Yet another flat tire while on the way shul. This is getting ridiculous. Surely G-d is sending me a message, but what could it be?
Thankfully, of all the places to get a flat tire, shul is an ideal one. It's warm, has plenty of toys for our little guy to play with, and the Rabbi was kind enough to baby sit while I coordinated with the auto rescue guy changing the tire.
So, all in all, I'm thankful.
What's your theory?
A while back, I got an e-mail from a firm asking me if they could use one of my photos of Atlantic City to create artwork for a piece they were doing on Boardwalk Empire. Could they? Could they? Heck yeah! For about 45 minutes I felt like an absolute rock star. Unfortunately, they quickly got back to me and told me that I had missed their deadline and they had to go another route. Alas, I missed out on a few minutes of my 15 minutes of fame.
Tonight, as I published some code, I got to thinking again about the content I publish here and how I'm happy to have folks use it.
It occurred to me, I really should put up some sort of legal statement that makes the rules of how you can use the content I publish here clear. Of course, I know nothing about the technical pitfalls of this sort of thing.
Luckily, the Creative Commons folks have done the heavy lifting. They even have a quick little tool you can use to to figure out which license of theirs you'd like to attach to your work. I ran through this and arrive at this one:
This work by Ben Simon is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Going through this exercise has been a good one. It has given me a chance to think about who I want using my content and how I want it to be used. Of course, you may find the Creative Commons too broad - but for me, it seems to work perfectly. Regardless, if you publish content on the web, even as a personal blog, it's probably an important exercise to go through.
Now, when someone stumbles on my work and wants to use it, hopefully, they'll be no roadblocks in their way. 15 minute of fame, here I come!
Love the native SQLite support in Adobe AIR. Hate how verbose it is.
Here's my attempt at an API which supports pithier code:
Grab the Db object here. Below are some examples that show usage.
Use & Enjoy!
// Setup
db:Db = new Db();
db.sqlConnection = ... // magic construct your sql connection
// Run a statement and ignore the results
db.exec("CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS people(id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT, name TEXT, ph TEXT)");
// Same as above, but use parameters
for(var i:int = 0; i < 10; i++) {
db.exec(["INSERT INTO people(name,ph) VALUES(?,?)", "Foo" + i, "555-" + (1212 + i)]);
}
// Extract data from DB and put it into an imaginary UI
db.each("SELECT * FROM people WHERE name LIKE 'A%'",
function(row:Object):void {
ui.updateUi(row.name, row.ph);
});
// Same as above, but work with a single row
db.first(["SELECT COUNT(*) AS num FROM people WHERE name LIKE ?", query],
function(found) {
if(found) {
ui.setStatus("There are " + found.num + " matches");
} else {
ui.setStatus("Oh uh, nothing found!");
}
});
This is the recipe we've been following for making stew lately. The ingredients are common enough, but the procedure we use to cook them is a bit on the odd side. It's all a result of trial and error, and what seems to work.
At 12:00pm, Ben combines the following into the crock pot. Setting the pot on high.
At 2pm, Ben turns the crock pot down to low.
At 5pm, Shira (who's just home from work), adds flour, soy sauce and anything else that strikes her fancy. She turns the crock pot back up to high.
At 6:30pm, delicious stew is served.
Here's an audio clip I captured of our little guy practicing one of his new words, and having a fun old time doing it.
For the record: I recorded the clip using Voice Recorder, then imported the .gp3 file into Windows Movie Maker. I added a graphic and a title, and poof I was done.
My dad sent me this PDF today: The Philmont Country Cookbook.
I actually made two trips out to Philmont and both were an absolute joy. The food wasn't all that memorable, though I do recall on one of our trips we did some trail work and were rewarded with canned peaches. Yum, that was tasty!
Other odds and ends I remember...
Who knew a cookbook could bring back such fond memories?
Of course, if I had blogged the trip back then, I could have just looked up the posts to trigger the memories. Oh well, what did I know.
Our little one is just beginning to see laptops and phones as more than a chew toy. We've got a ways to go, but I can see the wheels turning in his head as he begins to appreciate that these devices might have some real entertainment value. With that in mind, I'm really glad I found MusicGrid. The app's description just doesn't do it justice:
Technically a step sequencers, MusicGrid was inspired by the funky Tenori-on and the great online ToneMatrix.
Huh?
But download it and give it a try and it makes sense in just a few seconds. You're presented with a grid. As you rake your finger over the screen, various cells in the grid are turned on. While you're doing this, the program is sweeping across the grid playing a tone for each enabled cell.
Through, what I can only describe as magic, no matter what you draw you get a pleasing little song out of the deal.
Don't take my word for it, try the web version — ToneMatrix — that inspired the mobile app to see what I mean.
Music creation is made so simple, our 16 month old can play along. The tactile and interactive interface is perfect for kids of all ages.
I'd love to see a way to record the songs - but even without that feature, it's still a fun little app.
While not as sexy - it's also worth checking out the always impressive Toddler Lock. It let's our little one play with the screen without needing as much supervision, as he can't leave the app and call customers of mine.
Today, I was given a task by the wife: Cancel our trial subscription to the Quickbooks Time & Billing Manager tool we signed up for. We had gotten an e-mail from Intuit about our first month's charge and we didn't want to continue to use the tool.
Here's went through to get the job done:
Thing is, I wasn't really upset by any of this. This strikes me as normal for my interaction with Inuit, or really, most big companies. After all, there's all these limitations they have: the voice prompts can only be so specific and they can only have some many levels of phone tree. Not to mention, with such a huge company, I can't expect everyone to offer support or even know where to find it, for every product they offer..
But, thinking through this further it occurred to me that there was a better way.
Why not use click to call to offer an extensive directory on Quickbooks.com (or intuit.com or wherever)? They wouldn't be exposing phone numbers, and could have as deep and thorough a tree of options as they wanted. I could imagine something like:
Obviously, many of the Call buttons go to the same location - but they could be organized and structured in a way that made sense to the outside user. And, because you're not exposing phone numbers, you can re-organize them behind the scenes as often as you want.
You could even taken this one step further, allowing people like myself to associate specific questions with the Call option they selected. Then add in digg style wisdom-of-the-crowds behavior, so that as a new type of question comes up, more and more people would rank the right number to call. The result being that as more people get help, your help system gets easier to use.
In this case, though, there's actually an even cleverer solution they could implement. The e-mail I got from Inuit has the From address:
Intuit Customer Service <No_Reply@notifications.intuit.com>
Ahhh, the classic, No_Reply technique. But why? Wouldn't having reply support here be perfect? Imagine if the From address not only went to a human, but had embedded in it information about this transaction.
Getting my question answered should have been as easy as hitting the reply button and asking: "How can I cancel this trial?"
And why not mix the two concepts? Why not have a Call about this e-mail button I can click on and immediately get to an individual who's ready to talk about this specific e-mail?
I know support systems hardly seem like the place to innovate. But think about how valuable it could be. And the the technology to do this is available and just itching to be used for stuff like this. You just need to put some effort into the problem, and most importantly understand that this is an example of a problem, not constraint.
I had actually started a quite comprehensive critique of American by Heart - Sarah Palin's latest book. But, screw it. If Sarah's book can have a shoot-from-the-hip-folksy feel to it, so can my review. (Note: I will find a way to work at least on You Betcha! into this review).
As stories go, I found the book to contain little that was new. I felt like it was the book version of the narrative coming out of the Republican party for the last two years or so. It was like reading a highlights real: everything from Jeremiah Wright to Bristol Palin's Dancing with the Stars is mentioned. With the exception of the last chapter on Palin's own take on Faith and Leadership, there wasn't really anything new for me in here.
And it's packed full of wonderful gems like:
The deep unrest in America today wasn't caused by the color of the president's skin but the content of his policies. And more and more, it seems that the starting point for these policies is the liberal view that the Constitution is a flawed document. (p24)
Really? Liberals hate the constitution? Really?
Or this one:
We have a president, perhaps for the first time since the founding of our republic, who expresses his belief that America is not the greatest earth force for good the world has ever known. Now, I know that sounds a little overblown to many educated liberals, a little jingoistic. But so many of us do believe America is the exceptional force for good. America is not a perfect place. We have made mistakes, and allowed some terrible things in our history. Given the sordid historical record of virtually every other country on this planet, however, I think our pride in America is perfectly justified. Yet our current president seems to see nothing uniquely admirable about an America that fought two world wars and sought not one inch of territory or one dollar of plunder...(p264)
Really? Obama doesn't like America enough? Really?
This is just silly. I mean, it would be silly, but enough people want to believe this crap that when Sarah Palin says it, it becomes true. And thanks to this book not only has she said these things, but they're in print. So it definitely has to be true.
I really, truly wanted to like this book. I really, truly wanted to say that if I had grown up with Republican parents, surrounded by Republican friends, I'd totally be down with this book. But, I just can't. It's too shallow, too simplistic and too willing to fudge the facts when the story demands it.
Oh fooey, I'm at the end of the post and I didn't manage to work in a You Betcha. Am I disappointed? You Betcha!
I love this home schooling story by Kille Crowe on her blog:
[Kelli recounting a week of home schooling successes]
We had done so many great experiments in science and built a fort for history.
Just as I was practicing my acceptance speech for the Great Mom Awards (GMA's),
Alex commented to me,
"It is kinda weird that we didn't even do math all week."
WHAT?
I had forgotten to do MATH?
All
week?
I think these forgot the math moments are definitely possible while running a small business. You're humming along, and then bam!, you realize that you forgot something essential. Lately, I've been thinking about disaster recovery, and that's a perfect example of a topic that's easy to ignore and regret later.
The solution for Kelli was to develop a monthly chart that she and her kids could work against. All it takes her is a couple hours once a month to do planning for her 3 kids.
I love that she found a simple solution which kept her on track, yet didn't bog her down with process and busy work.
I'm not quite sure what my "monthly chart" should look like for my small business. But after reading Kelli's story, I'm pretty certain I need one.
With cold weather upon us, the fact that my G2's touch screen doesn't work through gloves has been bothersome. I'd had a few half baked ideas as to how to deal with this: (1) buy a pair of photographer's gloves that allow finger tips easy access or use (2) nose dialing (crazy, but just crazy enough to work maybe?).
Today, I learned that a real solution to this problem exists: the capacitive stylus. These appear to be like the old school stylus of the Palm days, yet with some sort of magic that makes them work on touch screen's like the G2 and iPhone.
$13.00 was a bit more than I wanted to spend on an item which I may not get much use out of - so I figured I'd google around and see if there's was a cheaper option out there.
And there is. How about Free: pocketnow.com: How to make a free capacitive stylus. The bottom line is that an anti-static bag, when rubbed against the screen, will work as though your finger was touching it. By rolling up the anti-static bag and taping it you've got an instant stylus.
I tried it with a bag I had lying around and sure enough it worked. Tomorrow I hope to get out my x-acto knife and some tape and see if I can actually make something that's a compact and workable stylus.
(Full disclosure: Pocketnow.com is a client of mine. But, I'm not plugging this link because of this. I simply googled for capacitive stylus and they were the first link in the non-paid results)
My brother pointed me to an op-ed by David Brooks: The Achievement Test. If you read one thing this month relating to politics, please make it this piece.
Brooks offers up an alternative to the Cut the size government at all costs or Protect government programs at all costs mentalities. Instead, he proposes we do something wild and crazy: evaluate the choices we make about government not based on buzz words and political posturing, but on whether the choice would generate any good for the country:*
The best way to measure government is not by volume, but by what you might call the Achievement Test. Does a given policy arouse energy, foster skills, spur social mobility and help people transform their lives?
His article gives examples where "Big Government" meets this criteria, and examples where it doesn't. He also shows that the same can be said of "Small Government."
His vision of how the Achievement Test could be used makes quite a bit of sense:
Reframing the argument around achievement wouldn’t end partisan division. Democrats and Republicans differ on what makes an economy productive. But it would allow for horse-trading.
As part of the budget process, Republicans could champion the things they believe will enhance productivity and mobility. Many of these will mean making sure people have the incentives to take risks and the freedom to adjust to foreign competition: a flatter, simpler tax code with lower corporate rates, a smaller debt burden, predictable regulations, affordable entitlements.
Democrats could champion the things they believe will enhance productivity and mobility. Many of these will mean making sure everybody has the tools to compete: early childhood education, infrastructure programs to create jobs, immigration policies that recruit talent, incentives for energy innovation.
And perhaps the key point is this:
The two agendas sit in tension, but they are not contradictory.
I think this point especially has been lost over the past few years. Anything Obama is for, McCain, Palin, Boehner and McConnell have to be vehemently against. Everything from Health Care to whether Obama can give a pep-talk to students has been met with resistance. From what I can see, the use of the filibuster just underscores the problem — when any progress by the other side is a loss, it means that every opportunity to block progress is a win and worthy of this extreme maneuver.
Tension is a good thing. Deadlock due to resolve that the views of each party are necessarily diametrically opposed is nothing but bad news.
Serious, I wonder who I could get to read Brook's article to actually talk some sense into these guys?
*Or as Obama and no doubt others have said: we don't need bigger government or smaller government - we need smarter government
I wanted to expand on the built in backup facilities Rimuhosting provides, and I figured S3 would be the way to go.
My first attempt was to use s3fs to make my S3 bucket available, and then use rsync to copy to it. I read about the idea here and was sold.
The setup instructions in the original post didn't quite apply to the CentOS server I was using. Via a combination of Google and trial and error, I came up with the follow yum install commands:
sudo yum install fuse fuse-devel python-devel sudo yum install curl-devel sudo yum install libxml-devel sudo yum install libxml2-devel cd ~/util/src wget http://s3fs.googlecode.com/files/s3fs-r191-source.tar.gz tar xzf s3fs-r191-source.tar.gz cd s3fs sudo make install
I entered the command:
sudo mkdir /mnt/s3 sudo /usr/bin/s3fs yourbucket -o accessKeyId=yourS3key -o secretAccessKey=yourS3secretkey /mnt/s3
And to my absolute amazement, it worked - I was able to trivially access my S3 bucket as though it were just another file system.
I kicked off an rsync command to test out the backup - and that's where I ran into the catch. It was so very s l o w. After a couple of minutes, only an itty bitty fraction of the 3 Gigs of data that needed to be backed up where in the S3 share.
Reading through the comments of the above approach, another user suggested duplicity as a work around for the sluggish S3FS behavior.
All it took was a simple:
sudo yum install duplicity
and the duplicity was ready for use.
I found this HOWTO which gives specific tips about how to use duplicity over S3.
My final backup script wasn't far from what was shown there on that page. Here's what I arrived at:
#!/bin/bash
export PASSPHRASE=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
dirs="/var/svn \
/var/www \
/home \
/usr/local/stuff"
for d in $dirs; do
prefix=$(basename $d)
echo duplicity $d s3+http://backup.bucket.name/$prefix
duplicity $d s3+http://backup.bucket.name/$prefix
echo ""
done
The script above is a little chatty for testing purposes.
I was able to backup about 4Gigs of data in about 45 minutes (or, what felt like 30 minutes - I lost track of time).
I like the duplicity approach for a variety of reasons:
I've added duplicity to cron and we'll see tomorrow how my 3am backup goes.
All in all, this seems like a winning solution. I'll also keep S3FS around too, as it's a wonderfully clever way to access S3 buckets.
We had an excellent night out last night in Old Town Alexandria, and I couldn't resist snapping a few retro camera snapshots.
We had dinner at Red Rocks, a classy pizza joint, and ice cream at Pops down the street. While the food was great, having a baby sitter and spending the evening with friends and not chasing a 16month old around a restaurant was truly precious.
A super huge Mazel Tov to Elana and Shmuel on the birth of our my newest Niece: Tzipora Sara!
What an angel!
This morning, Shira baked her first key-lime pie. It was absolutely delicious, and I think the perfect way to get thoughts of a sweet year ahead.
My suggestion is that every December 31st she bake a new form of pie, and my job is to eat it.
Sounds like a winning tradition, no?
The recipe for the pie can be found here:
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/easy-key-lime-pie-i/
Here's to a happy and healthy 2011!
I needed a facility for finding related words. Luckily, I was able to find the Big Huge Thesaurus API.
As web services go, it's pretty dang near perfect:
In fact, here's the PHP code I wrote to access it. Feel free to use and enjoy:
/*
* Find related words. 'word' is the word to search for.
* `narrow_to_relationship' will cause just matches of a particular relationship
* to return.
*
* Leave off the second option to get back all results.
*
* Possible values for narrow_to_relationship: syn (synonym),
* ant (antonyms), rel (related) and sim (similar).
*
* Return back an array of arrays of data -or an array of a specific
* type of words.
*/
function find_related_words($word, $narrow_to_relationship = false) {
$key = BIGHUGELABS_API_KEY;
$url = "http://words.bighugelabs.com/api/2/$key/" . urlencode($word) . "/";
$ch = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 3);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);
$lines = preg_split('/[\n\r]/', curl_exec($ch));
$results = array();
foreach($lines as $l) {
$values = explode("|", $l);
if($narrow_to_relationship) {
if($narrow_to_relationship == $values[1]) {
$results[] = $values[2];
}
} else {
$results[] = array('part' => $values[0], 'relationship' => $values[1], 'word' => $values[2]);
}
}
return $results;
}
// Sample Usage
$I_am_a = find_related_words("hacker"); // get back all terms related to hacker
$I_want_to_be = find_related_words("hacker", "syn"); // get back a list of synonyms
Using a thesaurus is a simple way to make a user's input seem a lot smarter. I'm actually surprised I've gone this long without integrating one into an app before. Luckily, using the facility was a breeze.
Lately, I've really been enjoying XM Channel 136 (technically, Public Radio Exchange). The stories that are run there are often quite captivating. Last night, I caught a Moth story. Specifically, Bronx is Burning by Tom Zeigler.
It was definitely a Driveway Moment.
You can give it a listen here or below:
Note - the above audio clip starts off with a story on a totally different topic. It's quite funny too and worth giving a listen to.
Yesterday, I was surfing the web on my Windows Vista laptop when I noticed a window that appeared to be a virus scanner doing a scan. How clever, I thought, a website had popped up an HTML window that looked like a system scanner. My heart sank as I realized, however, that the "virus scanner" was actually a running program and not a fake.
I realized, at that moment, I'd been hit by some sort of malware. And what nasty malware it was, it managed to do at least the following:
It probably did a lot of other nasty things, too.
Of course, I had a lapsed version of Norton on that laptop, so it was effectively unprotected. Yeah, that was a mistake.
Getting myself out of this jam hasn't exactly been straightforward. Here's what I've fumbled my way through:
At the moment, Norton has scanned 2,653,182 files and isn't finished yet. It has found 203 issues.
I'm not quite out of the woods yet, but things are definitely looking up.
The key lessons learned:
I've said it before, but I'll say it again: the people who craft these viruses are geniuses. If they would use their brains for good, instead of evil, we'd be living in a better world.
This imaginary Course List sure made for some fun reading. It's split up into Courses for Women taught by Men, and Courses for Men taught by Women.
I was going to quote a few items from each list, but every time I considered taking one from the Courses for Women taught by Men, I thought about the trouble I would get in from the wife. So, I'll stick to the Courses for Men taught by Women.
101 Combating Stupidity
102 You Too Can Do Housework
103 P.M.S. – Learning When To Keep Your Mouth Shut
104 How To Fill An Ice Cube Tray
105 We Do Not Want Sleazy Underthings for Christmas – Give Us Money
I've often wondered, but never taken the time to research the question: does a child need to be in a car seat while riding in a bus? What about a taxi?
Turns out, Virginia law is pretty clear about the this:
§ 46.2-1095. Child restraint devices required when transporting certain children; safety belts for passengers less than eighteen years old required; penalty.
A. Any person who drives on the highways of Virginia any motor vehicle manufactured after January 1, 1968, shall ensure that any child, up to age eight, whom he transports therein is provided with and properly secured in a child restraint device of a type which meets the standards adopted by the United States Department of Transportation.
(The above quote is trimmed slightly - you can read the entire law here)
The above should come as no surprise, right?
Now, here for the kicker:
E. Nothing in this section shall apply to taxicabs, school buses, executive sedans, or limousines.
Apparently, by law, you don't need to have your child in a car seat while they are in a taxi, bus or executive sedan.
If I squint, I can kind of see why a bus may be OK to not have a child in a car seat (it's a different kind of vehicle than a car; often going slower; and we don't use seatbelts while riding in them.). But not using a car seat in a taxicab? That seems just seems wrong.
Guess this is a case where the law is more lenient than you'd expect. Or maybe the powerful taxicab lobby is at work here? Who knows.
More info on the topic here.
I know they were calling for a "Monster Storm" and people often buy out bread and milk. But why isn't there a single bag of potatoes in the store? Are potatoes the new emergency food? Why wasn't I notified?
Update: The snow was very much a no-show. In fact, it's pretty amazing how we dodged the storm.
I consider myself to be a fairly experienced traveler. I also consider myself fairly organized. Yet, regardless of these two facts, no matter how big or small the trip is, I inevitably forget something. Always. It's almost a relief when, within the first hour or so, I have that head slapping moment and realized what I forgot.
Our weekend trip to Atlantic City was no different. Our big forget: the stroller. D'oh. I could try to explain how it is possible to forget such an essential item, but that would be a waste of time.
Luckily, I also had a fix.
We could have tried to hit a Wal-Mart or Target on the way to AC to pickup a temporary stroller, but that would have required a pretty big detour.
Instead, I recalled that last time I had been in the Rite Aid near Ballys, i had seen they were selling a very basic stroller (no doubt for emergencies like this).
Happily, my memory served me well and sure enough, Rite Aid was indeed selling a simple umbrella stroller. This little oops ended up costing me $16.99 to correct.
And how well does a $17 stroller work? Surprisingly well, actually. It's no-frills of course. But it is very lightweight and at $17 we won't mind if it gets damaged, stained or otherwise ruined. It won't replace the Maclaren I love so much, but as a backup stroller, to insure each car has one at all times, it is perfect.
It's worth mentioning that I've seen this same basic stroller at CVS too. So if you find yourself in need of a quick set of wheels, either CVS or Rite Aid can save the day.
Yesterday I rented up Sara Palin's new book America by Heart from the library. I just couldn't help myself. I've promised myself I'm going to read it with an open mind. With that in mind, I offer up the following:
We all know Mrs. Palin has an absolute gift for distributing zingers. Like, say, at the Republican Convention where we were introduced to her and she offered up this one:
Before I became governor of Alaska I was mayor of my home town. I guess a small town mayor is sort of like a community organizer except you have actual responsibilities.
Youch, that one stung. Or this one from a few days ago:
Where are the s'mores ingredients? This is in honor of Michelle Obama, who said the other day we should not have dessert.
Not quite as potent as the zinger above, but still, a pretty strong jab at the First Lady. And of course there have been many between those two examples.
Quick test - how many pages in do you think you need to go in Palin's new book before you get to her zinging someone?
The answer: 0.
That's right, on the very first page she manages to come out with a real gem:
[She opens the book by talking about Mr. Smith Goes to Washington - a touching film about an outsider making a difference in Washington, DC]
Most of all, it's a movie about the timeless truths of American handed down to us from our forefathers and foremothers.
[Wait for it...wait for it...]
In other words, it's a movie Hollywood would never make today.
Bam! She goes on to explain about Hollywood:
No doubt, most of today's Hollywood hotshots think movies like Mr. Smith are sappy and uncool, foolish sentimentalism about a country they seem to prefer to run down rather than build up. During the Iraq War, Hollywood produced a whole slew of movies that portrayed the United States as motivated by vengeance and oil, with the troops as mindless pawns.
Yeah, so there!
I used to think I was bothered by these comments because they came across so mean spirited. But if I'm honest with myself, when one of my guys lands a juicy one, is my first thought that it's being mean? Of course not.
No, my problem with statements like these is that they just don't hold up under thoughtful examination.
Consider the first comment. When Sarah Palin resigned her position as Governor of Alaska, one of her explanations was as follows:
She said leaving office is in the best interest of the state and will allow her to more effectively advocate for issues of importance to her, including energy independence and national security.
Essentially, she left job as Governor so she could do a more important job: be a community organizer (albeit one of a more virtual community). Yes, just a few months earlier, she was mocking community organizers, and now she is one (and does a great job of it too).
As for her comment to Michelle Obama - try flipping it around. Imagine Palin was advocating for a serious childhood condition that affects 1 in 3 children. Do you think Michelle Obama mocking her for doing this would have been appropriate? Of course not. Michelle would have been branded as cruel and ignorant.
And the Hollywood comment, I'm just not sure what the heck she's talking about. Which movies is she referring to? When I think about serious Hollywood movies about war, I think about Saving Private Ryan or The Hurt Locker. Sure, these movies aren't pro war - but I'd say they capture the hell that war is, and the valor of our troops serve with. How would she like war portrayed?
And what does she mean by "run down versus build up" our country? Sure, many in Hollywood lean to the left - maybe very far to the left. But does that mean they want to tear down their country? Of course not. You may not agree with their methods for making this country a better place, but surely you can at least agree they're trying to do something to that end?
I get that she's good at delivering these lines. And I get that these lines make perfect sound bites and Twitter chatter. But I for one, hope that I find out she's more than just a zinger factory in this book. I'm really hoping that along with these clever one liners there are actually nuanced thought content.
As you can imagine, I'll be reporting my findings.
While reading Three Cups of Tea, I proudly noted to myself that not only had I heard of Mortenson's home town of Bozeman Montana, but I even had a friend who lived there. Tonight, we saw that friend and he generously gave us a signed copy of Listen to the Wind - the children's version of the Three Cups of Tea story.
Shira read it aloud to our 16 month old and myself, and while I'm not sure he followed every word of it (if only it included more about bananas, yogurt and airplanes - some of his favorite words of late. Alas, it didn't), I certainly enjoyed it. The story imparts wonderful lessons about the power of an individual to help others and the universal nature of education. Heck, the lesson that a Muslim Cleric can be a force for good is probably something many American adults need to learn.
The book even points kids to a charity that they can get involved in pennies for peace - where they can learn that something as simple as collecting up apparently worthless pennies can be a force for good.
Sure is nice to know that you don't have to be grown up to start making a difference.
Go read this. Or, the Washington Post write up over here. Wow, just wow.
Next time someone tells me that the Internet and social media is going to be the downfall of civilization I'm pointing them to this story.
Geesh, makes me wonder how I should change the world today.
Pick something you want to accomplish but that's tough to do. Say, lose weight or start a business.
Now, what if instead of attacking your goal head on, you designed an experiment around it. So, you decide you're going to do 3 workouts a week on FitTV and eat 5 servings of veggies a day for a month. Or, you are going to develop a business plan and pitch it to 10 people.
You might lose weight or get that business started, or you might not.
The experiment approach has some interesting benefits: first, it's bounded - you aren't making a life change, just trying something out. The limited time frame means you'll have a better chance of toughing it out. Second, there is no possibility for failure, just the collection of data. You might find that after a month, you weigh more than you started, or that 10 people hate your idea. That's OK. You conducted the experiment, got the data, and can move on. Experiments work best when the data is shared with a community, which means the effort you put in can serve to help others. Finally, experiments make it easy to frame attempts gone horribly wrong in a humorous context, rather than shrinking in failure.
What does all this have to do with A. J. Jacob's My Life as an Experiment? Everything. My Life as an Experiment tracks a variety of tests Jacobs runs from living life through the eyes of a beautiful woman, to mimicking George Washington's life. He's apparently the guru of life experiments.
The book itself is wonderful: Jacobs manages to find the perfect balance between successes and failures in his experiments, gives us plenty of lessons to learn and wraps the whole package in humor. I was concerned that the text would come off as a bit holier-than-though ("Look at me and what *I've* done!) - but that isn't the case at all.
I also think it serves as a good template for designing your own life experiments - a problem solving technique, as you can see above, I think has a lot of value.
Read (or in my case, listen to) the book for the wonderful stories, or use it as a how to guide. Either way, you can't go wrong.
Note: I listened to the Book on CD version, which as a bonus is read by Jacobs himself. I for one found his reading delightful and probably enjoyed it more because of this.
One of main reasons I purchased a Netbook was for travel. I loved the idea of having a laptop with me for fixing issues or blogging, yet that was extra small so it didn't add to the stuff I was schlepping.
I just got back from a trip where I had a chance to test these assumptions.
Turns out, I definitely made the right call. The Samsung N150 totally performed as expected.
For most of the trip, we didn't have reliable WiFi, so the N150 just sat in its sleeve. It was small enough, that it didn't take up much real estate while packing. And also, not valuable enough, that I had worries it was going to be taken from the rooms we were staying at (though, we stayed at small resorts, where I'm sure theft is very rare).
I had a few occasions to do some writing for blogging purposes, and the laptop worked great for this.
Mid way through the trip, I finally needed the Samsung to actually work. I used Skype to chat with folks back in the states about a medical issue (everyone's fine, now, thanks) and I used subversion/sitecopy to grab files, and deploy them to fix a client's broken site.
While I wouldn't want the N150 to be my everyday laptop, it definitely worked great as "I don't think I'll need a laptop, but better bring one just in case" option.
No surprise, people believe totally false things in the world of politics. Like, say:
Though the CBO concluded that the health reform law would reduce the budget deficit, 53% of voters thought most economists have concluded that health reform will increase the deficit.
Or, say:
Though the National Academy of Sciences has concluded that climate change is occurring, 45% of voters thought most scientists think climate change is not occurring (12%) or that scientists are evenly divided (33%).
Or, say:
31% believed it was proven true that the US Chamber of Commerce spent large amounts of money it had raised from foreign sources to support Republican candidates
Or, say:
86% assumed their taxes had gone up (38%) or stayed the same (48%), while only 10% were aware that their taxes had gone down since 2009
More examples here. And the big lie of the year, is here.
The easy one to blame for these lies are the news media. I'll give you that delivering news and information is tricky business and that if you aren't careful, your viewers will end up with false information.
Maybe the answer isn't to suggest that news networks should be unbiased. Maybe that's just not possible. Instead, maybe they should expect an error rate in the system, and use a feedback loop to correct it.
In other words, find out what your viewers think is true that isn't - and then address it head on.
Seems like a simple way to demonstrate that you're serious about the truth.
Day 7 - our last day finally arrived. Our hotel bill reflected our little one's presence: $25BZ for a broken vase, and $50BZ for a broken clock. In my opinion, the clock had it coming to it - it was way too fragile to belong in a hotel room with tile floor.
Our main adventure for the day was making it from our resort to the airport. We made a cursory attempt to visit Belize City - but we really didn't have the time, nor energy, to visit this chaotic city. I did get some ice cream from a random shop on the street, and found it pretty blah. Who messes up chocolate ice cream?
We made it to the tiny airport with plenty of time. There was absolutely no line when we went through security - what a pleasure that was. And our plane left on time. We flew through Miami, which was a heck of a lot more chaotic than Belize, but painless none the less. Our flight was delayed 30 minutes due to weather in DC. I suppose that's a preview of what we have to face when we land in DC.
All in all, I'd say our Belize trip was an outstanding one. The sites and activities were absolutely top notch. The Mayan ruins are on par with our trip to Pompei - though they are on different scales. Our accommodations - both Mystic River Resort and Lamanai Outpost Lodge, exceeded expectations. The staff at both definitely went above and beyond to make sure we were happy (Mystic River cooked us pancakes with soy milk so our little one could eat them; Lamanai had a waitress who would carry our little one around and let us get a few minutes of peace during dinner).
The biggest surprise was just how underdeveloped Belize was. I always thought of Belize as an exotic getaway, not a country filled with crumbling shacks and roads in massive need of a good paving. It's easy to forget just how wealthy a country I live in, and this trip reminded me in stark detail how much this is the case.
I think Shira summed up the trip best when she remarked that she felt like we were on a Reality TV show. Challanges kept popping up (quick - your child has a 102 degree fever, and the nearest doctor is 2hrs away by rough road. What do you do?!) and it was our job to negotiate them. Sometimes we'd gracefully rise to meet them, other times we'd trip all over each other. But, in the end, nobody was kicked off the island, and we had an excellent time.
3 Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Relin is a Dayenu type of book.
Had the story just been about Greg's valiant, but failed attempt to climb K2 - it would have been enough.
Had the story also included his wandering into, and connecting with, a village in Pakistan - that too, would have been enough.
Had the story included these things, and Greg's audacious attempt to build a single school in that tiny villiage in Pakistan - that for sure, would have been enough.
But the book includes these adventures, and many more. You've got Greg falling in love getting married in a matter of days. You've got him surviving a kidnapping incident that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Heck, you have 9/11 taking place that shapes and molds his mission even further.
And the cool part is just how Human Greg is. He makes mistakes and missteps, yet manages to show how you can come out on top.
It sounds cliche, but this book really does capture one individual's attempt to change the world. Read it for inspiration. Read it to get a pulse on a region and religion that so many of us still don't understand. Read it, because when the movie comes out, you're going to want tell folks that what they are seeing aren't Hollywood embellishments, but the real thing.
Just read it.
Whooo! Our little guy slept the night!! Since we got here, he hasn't been feeling anywhere near 100%. During the previous nights of the trip he was massively congested and getting up every few hours. But not so last night - he slept from 7pm till 5:45 am. What a victory.
Our first official activity of the day was a visit to the Green Hills Butterfly farm. For $10, they'll take you into a screened in house filled with thousands of butterflies and give you an education as to how they raise them and what the different types they house. They sure are magnificent creatures.
We then made our way into the Pine Ridge Nature reserve. We made it as far as Rio Frio Cave. Caving is a big deal in Belize, and it's something we'd probably have done more of if we didn't have a 16 month old along for the ride. The Rio Frio Cave turned out to be the perfect way to get a little dose of caving and do it in a family friendly way. The cave is gigantic, which means there's no claustrophobia concerns. And it has an opening at both ends of the cave, which means it never gets 100% dark. Like I said, it's a cave for the whole family.
We also did some hiking and visited the Rio Frio pools - a site which was beautiful in and of itself.
Oh, and here's a tip - the Fodors book says that the 1000Ft Falls is relatively close to the Rio Frio Pools. The turn off to the falls is, but the actual falls is about 15 miles away. This doesn't sound so bad, but on Belize's rutted dirt roads, this is quite a schlep. We weren't committed enough to see the falls to make the journey.
Our next door neighbor brought over their HP Mini Laptop which was having some serious boot issues. You'd turn it on, and rather than booting to Windows 7, it would leave you at a prompt like so:
error: no such device XXXX grub rescue>
Apparently, the previous owner of the laptop installed Windows over the Linux distribution that came with the laptop. Hence the unexpected mix of the Grub boot loader and Windows 7.
Here's how I got this sucker booting again (I'll spare you the false starts and just give you the recipe that worked):
Looks like my guess that the Master Boot Record got hosed was right. Whew. Looks like those low level Linux installs of years ago really paid off.
My suggestion: prepare the Ultimate Boot CD on a thumbdrive now, and have it ready to go. Sooner or later, you're going to need at least one of the many tools it offers.
We started off Day 5 of our trip with a visit to the Belize Botanical Gardens - a starred attraction in the Fodors guidebook. We had two choices for getting to the gardens: take a 45 minute drive over very bumpy roads, or take a 3 minute canoe river trip down stream. We opted for the canoe. There's just something incredibly satisfying about using water travel for such a utilitarian purpose. I for one felt like quite the outdoors man.
Our canoe ride was for the most part uneventful and quite fun. That is, except that our little one repeatedly tried to climb out of the canoe. Apparently he's a little confused as to when we are supposed to float above the water, and when we are supposed to swim in it.
The Botanical Gardens were wonderful. The foreman of the gardens took us around, and his informative explanations made for a delightful tour. We've been to bigger botanical gardens before - but this one was the most enjoyable to visit.
The other highlight of Day 5 was a trip to the Cahal Pech ruins. The book claims that these are among the smaller Mayan ruins in the area, so my expectations were set fairly low. They need not have been - these were wonderful. There's plenty to climb in and around, and I more than got my Ancient Mayan Ruin fix for the day.
Most of today was spent getting from Northern Belize to Western Belize - about 10 miles or so small shacks, or homes that looked they should be condemned were quite prevalent along the way. Even the capital city of Belmopan was hardly impressive, lacking any kind of polish that we could see. Though, we did get some terrific pizza there - so that's at least one redeeming quality.
One highlight of our trip through Belize was a stop at the Belize Zoo. It claims to hold the title as the best little zoo in the world. And the fact is, it really was very nice. Our little one is now at an age where he can start to appreciate the animals - excitedly repeating "cat, cat" when we saw an ocelot. The zoo did look in surprising disrepair in some places. Apparently, that's due to Hurricane Richard who came through a few months ago and did major damage to parks in the area.
Mystic River Resort, where we ended up that night, was a real gem. Our little cottage is more polished than in Lamanai, and dinner from the restaurant was quite delicious.
Each room has a fireplace, and the evening was cool enough that I went ahead and started a fire. I'm embarrassed to say how many matches it took to get the sucker started. Our little one learned a variety of new terms with regard to the fire: "Hot," "owie," and "not cool" - which was he was glad to repeat. Of course, they mean nothing to him, so he says these words as he approaches the fireplace anyway.
You might as well go ahead and install 7-zip now, you're going to need it.
Why? Well, not because you want to use the fancy shmancy .7z compression. Nah, .zip works just fine. And not because you need a way to extract .zip files - Windows has fine built in support (sure, it took them long enough to add it - but it's there now).
Nope, you need 7-zip because sooner or later one of the following will happen:
7-zip will handle both of these cases seamlessly.
Today we tackled what we actually came to Lamanai to see: the Lamanai Mayan Ruins. We took a short boat ride to the park containing the ruins and started our guided tour there.
About all I remembered from my social studies class about the Mayans was that they were into the sacrifice thing. And turns out, that's quite true. In fact, our guide (who apparently has Mayan roots) said that the Mayans were actually quite an aggresive people, and didn't mind war or bloodshead per se.
Well, when they weren't at war or sacarficing something, they seemed to be building stuff. Because, wow, the ruins are impressive. You can actually get quite upclose to most of the buildings, climbing the impressive looking steps to their summits. In fact, our little one got to practice that word a lot: steps he would say in a surprisingly clear fashion.
I doubt the pictures do the place justice - it was just an amazing site to see. The ambiance is also perfect because in the jungle, out of sight, are howler monkeys doing their thing. They sound like some sort of large predator - certainly not something I would want to mess with. We did see one monkey sleeping up high in a tree - and as you can imagine, they look a lot cuter then they sound.
The main event for Day 2 was a medicine walk. Essentially, our guide was going to take us through the jungle and point out various plants with medicinal properties. Turns out, in the jungle, you only have to walk a few feet before you find such a plant. And so we took a relatively slow walk, first on the grounds of our lodge, and then into the town nearby, stopping every few minutes to learn about a new plant its impressive effects on the body.
While the tour was great, getting to walk through the nearby town with a guide was probably even more interesting. The word that seems to best describe what we saw was undeveloped. Most of the homes don't have electricity, and the school appeared to have outhouses for the students to use. I asked how many people lived in a small, two room house, and was told it was a family with 4 children. The people of the town didn't appear to be poor - they were just living a totally different lifestyle than we can imagine.
While on our tour, a van pulled into the town honking his horn. Apparently, he was the tortilla man, delivering fresh tortillas. And how much do you think a package of say 29 tortillas costs? Oh, about 60 cents US. And that's more expensive than usual, as the price has gone up lately because the cost of corn has increased.
We ate lunch in the town, and was again treated to a wonderfully delicious meal. Then again, I like cheese, rice, corn and beans - the staples of the food we were served. So, I could hardly go wrong.
We brought along a backpack to carry our little one in - which was a smart move. This isn't stroller territory at all. He liked the walk, and slept for a good chunk of it. At lunch, the ladies at the restaurant were glad to play with him and sit him on their laps. It's amazing how universal children are, with everyone being glad to pick up our little guy any chance they can.
In the afternoon, we got really wild and crazy and took a family canoe trip. Shira and our little guy were in front and I paddled in back. I'm happy to report the only thing we lost overboard was a hat, and even that we were deftly able to retrieve.
Our little one then spent a good 30 minutes wading in the water and splashing around. It's amazing how sometimes it takes so little to entertain a 15 month old.
By the time evening rolled around, we noticed that our little one wasn't feeling so hot. In fact, we could tell he had a fever. How he managed to come down with something so quickly (heck, it's the first full day in Belize!) is beyond me - but he did it. Luckily, we brought plenty of baby Tylenol and with a dose on-board he was back to being happy.
Never, never, never leave home without that stuff. I'd sooner travel without diapers and wipes. (OK, that's probably not true..but you get the idea.)
I really like pastebin.com. They allow you to easily publish information (usually, code) so that others can access it via unique URL. The site has some cool features, such as keeping your data around forever or expiring it.
During a recent visit to the site, I noticed they are now offering Pastedroid an Android app for quickly generating Pastebin entries.
The app is setup much like you would expect to be: you can publish content, set various options (such as the subdomain to publish on) and review the past links you've published.
The result is a cool tool that could be used for publishing snippets of information with almost zero effort. Just enter the data, and Paste. Every bit of information gets it's own unique URL and is safely archived forever. By organizing your content into a subdomain, you can keep all your data together.
It's definitely worth experimenting with.
Our flights to Belize were fairly uneventful. So was Customs in Belize and the rental car desk. In fact, if anything, the whole arrival was almost too calm. I'm used to arriving in a foreign country and being swarmed by taxis and other people all trying to help you out. Not in Belize, it was one calm experience.
We immediately made our way out of Belize City (not really seeing anythying city like) and started up the Northern Highway to Lamanai Outpost Lodge - where we planned to spend the first half of our trip.
Calling the Northern Highway a Highway is probably being a bit too generous. Yes, it's 55mph, but there are no painted lines of any kind, and then every few miles there are speed bumps. Yes, speed bumps.
The scenery along the road was gorgeous - everything was so green and the sky was a perfect blue and filled with puffy white clouds. Every once in a while we'd pass a building and I'd wonder if it was a home or business, abanonded, or being built, or just in a state of disrepair.
As promised by the guidebook, about 3/4 of the way into the drive we came across a Mennonite Community. I have to say, it was a surreal experience to suddenly see families in horse and buggies, all dressed in plaid shirts or dresses and wonderful hats. I felt more like we were in Pennsylvania among the Amish, than thousands of miles away in a foreign country.
After leaving the Northern Highway, the road got rougher and rougher till it was not much more than gravel covered pot holes. Now I see why Hertz only rents you 4 wheel drive vehicles.
Finally, we reached the lodge and started getting settled for the night. The particular little building we are staying in is quite comfy, feeling rustic enough for my tastes, yet upscale enough for Shira. Having no TV and no telphone help to set the stage for the kind of trip we were planning.
We had the first of many meals provided by the lodge, and it was quite good. They were more than glad to meet our vegetarian meal request.
Then it was off to bed, realizing just how exhausted we were from a day of traveling.
