Thursday, January 14, 2010

Things my 2-year-old daughter will probably never do

  • Rent a movie from a video-rental store
  • Purchase a compact disc
  • Dial a phone number (in the original sense of the word)
  • Use a non-VoIP landline phone
  • Deal with a utility’s meter-reader

Am I missing anything?

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Monday, August 31, 2009

I’ll bet you didn’t know I wrote a book about Tango dancing

 

It's true. As part of a technical writing program I’m close to finishing, I had to write a user manual, and the instructor assigned us topics she thought the students would know nothing about.

And she was right.

For the record, I don’t recommend producing long, carefully formatted documents in Microsoft Word.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Elena wakes up at midnight to make a phone call

This “conversation” was going on for 5-8 minutes before we started recording.

Proof that the Wiggles make kids go insane

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

And now the longer version

11 seconds of previously unseen material!

Elena’s first steps!

She walking. Now we’re in trouble.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Elena bath

Bathtime!

Saturday, February 28, 2009

Kill the Newspapers

Marc Andreesen says killing the print edition of newspapers to survive. His thesis: the print advertising dollars have to go somewhere. Newspaper Web sites won't get all of it, but thanks to dramatically lower publishing and distribution costs, they'll get enough to be profitable.

He may be on to something. I hope one of the about-to-be-shutdown publications in one-newspaper towns tries this (I'm looking at you San Francisco Chronicle) to test this theory. What have they got to lose?

Friday, February 27, 2009

The meltdown continues

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If I turned in a chart like this to my newspaper’s art department, they would call me to double-check that the last number wasn’t a mistake.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

My Micro-Review of Windows 7

After much trepidation, I finally installed the Windows 7 beta on my laptop. With the possible exception of losing my VPN connection (Cisco hasn’t made a driver available yet), it’s been a really smooth experience. The beta is very stable and a big improvement over Vista.

I’m one of the few people who seem to actually like Vista, but 7 takes it up a notch. In a nutshell:

  • It seems snappier than Vista and uses less memory on my machine.
  • It ditches some of Vista’s big annoyances (I’m looking at you, UAC)
  • It adds some nice features such as an improved and more useful taskbar.
  • It resumes from hibernation and standby much faster.
  • It updates the Media Center interface.

Windows 7 also extends the life of the laptop battery, but I have not had time to test that.

In other words, my observations seem to jibe with what everyone else has said so far. If the final addresses the VPN issue, there’s no question that I’ll upgrade when it comes out (the final is scheduled to launch in about a year).

Update: I installed it on my home computer, but it didn’t recognize my ancient GeForce3 chipset, which controls audio and networking. So I had to go back to Vista on that machine.

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Happy New Year!

Things I’m looking forward to in 2009:

- Buying my first house

- Seeing my daughter turn 1

- An Obama presidency/Bush leaving office

- Final half-season of Battlestar Galactica

In 2009, I resolve to:

- Make better use of my time, money and other resources

- Procrastinate less (see above)

- Read more fiction

- Be more helpful around the house

- Re-do my professional Web site

- Finish my technical writing certification

- Grow more adept at Flash

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Redfin defects from Microsoft to Google

I meant to mention this when I first read it over the weekend -- it’s been thoroughly warmed over now -- but real-estate Web site Redfin has switched completely to Google Maps from Microsoft’s Live Maps service. Redfin said it liked Microsoft’s technology, but that Google’s maps are much faster.

That’s pretty much been my experience. I love showing people the 3-D and bird’s-eye view on Live Maps, but when it comes down to trying to find something fast, I always gravitate to Google Maps.

This is probably true of most of Microsoft’s Live services -- they’re just not fast enough. Hotmail has gotten noticeably faster in recent weeks, but everything else seems kind of pokey.

From my television family to yours…

Here’s a timely Christmas project I did a couple of years ago for a class I was taking. Enjoy!

Yes, I know. It takes forever to load. It was an intro to Flash class, OK?

Monday, December 15, 2008

CBS on the mortgage meltdown

It gets scarier.

 

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Two sci-fi shows I thought were great but somehow turned out terribly, terribly wrong

image

1) Heroes. My theory on why the show started going downhill in season two: The writers abused time travel. Now, no one stays dead, so nothing has any consequence or finality. Lame.

2) Smallville. This used to be my favorite show, but has become downright unwatchable this season. No Lex Luthor, no Lana Lang. No Smallville even.

Sunday, December 7, 2008