I like the cold weather. I enjoy getting all bundled up and going out in sub-freezing weather. Sometimes I don’t even get bundled up.

However, even I have a limit. After reading this interesting article about Yakutsk, a city in Siberia, I’m pretty sure it’s WAY past my limit!

Read the piece in The Independent.

You’ve seen my photos from Peddler’s Village taken during the summer. (If not, view them here.)  Their annual Christmas Festival was this past weekend, so Kelly and I went back to see what it’s like in winter. It’s a whole different experience. The sub-freezing temperature was made bearable by marshmallow roasting over an open fire, hot cider cooked over a fire, carolers and even a little parade to welcome Santa Claus. Add thousands of Christmas lights and you have a great start to the Christmas season!

Click here to view my pictures from the festival.

It’s amazing how far and wide-reaching the coverage of James Kim’s tragic death has been. Usually a tech journalist such as James has a small following who will pay attention to something like this (I’m among that group.) but his tragic demise has been covered by every news outlet imaginable. I can’t stand People magazine, but even they put him on their cover. CNN had a special about it tonight as well. Even competing tech media outlets are doing memorial pieces about him.

The latest news is that he actually walked 16 miles in his attempt to save his family, not the 10 that was first thought.

You probably already know that I was a huge fan of the long gone cable channel ZDTV/TechTV. One of the people who contributed to that channel’s success was James Kim. Last weekend he and his family disappeared while on their way home from Thanksgiving at a friend’s house in Oregon. After being lost in the snow for over a week his wife and children were found. James, however, had left them to find help 2 days earlier.

After an extensive search by land and air James’ body was found earlier today. It appears he was leaving a trail of clothing to help searchers track him, but they got there too late.

Besides losing a great technology journalist what strikes me is that this could happen to anyone. They missed a turnoff and looked at map and found another route to take. It was a National Forest Service road that, unkown to them, is not plowed in the winter. They became stuck and wound up staying in their car for a week with little or no food.

I’ve seen a lot of people who were critical of James’ decision to leave the family and car. But I can’t imagine how desparate he must’ve been at that point. They ran the car heater until it ran out of gas. They then burned the tires for warmth. Seriously, how bad does a situation have to be to push you to the point where burning your tires is the best option. After a week of being stranded, he had to think that they’d never be rescued unless he went for help.

Like I said, what is so scary is that this could happen to anyone. I mean I don’t expect that you could get quite that lost in the this part of the country, but there are is still plenty of wilderness in places like Oregon. It’s definately making be reconsider what I carry in my trunk.

You can donate to the family at the site set up by a friend while the family was missing at www.jamesandkati.com.

You can also view a tribute from his coworkers at C|NET.

OK, OK, so you’re tired of the Olympics. I’ve been talking about the Torino 2006 Winter Olympics for 2 weeks or more now. However, I have to point out one more link that I thought was pretty cool. On the Bejing 2008 Summer Olympics site they have a page that shows all of the medal designs used in every Olympic Games and the torch design as well. You might not agree, but I thought it’s pretty interesting to see how the designs have changed.

View the medals here and the torches here.

It’s hard to believe that it was 16 days ago that I sat here in fron of a roaring fire watching the Opening Ceremony of the XX Olympic Winter Games in Torino. Now here I am sitting in front of a roaring fire watching the Closing ceremony. Lucky for the althletes and attendees of the ceremony it’s actually warmer there than it is here. It’s aout 40 degrees in Torino tonight, here it’s only in the teens!

If you’re looking for info on the next Winter Olympics, check out vancouver2010.com. If you want info on the upcoming Summer Olympics check out beijing2008.com or london2012.org.

In the meantime, I’ll still be watching the Torino Games for a few more days because I still have some left on my DVR that I haven’t watched yet.

While watching the Olympics over the past 14 days, I couldn’t quite put my finger on why I thought this year’s has been more interesting than some other years. The main reason that I could come up with was that this is the first time I had a DVR while watching the Olympics. It lets me completely skip over the really boring sports like hockey, figure skating and cross country.

However, tonight while watching the primetime broadcast I realized that there was something else. Jimmy Roberts mentioned during his nightly “Chevy Olympic Moment” that nothing has gone as predicted in these Olympics. He pointed out that there were no real sure things in these games. He also pointed out that so far during the Olympics, 26 different countries have won medals. There were some Japanese gold medalists, Croatian gold medalists, and many others you might not expect.

You can read/view tonight’s “Olympic Moment” on NBCOlympics.com.

Looking for a way to keep up with the latest from the Olympics in Torino without having to head to the web? I finally found a good way. You very likely already use Konfabulator (now known as Yahoo! Widgets.) If not, go get it and then continue reading.

The Turin 2006 Winter Olympics widget puts the current medal count on your desktop and continuously updates it. It also gives you all the latest photos from the games and the day’s latest news.

Get the widget right here. It works on both Macintosh and Windows.

NBC airs some of the Olympic curling matches live in the middle of the night on its cable channels. The beauty of having a DVR means that time doesn’t matter so I decided to record a few of them. It might not have the excitement and speed of the luge, but it involves strategy and careful consideration, etc.

After watching a men’s match and a women’s match, I learned something new about curling. It’s insanely boring! Don’t get me wrong, it’s interesting for an end or two but then it just keeps going and going and going at the slowest pace you could imagine. Oh well, I guess there’s a reason they show it live instead of saving it for primetime on the network.

Singles luge has always been one of my favorite Winter Olympic sports to watch. I’ve also always thought it would be fun to try. Not that I’d probably ever have that chance, but if I had to try one Olympic sport, I’d pick the luge.

After watching the women’s singles luge yesterday my opinions changed slightly. It’s still loads of fun to watch. But I’m not so sure about wanting to try it now! There were a few pretty fierce crashes, but the worst was Samantha Retrosi an American girl who got knocked out and slid down half the course unconcious. Read the details here.

Oh well, maybe trying the skeleton would be safer. What? Face first? Oh…