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I doubt there’s anyone who reads this who did not know that Teri and I went to Hawaii at the end of August. The lure of $10 roundtrip air fare and a free condo stay were hard to resist, especially compared with the other option we were considering: the dark wet Highlands of Scotland.

We flew to the Big Island where we spent a week touring around the island, spending most of the time in Teri’s parents’ Kailua cond but also with one night in Hilo so that we could check out the volcano at our leisure. After that we took an inter-island plane to Maui where we spent four days in a hotel exploring the area around Lahaina.

We did way too much to list it all here but some highlights:

• awesome sunsets
• delicious Mai Tai’s
• gorgeous beaches
• Kilauea
• Maui Ocen Centre
• standing at the southern most point of the USA
• and of course spending time with my sweet wife

There are a lot of photos to look at but all the ones I took are in my Hawaii 2009 Collection on Flickr. Teri has been uploading hers to Flickr also but she is not complete yet, I will post her link when she is done.

Mahalo.

I’m usually pretty slick when it comes to making travel bookings, I love sniffing out the best deals, playing websites against each other, trying out all the possibilities. But I’ve made a small boo boo for our trip to Hawaii in a couple of weeks.

I was looking for a car rental for the week we are on the Big Island and found a good deal with Enterprise for a convertible but their office is not open when we arrive from LA. So I figured we’d pick it up next day but at the last minute thought about checking Hotwire to see if I could get a better price. I put in the times and it came up with an even better rate for the Convertible so I booked it – score!

But it wasn’t with Enterprise like I was expecting, it is with Alamo which is absolutely fine except that their office is open until midnight. I could have booked the car pickup for when we arrive – no need to cab it to our condo and then back to the airport. For an extra $35 we could have had it from hour 0.

Grrr… I hate it when I screw up.

Make sure you are watching with the HD option on for best viewing. Click on the Back to San Diego Zoo link below the video to see a larger screen version.

Bunch of things I’d like to take lessons in although, thanks to my lazy-ass self, almost certainly won’t.

• Spanish
• The Mandolin (yes I still have it)
• Professional video editing
• Argentine Tango

Huh, thought this list was longer when I started it.

My apartment in San Diego is quite close to the San Diego Zoo and now the zoo is open until 9pm at night, plenty of time to take a visit after work (we have annual passes). I took a trip and made a couple of videos, more to come over the summer.

San Diego Zoo Part 1 from Paul Sanders on Vimeo.

San Diego Zoo Aerial Tramway from Paul Sanders on Vimeo.

You can get a larger version of each video by clicking on the link beneath each clip.

I’ve been using the iMapMyWalk application on the iPhone to record my walks. I’m sure there are very many of these things for the iPhone but this one seems to do all that I need. It can visually, and orally, show you the mileage, time elapsed, current and average speed.

To ensure GPS coverage I’ve been carrying it in my hand whilst I walk which no doubt makes me look like a prat but I figure it needs to see the sky. Battery life goes down quite quickly if you are listening to music at the same time though if you are out walking for 4 or 5 hours then you probably have something more professional to track your activity than this.

When the walk is over you can hit a button to upload your walk to the main site, and it will record the route, elapsed time etc and from there you can view it or share it on your blog like this:

They also have mapmyride, mapmyrun etc but they are all the same.

Summer is here and yes it’s pretty hot outside and only going to get worse but the biggest annoyance to me is the water. You can’t get cool water out of the tap any more. Want a glass of water? The stream will start cool but by the end of it you’ll be drinking luke warm water. Ick.

But it’s not just drinking water. This morning I was at the mall, using the gentleman’s facilities when I was aware of this hot blast of air on my tender behind. Yes, even the water in the toilets is hot, giving out a warm air onto your nether regions. Now I can’t say that it was unpleasant but not something I am used to.

Now back to the sofa and a fan….

So with the third incarnation of the iPhone I think we are about to see the start of premium applications that do much more than wrap an internet service in a cool u/i, or play a dozen different fart sounds. Most importantly they aren’t going to cost $1.99, no sirreee.

The most touted premium app is most definitely turn by turn navigation and, in particular, Tom Tom for the iPhone. But already there have been a couple of navigation apps that have beaten Tom Tom to the punch. The interesting thing about these apps is the price: Gokivo may only be $1 to buy but if you want turn-by-turn that’s going to cost you $9.99 a month. Yes, a month, or $120 a year! I’ve been a big fan of the Navigon GPS units and they too have an app for the iPhone, only in Europe right now. Navigon’s Mobile Navigator costs the equivalent of $104 to buy.

Are we ready to spend this much on an iPhone app, no matter how good or useful? The argument I read is that the GPS companies have to make up for the fact they aren’t getting and hardware revenue. But I’d make the argument that I’ve already paid for hardware, why should I be paying “again”? And is $10 a month worthwhile for an app that I generally might only find truly useful 2-3x a year – most of the time I know how to get home.

I suspect most iPhone owners will be horrified when they realise how much these things are going to cost but, like any Apple product, they’ll pay up in the end. Me? I’m not so sure.

If you’re reading this in RSS land then you won’t have noticed but the ol’ blog has been upgraded to WP 2.8 (which I doubt you can tell from anywhere) and you won’t have noticed we have an all new theme. It’s not quite finished yet, still need to make updates to the sidebar, add some social network icons, flick and vimeo sidebars, things like that. But I like the overall scheme of things. Come back later to see the changes.

So I’m certainly the heaviest I’ve ever been in my life, and most likely the least fit too. It’s time to do something about it. Small steps at first (ha ha, a pun!), going to do some walks here in San Diego in the evening and maybe try to get onto some of our exercise equipment at home (though the 110F temps make that difficult), get some weight off and get into better shape.

Tonight was Walk 1, and you can see the details at this handy map from MapMyWalk.com, great site for mapping out hikes and bike rides. I’m not quite sure how to use it properly yet but I got it close.

There is an iPhone app to go with it that will record everything for me, so I will use that next time.

Just under 2 miles, I’ll grow that to longer and longer as the time goes by. Or give up and embrace my fat self!