Month: July 2011

What I saw when I got off the elevator at my floor. I reminds me of some of the better loft-o-miniums I’ve seen in Toronto.

Microsofties get sweet hotel deals from Fairmont. When I was one, I’d get charged something in the mid-$100 range per night where ordinary schlubs would get charged something closer to the mid-$200s or even mid-$300s. I’m now at Shopify, which isn’t a Fortune 50 company buying tens of millions of dollars of hotel bookings, so I don’t have access to The Empire’s hotel booking system. I have to go hunt bargains like a chump again.

A table in the hallway at Hotel FIVE. Right angles are sooo mainstream.

I went bargain hunting a couple of weeks before flying to Seattle for BarCamp. Among the so-so choices that Expedia offered was an unusual little gem: Hotel FIVE. The photos looked intriguing; unlike the others, it wasn’t a cookie-cutter lodging, but something that seemed a little funkier. I like my hotels offbeat (see my writeup on the aLoft in Minneapolis) and I’ve managed to deal with dumps (such as Hotel Cecil, which I called “A dump with a future”), so I said “Why not?” and booked it.

The door to my room.

Hotel FIVE is on the corner of 5th and Blanchard, or as I like to say, “The corner of 5th and Top Pot”. For me, being next door to Top Pot Doughnuts is a big plus. The hotel was close enough to Seattle’s Westlake Station that I instead of taking a cab from the airport, I took the light rail. That’s $2.75 versus about $40 with tip, and given the way traffic can be, it’s almost as fast.

Approaching maximum hipsterness!

The room’s pretty nice. It’s a decent size, with lots of rooms for bags, and if you have one, an accordion. The decor is considerably funkier than Ramada standard; if you changed the colour palette to something brighter with more pink, green and baby blue, it could pass for an aLoft. I can’t remember the last time I stayed at a hotel with hardwood floors. The bedsheets are comfier than you’d expect.

And yes, there’s wifi.

Pretty funky for a recovering Ramada.

There are outlets aplenty, a decent-sized TV (they could stand to add Comedy Central to their cable package), a workable desk and one of those iPhone/iPod docking station alarm clocks. As a Microsoftie and especially as a designated Windows Phone 7 champ, that docking station was useless to me, but as a new iPhone user, it’s now almost a must-have.

There’s a Keurig coffee machine in the room, but I didn’t use it, as Hotel FIVE is across the street from Top Pot, which was my coffee source while I was there.

In case you wake up wondering where you are, just look at the roll-down blind.

Here’s the bathroom sink. I want one of these at home. The bathroom’s nice, but could stand to be better-lit.

I like looking at art when I’m pooping:

Here are the bathroom shelves. The soap’s really good: a lot of people commented on how good I smelled, and I’m sure it’s not just because I was at a conference full of nerds, whom I’ll admit set the bar pretty low.

The room had what I might have to declare as the best damn hotel shower I’ve been in in the past few years. I’m talking better than any Fairmont or W I’ve been to in recent memory. There’s only one way to improve it: it needs actual shelves or someplace to put the shampoo and soap.

One last quibble: the closet is an nook in the bathroom without a door. If you don’t like getting your clothes steamed from the shower, you’re not going to be all to keen on it.

Hotel FIVE has the sort of small but usable gym that you’d expect: a couple of multi-exericse weight machines, an exercise bike, an elliptical machine, a water cooler and TV set.

Expedia got me 5 nights at Hotel FIVE for about $150 a night, and the hotel gave me 5 $20 vouchers for the breakfast restaurant (it’s a “breakfast restaurant” because it closes at about 1 p.m.). The restaurant’s a good deal: nothing’s above $12, and they make a very nice chicken fried steak. It’s staffed by cute women from Capitol Hill who dig accordions, which always gets top marks in my book.

I’m likely to come back to Seattle soon, and I’m very likely to stay at Hotel FIVE again.

Not quite what they meant by “heat stroke”. Found in Monday’s edition of USA Today.

The Checklist

Grill? Check!

Accordion and party-sized Jack Daniel’s? Check!

Go-anywhere stove/oven combo? Check!

Bourbon and favorite draaaankin’ mug? Check!

Death-defying stunt crew, ready to lead their audience in a chant about meat? Check!

Bacon strips? Check!

Documentarians to record this day for posterity? Check!

Shopify guru with emergency equipment at the ready? Check!

Very well then…bring on the VIP guests!

The VIP Guests

On Saturday, the gentlemen from the hit YouTube series Epic Meal Time came to Shopify to do what they do best: cook an epic meat-laden cardiologist’s nightmare of a meal, quaff whiskey and beer in Brobdingnagian quantities, create a ruckus and shoot a video of the proceedings.

If you’ve never seen an episode before, here’s a taste: the Breakfast of Booze episode, which takes the most important meal of the day and turns it into the most important meal of your life, however shortened it may be after eating it:

Epic Meal Time debuted less than a year ago, in October 2010. In their brief existence, they’ve gained a mass internet following. When we walked about town with them as they went to buy supplies for their video shoot, they were stopped several times by fans who recognized them. If you check their YouTube channel, you’ll see that their videos typically have at least 2 million views. Their most-viewed video is the TurBaconEpic Thankgiving episode. Not to be outdone by a mere turducken — that’s a turkey stuffed with a duck, which in turn is stuffed with a chicken — the Epic Meal Timers went all out and created a dish that they described as "a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig". Wrapped in bacon, of course.

In addition to their popular show, Epic Meal Time have a collection of popular T-shirts which they sell through their Shopify-powered store:

The Setup

The Shopify office functioned as their studio, lounge, bar and playground for all of Saturday. In the afternoon, our boardroom functioned as the writer’s bullpen, where they brainstormed and crafted the general arc of this particular episode:

Our kitchen functioned as their prep kitchen (that’s Anna from Shopify; we blurred out the non-bacon ingredients, because we don’t want to give away the theme of the show before it’s released):

…while our roof functioned as the main kitchen. Here’s it is at the start of the afternoon, still pristine and with the camp stove/oven and the first grill in place:

The first grill was completely non-functional, so we went with plan B: a quick run over to Shopifolk Julie’s place to borrow hers. With the backup grill set up, the cooking could begin in earnest (yup, we’re blurring out the food — we don’t want to spoil the surprise):

As for the camp stove/oven, the Epic Meal Time wizards used it to perform their saucery:

The Waiting

While Epic Meal Time videos are typically five minutes or less, it takes hours to prepare an entire zoo’s worth of meat. So we had to kill time while the Epic Cooking Crew did their thing.

The Epic Meal Time crew took to our Nerf weapons like bacon to maple syrup:

Let’s get a close-up look at Harley:

RELOAD!

We threw a little rooftop party:

Muscles Glasses gave our Chief Platform Officer "H-Fizzle" some "bro" pointers. Attention body spray manufacturers: here are your next spokes-bros!

While on the roof, I helped get the Stunt Double Circus performers, who were doing their usual Saturday act on the street below, to get their audience to chant the Epic Meal Time battle cry: "Bacon strips! Bacon strips!"

We played bowling on the Kinect:

Harley indulged in a little Street Fighter:

We made a run to the liquor store:

In the meantime, the cooking crew worked hard into the night.

The Shoot

At long last, the food was ready and now it was time for the final shoot. Our boardroom became the Epic Feeding Trough:

While the arts and crafts section of the show (you’ll have to watch the video when it comes out to get what I mean) was shot in our kitchen:

We got to hang out during the shoots, just as long as we were out of the way and very, very quiet:

The Aftermath

With the shooting completed, there was only one thing left to do: eat their creation! Being Epic Meal Time, they cooked epic amounts of Paleo Diet-friendly food, and there was more than enough for the two dozen people who stuck around. There are three reasons there are no photos of all of us eating:

1. I don’t want to spoil the episode by giving away the theme.
2. I was so hungry (it was 11:00 p.m. before we got to eat) that I couldn’t be bothered to snap photos.
3. We were all so hungry that the way we ate wasn’t very pretty.

In lieu of pics of the dinner, I present the next best thing: the "Friar Tuck" vignette from the cheesy 1960s cartoon series Rocket Robin Hood. It’s pretty much what we looked like:

The Apres-Aftermath

With the shoot completed, the food consumed, the office cleaned and vacated and the Epic Boys showered and de-greased, it was time for a night of celebratory clubbing. Bottle service and Shopify-branded accordion poses for everyone!

Even in the dead of night, in the darkest of clubs, Muscles actually keeps the glasses on:

The Conclusion

We’d like to thank the Epic Meal Time folks for coming down to the office, using our space as a location, feeding us and of course, for using Shopify to sell their swag! It was great hanging and pigging out with you guys.

Keep an eye on Epic Meal Time’s site — the episode shot at Shopify will be up in a few weeks.

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

Great bird! The eagle’s not bad, either.

I’d like to wish my American friends a happy 4th of July! Have a safe and happy holiday, and please enjoy this Independence Day-themed version of everyone’s favourite musical cat meme.

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

Screen capture of a Google search for Fitbit profiles containing sexual activity.

Don’t bother Googling for "sexual activity" site:fitbit.com anymore. Earlier today, using those search terms would’ve given you the profiles of Fitbit users who were both sharing their activity logs and counting sexual activity as part of their calorie-burning efforts. As of this writing, Google seems to have acted in the interests of privacy by not returning any results for those terms. (Bing, on the other hand, returns ten results as I write this.)

A Fitbit device.

The problem comes from a design decision that probably made sense in the abstract, back when they were designing the software. Fitbit lets you set the privacy levels of various section of your online profile individually. Fitness goals are one section, activities are another. Many people are a bit self-conscious about their weight and naturally set their fitness goals to “private”.

At the same time, many people want to announce to the world that they’re working out. Since that’s not the sort of thing most people are embarrassed about — in fact, it’s something some people like to brag about how often they go to the gym — it’s not too surprising that they set their activity log to “public”.

Finally, there’s the ability to manually enter activity data. Most people won’t wear the Fitbit all the time, but want to count every calorie burned. Manually entering activity data lets you count those activities when you’re Fitbit-free towards your calorie burn. Among those activities is sex, which burns far fewer calories than you’d think.

Combine all these factors and you have situations where your user profile hides your target weight, but shows all those intimate encounters that you faithfully logged — not out of braggadocio but the simple desire to count every last calorie expended. The saving grace is that since Fitbit is a health program, most people’s descriptions of their sexual activity in their Fitbit logs sound rather clinical. Most of the descriptions are more along the lines of “light kissing” and “vigorous activity” rather than “OMG PILEDRIVER” and “What what in the butt”.

A (slightly doctored) Fitbit activity profile.

For software developers and designers, this is an object lesson in unintended consequences and privacy. The fact that Fitbit gave users control over the privacy settings of various parts of their profile shows that they were designing with their users’ privacy in mind; it’s just that the implementation didn’t account for the fact that some activities may be private. I wonder how they’re going to redesign around that problem.

For users, the lesson is that you should check your online profiles regularly. Just as you look in the mirror before you leave the house (well, some people do), you should make sure that you’re presenting yourself to the online world in the way you want.

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.