Ben's Journal

It was time to replace my ancient (OK, 3 year old) Dell Latitude D630 laptop. I had originally wanted to replace it with a Sony, as I love...

I love the power of racket (formerly known as PLT-scheme). And I love the power of emacs . In the past, though, to leverage racket I'v...

One of the go-to biblical texts that Jews turn to when Stuff (good, bad, or otherwise) Happens is Tehillim - the Book of Psalms . Here ...

First, I made it through Boy Scouts without learning to calculate distances with a compass . And I now I learn about yet another outdoor di...

Today's snack was powered by Batter Blaster - that's pancake batter that comes in the same form factor as whipped cream. I'm...

I have to admit, I love the stunt that the guys over at SurivalWeekly tried about a year ago. They both hit the local dollar store and pi...

Apparently, the video of Leeroy Jenkins doing his thing has been around nearly half a decade - yet my brother just shared it with me. Man,...

Today's Fix-It was to replace the outdoor lights near both the front and rear entrances of our house. With my Brother's help, it wa...

The DC area is experiencing the most perfect hiking weather today: 70 degrees and sunny.Yeah, perfect. I wasn't sure if our sched...

I was delighted to see that Amazon's Simple E-mail Service has instructions for integrating with Postfix . In theory, this means you c...

Let me make sure I got this right. Michelle Obama praises a recent decision by the IRS to consider breast pumps medical equipment, and th...

I've always known that you can get MySQL to cough up what it's doing while running a query by using the explain command. But, t...

The audio version of The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks begins with this spooky recording by the author giving you a little intro to the bo...

I have to admit, I was psyched about Amazon's SimpleDB . There was so much to love: You get High Availability for free Data is alw...

This could be useful: How to give a foot massage This could get you in loads of trouble: The Clap Off Bra Some Last Minute Valentine'...

I want the Haptica Braille Watch . Really, I do. Check out this bad boy: The watch appears to function just like you'd expect it...

Arlington County may be one of the smallest counties in the country, but it never ceases to surprise me with what it offers. Today, we exp...

I've always had this philosophy about time and and photography. Any photograph, given enough time, becomes precious. A random snapshot ...

I'm always on the lookout for ideas to entertain our little one (or heck, anyone). And if the idea works without an Internet connectio...

One of my laptops is having virus issues again . This time, it was running an up to date version of Norton, yet I still managed to get one...

Yes and Yes posted this wonderful French video showing kids trying to make sense of 1980's and 90's technology . It's definite...

Apparently, there's more to the Super Bowl than commercials . There's also the player's impressive back stories. The Rumpus ...

I didn't watch the Super Bowl last night. But I was kind of bummed to miss all those high quality commercials that make their debut. Th...

Yesterday, we hit the National Aquarium in Baltimore. We did the Aquarium in 17-month-old-time, which means that we managed to get in and ...

I stumbled onto armystudyguide.com and it seems like it contains some pretty useful information for the general public. Specifically, I t...

Perhaps it was the mood I was in when I was browsing theoatmeal.com because I found just about every comic made me giggle. Giggle, I say. ...

Here's a handy technique I'd like to try next time I'm in the woods: Measure Distance with a standard Compass . By using two...

I found this interview with Francis Ford Coppola to be surprisingly riveting. It's filled with all sorts of insights that seem to appl...

Perhaps, retro is a better term than offbeat. I give you: The Boy Mechanic Vol. 1 700 Things for Boys to Do . It does, in fact, appear to ...

You know this is going to be hilarious: WhenParentsText.com . And it is. Very. Mom: I just looked at the forecast! Appears you have a ...

One of the items in my Toddler Airplane Survival Kit is dental floss. I figured it would be worth a few minutes of distraction as our litt...

A friend of mine has been publishing a clever and humorous web comic: microkosmic.com . As if publishing a web comic wouldn't be tricky...

Arlington County Schools are off today because of the storm , which means that day care is off, which means that I2X is having a snow day!...

Want to give this whole Facebook thing a try, but sure you're privacy and identity will be lost in the process? Well, I've got a s...

This was yet another gem passed to me by brother: TED Talk: Steven Johnson, Where good ideas come from . It's a short and highly en...

Seriously, how often does one discover a new favorite cookie? I'd say not often, but, that's just what ShaSha Co's Cocoa Snaps ...

For the last week or so, our little one has had a song stuck in his head. Ask him what he wants to hear, and he'll inevitably tell you ...

[ Update 8/7/2015: Check out my latest Kid Surival Kit here ] Between our last few trips and useful links the web , I was inspired...

We had an absolutely wonderful time this weekend meeting our new niece, Tizpora Sara and hanging out with the Twins. We managed to narr...

My brother David sent me this wonderfully clever set of animal clips . It's family friendly humor that Just Works. I think the dental s...

This afternoon we arrived in Boston and I got to meet my newest niece , Tzipora Sara! She's 7 pounds of cute and perfection. Seriously,...

Thunderstruck by Erik Larson follows two stories - Marconi 's invention of wireless communication and a well known London murder . As...

This is America, where a white Catholic male Republican judge was murdered on his way to greet a Democratic Jewish woman member of Congress...

The other day, we took our little one to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History . Of all the displays there, the tank of brightly colore...

Last night, I was installing Chrome on my netbook. When I got to the end of the setup , I received this prompt: You couldn't real...

The previous owner of my netbook had split the drive into a C:\ and D:\ partition. D: had the bulk of the space. Back when I was doi...

The view from my parents upstairs window. Winter sure is pretty.