Sunday, May 26, 2013

Happy Memorial Day Weekend, America

~ The Memorial Day Weekend is considered the official start of summer in America, and I wish I was there to see the summer in. Since I’m not, I thought I might at least point lucky visitors and locals to a few of my favorite New York-centric websites and events.

Over the past 50 years, more than five million people have enjoyed free productions of plays by William Shakespeare at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. This year The Comedy of Errors is the Public Theater’s choice for their free annual Shakespeare In The Park production. The play kicks off Tuesday, May 28 and runs through until Sunday, June 30, 2013. All shows begin at 8:30 PM.​​​, and there is no intermission during the 90 minute performance.

Among the actors featuring in this year’s production will be Jesse Tyler Ferguson, one of the stars of Modern Family, Hamish Linklater, and Becky Ann Baker.
If you want to join the audience, you are advised to line up early on the day of performance.
​Free tickets are distributed on each performance day from 12:00 PM (midday) via the free lines at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. Tickets are for the daily performance only. You can not line up to get tickets for the following day, or for an upcoming performance.
Once The Comedy of Errors finishes its run it will be followed by Love's Labour's Lost, A New Musical​, which is of course, a musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Love's Labour's Lost. This production will run from July 23 - August 18​, 2013.

More information: Shakespeare In The Park…

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I have written about this website before here… This is my ‘go to’ site for cheap tickets to a whole range of events in New York City and beyond. Via Goldstar you can find tickets (many at half their box office price) to numerous theatre productions and major sporting events, as well as walking tours, harbor cruises and much more. The great thing about Goldstar is that discount tickets are available for similar events in more than 30 other cities across the United States.

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SummerStage is another annual arts and music program of New York’s, City Parks Foundation. It schedules a host of free events throughout the summer months, and 2013 will be no exception. As in previous years, the artists chosen for the 2013 program represent a wide range of genres and cultures, and perform in outdoor settings accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds. I was lucky to see one of my favourite performers, the late Gil Scott-Heron performing as part of the 2010 SummerStage concert series, and I am very grateful to the City Parks Foundation for giving me that opportunity.

SummerStage strives to develop a deep appreciation for contemporary, traditional, and emerging artists as well as the communities in which these artists originate. All SummerStage shows go on ‘rain or shine’, and are only cancelled if extreme weather events are forecasted.

You can follow SummerStage on Twitter and Like them on Facebook to keep up to date with the latest SummerStage fan content and contest opportunities.

More Information: Summerstage...

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Good things are said to come in three’s, and the above three sections point to three of the best in my experience. If you are visiting New York City for the first time, you are in for a treat, and I can only wish I was there with you. All things being equal, I plan on visiting America and New York City again next year, so you can be sure the next twelve months will be filled with much anticipation, and forward planning. I can hardly wait.

Friday, May 24, 2013

Friday Photos: Adelaide Central Market

Let them eat cake? Not when the bread is as fresh as this.
Originally known as the City Market, the facility was officially named the Central Market in August 1965, and continues to offer almost every variety of fresh fruit and vegetable available in South Australia.

The world comes to shop at the market.
Hot nuts! Once you start eating them, you can't stop.

Several tour operators offer tours of the Central Market.  For more information on tours of the Market, visit Top Food & Wine Tours… 

If it is available fresh, you will almost certainly find it at the market.
Processed meats to go.
A wide range of events and activities are scheduled each week at the market. Some traders offer product samples in ‘try before you buy’ promotions, while others present short classes, and product/produce demonstrations each week.

Ice on Mt. Brocoli.
How many varieties of Mettwurst can there possibly be? Ask here.
Mark Gleeson conducts Central Market Tours that provide participants with an exclusive experience interacting with suppliers, producers and retailers of South Australia’s vibrant food industry.

Watermelons by the ton.
Mid-eastern spices and processed foods.
More than 80 stalls offer a wide range of fresh and processed meats, cheese, seafood, nuts, confectionary, coffee and other specialty foods. And of course, let’s not overlook the bakeries, patisseries, and numerous cafés and restaurants.

There is always time for coffee and cake.

Trading Hours
Tuesday: 7am - 5.30pm
Wednesday: 9am - 5.30pm*
Thursday: 9am - 5.30pm
Friday: 7am - 9pm
Saturday: 7am - 3pm
*Optional trading day, not all stalls open

Closed Public Holidays

Here is a brief video of footage I shot during a visit to the Adelaide Central Market:


More Information

Thursday, May 23, 2013

My iPad 2 – One Year On


One year ago today, I bought a 64Gb iPad 2. I purchased the device in preparation for the three month visit I subsequently made to America between August and October, 2012.

I had two main purposes in mind when I bought it: one was that it made it easier to leave my 15 inch Toshiba laptop behind, and thereby reduce the amount of weight I was carrying; and the other was my desire to use the iPad as an eBook reader.

I have said it before, and I don’t mind saying it again―buying the iPad was the best pre-travel gift I have ever given myself. The convenience it offered in terms of size, weight, and functionality has proved its worth over and over again.

A year after my initial purchase, the device is rarely out of my sight or out of reach. The word I keep coming back to when I talk about the iPad is convenience. Couple convenience with ease of use, and you have a device that has helped to revolutionize the way we use technology to connect with each other, and tap into the vast resources of the internet. Making use of a basic WiFi service, I find I am forever reaching for my iPad to look for information online, research some small item of interest using Wikipedia, or translate a couple of lines of French or Latin that I have encountered in one of the many eBooks I now have saved to my iBooks app.

I maintain a daily journal with Pages, track my daily spending with Numbers, and keep in touch with family and friends via Facebook. Using a free app supplied by my bank I can move money between accounts, and to the delight of my creditors I can pay bills on time with Bpay. I have far more apps than I need or use on a daily basis, but then why not? Most of them were free to download, and if I need the space for more important or useful applications, they can be deleted with a couple of taps.

I have written before about my favorite iPad apps here… and here… so I won’t repeat myself in this entry, however, I do have plans to write about some other favorite applications not reviewed already.

After twelve months my iPad continues to work flawlessly, and I am more than happy with the physical size of the device, as well as its 64Gb capacity. The quality of the images I can get with the camera is one of my biggest frustrations, although video footage is actually quite good―as long as you are shooting in plenty of light. Although I have WordPress and Blogger apps, I prefer to use my laptop to write for and maintain The Compleat Traveller. Even though I have bought a keyboard to use with the iPad, I find writing with my laptop to be easier, faster, and generally more accurate. Personally, I find the iPad’s virtual keyboard good for short journal entries, and minor text entry work for things like email, Facebook, and other such tasks, but for long periods of typing it just doesn’t suit me.

Quite frankly, apart from my complaint with the camera and virtual keyboard, I am struggling to think of any other issue that has been the cause of major―or even minor concern. The biggest frustrations are caused by badly designed apps, not the iPad itself. Recently, I exchanged my old iPhone 3GS for a new Galaxy S4, and I remain very happy with that decision. However, I can’t see myself swapping my iPad for a rival tablet device any time soon.

I realise I have not written anything about using the iPad as an eReader, but I will leave that topic for another post. In conclusion, if you have been thinking about getting an iPad, or similar tablet device, I am more than happy to recommend this amazing technology to you. It is hard to believe that tablet devices were almost unheard of five years ago, given the way they have become pretty much ubiquitous today. They can only get better, faster and more ubiquitous over the next five years.
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