It's Steve (now in blog form)

Screw that 25 Things About Me nonsense. What are your 10 favorite gadgets and why?  (All of the gadget dorks just had minor aneurisms at the prospect of choosing).  Start with your favorite and work down.

1. Casio Exilim 10MP Camera – I love my digital camera.  10 megapixels? Yup.  Small enough to stick in my pocket?  Yeah.  Special setting that waits until the subject smiles before going off? Bet your ass.  At less than $200 you just can’t beat this thing.
2. Philips 50″ plasma HD TV – My giant TV is an endless source of pride/joy.  It also gives me a distinct technological advantage when I play online multiplayer Call of Duty.  An example:
   

   Kid to me: “Dude! How’d you shoot me from all the way over there. I couldn’t even see you!”
   Me to kid: “I have a giant hi-def plasma.”  
   Kid: “That sucks!”  
   Me: “Sucks to be you. I’m an adult and can buy stuff like this.” 

3. 13″ MacBook – The MacBook is a great device.  You can immediately tell that the hardware and software were designed to work together from the get go.  Makes me super happy.
4. Xbox 360 – After a hard day at work, nothing helps me relax like a cocktail and blowing up strangers on Xbox live.  The 360 is a well designed machine if you don’t mind massive heat generation, an incredibly noisy fan, and the occasional red ring of death.  Actually, it’s a terribly designed device.  It’s also really fun when it’s working properly.
5. Blackberry Bold – A haiku:
   

   Oh, Blackberry Bold
       You give me joy and sore thumbs
   Red light blinking bright

6. DVR – I have the generic DVR available through my cable provider.  It’s not a great example of the category, but DVR’s are freakin great.  I no longer watch any commercials, ever watch live TV, or associate shows to a particular network.  I’ve made the jump mentally to content existing as stand alone elements outside of any sort of continuous time stream.  It’s great if you’re not an advertiser or network.
7. iPod Shuffle – If my Shuffle was any tinier I’d have to have smaller fingers.  Great piece of gear given how much I’ve been traveling over the last year.
8. Network Attached Storage – I have a terabyte of storage on my home network.  I remember being about 12 and talking with my friends about how awesome it would be to have a whole terabyte to ourselves.  In retrospect, we were huge dorks.  
9. HP Mini 1000 – I really like netbooks.  It’s the missing link between my Blackberry and MacBook.  Even cooler since I got it running Linux.
10. Garmin Nuvi 350 GPS – I have no sense of time, social appropriateness, or direction.  GPS helps with the getting lost all the time at least.  When all else fails and I’m completely lost the “Home” button is a life saver.  Way better than calling the wife and asking her to get on mapquest.  ”I’m lost and don’t know where I am!!”

I was in Paris a few weeks ago for a conference and hadn’t gotten around to writing it up yet. Ben is asleep, Kim is out with her mother, and I’ve had a couple of cocktails so here are some random thoughts about my last trip to Paris.

I really like the Louvre- It is in no way an overstatement to say that the Louvre may be the best museum in the world.  From the architecture of the building itself to the collections, it is just incredible.  I’d been there before, but this time I made a point to check out some parts of the museum I’d never visited.

The Louvre was originally a fortress that was eventually modified into the structure that it is today.  There is a path to the lower levels that include some of the original donjon and the only remaining portion of the medieval complex.  They were uncovered during excavation to put in IM Pei’s pyramid in the courtyard.

I also made it to the Egyptian area.  Some of this really struck me.  How can you not like a culture that would sculpt happy/hungry hippos in a variety of colors?

They also have an impressive collection of Egyptian sarcophagi.  I’d not seen them displayed in a line like this with the lids before.  The interesting part is that a number of the lids were decorated on the inside.  That just seems like a practical consideration from a people that gave a lot of thought to the afterlife.

The Middle Eastern room was really something to see.  The corridor leading into it was amazing and I really like the happy Iranian.  Sadly, my picture of Hamurabi’s code failed to come out. Damn.

I was the biggest dork in France- In a land known for their abiding love for Jerry Lewis, I may just be dorky enough to develop my own French following.  I certainly made a valid try at it while I was in town.  I went on a Segway tour of the city on Sunday and it was amazing.  If you go to Paris, look up City Segway Tours.  Here’s their card.

Segways are great.  Over the course of about four hours on a very cold morning we covered a ton of ground.  Our guide would give us a bit of the history and then we’d zip off to our next destination.  The key to effective Segway driving, according to our guide, is watching out for the four P’s: people, poles, poop and poodles.   It was cold and snowing a bit, but I’d absolutely do it again in a minute.  This is my new favorite way to see a city.  Here are some of my best around Paris.

Check out all of my Paris pics here.