Comparing the 2015 Toyota Prius to the Brand New Redesigned 2016 Toyota Prius →

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It's been a while (almost a month to be exact) since my last post, but I've been around.  Lately, it's that my 1999 BMW 5.28 iT (wagon) is on it's last leg.  And with that, I'm out with the necessity of yet another car payment.  So with that, here's to 2016! 

Over a gentle drive of 22.5 mostly highway miles, we got a dashboard display of 67.3 mpg. But when you add in a similar stretch of more stop and go driving and some winding roads, our total for 48.8 miles was 57.3 mpg. That's a great number, even if the overall average amount of fuel you'll save over the course of a year with the fourth-gen Prius instead of a third-gen model is negligible. Given 50 mpg combined in the third-gen and an estimated 52 in the new Prius, you'll save around 12 gallons if you drive 15,000 miles a year

Toyota dealerships are giving around $4,000 - $6,000 off the outgoing 2015 model. That's around $65 - $100 a month in savings at 0% APR which they don't offer on the 2016 model.

Essentially, 12 gallons a year which equates to $36 a year at current rates, it's probably best to take advantage of the 2015 deals.  Don't get me wrong, I've always believed in getting the latest and the greatest, and with the new tech in the 2016 Prius, it makes it even more tempting but let's face it; the deals they have going right now are just down right ludicrous.  

A Quick 'Photography Basics 'Run Down

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For everyone that is either receiving or giving a camera for the Christmas / Holiday season, check out Tek Syndicate's great video that covers the main three topics: ISO, Aperture, and Shutter Speed.

You also can't go wrong with Olympus' new OM-D E-M10 Mark II paired with my favorite Panasonic Leica SUMMILUX 25mm f/1.4. Check them both out!

Long Beach Airport Must Allow More Flights →

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Now, a recent recalculation of that formula using the noise production data of today’s quieter jetliners concluded that Long Beach must allow at least 50 flights a day (if demand exists for that many). Under the terms of the Long Beach noise ordinance, airport officials now have less than 30 days to offer nine additional sets of landing and takeoff rights to the airline community. If no such offer is made, the city’s airport noise ordinance will be voided and, at least in theory, the city would have to allow airlines to offer as many flights there as the facility can handle physically.

I hope that JetBlue capitalizes on these slots! Even more so, I hope that JetBlue and the city of Long Beach can agree to have a customs terminal built and begin some awesome Mexico or even Canadian flying!

update: picture of the Airbus A320 that I flew out of Long Beach on the 16th of December 2015 as a Long Beach based First Officer. 

Star Wars: Battlefront Falling Out of Favor Quickly →

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With only a handful of maps and guns to play around with, it's hard not to raise eyebrows at the luxury $50 price tag of Battlefront's Season Pass DLC—with the small quantity of repetitive content on offer drawing some parallels with 2014's Destiny. The key difference here is quality and timescale—Bungie's shooter nailed the gunplay so hard that doing the same thing over and over wasn't galling for many, but Battlefront loses most of its appeal after just one or two hours.

So what is this, then? It's gorgeous and far more fun to watch than play, so it's fantastic for anyone who wants to show off a new telly. Apart from that, it's fundamentally just a very expensive way to immerse yourself in Star Wars. The mileage on this magic will certainly vary, and when it fades you're in for a very boring ride.

After a few matches with friends, it definitely falls off short of what could have been a much better game. I'm already friends move t Call of Duty Black Ops 3 or back to Destiny's The Taken King. Too bad. I still enjoy it a bit here and there but for $59.99 then another $49.99 for the DLC pack, sorry. I'm not buying it.

MLB to Allow In-Market Streaming →

But one smaller issue is being fixed for the 2016 season – MLB will allow fans to stream games in-market. The catches are that only Fox and MLB have reached an agreement (sorry, Comcast), and that you must have an authenticated login to stream the games (sorry, cord cutters).

And yes, the San Diego Padres are finally part of this deal thanks to Fox. Here's the hoping that the team actually gets better. Still disappointed about trading Kimbrel away but the prospects we got in exchange are promising1.

  • Promising that we'll build them up in our farm team then trade them away like every Major League Farm Team to either the Dodgers, Giants, Yankees or Red Sox. We love doing that.↩

    • Dinuguan at Thanksgiving →

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    On Monday’s episode of Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Rebecca cooks a traditional Filipino dish called dinuguan to impress Josh’s family at their Thanksgiving celebration. By the time it came to filming the scene that included eating the pork blood stew, the meal looked more like carnitas than the hearty soul food it was meant to be.

    “The dinuguan had been sitting on set all day in the heat, so it no longer looked accurate,” said episode writer Rene Gube. “I started thinking about whether I’d say so because the props guy was working his ass off, and if I slowed down production, we might run overtime, and it would cost thousands of dollars. But [executive producer Aline Brosh McKenna] saw my face and asked what was wrong. When I told her, she immediately stopped everything and said, ‘It’s done, we’ll fix it.’” This might be perceived as a minor course-correction in other circumstances, but for the Filipino-American actor and writer, it was proof that his bosses are committed to representing Filipino culture authentically on the CW musical comedy — the first TV series to depict Filipino-American family life, with a large Filipino cast of actors, in a single episode. “I was encouraged every step of the way to make it truthful and accurate,” Gube said. “That’s something I’ve never felt the agency to do by my previous bosses.”

    A fantastic episode and more notable that Rene is getting some awesome traction. Seriously, this is what I look forward to on Thanksgiving.

    Catch the clip:

    Ballast Point Acquired for $1B by Corona / Modello →

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    Constellation Brands is officially entering the craft beer category, and in a big way. The Corona and Modelo maker today announced it would acquire San Diego’s Ballast Point Brewing for a whopping $1 Billion.

    San Diego's Craft Beer Companys are being targeted left and right to no surprise. Congratulations on the newly minted billionaire club owners. Alesmith is next I take it.

    Federico's iPad Pro Review

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    From Frederico MacStories' iPad Pro Review:

    This is less of a "just for media consumption" device than any iPad before it. The iPad Pro is, primarily, about getting work done on iOS. And with such a focus on productivity, the iPad Pro has made rethink what I expect from an iPad.

    I've find myself manipulating my iPhone 6s Plus more and more as my main device and have been updating elijahnicolas.com more often than not using only iOS.

    After reading Frederico's awesome review, I find myself intrigued about the future where I used an iPad Pro as my main device.

    Those who will only compare the iPad Pro to a laptop will miss the big picture – this is a large tablet that can be used at a desk and that runs iOS. The richness of the iOS ecosystem is what sets the iPad Pro apart, and the reason why, ultimately, people like me will prefer it over a MacBook. It can be used at a desk, but it's also portable, and it runs iOS.

    This is where I believe he has seen the light as compared to Walt Mossberg's "I'm disappointed in the iPad Pro because it's not a laptop replacement" review. I'm actually disappointed with his review as I expected a more thorough analysis but alas, he just skimmed the top in my opinion.

    If you're going to read other reviews, check out Jon Gruber's Daring Fireball and Rene Ritchie's iPad Pro Preview along with Living With: Day One story on iMore. Macworld also posted a "First Few Hours" review which is worth a read.

    Apple's iPad Pro Beats Last Year's MacBook Pro →

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    The benchmarks speak for themselves. Apple is out pacing Intel's x86 architecture with their own in-house ARM A series build out and it’s really impressive. See for yourself.

    After a very short conversation with my wife, looks like the iPad Pro might be her next machine while I’m still reserving myself for the SkyLake Retina MacBook Pro for gaming and heavy photography processing. Maybe some video intertwined here and there.

    The iPad Pro →

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    The iPad Pro is without question faster than the new one-port MacBook or the latest MacBook Airs. I’ve looked at several of my favorite benchmarks — Geekbench 3, Mozilla’s Kraken, and Google’s Octane 2 — and the iPad Pro is a race car. It’s only a hair slower than my year-old 13-inch MacBook Pro in single-core measurements. Graphics-wise, testing with GFXBench, it blows my MacBook Pro away. A one-year-old maxed-out MacBook Pro, rivaled by an iPad in performance benchmarks. Just think about that. According to Geekbench’s online results, the iPad Pro is faster in single-core testing than Microsoft’s new Surface Pro 4 with a Core-i5 processor. The Core-i7 version of the Surface Pro 4 isn’t shipping until December — that model will almost certainly test faster than the iPad Pro. But that’s a $1599 machine with an Intel x86 CPU. The iPad Pro starts at $799 and runs an ARM CPU — Apple’s A9X. There is no more trade-off. You don’t have to choose between the performance of x86 and the battery life of ARM.

    It's getting to the point that Apple is indeed paving the way for a faster and better experience. If they up the game with iOS X (or whatever they are going to call it) and make it a more viable operating system for the notebook replacement, I can see them conquering the $1200 and lower market segment.

    The only thing that sets me back on making this a replacement laptop is that sometimes, Mac OS X has more to offer in terms of shortcuts and various other apps that are NOT for mobile. Jon Gruber also points out a few short comings on using a keyboard without a trackpad. Funny though, I see my daughter (3 years old) try and manipulate my laptop and her little fingerprints are all over my screen. After some frustrations has set, she turns to me confused.