J . M A I L

Tom Bihn Aeronaut Review +

I thought it was time to post a review of a recent purchase, the Tom Bihn Aeronaut Bag, finally I think I have enough experience to post something of use, here goes…

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Description:

The Aeronaut is hard to categorize: Is it soft luggage? A duffel bag? Or a backpack?

The Aeronaut is all of the above. It takes the best of all of those bags and combines them into what may be the most versatile travel bag yet. A maximum carry-on size bag, the Aeronaut converts to be carried as a backpack with zip-away backpack straps

• Exterior made of U.S. 1050 denier Ballistic nylon: twice the abrasion resistance of 1680 denier fabric
•  Lined with Ultra-lightweight yet tough Dyneema/nylon ripstop fabric, made for us in Japan.
•  Meets most non-commuter domestic airlines’ carry-on size standards as well as many international carry-on standards, including Heathrow
• Overall dimensions: 22” x 14” x 9” / 555 x 355 x 230mm
• Volume: 45 liters (2700 cu. in.)
• Weight: 2.71 lbs / 1230 grams

http://www.tombihn.com/page/001/PROD/500/TB0906

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Let me start off with the obvious, this bag is not cheap. At $240 dollars without the shoulder strap and $30 dollars shipping this is not a cheap piece of luggage. 

- not me (but posted for visual size comparison)

What you are getting for this price is what I believe is one of the best carry on bags available today. I have so far taken this bag to Vancouver, Scotland, Italy, and the Netherlands (all carry on) using Air Canada, BMI, Ryan Air, and Easy Jet airlines with no problem and testing each airlines baggage restrictions racks at the airport with this bag.

This bag fits pretty much every airlines carry on limit on the planet due to the fact of its particular size and the fact that it is not a rigid bag. However, I did see one airline in Rome with a weight limit of  7 kg which I had never heard of before and I really doubt this bag would fit within their baggage limit, that said I doubt I will ever fly with this no name airline.

I started looking for a new piece of luggage  while thinking about switching my traveling style to carry on baggage only. It is just so much simpler to fly with carry on bags only, in so many ways that I don’t have to explain.

After searching the web and talking to a few people I realized one bag/no wheels luggage was the way to go. A bit of google searching and I found this bag based on a number of glowing reviews. I now have to agree with all the praise this bag gets. It is pretty much perfect.

To begin with… the size is perfect, as big as possible but not so big that you can’t carry on airlines like Ryan Air or EasyJet (the cheap euro airlines).

The convertible hideaway backpack is awesome. No, it is not the best backpack in the world but it is fine for a day walking around the streets of Rome with a full weeks of clothing in it without too much discomfort.

The $30 dollar addon shoulder strap is probably the best strap I have ever used and likely the best anywhere due to the stretchy soft material used that you kinda have to try to understand what I mean. 

The material of the bag is top notch, basically bomb proof. It seems more durable than my Chrome Messenger bag as comparison.

Handles on the bag are where you need them when you need them and the bag is pretty good looking to boot.

I probably won’t go for anything smaller than this bag though as I found I wanted as much space as possible to make week long trips possible, which is very possible with this bag.

The duffle bag design is great. One big main pocket and the two side pockets divide everything logically and well. Making this even better are the optional packing cubes Tom Bihn sells to match the bag.

I decided to go for the two end cubes and one large cube and two small for the main compartment and am very very pleased with them. They make packing and unpacking amazingly easy… its actually pretty unbelievable to how awesome they are as the are so simple in concept but that concept works and works well.

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So I have described the basic parts of this bag but really the take away point is that this is probably the best carry on bag on the planet for trips up to a week long. One bag / no wheel travel is the way to go and there is a lot more information about this on the web one can easily find using google.

This kind of luxury does not come cheap at over $300 US fully loaded but I expect this bag to outlast me and I really like to support hand made locally (Seattle) craftman type products made by people who really care about what they do. The attention to detail and thought put into this bag really shine through.

To go along with bag I also purchased the Arc Teryx Cierzo 25.

At $80 dollars it is probably not worth the cost but at 415 g it is super super light and folds down to almost nothing (made of 100-denier nylon) making it an ideal companion to the aeronaut.

I use it as my day trip bag that so that I can leave the Tom Bihn where I am staying when I travel. This bag is a bit overkill for the purposes of a day bag but it performs well and is fairly comfortable.

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Overall scores according to me:

Tom Bihn Aeronaut :      5 / 5 

Arc’teryx Cierzo 25:      4 / 5

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Let me know if you have any questions about either bag and I will do my best to answer them.

The era of watches: time is ticking down

Just had a thought… is the era of watches slowly coming to end? Now obviously clocks are not going anywhere, they are great on the walls of the gym, the walls of classroom, the train station, the airport, while scuba diving, ect … But personal time pieces worn on the wrist seem to be less and less noticeable on people in their 20’s.

Growing up I was really into watches. It seemed like something everyone wore. Watches seemed like they were maybe the only truly accepted piece of male jewelry. However, the rise of cellphones has basically brought this to a halt.

Cellphones have seemly made wrist watches redundant. What I am thinking is that as all these 20’s enter into their 30s they still won’t be wearing watches except on formal occasions. I don’t see the younger generations really getting into watches except for maybe those cool japanese wrist watches, yet even those seem less popular then they once were.

In 20 years time will no one be wearing watches??? What do you think?

WebLog Reboot

I did some house keeping on my blog recently, getting rid of a lot of the older posts and trying to leave just the ones that were heavily accessed via google searches and those which have some useful computerish/jonish information in them.

I decided to clean up and “professionalize” the content of my website a bit so that I could link it to my lab’s website : http://innovis.cpsc.ucalgary.ca

Soon I will have an expanded research section of this website detailing what I have worked on, what I am working on, and what I see myself working on in the future.

I know a lot of the content I have written in the past has perhaps been too personal to share as openly as I do so going forward I will try to focus my writing to things I wouldn’t mind anyone in the world reading. Maybe I should have done this long ago but at least I am doing it now.

In Jon related news, my apartment is now furnished with only a few more things to be built. I have a guestroom so please come and visit me and you will have an awesome and private place to stay.

I leave for Salt Lake in two weeks and still have a lot of work to do on my poster but as the time gets nearer I get more and more excited to get away and soak up my first real conference.

Also this week I am going to a surfnet workshop two day event held at the University of Calgary. I am trying out a new presentation style in which I will deliver a 60 second slide show containing 60 slides (1 slide / second). I am hoping it will be funny and interesting. Fingers crossed. There is an award being given out for best minute long presentation that I hope I will be in the running for.

So that’s what is new. I am super busy with school these days. Work is piling up and yet I am still trying to have fun when I can. I will try to update this blog more and will really especially try to update during VisWeek in Salt Lake.

Till then…

Art Interactivity

I have been thinking about an exhibit lately focusing on touch interactivity, audio prompts, and visual reveals.

The idea is pretty simple, a show case of different interaction metaphors which each reveal a visual piece of art or info-graphic. Leveraging iPads as the interaction canvases different interaction methods would reveal related work.

For example…

A pair of headphones is attached to one of the screen mounted on the gallery wall. When a person places the head phones on they hear the beating of a human heart. At first all that would be seen on the display would be the icon of a heart and a red circle. When a person taps inside the circle in time to the heard beat on the audio track the circle would slowly turn green indicating progress of the interaction (red - green traffic light progression). After a set number of correct taps in the right rhythm an info-graphic would be revealed above the interaction space of the canvas.

This sort of piece would invite the audience to play with the piece, discover the interaction naturally through visual feed back and transition an audio cue, to a touch interaction, and ultimately to visual reveal/reward. Such a piece would also invite other on lookers to observe the participant using the piece and study the interaction required to “unlock” the work.

Other such interactions could include having one hand of the participant move one touch point up and down and one touch point left to right using the other hand of the participant to reveal the work.

E.G.

I envision maybe 5 - 6 different interaction metaphors making up the exhibit, each interaction inviting trial and error, playfulness, observation, and discovery.

Let me know what you guys/girls think of this and if you might like to be involved. If you think this is just crazy let me know that to. :)

Acer 1830T First Benchmarks

Battery life via windows (everything at default)…

Internals of the 1830t.

My old computer benches at (Core2 Solo U35000 @ 1.40 ghz / 3 gigs of ram / mobile intel 4 series express):

But check out the 1830t:

Check out how the ssd in the old computer crushes the new one.

The cpu score with the i3 is over double that of an su3500.

Faster memory. Better graphics. Am I sold? I don’t know yet.