This was another great weekend.

On Friday night my cousin came to Astoria and we went out for some drinks at a nearby lounge. Since the place makes very good frappés (so very few places here do), I got one. Usually getting one at 11PM means that I will be up until 2-3AM, but this time I was coding all night until 6 in the morning. After only 4 hours of sleep – my cousin stayed over and had to leave before noon – I went back to coding until the evening. So yeah, a productive day (and night).

Spent the Sunday with the girlfriend: had brunch in the city, went to see West Side Story, then an exhibit on Tutankhamun, ended with romantic dinner at a wine&chocolate bar. I took some pics with my phone, but the combination of iPhone camera and low light resulted in some very heavy noise. I salvaged a couple using some filters from Lightroom and they’re up on facebook.

Sometimes last week – while looking for a beter RSS reader for my phone – I found a little app called Reeder. I had previous attempts with reader apps but none of them were really usable – their sync with Google Reader was spotty at best. Until I found this.

Reeder is so good, it changed my commute. Before I used to listen to music or read a book on the subway, but these days I sync it in the morning and read all my feeds on the way to work. Star the ones I find interesting for further study and when I’m back above the ground, another sync and it’s all in my account. I used to check out my feeds at work – took a good chunk of time, too – but now I do it on my phone, even when I’m at home. The interface is so much better – in Google Reader I either read all feeds expanded (which takes a lot of time) or have it as a list (which is hard to read for 20+ posts) – while Reeder’s list view and touch scrolling is perfect. It also integrates with Instapaper – another recent discovery – and has sharing and emailing links built-in.

Basically, if you’ve got an iPhone and have RSS feeds, get this. It’s so worth it.

Both yesterday and today my productivity was highly affected by watching the E3 keynotes – Microsoft on Monday, Nintendo and Sony today. I would feel bad about it if my coworkers wouldn’t be “working” just as hard at watching the World Cup games. This actually reminds me of the last year in high-school when I used to sneak out to the computer lab while most of my classmates were out on the field playing football. Things haven’t changed much apparently.

So far the Microsoft Kinect demos were technologically impressive – the sports, dancing and workout games looked fun. Nintendo didn’t impress me much – the 3DS looks nifty, but I haven’t touched my NDS or PSP since I got the iPhone. I doubt I’ll get it – unless they release another Advance Wars or Fire Emblem. Sony hyped the PS Move, but after seeing Kinect it kinda felt flat. It’s basically a glorified Wiimote. Their presentation was much better though, while MS and Nintendo’s presenters kept using marketingspeak – “franchise”, “mass market”, “consumer trends” – Sony’s Kevin Butler went with a funny speech crafted for their target demographic. Too bad Jack Tretton went back to BS right after. I also thought PSN Plus is crap since you basically rent the content – it’s yours as long as you pay the subscription.

Wish I was there though – Microsoft gave free Xboxes to all keynote attendees and Nintendo had pretty girls demoing the 3DSes. Games-wise, I’m excited about the next Mortal Kombat, that should be fun. The Medal of Honor, Bulletstorm and Crysis 2 trailers looked really good. Should be a fun holiday season.