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't.
I may not get WiFi on this device, but at least it won't run out of batteries and will be keep me well entertained.
Thanks Babe for such a delicious birthday!
From Buzzfeed:
And sure enough, on this, my 35th birthday, I can clearly recall this scene:
D'oh - I'm old :-). How did that happen?
Seriously, though - I've got a super wife, loving family and friends, the most amazing 20 month old on the planet, a job that rocks, and a full head of hair. I really, truly, couldn't ask for anything more.
Yep, life at 35 is good.
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 out and explore it. The path is known as Custis Trail, and it's a real gem. It essentially connects the W&OD trail to Rossyln. And while it follows 66, we didn't find the road noise especially distracting.
Here's what we managed to get accomplished last Sunday (with a kid on my back, no less):
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. Forget the Boy Scouts, this little project brought back memories of Cub Scouts, where we crammed a survival kit in a film canister. My, that was fun, though good luck to us if we ever needed one. Still, it planted the seed of preparedness.
So here goes - what I managed to cram in an Altoids Tin. It's worth mentioning that I decided: (a) to focus the kit on things that would actually be useful on a regular basis (b) I tried to limit what I stored in there so that it wasn't impossible to repack.
Contents:
So what's in your get-through-the-day kit?
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's a must watch.
Who said you needed a little thing like a grass field to play soccer?
Via: Kottke.org
Yesterday, our little one was diagnosed with a bacterial infection. That means no returning to Day Care for 24 hours while he's contagious (ignoring the fact that he's already given whatever he had to everyone there over the last few days - but, whatever - rules are rules). What a prefect opportunity, I figured, to ditch work and play for the day. So, that's what we did.
I wanted to get outside for a little hiking adventure, but I wanted to do it close to home. I thought I'd give Potomac Overlook Park a second visit, as I recalled seeing a 2 mile loop there that looked intriguing.
The hike, which starts off taking you through the park itself, is pleasant enough. You get the feeling of being in the woods, but with a family friendly trail. Then the trail hooks up with Donaldson Run, and things actually get kind of interesting. There's 3 or 4 stream crossings to make, as you go from one side of the run to the other. There's a mysterious abandoned structure to oggle, and finally the hike finishes in a steep a slightly nerve racking (well, with a 29lb toddler on your back, anyway), finish to the Potomac Heritage Trail.
You get all this excitement in a stretch that's about a mile or so long. It turned out to be the perfect little day trip out.
Got to love those sick day policies after all!
Preparing for Passover this year has been surprisingly, well, not stressful (I can't go as far as calling it relaxing). The secret, I think was that I managed to spread the tasks out over multiple weeks. For example, I usually do a fridge cleaning marathon - but by spreading it out over multiple sessions, it was a lot easier.
Here, for my use next year, is basically the schedule I followed.
(NOTE: there's mention of 1 shopping trip here. Shira and David have probably made half-a-dozen. I'm on the cleaning team, not the shopping team, so their timeline and tactics don't concern me)
Here's to a Happy, Health and Kosher Passover - Chag Semeach and L'chiam
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!
Note to self: avoid a cholestrol test over the next couple weeks.
It's crunch time in the world of Passover Preperationville. Today's goal: clean out the car. Good Gosh, having a toddler makes this experience unique: as I peeled back every surface I could find in the car and car seat, I found another batch of crackers. I must have cleaned up an entire box of Ritz during this process.
I did, however, stumble on a useful car seat fact: rather than jam the top of the car seat into the headrest, it's trivial to just remove the headrest altogether. Now the headrest won't get damaged from the car seat, and my field of view is improved back there.
With the cars cleaned up, I've only got about 742 things left to do before Passover starts Monday night. Gulp.
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 webdav is just waiting for me to turn it on. That means I can enable publishing just by tweaking my Apache config, and not having to bother with setting up an FTP server (with the firewall rule and unix accounts backing it up).
It all Just Works. That is, with one itty bitty exception: by default attempts to upload a .htaccess file fail with a 403 error code. Inside the Apache log, I find:
[Thu Apr 14 06:06:00 2011] [error] [client xx.xx.xx.xx] client denied by server configuration: /var/www/vhosts/yyyyyyy/.htaccess
This is actually quite explainable, as there's the following standard configuration in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf:
#
# The following lines prevent .htaccess and .htpasswd files from being
# viewed by Web clients.
#
<Files ~ "^\.ht">
Order allow,deny
Deny from all
</Files>
I knew I didn't want to simply yank out these lines, as that would leave a gaping security whole. Instead, after much poking and prodding I came up with the following recipe:
<VirtualHost xxxx>
ServerName xxxxxxxxxxxx
DocumentRoot /var/www/vhosts/yyyyyyyy
...
<Location />
DAV on
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Private"
AuthUserFile zzzzzzzzzz
<LimitExcept POST GET>
Require valid-user
</LimitExcept>
</Location>
<Files ~ "^\.ht">
Require valid-user
Satisfy any
</Files>
</VirtualHost>
For the most part, the above is the standard virtual host setup for using webdav. For GET and POST requests you allow any user to access the URL, and for other types of requests (which include webdav requests), you require a user.
The funky part happens within the Files block. The Require statement is fairly obvious - it insists that any user who wishes to access a .htaccess file must be logged in (which is a requirement for using webdav). The Satisfy directive took a little longer to figure out. Without it, the original rule in httpd.conf was still taking effect, which always denied access. With that Satisfy directive, I'm saying that you can *either* be a logged in user, or be denied.
Slowly but surely, I'm understanding Apache's configuration rules enough that I can actually use them to my benefit. And I suppose that's another bonus you get for using webdav - you have one powerful set of configuration rules to control access for both web viewers as well as publishers, versus needing two different systems (say, Apache for web viewing and an FTP server for publishing).
A friend of mine asked me for some links/suggestions for learning Emacs. While, I was naturally excited that another soul was interested in the emacs religion, I do appreciate the awfully high learning curve involved. It's been years since I sat in a University at Buffalo CS113 class getting schooled on how emacs worked.
To help him get started, though, I've compiled the following 10 links into emacswiki.org - a site that consistently shows up first when I search for all things emacs. I've tried to focus this list on some core concepts that I absolutely rely on. Many of these aren't sexy topics, but emacs has never been about flashiness - it's about editing text quickly and never having to take your hands off the keyboard.*
Once you've mastered the basics, it's time to ponder the emacs lisp list - which provides plenty of add on functionality for emacs.
So, if you were learning emacs today - what topics would you focus on?
*Yes, I know your whiz bang IDE can do all this functionality. Congrats. This list isn't meant to be a: "emacs is better than X list" -- I'll leave that to others to duke out.
HikingUpward.net has an impressive catalog of Northern Virginia hikes. Like LocalHikes, the list is quite extensive. But, they go beyond simple descriptions and reviews.
The handy overview map and easy to use get directions to this hike cool. But, by far, the coolest feature are annotated photos. Such as,
There's nothing more frustrating than trying to take a hike in some far off location, only to be stumped as to where the trail actually begins.
Definitely a useful site.
Pop Quiz: your 0-3 year old wants to play with the digital camera you left lying within reach. You should:
Positive Discipline: The First Three Years, which I just finished reading, is essentially dedicated to teaching you about option (d) - None of the above.
As I've mentioned, the book tries to focus on interacting with children using methods other than punishment (options a. and b.) and permissiveness (option c.).
At stake is far more than simply a "well behaved child" (an absurd notion at 0-3 years old). The idea is that the techniques behind positive discipline help set the foundation for a confident and capable child. I really like this notion - for example, that the struggles our 19 month old is having with tantrums is really an opportunity for growth, more than anything else.
This isn't the best book I've read on parenting - right now, these books hold that title. But, it definitely felt like key information that I should know, and that I wasn't going to figure out on my own. Basically, if you're wondering should you be spanking your kid, or what the heck you can do about your child's misbehavior - this book is a must read.
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 probably cry if I was in his shoes. Just watch it, it's hilarious.
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. What's the worst that could happen, was he going to delete all my e-mail or something?
I came back, and found this:
He managed to flip the orientation of the screen from landscape to portrait. The only way I know how to do this is by going through a series of menus and hitting the confirm button a dialog box. Yet he managed to find some mechanism to do this in the 20 seconds I left him alone.
Amazing. Makes me wonder what kind of skills they're teaching him at day care. I'm going to have to have a talk with them - in this household we learn Emacs shortcuts first, *then* Windows shortcuts. It's just our way.
I'm making my way through Positive Discipline: The First Three Years - a day care recommended book on the topic of discipline. For the most part, I'm really enjoying it and finding it quite useful. I'll do a full review when I'm finished with the book, but reading through the chapter on technology got me thinking enough that a blog post was called for.
A very quick and dirty summary of the book might go like this: Your 0-3 year old needs to learn about the foundations of discipline*. To do this, you need to find the midpoint between punishment and permissiveness. In other words, spanking your child is out, and so is letting them do whatever they want. Instead, you want to help your child achieve the age appropriate level of independence.
Got all that? The book then goes through the classic range of topics, from tantrums to toilet training, and explains how this philosophy applies. It's a sensible approach and one I think they do a good job with. That is, until they hit the chapter on technology.
As you can imagine, the chapter on technology (TV, computers, and other screen time activities) leaned heavily towards the danger of these mediums. Everything from the "it's not healthy for their brains" to the "they'll see poor role models" is covered. Essentially, it's easy to swing to the permissive side of things when technology is involved. And the points are all valid.
What got me buzzing though, was that there was no suggestions for how technology could be used as a positive force in a child's life. You're telling me that with infinite content of YouTube, the highly interactive nature of cell phones and power of the desktop computer, there's no way to harness this good? When our little one listens to CDs of nursery rhymes, it's a good thing - he learns all sorts of language constructs. Yet, when you add a visual component, it suddenly becomes TV and is evil?
I'm not suggesting the book shouldn't have had plenty of stern warnings about technology being a trap for kids. I just wish that they would have considered the technology what it is: tools. And giving parents suggestions for how these tools could be used in a positive way would be far more valuable than just writing them off as a necessary evil.
*That's discipline as in "man, that Olympic athlete is disciplined!" not discipline as a euphemism for punishment or spankingI've always struggled with wrapping my head around the various configuration parameters of MySQL. Whenever I try to read the docs or look around for informative articles I either find obvious stuff I know (such as using explain to check for index usage) or the content goes way over my head in a hurry.
I saw the recommendation to give mysqlreport a try and because I'm always on the lookout for new tools I jumped at the chance.
The install couldn't have been more hacker friendly, with one option being:
wget hackmysql.com/scripts/mysqlreport from your terminal
With no crazy dependencies to fulfill, I was able to generate a report from one of my servers in just a few seconds.
As I glanced over the report my eyes definitely started to glaze over - so many numbers, and buffers and more numbers. And then I started reading the myqlreport guide. What a truly wonderful document. The author of mysqlreport not only takes you through the output of his software, but explains how the information presented interpreted.
It's the best read on MySQL performance I've ever found. It's fairly dense stuff, and you can't rush through it - but it's worth the read. Definitely a find.
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 when I'm out and about. From my perspective, the LÄRABAR is about an ideal EDC food as you can get:
In the winter, I kept one in my jacket pocket and found it to be ever so useful. Come summer time, I'm not sure where I'll stash one on me.
What's your favorite portable snack?
OK, maybe Best should be replaced with Geekiest. I guess if I was really clever I could have left a note mentioning closures, lambda or continuations.
Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Lisp!
Yesterday was an absolute perfect day - 80'ish degrees and sunny. I had chance to take an excellent walk outside with our little guy, and most importantly - for the first time ever - eat on our deck:
That humble little setup may not be much, but my gosh it was nice sitting outside in the warm breeze.
Today, we've gotten torrential rains and it's currently cold and cloudy outside. And soon enough it'll be too hot and muggy to sit outside - but in DC, when you get a perfect day, you've got to enjoy it to the max.
Relayed through Parent Hacks:
This may be brilliant or evil, but being sick of the endless holiday candy train with my kids, I'm going to just get a small set of Legos and fill their eggs with them.
Again, not knowing anything about Easter, I think I can still call this a clever and useful hack. In fact, I wonder if the same maneuver could be applied to Halloween? Probably not, as the whole cool factor of accumulating lots of eggs and then resulting in lots of Lego pieces is unlikely. But still, it's a thought. Or maybe there's a way to mix in hidden legos during the whole search for the Afikoman?
Last week I actually picked up a sleeve full of plastic Easter Eggs at the store for $1.75 or so with the intention of giving our little one something fun to play with. So far, he's had great fun mashing them together and practicing opening and closing them. I definitely got my $2.00 out of them.
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, they are beautiful.
This video has embedding disabled, so you'll have to click over to YouTube to watch it. Luckily, this one I can embed:
Magnificent stuff, no?
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 take on the evening:
All in all, it was a wonderful evening and I did get in plenty of laughs. The true high point, however, may have been the food. The Mexican salad I ordered was both fresh and gigantic (and how can you overdue it on salad?) and the chocolate mousse cake was off the charts good.
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't like about it, it's giving out my e-mail over the phone. The long domain name is just a drag. The fix I decided to implement was to buy some shorter domain names, specifically ones I thought I could give out over the phone a bit easier.
I ended up going with:
i-2-x.com ideas2exe.com
To make these domains actually useful, I wanted to setup both e-mail and web redirects.
There are a handful of ways to forward a web domain name. Heck, GoDaddy allows you to do this right from the domain manager they provide. I couldn't resist using a RewriteRule hack I've fallen back on many times. I through the following in my webserver's httpd.conf:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName ideas2executables.com
ServerAlias www.i-2-x.com i-2-x.com www.ideas2exe.com ideas2exe.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/vhosts/www.ideas2executables.com
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule /(.*) http://www.ideas2executables.com/$1 [R=301]
</VirtualHost>
This configuration sets up a dummy virtual host which responds to a whole slew of domain names that I want redirected, and then issues a basic RewriteRule command to send everything to my real domain: ideas2executables.com.
Setting up e-mail is in my eyes always more daunting. I take one look at the docs for postfix and my eyes glaze over. Luckily, exactly what I wanted to do was outlined here. The first step was to point the MX record in GoDaddy's DNS to my Linux box. With that out of the way, I added the following to my /etc/postfix/main.cf:
virtual_alias_domains = ideas2exe.com, i-2-x.com virtual_alias_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/virtual
Inside of /etc/postfix/virtual I added lines like:
questions@i-2-x.com questions@ideas2executables.com questions@ideas2exe.com questions@ideas2executables.com
I then ran sudo postmap /etc/postfix/virtual, restarted postfix, and to my amazement, mail was properly forwarded.
When setting the above up, I ran into a strange problem: the domain i-2-x.com wasn't being found by dig. Surely GoDaddy must have an obscure provisioning problem, I thought. So, I got GoDaddy on the line and explained to them the situation. After some back and forth I realized it was me, not GoDaddy who had the fault. I had purchased i-to-x.com instead of i-2-x.com. D'oh! To my amazement, Shawn, the tech on the other end of the phone, gladly offered to refund the domain I purchased and get me the one I intended. Withing a few minutes, he had switched everything around for me.
I never really thought about what the return policy on something like this would be - but I was delighted that GoDaddy could just undo the oops that I created.
So now I've got my new domains - I'm almost looking forward to giving it out over the phone to see how it works.
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:
As my pal Thad put it a few years ago: “The humble Bic lighter is in fact the pinnacle of human technical achievement and fairly close to a techno–religious talisman. In a completely integrated package, every significant detail of human evolution (the opposable thumb, mastery of fire, and control of various materials) is embodied. Plus it fits nicely in the pocket and comes in a rainbow of pretty colors.”
Wow, good points.
I like the insight about using a Bic Lighter as a gift or trade item. Heck, maybe they would make cool company schwag - what with the power one of these guys contains.
It really is easy to ignore the wonders around us - be they man made or natural.
Oh, and these days when I do carry a lighter, I usually carry a Scripto Tiny Lite rather than a Bic Mini because it's a little smaller.
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 need to be entertained. But sometimes, I'm caught off guard and we end up in a holding pattern. Not to fear, in our little guy's diaper bag is his Emergency Toddler Entertainment Kit.
Here's what it looks like:
The contents:
A few notes worth mentioning: (1) all of the above stuff is small, and therefore a choking hazard. So, when I take these toys out, we play with them together. (2) these items keep his attention now, but I know that's only temporary. I've replaced items as he's gotten less interested in them, and I expect I'll continue to do so.
My only regret is that I couldn't cram all this stuff into an Altoids Tin - then I could really have been cool.
Tonight, one of my client's discovered an odd issue with his Google Custom Search setup - it was indexing and directing folks to https versions of his page. He doesn't really a need for https, so while the server is listening on port 443 (probably for plesk, right?) sending users over there isn't a good idea.
While Google Custom Search gives you a fair amount of control of which sites get indexed and which don't, I couldn't find an obvious way to tell Google to exclude the https version of the site.
In the end, I used two tips I found floating around the web:
Problem solved, and I learned a multitude of lessons: the inurl: operator rocks, rewrite rules are nearly always the solution and Google Custom Search can magically append a search parameter for you if you ask nicely.
Exploriment pointed me to this song by Bluetech & Kilowatts - two artists I'd never heard of. I'm not exactly sure what to make of the music, but I know I like it.
And here's another one:
Just think, with life before the Internet I probably would never have heard of these songs, or even down tempo music. And now, with a few clicks of the mouse I can be enjoying it. Amazing.
Some very helpful advice from Unicorns For Socialism on how to deal with life's ups and downs:
Now, a life lived ferociously is bound to include more than a few awkward birth canals. Grotesque break-ups. Nasty business splits. Clients that go A.W.O.L. “Brilliant” choices that bomb. Bad hair. Despair. And every degree of misery in between.
My approach? When life sucks, don’t pretend that it doesn’t — but make sure the suckiness has a limited shelf life. And while you’re crawling towards the shiny neon light at the end of the disco tunnel, LIVE a little, for heaven’s sake. ‘Cause it’s universally impossible for everything to suck. Somewhere, somehow, someone is grinning. So there.
Here's 33 ways to take on life's cruddy moments head on. What a wonderful list.
Here's to misery's very, very, very short shelf life.
I've been experimenting with JSL, the JavaScript Loader and really been liking it. It allows to turn:
<script type='text/javascript' src='foo.js'></script> <script type='text/javascript' src='bar.js'></script> <script type='text/javascript' src='baz.js'></script> <script type='text/javascript' src='zoop.js'></script>
into:
JSL.add("foo.js");
JSL.add("bar.js");
JSL.add("baz.js");
JSL.add("zoop.js");
JSL.load();
and now your JavaScript loads in parallel instead of in sequence. Watching the scripts load simultaneously in Firebug is just too cool.
On one hand, I like how simple the API of JSL is - there's just two method calls (load and add). But, I find it a little quirky: add, as the name suggests, adds a script to the queue of JavaScript files to load. Unless you happen to pass in a priority of -1, then add is equivalent to load. And load load executes the queue, unless you supply a path to a file, then it loads and adds just this one file, leaving the queue unprocessed.
Still, the loader seems to work well and is a breeze to use.
I also looked at headjs - but in the end, I liked the simplicity of JSL.
Do you have a favorite JavaScript loader? If so, please share.
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's a remarkable read.
Here's a little snippit:
How the f*** Hideaki Akaiwa got a hold of a wetsuit and a set of SCUBA gear is one of the great mysteries of the world. I'm roughly twenty hours into Fallout 3 and I'm lucky to come across a f***ing vacuum cleaner in that godforsaken post-apocalyptic wasteland, yet this guy is in the middle of a real-life earth-shaking mecha-disaster and he's coming up with oxygen tanks, waterproof suits, and rebreather systems seemingly out of thin air. I guess when you're a truly unstoppable badass, you, by definition, don't let anything stand in your way. You make s*** happen, all the time, no matter what.
Regardless of how he came across this equipment (borrowing, stealing, buying, beating up a Yakuza SCUBA diving demolitions expert, etc.) Hideaki threw on his underwater survival gear, rushed into the goddamned tsunami, and dove beneath the rushing waves, determined to rescue his wife or die trying. I'm not exactly sure whether or not the dude even knew how to operate SCUBA equipment, but according to one version of his story he met his wife while he was surfing (which is awesome, by the way), so it doesn't seem like that much of a stretch to say that he already had a little experience SCUBA diving under a more controlled situation. Of course, even if this dude didn't know how to work the gear I'm certain that wouldn't have stopped him either – Hideaki wasn't going to let a pair of soul-crushing natural disasters deter him from doing awesome s*** and saving his family. He dove down into the water, completely submerged in the freezing cold, pitch black rushing current on all sides, and started swimming through the underwater ruins of his former hometown.
As you can see, it's a story filled with some colorful language. But wow, what a story.
Via: badassoftheweek.com.
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 really simple spreadsheet do this, and it's refreshing compared to the more complicated UI I've been dealing with over the last year.
But, there is one little annoyance that the fancier time tracking solution had to offer: a built in timer. With my Google Spreadsheet, I enter the start and end timestamp, and then calculate the difference to get my task time. Entering the start and end time isn't awful, but it takes a few moments to look over at the clock on my screen and to retype what's there into a spreadsheet cell.
C'mon, this is a computer, I shouldn't have to retype anything. Ever.
I was tempted to rig up a script inside a spreadsheet, but that seemed like overkill. Then it hit me: I bet an old style windows macro would do the trick. You know, the kind where Windows replays you entering in a sequence of keys.
Googling around landed me on AutoHotKey, which looked tempting. I'm always a bit nervous about downloading windows apps that sound too good to be true, so I checked out LifeHacker. Turns out, they recommend AutoHotKey over and over again.
So, I installed it. Got a little overwhelmed by the options/help file, and after a minute or two wrote up this little guy:
;; ;; Insert the current timestamp into an app ;; #z:: FormatTime, TimeString, , M/d/yyyy hh:mm tt Send %TimeString% return
Now, when I press Windows-z, a Google Spreadsheet compliant timestamp is automatically inserted in the current cell.
Not only is that little problem solved, but my eyes have definitely been opened as to what a power tool this guy can be.
So, tell me, what's your favorite automation hack with AutoHotKey?
I like to travel and blog - which means that being ready to take quality photos anywhere, anytime, is pretty key for me. It's tempting to think of my Android G2 as my minimalist camera setup - but the lack of zoom, and relatively poor quality, means that I still can't rely 100% on it. Though, I can imagine one day I'll take the majority of photos with my cell phone, I'm just not there yet.
So, here it is, my bare minimum photo kit:
You'll notice there's no extra memory card in the kit. That's because I always have one on me.
So, what's the setup missing? Any advice for what my next camera should be?
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 actions on it are (like opening up The Gimp).
Here's my only complaint so far. See:
What you're looking at is the backlit keyboard in action. I used it officially for the first time last night, and it worked great.
The problem? Next to the power button is a line of buttons used to control the volume and perform other media operations. You can't see them in the above photo because they aren't backlit. And that's the problem.
If you're going to go through the trouble of backlighting a keyboard, shouldn't you make the volume keys light up too? Especially, because they are already backlit - when you press them, they light up. Can they stay lit?
Still, if that's my only complaint, I'd call the Vostro a success. Well done Dell.
The project: replace the guts (yeah, that's a technical term) of our bedroom bathroom's toilet. The project went surprisingly well (read: I didn't have to call a plumber). Here a few things that helped:
Now, providing the toilet doesn't leak over the next few hours, I think I can safely call this little adventure a success.
I love the mailinator service. Need a disposable e-mail address? Just pick one, like, say, gotcha@mailintor.com and it's yours. In fact, you can pick any @mailinator.com address you want to use.
The catch, of course, is that the e-mail address has zero privacy to it. You, and anyone else who chooses that name share the inbox. For certain types of e-mail this limitation is just fine. The classic use case is for registering for a website. I also use it quite a bit for testing software, where I might need a whole bunch of unique e-mails (ben.test.1@mailinator.com, ben.test.2@mailinator.com and so on).
This was all well and good until I tried using a bunch of @mailinator.com addresses with the AWeber mail service. I was creating a custom form, and for the life of me, I couldn't get AWeber to accept my submissions.
And then it hit me: they've probably black listed @mailinator.com addresses.
With that hunch in mind, I visited mailinator.com and checked out the section to the right labeled Alternate Domains. I hit the refresh button a few times and got the following options:
thisisnotmyrealemail.com safetymail.info mailinator2.com bobmail.info
As you may have guessed, any of the above domains will work as a substitute for @mailinator.com.
I fed AWeber ben.test.1@bobmail.info and sure enough, it was glad to accept it.
I can then check that inbox anytime I want by visiting: http://ben.test.1.mailinator.com.
So, yeah, nice try AWeber. But, for testing, Mailinator will still work for your service.
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 painful this year.
Rolling out Hamantaschen dough means either fighting a losing battle with wax paper, or covering every surface with flour and mess. The Baking Mat promised to be the stationary surface that wax paper (plus tape and whatever else I come up with) never is.
We actually were going to buy two of these guys - but we couldn't justify spending $60.00 on kitchen gadgets which may be useless. Fortunately, they are useful and I'll probably pick up another one from Amazon (where the price seems less steep).
Thanks to our friend Lauren for coming over and helping bake up a storm!
Man, I'm so hungry after writing this post. You'll have to excuse me while I duck downstairs to steal another handful of yummy hamantaschenness.
It's Friday - definitely time to laugh. Here are two bits from around the internet that made me smile.
Check out this baby watching mom blow her nose. The baby is both terrified and elated. I can relate.
And check out this chemistry joke:
I know my father-in-law, may his memory be for a blessing, would have enjoyed that one.
Thanks to BuzzFeed for providing the entertainment.
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 what you want to hear.
Googling around there were basically two options given for fixing this: (1) hit the radio to jiggle it back to life. And (2) cram more CD's in the slot hoping to jiggle it back to life.
Yeah, neither of those approaches worked.
So, we called our Acura dealer and our usual service rep told me she had a guy she could recommend. Her guy: Ramon of Auto Audio Service, Inc.. His phone number: 703-801-2022.
Ramon, like us, is a small business. He removed our radio, brought it back to his shop, got the CD's out for me and repaired it. I didn't have to pay anything until the radio was back and installed. Heck, when I asked him about the CD that he was playing to test-drive the radio with, he told me to just keep it.
Best of all, he makes house calls.
I'd prefer if my radio stayed working, but at least I've got someone call when it breaks.
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: Let's use video to reinvent education - a title that I'll admit I didn't have high hopes for.
The point of the talk, so far, is how Salman Khan created a bunch of educational videos to help out family members and they were so effective that they started getting used in all sorts of contexts. No surprise there. The mind bending part came when he mentions this:
The other thing that happened -- and even at this point, I said, "Okay, maybe it's a good supplement. It's good for motivated students. It's good for maybe home schoolers." But I didn't think it would be something that would somehow penetrate the classroom.
But then I started getting letters from teachers. And the teachers would write, saying, "We use your videos to flip the classroom. You've given the lectures, so now what we do ... " and this could happen in every classroom in America tomorrow, " ... what I do is I assign the lectures for homework. And what used to be homework, I now have the students doing in the classroom."
And I want to pause here for -- (Laughter) I want to pause here for a second, because there's a couple of interesting things. One, when those teachers are doing that, there's the obvious benefit -- the benefit that now their students can enjoy the videos in the way that my cousins did. They can pause, repeat at their own pace, at their own time. But the more interesting thing is -- and this is the unintuitive thing when you talk about technology in the classroom -- by removing the one size fits all lecture from the classroom and letting students have a self-paced lecture at home, and then when you go to the classroom, letting them do work, having the teacher walk around, having the peers actually be able to interact with each other, these teachers have used technology to humanize the classroom
When I was growing up, be it middle school, high school or college, there was always this sense that what we needed was more computers in the classroom. I think there were good intentions behind this desire, but I'm not sure I ever really saw the point. If I'm in a college lecture and I'm trying to concentrate, how exactly, is a laptop going to help with this? On the other hand, technology and innovation is a good thing and something we should embrace.
And Khan's comments above tie this together: use technology to make the out of classroom time effective, and then use the in class time to leverage the value of teachers and students.
It's simple, it's brilliant and it's totally unintuitive. I love it.
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 actually learned quite a bit from others with respect to what gear works and doesn't work from sites like these, so I thought it would make sense to contribute a little back.
The plan is simple: when I have a chance (in theory, on a Wednesday), I'll post some collection of stuff. Like say my camera bag, or portable office. I've done this in the past with my backpacking gear.
So, let's get started.
Seems like the right place to begin is with a pocket dump. Those are always fun.
Here's what's typically in pockets:
So there you have it.
I'd wonder what my pocket contents say about me - but I think already know: once a Boy Scout, always a Boy Scout.
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 Why Bad Things Happen To Good People - it attempts to explain how something as awful as a child being murdered could fit into a Christian theological context.
Although I was a little skeptical at first, I did find the book clever, filled with novel imagery and good at explaining Christian concepts (like, say, the Trinity).
I did, however, read the book with a sort of mission: I was curious how the Christian depiction of G-d would match up with my Jewish experiences. Discarding the obvious differences (like the presence of Jesus), at first there seemed to be a fair bit of alignment. Both the Christian and Jewish perspective talk about our limited vision as people to understand events. But, as the book delved deeper, I could definitely detect a major split in philosophy.
I'd really need to read the book a couple more times to fully grasp what the author was driving at, but it seems like his key message was that we should strive to embrace a sort of active passivity with G-d. That is, the goal is to have a relationship with G-d and you can only achieve this by giving up worldly pursuits. Taking action, even embracing organized religion or laws, only serves to put up barriers between you and G-d.
Jews, on the other hand, are all about action. Instead of looking at ritual as something that harms your relationship with G-d, we look at it as something which enhances it. We eat certain foods, celebrate certain holidays, give money to the poor, etc. because we think this puts on the right track to living the correct life.
But, the idea of action goes just beyond traditional religious life. In a number of places, the book laughs off the foolish idea of "people playing G-d" - what could be sillier, right? Which of course, brings me to one of my all time favorite Rabbincal answers:
Regarding the question of whether man has the right to play G-d, as in many instances of genetic engineering, some claim that it is wrong to play G-d. The Jewish perspective, however, is that since man was created in the image of G-d regarding intelligence, morality and free will, he is intended to be G-d’s partner in creation. To that end, G-d intentionally left the world incomplete in order to involve man in its betterment and refinement. Therefore sickness, poverty and other suffering need not be accepted passively. On the contrary, it is G-d’s will that man intervene to improve the world.
From the Jewish perspective then, not only is it not wrong to play G-d, but we are actually supposed to play G-d to the extent that doing so will benefit and improve the world and humanity.
So, while the Christian response to a tragedy might be to redouble one's faith in G-d, a Jew would do this and look for ways to help improve this world. In the case of a child murder, John Walsh is an excellent role model.
All, in all, though, it was a good read. If you're a Christian, I could definitely see how this could help connect you with your faith. And if, like me, you're just curious - you'll have an interesting read ahead of you.
Yesterday, we attempted to hit Theordore Roosevelt Island for a little light hiking. Unfortunately, we weren't the only ones with this idea and the place was absolutely packed. Rather than waiting for a parking spot, we continued up George Washington Memorial Parkway a couple miles to Fort Marcy. There's not a whole heck of a lot to see there - a couple of canons and a few signs explaining the locations role in the Civil War.
But, we were able to do a perfect little loop hike around the area, and then jumped on the Heritage Trail for another few miles of perfect woods trampling.
The day was absolutely perfect, and there was barely a soul in sight.
We came to an especially tricky stream crossing - probably the trickiest I've ever considered doing before - and after much debate, decided we'd give it a shot. We all made it across in one piece, me including my 30lb payload of 19 month old.
These trails are really gorgeous - if you live in the DC area and haven't been along the Heritage Trail, you're really missing out.
We even saw a couple of deer on the way back to our car. They were among the tamest dear of I've ever seen. While we tried to stay absolutely silent, our little one was explained to us in his usual loud voice that we had a couple of woof-woofs here. He was very excited. The deer just stared at us, and could obviously sense that we were quite unarmed.
We made it all the way to the Chain Bridge, which cross over a remarkably turbulent Potomac River. The river was definitely angry that day, though I'm not quite sure at what or who.
