Enter Signs At MIA: Logical Sign Design Win!

Miami Airport Doors with “Do Not Enter” & “Enter” Signs

When I was in Miami Beach recently I flew in and out through Miami International Airport aka MIA and when I was going in and out of the airport I noticed their “Enter” signs on the airport doors were different than any I had ever seen before. Usually this is unremarkable and I wouldn’t think anything more of it aside from mentally acknowledging which was the correct door to enter/exit as I was walking. The difference here was that unlike most other “Enter” signs I have seen in my life, this sign was an almost exact opposite version of the “Do Not Enter” sign we are all familiar with from all over the world.

Why Aren’t Hotels Supplying Us With Toothbrushes & Toothpaste?

Typical hotel bathroom toiletries. Photo credit Chris Vollick aka @Canadian88

–

When you go to a hotel they give you all sorts of toiletries from shampoo & conditioner to body lotion to special soap for your body versus your face. In my hotel stay experiences I’ve seen shower caps on the offer as well as sewing kits but never have I ever seen a small tube of toothpaste and/or a toothbrush in a hotel bathroom waiting to be used. Why is this? I have a couple of theories and have done a bit of research into it.

First, the toothbrush. You’d think that it is such a personal thing that no one would ever want to use a random toothbrush but to that I have two answers:

1. I have discussed travel options for toothbrushes before but even this isn’t the ideal especially if you travel regularly as seems to warp and mash the bristles of the toothbrush over prolonged periods of the brush being forced into the container.

Electric Toothbrush Travelling Conundrum Solved

I am sure most of you have seen a travelling toothbrush holder much like the one pictured above (photo via Amazon.com). Anyone who went to overnight camp probably used one of these or something similar to stow their toothbrush in their cabin and keep it sanitary. For years and years whenever I went on a trip anyway I would put my toothbrush in my toiletry bag safely contained in one of these plastic holders. Then my dentist gave me one of them new fangled 21st Century toothbrushes with all sorts of different aspects from the traditional toothbrush I’d grown up using. It looked all sorts of awesome and kept my teeth nice and pearly white. Amazing, right? Right, until the time came when I needed to travel with it.

I was getting ready to head out on a trip and was getting my toiletries all in their bag when it came time to pack my toothbrush. I pulled out one of my trusty travel toothbrush holders and tried putting my new toothbrush in but it was too long. Ruh-roh! What to do, what to do? Well, for a time I came up with some various solutions out of necessity. I would wrap tissues or toilet paper around the head of the toothbrush before I stuffed it in my bag or I would put it in a ziploc. The problem with those, however, were that I was wasting a heck of a lot of toilet paper or tissue every time or when I used the bags my toothbrush – often last to be packed as I brushed my teeth right before I left – would be still damp and sit in a plastic bag, sealed in its dampness which just doesn’t sound all that sanitary. (I can be a bit of a germaphobe/neat freak sometimes.)

Then, I found this beautiful invention one day when I was meandering through the camping section of a big box store

Reunions: A Troublesome Trio Traipsing Toronto Together Again!

April 2006 at the Frog & Firkin in North York, Toronto: Akiva on my left, Jon on my right.

Wow, since that picture above was taken it has been 5 long years. I have seen both of these guys individually since this picture was taken but we haven’t all been together in the same city since April 2006. Back in the day (which was a Tuesday, if anyone ever says “back in the day”, the day they’re referring to was a Tuesday) we used to be inseparable. I met Akiva when he and his family moved from South Africa to Canada in 5th grade and then met Jon in high school in 10th Grade. When Akiva came to our high school in 11th Grade a lifelong bond was formed between the three of us. We became as close as brothers and, quite honestly, I talk to them more often these days than I talk to my brothers by who are genetically my family.

We went to Israel together after high school and spent the year touring around Israel and having adventures. But we haven’t all hung out together since they were both in town when that picture above was taken. Now, Akiva still lives in Israel and is married with 3 kids – and is quite a bit more responsible than anyone ever thought possible. Jon lives in London, England and is still living the single life with a girlfriend every now and again much like me. I, as you all know, live in Toronto and as previously stated am still unattached.

Of course, both of them come into Toronto fairly frequently to visit their families but, unfortunately, the timing never worked out in the past bunch of years for all of us to be together in the same city until now. So I am happily headed out tonight to chill with my boys again and see what kind of trouble we can get into. (Yes, I am trying to recapture my youth! Don’t judge me!)

This also reminds me that I have to go visit them in London and Israel at some point in the future – I still haven’t been back to Israel since 2001 and I’ve never been to London.

Have a great rest of the weekend folks!

Beam Me Up Scotty! When Teleportation Is Finally Possible I’m Going…

As part of the Post-A-Day Challenge WordPress has their own “Daily Post” Blog to help all of us in the Challenge with ideas for topics when we have nothing else to write about or are having ‘blogging block’. I went through the past few days of posting and saw this question posed “When teleportation is finally possible, where will you beam yourself first?”  with the note that “(Yes, you can assume you’d be able to teleport yourself back. It’d be a teleportation app for your phone of course, which you’d keep in your pocket).”

I have never given this very much thought before I saw it posted so I am sort of doing a stream of consciousness post right now just thinking about it and typing wherever occurs to me. My first instinct is to say somewhere tropical and warm as it is currently winter here in Toronto, Canada (although it is relatively warm right now reaching above 0 Celsius – 32 Fahrenheit – today and predicted to do so tomorrow and to even to 11 Celsius on Friday which is in the low 50s in Fahrenheit). However, realistically that would not be the FIRST place I would go…sure I would want to spend time in warm weather whenever I could but why would that be my first trip with this stupendous technology? There will always be time to go somewhere tropical later – after all, this technology is on my phone I can go wherever I want, whenever I want.

Picture taken from Skyway article on Futurepedia at http://backtothefuture.wikia.com/wiki/Skyway

But as I sit here writing this I cannot honestly think of anywhere I would like to go that I can’t reach by plane…sure I could say I would love to teleport into a bank vault and get a whole bunch of money but I don’t really because that would be stealing and wrong…maybe if I knew where a criminal had their money stashed I would say there because then I wouldn’t feel so bad about taking it but even then the idea of theft doesn’t really appeal to me when I coupled with the inherent moral and ethical issues. Similarly much as I would like to say it I don’t actually want to beam into the White House or the FBI Headquarters or CIA Headquarters in Langley, VA. because that would just get me very arrested, very quickly. For me, I would much rather be able to teleport to anywhen rather than anywhere. I think it is a much more interesting question to ask what time period I would want to go to first if that became possible rather than the where. But that wasn’t the question so I am going to stick with the question asked.

So where would I go? Well, it very much also depends on how I got this technology. Is it a well established technology that people have been using for a while and I trust it will work properly? Because if not, I am probably scared it won’t work properly and I am going to probably going to be teleporting myself from one part of a field to another part of the field a couple feet away. If this is the first time this technology has every been used by me and I am unsure of its reliability no way am I trying to teleport myself hundreds or thousands of miles away from where I currently am, who knows what’ll happen!

But to keep with the fun of this whole question, I am going to give a more simple answer. My first instinct would be to say to Miami Beach, FL where my 2 nephews and niece live with my brother and my sister-in-law but they are supposed to be coming into town next week anyway. Therefore, I am going to go with wanting to teleport to London, England. One of my best friends who I consider like a brother has been living there for a couple of years now and he is always urging me to come out and visit & party with him in London and I never seem to have the chance to do it. Obviously I’d wait a bit before visiting him because it is 4:45 AM in London right now so it might be disturbing if I suddenly appeared in his apartment.

Where would you go if you suddenly had this amazing technology at your fingertips?

 

NOTE: To be perfectly honest, as I have always endeavored to be on this blog, I had a post ready in my mind for tonight but then I realized that I shouldn’t bother writing the post because in researching certain aspects of it I came across information that basically would have made me look like a fool who hadn’t bothered doing any research if I had posted about it. The post was going to be about having open WiFi at Social Media Week lecture/panel venues and what I found out was that all during Social Media Week there HAD been free WiFi provided via Skype.