto your fingers in such a way that you barely even notice them. Once you put them on, you don’t have to actually hold them, they just stay there. They’ll work over gloves or mittens as well.

All in all, I think Knuckle Lights are well worth the $40. They’re not going to light up the entire road in front of you or impress you with their brightness, but they will give you enough light to not only allow you to run at night, but also make you feel comfortable with running in the dark. They’ll also make you very visible to cars, which is important. They’re easy to use and aren’t annoying. I can’t compare them to using a headlamp because I’ve never used one before, but I have no doubt that these are a much better option.

For most of us, it’s normal to shift focus to different interests and sometimes some interests take a backseat to others. For the majority of this year, running and wedding-related things have been the main focus, but with the wedding a few months past now, I want to get back to my camera.

In the past, I’ve taken photos when I’ve had things to take photos of. I want to change that and start taking photos because I want to take photos (which I do want to do). There are millions of things around to make photos out of and thinking that there is nothing shouldn’t be an excuse to not take photos.

I should have subjects because I want to take photos, I shouldn’t take photos because I have subjects.

So I’ve decided that to force myself to start looking for things to take photos of instead of waiting for them to come to me, I’m going to do a photo 365 project for 2012. I’m going to produce at least one presentable photo everyday. I’ve already got a few ideas for weekly themes, but I’m not going to limit myself or force myself to always have a theme. The photos can be of anything that strikes my interest.

This project is going to be mainly about two things. The first is developing my skills so that I can produce photos worth sharing on any given day and without having to take dozens or even hundreds of shots to get that photo. I want to teach myself to take the time to set up shots and think about what I’m trying to capture instead of just firing away. I’m looking to spend less time taking snapshots and more time making photos. The second thing I’m going for is learning to see the world around me from the eyes of a photographer. I want to get better at looking around and seeing the beautiful things that are worth photographing. I want to take notice more.

In reality, I’ll probably end up with a lot of photos of my cats and various things around my home or my desk at work. A large portion of the photos will probably be from my iPhone instead of my DSLR as well, but considering how great the iPhone 4S camera is, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

My plan, at least as I see it now, is to post my photos daily on Twitter, Flickr, Google+, and maybe Facebook or Tumblr. At least as much as I can. Then, I’ll do a weekly post here with my photos from previous week. I may also join 500px and post to Instagram as well to round it all out. We’ll see. I’m hoping that I can make pretty good use of If This Then That so I can just upload once and have the photo automatically posted everyone. Additionally, I’m planning to finally build out the photography site that I wanted to do a year ago, but that won’t be right away. I’ve been paying for the domain for over a year now, but I never got around to actually building the thing. Part of the problem was a lack of having content to start out with, but I think I’ve got enough photos of bands and such to get started.

Anyway, look for that coming on 2012. I’m hoping I actually stick with it.