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The highlight of my 2007 year had to be our 2 week family vacation in England this past July. We stayed in the same seaside town of Deal in Kent where my family had lived 35 years ago when my father took a sabbatical leave from teaching. We’ve been back to visit a few [...]

Looking over a log of dreams I’ve had since 2002, the following are places I’ve “traveled” in dreamland. I’ve been to all of them in real life (well except the “non-earth” planet, underground prison, space shuttle, and Australia…)
Philadelphia, PA
Vermont
The Main Line, PA
England
Some large European city
Germany or Amsterdam
Media, PA
A planet (not earth)
Atlantic City, NJ
A suburban town
Florida
New [...]

1. What ever happened to the hype around websites Virb and Vox? I’ve tried both and decided they looked OK but especially in Vox’s case, they are very slow to load from page to page in a browser. I haven’t heard much about them or seen any mass migration from the ugly MySpace to Virb [...]

So we had the first real snowfall of winter today and Victor and his friend got out of school early. I’m told that they’re both on the enclosed front porch or our house with cookie trays of snow and using Lego to reenact the Battle of Hoth from Star Wars. Clever lads.

Ok - this post will solve a few nagging issues. For one it will satisfy my “at least one post a month” rule…and two, it will give me an excuse to note a bunch of stuff without multiple posts. Onward!
I got one of the new iPod Shuffles for Christmas from Melissa. It’s great, I love [...]

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Top 8 Reasons HCI is in its [...]

The new site design is mostly done. The CSS file and most pages validate. There are a few little things to deal with like clean up comment form code, and fiddle with the header area. I might re-think the navigation in the Portfolio section. I wanted something bolder than the white, grey and green theme [...]

Weaponry in the armory, a list:
Toy guns/swords/weapons in our house…
Double Skull Axe
Bow & Arrow
Winchester Rifle
M-16
Light Sabre
Granade
2 Small Water Pistols
Small Ray Gun
2 Revolvers
Dagger
Throwing Star
2 Orange Cowboy Pistols
Skull Sword
Ninja Dagger
3 Knight’s Swords
Billy Club
6 Large WaterPistols
3 Foam Dart Guns
2 Japanese Swords
2 Small M-16’s
2 Uzi Machine Guns
Pirate Sword
Pop Gun from Cabela’s
2 Ray Guns
Small Viking Sword
Camo Hand Gun
Boba Fett’s Ray [...]

Swarthmore College recently hosted a lecture by the New Yorker magazine’s cartoon editor Robert Mankoff.
Mankoff, who is a great cartoonist himself, opened with some background information on the New Yorker’s cartoon archives (they have scrapbooks with all the cartoons in them by artist and tagged with keywords), his work-flow process (he sifts through over [...]

A few quotes from around the web:
“A meeting here turns into a need for another meeting there, which turns into what they call a service report which recaps what the meeting about the meeting was all about so we’re all in agreement and “on the same page” at the next meeting. Very efficient, our world [...]

I got a marketing research call last night. Sometimes I’ll answer these questions because a long time ago I used to work for a place that made calls and conducted interviews in the local mall. I know it can be a rough job.
A friendly woman on the line tells me upfront they aren’t selling anything [...]

I’m just back from a week in Vermont and have posted a few photos in the gallery. I was greeted with a nice surprise gift on my return - a Pro Flickr account upgrade from Mike Webkist. Thanks Mike!

Writer Christine Rosen wrote an interesting article in The New Atlantis a few months back on what she terms “Egocasting”. She describes this term as:
“…the thoroughly personalized and extremely narrow pursuit of one’s personal taste. In thrall to our own little technologically constructed worlds, we are, ironically, finding it increasingly difficult to appreciate genuine individuality.”
And [...]

Here’s a little memory trick (life hack?) that works for me.
Instead of keeping a notebook and a flashlight next to the bed for those middle-of-the-night “brilliant ideas” or ( in most cases for me) the dreams I want to remember, I use a “displaced object” technique. All you need to do when you wake [...]

My portfolio section is finally built. I’ve amassed quite a few pieces over the years. Most of the work I’ve done for the past 7 years focuses on the web and web applications compared with my early career playing full time with the Dead Milkmen in the 80s and early 90s— my graphic design output [...]

There is an excellent article in the current anniversary issue of The New Yorker magazine by Richard Preston entitled “Climbing The Redwoods” (unfortunately the article is not online).
Preston is working on a book about tree climbing and spent some time in the Northern California redwoods with Stephen Sillett and his wife Marie Antoine—researchers on the [...]

I’ve added new links and a new gallery to my photos section of the site. There is a link to a new gallery of images from a summer trip to Vermont last year. Fungi - Norton Pond Vermont 2004 displays 16 photos I took on the last day of our vacation. While waiting to depart, [...]

Just getting things going here. The one-click install of WordPress offered by my host DreamHost was a breeze. I’ve been spending a bunch of time fiddling with the page templates and the CSS styles. I’m sure the initial design will be tweaked and evolve over time.
Topics here might be all over the place. My [...]