This was another great weekend.

On Friday night my cousin came to Astoria and we went out for some drinks at a nearby lounge. Since the place makes very good frappés (so very few places here do), I got one. Usually getting one at 11PM means that I will be up until 2-3AM, but this time I was coding all night until 6 in the morning. After only 4 hours of sleep – my cousin stayed over and had to leave before noon – I went back to coding until the evening. So yeah, a productive day (and night).

Spent the Sunday with the girlfriend: had brunch in the city, went to see West Side Story, then an exhibit on Tutankhamun, ended with romantic dinner at a wine&chocolate bar. I took some pics with my phone, but the combination of iPhone camera and low light resulted in some very heavy noise. I salvaged a couple using some filters from Lightroom and they’re up on facebook.

Sometimes last week – while looking for a beter RSS reader for my phone – I found a little app called Reeder. I had previous attempts with reader apps but none of them were really usable – their sync with Google Reader was spotty at best. Until I found this.

Reeder is so good, it changed my commute. Before I used to listen to music or read a book on the subway, but these days I sync it in the morning and read all my feeds on the way to work. Star the ones I find interesting for further study and when I’m back above the ground, another sync and it’s all in my account. I used to check out my feeds at work – took a good chunk of time, too – but now I do it on my phone, even when I’m at home. The interface is so much better – in Google Reader I either read all feeds expanded (which takes a lot of time) or have it as a list (which is hard to read for 20+ posts) – while Reeder’s list view and touch scrolling is perfect. It also integrates with Instapaper – another recent discovery – and has sharing and emailing links built-in.

Basically, if you’ve got an iPhone and have RSS feeds, get this. It’s so worth it.

It has been a busy week…

After a long-awaited Memorial Weekend (= 3 day weekend, for my non-US readers), I started a very “social” week, with outings on every single night.

On Wednesday I met up with a friend that just got back from Boston and got me a new camera case (thanks, Angela!). We both have the GF-1 – I was the one who pitched it to her – and she knew I have a makeshift case (it’s actually a mini video recorder case) so she got me something more fitting. Earlier that day I had a long discussion with Mihnea about lenses (now I finally understand what all those numbers mean) and that made me very eager to get some more. I guess my next purchase will be a 14-45

On Thursday after work I met with a romanian friend that was passing through New York for a couple of days on her way back home. We never met before, but my father knew her mother and through some intricate stageplay we became friends on Facebook. I took her to Shake Shack for some “authentic” New York burgers. She loved it.

Friday was great – for two reasons: one, through some unexplained miracle, my company decided to give us summer Fridays (from now till Labor Day) which means from now on we’ll bounce at 3PM on those days. Second reason was the fact that Roxana and Slava finally tied the knot – legally at least, the ceremony and everything will take place in France at the end of August. Therefore we had a small party to celebrate – on a downtown rooftop – so make sure you check out the pictures.