As 2015 draws to a close, I wanted to check back in on the resolutions I publicly made last year. Most were running related, and I made some good progress, while others were more wide ranging and I did well on some there as well. So let’s check in on those I made last year. Increase Speed - My PR in 2014 was a 1:54:00 at the Runner’s World half, and I aimed to best this, possibly even get down into the 1:30:00s.

There are meals in life that are great for many reasons. Sometimes a waiter can stand out as very knowledgeable, or perfectly figure out your likes and preferences and tailor suggestions to you. Other times a setting may make the meal, such as our incredible seafood on the Croatian Island of Hvar under the night sky with the sea breeze drifting in. Sometimes instead the food can speak for itself and be perfection of a specific technique or wildly imaginative.

With all of my software projects I’ve been working on lately, I decided about a month ago to get into some hardware hacking as well. Arduino seemed like the obvious choice due to its fast growing popularity, great support, and the fantastic starter kit. I ordered up the starter kit and over the past month, worked through the 15 sample projects to learn the ins and outs. After completing these, I decided a binary clock would be a cool first self led project.

The East Village of New York is rapidly becoming nirvana for great food, especially international. The Filipino, Mexican, Indian, Japanese, and even Ethiopian options here are top notch. In fact there are so many great options these days, that you can spend a full day sampling just on St. Marks between 1st and 3rd Avenues and only hit a small portion of them. Here are the highlights that should be on your bucket list.

2015 was a deliciously decadent year for me. We explored a huge number of new and new to us restaurants in NYC, had a gastronomic adventure in Portland, Maine, and had a truly epic meal at the Michelin star tasting menu restaurant EIPIC in Belfast. Here are some of the best things I had all year. New York Babu Ji Babu Ji is hands down my favorite restaurant of 2015. Something about the playful menu, delicious dishes, and self serve beer fridge resonated with me and I cannot wait to go back.

As the door closes on 2015 and another opens on 2016, it’s the most magical time of the year, time to plan your races for 2016. 2015 saw the most participants ever in marathons world wide, as well as the biggest increase in half and full marathons ever recorded. While this means there are more great races than ever before, it also means some are harder to get in to and planning a schedule is more important than ever.

“I recently ran across this post explaining how to hack your GoPro camera over wifi and thought it would be awesome to control my GoPro with my Amazon Echo. I imagined being able to set up a home security system that I could control with the power of my own voice. Sadly, GoPro’s “API”, which is really more of a hacked http request, only works when directly connected to the camera via wifi.

I’m a little bit behind pace to finish 100 books this year, but with 80 completed so far, I’d like to share my favorites. My Audible app and Kindle certainly have had quite a workout this year. A long cruise at the beginning of the year, several weekends on the hammock, and more traffic also haven’t hurt. Here’s my full 2015 list on Goodreads Beach Reads The Girl on The Train, Reconstructing Amelia, The Husband’s Secret, and Everything I Never Told You

On an unseasonably warm December Sunday that feels more like September, we decide to take Hershey for a hike at the second closest park to us, Ramapo Reserve right across the county line in Bergen County. https://connect.garmin.com/activity/embed/976348205 The reserve grounds are home not only to the NJ boy scouts headquarters, but also NJ Search and Rescue, and the NJ Trails Conference, so you know the trails are pristine. It also has the most dogs per hiker of any park I’ve been to.

Get ready for a long, nerdy post with lots of coding and even more configuration. Don’t worry, I did it in a few nights, so anyone can. Pretty much every night, my wife asks, is the Nest still on? It’s freezing in here. Due to our setup, and hopefully not sedentary lifestyle, the downstairs Nest often things we aren’t home when we’re on the couch, and goes into a balmy 55 degree away mode.