Except, ironically, Champagne is a protected term, at least in most countries, while bourbon apparently isn't.

I'm pretty sure I never want to be an enthusiast of anything - all they seem to do is decide what not to drink, or do, or what brand of camera not to use, or shoes not to wear, or cars not to drive, or whatever. I'd much rather be an unenthusiast and drink the odd screwdriver, and whatever else I feel like.

As long as Facebook doesn't become leather-bound, I'm cool.

I think you're well-named.

That's weird. I took a couple of photography classes for fun, and both of my professors (professional photographers, made their living selling photos, etc) shot Canon. I guess they hadn't heard Canon's were for shooting video.

How come the monsters don't get your head?

Anymore than your flatscreen, computer, and jewelry invite regular thieves to break into your home? Are thieves looking specifically for copper a serious issue for people other than the foreman on a construction site?

Why make the soles orange? I'm all for making dress shoes more comfortable. Just make them look like normal dress shoes (brown/black soles) so I don't look like a dork in a meeting.

But the shape of the aperture and the amount of aberration in the lens still has a huge impact on the quality of the bokeh, regardless of the size of the sensor. Most lens manufacturers take bokeh into account when designing the aperture blades, but much light aberration is still going to make bad bokeh. Though I…

A neat idea, but based on my understanding of hospital administrations, if it's marketed as a way to improve patient satisfaction they might be able to sell it. If they can figure out how to market it as a patient safety device, they can almost certainly sell a few. If they market it for caregiver comfort, they'll get…

So one time I was travelling across the continent by bus - I was 17, and apparently my parents trusted me way too much - anyway, after four days on a bus and washing myself sporadically in bus station sinks, I'd have loved to have some of this stuff. Probably the other people on the bus would have loved for me to have…

You apparently either follow wedding trends or go to a lot more weddings than I do. I had no idea.

Seeing as it was his wedding night, I left it up to his wife to thank him appropriately. Though they did get about eight toasts out of it...

Some of my friends just got married. The groom and his groomsmen all wore (matching) Converse All-Stars. The bride and her maids all wore flip flops. I liked it... mostly because, while they took the wedding seriously (wrote their own vows, etc), it's very much like them both to add a little whimsy. Also they had an…

Yeah... my endo originally recommended the MiniMed with the built-in CGM. I actually ended up with the DexCom because my insurance wouldn't cover the CGM sensors for the MiniMed, so I thought I was only able to get a pump. I picked the Animas Ping because of the waterproofing (you never know when someone will think…

I'm using both a Dexcom Seven Plus CGM and the Animas Ping pump... the pump helped my blood sugar. The CGM seriously helped. I can download the CGM data to my PC, look at every reading taken over the last 7 days, last month, whatever (and since it tests every five minutes, that's a lot of data points). Then I can see…

When I was diagnosed in the 90s the JDF was touting that the 90s were "the decade of the cure." I don't hold out much hope we'll ever see a cure in my lifetime... but I'll take any incremental improvements they come up in the mean time.

I travel with an insulin pump and a continuous glucose monitor. I've even taken them to places that frisk you worse than the TSA - like going into a testing center to take the GRE. By law, since it's a medical device, they can go pound sand.

There's a problem with the "I can eat anything I want as long as I take enough insulin" philosophy, and that's that you also have to time it exceptionally well. Insulin infused or injected into the abdomen can take several minutes to start working, and if you have much abdominal fat, it can take up to 30 minutes to…

So current CGMs already work like this. You test twice a day (every 12 hours) to calibrate the glucose monitor, which then transmits to a small display and can alert you with vibration and sound if your blood sugar gets too high or too low. So the reduction from five finger sticks to two could be had with just a CGM.…