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.

Reminder, this blog represents my own opinions only and is on no way affiliated with my employer, Audible or Amazon. Still I think these thoughts are pretty common. In 2014, I moved from a software development role on my team to managing it. During the time since, I slowly began to write less code, made a concerted effort to contribute on some projects, pick up bug fixes on critical projects, help with low severity issues, and do some side projects.

2014 was the first year of my newfound hobby of marathon running. Last fall, I ran the New York City marathon and had planned to try to run Philadelphia three weeks later, figuring I’d already be in training shape. When the morning arrived, I decided I was still way too sore from New York to attempt Philly. I pledge to try again in 2015. After running the Belfast marathon in the spring, a race where my goal was to finish without feeling like I was dying, my goal for Philly was to shave some time off my finish time.

I’m not a person who normally feels a need to voice my opinions on anything vaguely political, religious, or generally contentious, but don’t get me started on VIM vs EMACS. However, with the recent rhetoric and what is unfortunately becoming policy regarding refugees, I felt I had to speak out. These are my own opinions and I have no illusions anyone will read this, but I have to get it out.