Ben's Journal

In the past I've thought: Ya know, Google's mail is more spam free than this home grown solution I've got. And their calenda...

Web App Testing with Watij Kostyantyn found this really nifty java library that allows you to script IE from Java. You can, for example w...

Thanks to trasl8it.com I can finally create messages like this: f U cn rED DIS, U R t% hip 4 me. Decode it here . Found in a comment...

Micro Persuasion: Dave Winer Intros Mobile Blogging Tool The above post points to a tool for mobile blogging that's compatible with Wo...

armstrong on software: Concurrency is easy The above article explains all about Erlang in simple and inspiring terms. If you don't ...

Boing Boing: How to really fight terrorists: Anti-terror After having flown on a plane, and finding out after the fact that we accidentall...

It does WiFi, MP3s, Flash and widgets. Oh, you can cover it with fur or seashells. Did I mention that for about $150, it will replace yo...

Thanks to Micro Persuasion for pointing me to this list of the Top 10 Best Presentations Ever . The list seems to be made up of excellen...

http://www.micropersuasion.com/2006/08/google_warns_me.html My CEO mentioned to me that Google was getting a reputation for corporate arrog...

Elana and Shmuel's Wedding Aug 26, 2006 - 58 Photos Here are the official pictures we took from the Blumenthal-Kahn wedding. Aren...

We got to play on my kindergarten's playground with Ethan and Maddie. They showed boundless energy as they fearlessly explored all the...

Shmuel and Elana look like they mastered this whole marriage thing in a single night. They look quite happy.... --Ben

I present to you Mr. and Mrs. Shmuel Blumenthal-Kahn. Here they are talking on the phone...but not to each other! --Ben

Shmuel and his Rabbi discussing last minute details. I can only imagine the deep and mystical conversation going on. --Ben

Gosh Elana is calm. As bride's go, she really has it together. --Ben

We are now hours away from the big event - Elana and Shmuel's wedding. Tonight we got to hang out with various out-of-towners and have a...

Check out what I found in my *carry on* bag? Toothpaste - this is a forbidden substance. It was loosly floating around in the outer pocke...

We are on our way to Rochester, and as a bit of a treat, are flying rather than driving. This is my first time flying since the London scar...

Like the blog? Don't like having to come back and visit it? Then getting these blog entries sent to you via e-mail may be the way to go...

Shira parked in a reserved spot today accidentally, while being offsite. She ended with a spooky note on her car. It reads: "You are...

We ended up spending three hours at Norstroms tonight (hence the four blog posts) dealing with Shira's dress for the upcoming wedding. T...

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/08/ten_questions_w_2.html Check out Guy Kawasaki's interview of Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL. Not only ...

http://mobits.com/digg/ Micro Persuasion [1] pointed me to a mobile version of Digg. It looks great on my sidekick, and I can imagine it w...

My ITE students looking through my gadgets - trying to figure out makes a computer a computer. --Ben

Superstitious FAQ Writers Joel talks about what happens if you, gulp , explain to your customers how you can cancel their service in a ...

How to send an SMS from cell phone to an AIM user This is a cool hack for sending an AIM message to someone via an SMS message. I'm n...

Tomorrow I begin teaching ITE 115 - an Intro to computers class at NVCC. If it's anything like ITD-210 it should be lots of fun. An...

My Amazon.com order came in today - a collection of classics (Don't Make Me Think, Non-Designers Design Book and Peopleware). I just lo...

Shira finally managed to get us into Writely - and I have to admit, as word processors go, it's pretty impressive. You can do all...

I just finished listening to Copy This! the story of Kinkos, by its founder Paul Orfalea and Ann Marsh. In many ways Copy This! is your typ...

Performance Tuning PostgreSQL Here's a useful article that explains how to tune PostgreSQL. It seems to cover many issues, from tweak...

SICP Programming Assignments Want to be a better programmer? Then you need to practice! A while back I stumbled across these sample prog...

Someone finally bought the "house" across the street from us. Slowly but surely the house has been going from bad to worse, back...

I needed to create a bunch of HTML documents for an NVCC course I'm going to be teaching. As usual, I was left scratching my head as ...

How to Remove Spyware and Malware from a Windows computer I'm off to go help a friend repair his computer that is no doubt paralyzed b...

Everything Scheme: Eager Comprehensions for Black Belts - An SRFI 42 Tutorial Eager comprehension sounds like a really complicated and obs...

If you are even remotely a Star Wars fan you should find this movie about Chad Vader hilarious.

Lately I've been thinking about ways that I can have my team spend a bit more time designing our coding solutions. One tool that came ...

Better BlogThis! I find the BlogThis! bookmarklet to be really handy. It gets more use than the TinyUrl bookmarket which I also find ver...

Craftzine.com blog This one's for you Mom. Here's a blog custom made for you! I can't wait to see you make some of these pro...

Click on the image to see the full size version Make your own motivational poster - Lifehacker Make your own today . Anyone know ...

MAKE: Blog: Online drawing lessons Here's a really complete drawing course that you can take online - for free . I poked around the f...

MAKE: Blog: Homemade sandal bottle openers We saw these at Mark & Tonya's wedding - a pair of flip flops with a bottle opener bu...

Google Operating System: The New Blogger Simon has pointed me to the above list of cool new features in Blogger. I'm especially loo...

SEOmoz Blog | 5 HTML elements you probably never use (but perhaps should) Here's a list of useful HTML elements that I should be using...

Tonya and Mark's wedding was incredible. On the beach, barefoot, sun shining, ocean waving in the background. We had a great tim...

It was great getting to hang with Paul, Sam, Zach, Amy and Smitty this morning. It's an awful shame we have to head back to reality. I...

Introducing Mr. and Mrs. Mark and Tonya Helmstetter! --Ben

Shira and I arrived at the Outer Banks just a few hours ago for Mark and Tonya's big event. The house is incredible, and the beach is j...

The Codex, by Douglas Preston probably doesn't qualify as great literature (or even literature?). But you know what? Who cares! Yes, ...

So I tried rebooting a Linux box that hadn't been restarted in 300+ days. And of course, the fs check failed and the server wants me t...

There is nothing more precious than watching a baby take their first steps. In this case, the baby got a running start on all fours, and ...

Last night I blogged about management and today we got the following spam faxes. I found the course for "Managing Employees Who Have R...