If you’ve known me over the past year, you’ve probably heard me rave about my discovery of the region just north of Santa Barbara, CA, known broadly as the Central Coast of California. Specifically, this region is the San Ynez Valley, which is a quick, two hour drive up the Pacific Coast Highway from Los Angeles.

Aside from the green, rolling hills and lush farmland, I often find myself daydreaming of the local food that initially brought me up to the small town of Los Alamos 12 months ago.

While reading the back of a frozen flatbread pizza box that I bought at Whole Foods, I was in complete disbelief that the pizza that I just ate was made by hand and was mostly composed of locally grown ingredients. It was a fantastic pizza, a simple cheese and fresh herb flatbread, but my mind imagined machines and production lines. The box mentioned the use of a single wood oven – and that got me curious.

After reaching out to Full of Life Flatbread via their website, I was contacted by Clark Staub. An extremely friendly and open guy, the owner of Full of Life Flatbread invited me to visit on the weekend, when their production facility was converted into a restaurant. I took Clark up on his offer and was amazed to find that not only were his pizzas made by hand in a wood fired oven, but more importantly, the ingredients truly were the product of local farmers. I actually saw the fava beans that were in my dinner salad being dropped off in the afternoon. That was the surprising thing; Full of Life Flatbread pizzas are amazing – even better fresh out of the oven, but Clark and Chef Brian Collins prepare some of the best dishes I’ve ever eaten.

After dozens of meals at Full of Life Flatbread over the past year, I’m still amazed by what’s on my plate each and every time. This weekend, I had the opportunity to shoot (and sample) most of the menu, including house-made ricotta gnocchi with artichokes and garlic butter.

If you’d like to know more about this gem , you can read about Full of Life Flatbread in depth on my food review site. If you’d like to learn more about the Central Coast of California, stay tuned, I’ve got more on this area (including photos) coming soon!

Everyone wants to get hooked up when they head to Las Vegas. The high rollers get free rooms at the casinos- so I guess a few technophiles at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas thought they deserved the same treatment from the Las Vegas Convention Center.

I captured these snapshots of people sleeping while I roamed around the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show and they gave me a good chuckle, so I thought I would share them.

My favorite is the table of guys trying to pretend they are texting and writing (they were both sleeping), with their colleague blatantly giving in to his exhaustion. I also enjoyed the man with heavy eyelids watching an action sequence on a new 3D TV from Panasonic.

I consider myself a “practical technophile”.

I don’t usually get all worked up over conceptual or emerging gadgets and other consumer electronics, knowing that it is going to take a little time for the kinks to get worked out and actually become practical. Nonetheless, a friend from back East was going to the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this year and I decided I would attend if I could wiggle my way onto the press list.

From what I read, there were over 120,000 people at 2010 CES at the Las Vegas Convention Center- a massive trade show!

An interesting tidbit – the first CES took place in New York City in 1967 with 200 exhibitors and 17,500 attendees. A few notable products that debuted at CES over the years:

• Videocassette Recorder (VCR), 1970
• Laserdisc Player, 1974
• Camcorder, 1981
• Compact Disc Player, 1981
• Mini Disc, 1993  (that one never quite took off, did it?)
• Digital Versatile Disk (DVD), 1996
• High Definition Television (HDTV), 1998
• Microsoft Xbox, 2001
• Plasma TV, 2001
• Blu-Ray DVD, 2003

What was astounding to me, aside from the sheer number of people, was the amount of effort (and $$$) that electronics manufacturers are willing to put into a trade show like this. A few of my 2010 CES photos below show off how heated the LED TV – and now 3D TV product categories are getting. (pun intended, electronics geeks, the new LED TV’s are actually pretty cool to the touch)

I couldn’t point my camera in any direction without seeing 1000’s of TV screens. For a true technophile, this event was drool-able. For me, I couldn’t stop thinking about the logistics of designing and deploying some of these gargantuan TV displays. (click to expand photos)