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Private Cove in Punta Cana

I just got back from a vacation in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. My girlfriend and I went there for New Years Eve. We stayed at a brand new resort called Chic and it was an overall great experience. After the new year we heard from the other travelers that there was a cove within walking distance of the resort. Being that my girl and I are both into a little adventure, we knew we had to check it out.

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So, we traveled out to see what we could find. We took a sharp right at the beach and walked through lots of garbage and seaweed. It was pretty dirty out there and we were starting to think we were not going to find it. After over 10 minutes of walking on sharp rock rocks in flip flops we came to the cove! There were rocks there to absorb the energy from the waves and that made the water pretty calm and beautiful. There were rocks pretty close to the water so we didn’t get in to swim but walked around and explored the area. It was great to be on a beach alone for a while.

Also, RIP my old Canon ELF that took this video. It was sadly left in my pocket in the resort pool later in the stay. 🙁

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Goodbye Stitcher App

Stitcher AdI have been using the Stitcher app on the iPhone for about 4 and a half years now. Among other things, Stitcher aggregates multiple podcasts into a single place and lets you subscribe and listen to shows back to back like a radio station. I used the app primarily at work just to have something going on in the background throughout the day.

Over the past several months, Stitcher has been steadily increasing their rate and annoyance of ads. There are, of course, ads in each podcast but switcher will also insert its own ads on top of that. It started off gentle enough with a ad here or there between podcasts that could be skipped. Then, I could no longer skip the pretentious Jaguar ads and had to listen to at least 10 seconds. Even that was acceptable to me but now they have stooped to new lows. Without being touched, when the app’s open then mid podcast, it will automatically launch the Apple App store and take be the page of some crappy game. This happened to me 3 times at work yesterday.

Back in 2010, Stitcher was the best (maybe only) game in town for downloading and listening to podcasts without syncing with a PC. Apple would let you subscribe to podcasts but you had to let them sync to your iPhone from iTunes through a computer. It was not a good process at all. Stitcher, however, let me browse, subscribe, and listen to shows from anywhere and that was fantastic.

Now, Apple had separated Podcasts out from the Music app into its own app. I can do all of the things I did with Stitcher but without any additional ads. It was a no brainier.  The only thing I can even think of that I might miss is the news functionality of Stitcher. I never used that though and all it ever did for me was get in the way of my podcasts.

Also, there were some podcasts that were not available on Stitcher, like Bill Burr’s Monday Morning Podcast. Now I have everything I want in a single location and am glad I ditched Stitcher for good.

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The Green Chicago River in Glorious Extra Color

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Went to Chicago again and I realized that I have never seen the river in its yearly artificial green state. We were up there for The Walker Stalker Con, which is a walking dead convention held near O’hare. We got our hands on some free passes from our friend Brandon and decided to make a weekend of it. There were lots of vendors hawkin’ zombie themed merch, but there were also lots of cast members there. You could get your autograph or picture with them for a fee. None of us opted for that but we still got to see them up close, and that gave us as much celebrity interaction as we needed. There were also free Q & A panels that were cool.

After the con, we played with the idea of going to Second City to see some improv, but we were pooped and just ended up calling it an early night at the hotel.  Wouldn’t you know it, a bunch of the cast members from the Walking Dead went to that show and Steven Yeun apparently even went on stage for a bit. That would have been really cool but we missed it. We still had a good time though.

On Sunday, Jesse and Mari Ann dropped me off downtown while I took some pictures of the green river. That was a lot easier and cheaper than paying to park. I didn’t end up using any HDR pictures in my photo 52 project like I wanted to but I say it’s better late than never! I went pretty strong on the HDR effects but I like the way they turned out. I am still learning that balance.