Ben's Journal

Shira made me Birthday cake last night . We have a road trip to Rochester today. Could I imagine leaving the cake at home? No, no I couldn...

From Buzzfeed : And sure enough, on this, my 35th birthday, I can clearly recall this scene: D'oh - I'm old :-). How ...

For years, I've noticed a path that appears to follow Rt 66 -- though, it was only a few days ago that Shira and I decided to venture o...

After seeing an Urban Survival Kit like this one (and this one , and this one and this one ), I just couldn't resist making my own. ...

This 5 minute video follows the creation of the first soccer team of the Thai island of Koh Panyee. Whether you like soccer or not, it'...

Yesterday, our little one was diagnosed with a bacterial infection. That means no returning to Day Care for 24 hours while he's contagi...

Preparing for Passover this year has been surprisingly, well, not stressful (I can't go as far as calling it relaxing). The secret, I ...

Hard to believe, but the 7 dozen eggs shown here will most likely all be consumed during the 8 days of Passover. Got to love this Holiday! ...

It's crunch time in the world of Passover Preperationville. Today's goal: clean out the car. Good Gosh, having a toddler makes this ...

I've found that webdav can be a really handy way to publish file to a server. With a modern version of Apache I usually find that webd...

A friend of mine asked me for some links/suggestions for learning Emacs . While, I was naturally excited that another soul was interested ...

HikingUpward.net has an impressive catalog of Northern Virginia hikes . Like LocalHikes , the list is quite extensive. But, they go beyond ...

Pop Quiz: your 0-3 year old wants to play with the digital camera you left lying within reach. You should: (a) Slap the child's hand...

You've got to feel for this kid: being told your too young the job you've always wanted is a frustrating experience . I'd proba...

I left our little one, who's 19 months old, in front of my work laptop for about 20 seconds while I ran upstairs to get my car keys. Wh...

I'm making my way through Positive Discipline: The First Three Years - a day care recommended book on the topic of discipline. For the...

I've always struggled with wrapping my head around the various configuration parameters of MySQL. Whenever I try to read the docs or l...

My I get hungry, I get cranky. This is a bad thing. So, taking a lesson from my Mom and Grandma, I try to always have a snack at the ready...

OK, maybe Best should be replaced with Geekiest . I guess if I was really clever I could have left a note mentioning closures, lambda o...

Yesterday was an absolute perfect day - 80'ish degrees and sunny. I had chance to take an excellent walk outside with our little guy, ...

Relayed through Parent Hacks : This may be brilliant or evil, but being sick of the endless holiday candy train with my kids, I'm go...

If I could sing like these guys I would make it my goal in life to sit around with 3 of my buddies and spend the day signing. My gosh, the...

Last Thursday night (yes, on a school night!) my brother and I had the chance to see Judah Friedlander at the DC Improv . Here was my ta...

I love the name of our business - it's simple and direct, just like we strive to be as a company. But, if there's one thing I don...

I've always carried a Bic Lighter while backpacking, but it wasn't till I saw this post that I really appreciated that tiny device...

I try to be good about bringing along the appropriate load of books and technology whenever we take our 19 month old somewhere he'll ...

Tonight, one of my client's discovered an odd issue with his Google Custom Search setup - it was indexing and directing folks to http...

Exploriment pointed me to this song by Bluetech & Kilowatts - two artists I'd never heard of. I'm not exactly sure what to m...

Some very helpful advice from Unicorns For Socialism on how to deal with life's ups and downs: Now, a life lived ferociously is bou...

I've been experimenting with JSL, the JavaScript Loader and really been liking it. It allows to turn: <script type='text/jav...

Not sure where I came across this article describing the feats of one Hideaki Akaiwa and his response to the disaster in Japan - but it...

I'm back to using a Google Spreadsheet to track my time instead of a cloud based app (more on this later, perhaps). I've setup a r...

I like to travel and blog - which means that being ready to take quality photos anywhere, anytime, is pretty key for me. It's temptin...

So far, I'm really liking my Dell Vostro 3300 . The feel of the hardware is impressive, and it still surprises me at how fast some acti...

The project: replace the guts (yeah, that's a technical term) of our bedroom bathroom's toilet . The project went surprisingly wel...

I love the mailinator service. Need a disposable e-mail address? Just pick one, like, say, gotcha@mailintor.com and it's yours. In fa...

OK, Hero may be a bit strong, but still, this baking mat we picked up from Bed Bath and Beyond made Hamantaschen creation a lot less pai...

It's Friday - definitely time to laugh. Here are two bits from around the internet that made me smile. Check out this baby watching ...

Couple days ago, I go to eject my latest book on CD from my car and instead of the radio producing disks it produced a grinding sound. Not...

The radio is out in my car, so I've been listening to TED Talks on day care runs. I'm in the middle of listening to Salman Khan:...

In the tradition of EDC forums , everyday-carry.com and Flickr: What's in my bag , I give you What-I-Carry Wednesday . I've actual...

A friend of mine nudged me into reading The Shack by William Young. I'm glad she did. The Shack is a sort of Christian version of W...

Yesterday, we attempted to hit Theordore Roosevelt Island for a little light hiking. Unfortunately, we weren't the only ones with this...