Ben Sternthal & Friends

I absolutely love Top Gear and the new season looks awesome.

ben random

During my standard Sunday morning google reader catch up, i found this post from
http://www.findability.org/ about the first issue of the Journal of Information Architecture. Looks interesting.

http://journalofia.org/

ben tech

One of my favorite Icelandic startups is datamarket.is. The company specializes in data aggregation and visualization. I have always had an interest in statistics and data so these guys are of particular interest to me.

Embedded below is a visualization of Urbanization in Iceland from 1901-2009. Besides being very cool, this also shows how good datamarket.is is.

Urbanization in Iceland from 1901 / Búseta á Íslandi frá 1901 from hjalli on Vimeo.

Services like this are of particular interest to me, not just because it’s cool but because I totally see ways this can help me.

I have way too much information flowing in every day and have no way to muddle through it all. I’d love to have some visualizations of twitter, facebook, google reader etc so I can spend less time weeding through the noise and more time with the good stuff.

ben iceland, startup

I was walking home from an Open Coffee Reykjavik event last night and snapped this photo of the sun setting around midnight. Very beautiful.

ben iceland

At the Seafarers Day in Reykjavik over the weekend they had boxes and boxes of arctic fish on display. Below are two photos I snapped with my cellphone, there are much better photos here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/suda/3603485103/.

ben iceland

While Iceland has great fishmongers, I have yet to find a proper butcher. The supermarkets have an OK selection of lamb, pork etc but you are limited to the cuts you can get. There is no meat counter just a cold room but the quality is always very good and fresh.

For Pork I have found some type of rib, not sure if they are short ribs or some other cut but they do have a HEALTHY amount of fat on them . . .which is nice. I usually cross cut the fat and grill before plopping in the oven for 2-3 hours.

ben food, iceland

Monday was a holiday here in jolly old iceland. The weather was a nice 50 and the sun was sparkling. A Perfect day for reading in the park. This photo was taken at Mikaltun, my new summer hangout, you can see Perlan out in the distance.

ben iceland

Snapped this pic while picking up some Arctic Char. My fishmonger explained that these are sea gull eggs and were very fresh. There were also bright blue ones which are a cliff bird (i thought maybe puffin but he said no).

When I asked if I should try one.. his eyes got big and he quickly nodded his head left and right. Always listen to the fishmonger.

ben food, iceland