I remember when I was a kid coming across art work that my mom had done and was really impressed with her work. As I got older I did my own thing, but as I moved out of high school and in to young adult hood I started giving up my artistic pastime. I’m made some strides to get back into it, but it’s more through photography and design then actual sit down and draw something art. I still from time to time draw (according to my wife and kids) fantastic sketches on Sydney’s Barbie magna doodle.

But more recently, we’ve been sending our boys to a local artist for classes. They both love to draw, and have been doing stuff for years and my wife thought it would be good for them to actually learn proper techniques and how to do things and whatnot.

Posted in Family 4 Comments »

I was going through all my feeds and checking out all the nerdy stuff going on, when I came across something that rang vaguely familiar with me. Adobe Flex was releasing a version 3. Why did that ring a bell with me? It finally came to me, while I was out at the Zend conference, there was a booth for Adobe Flex and giving out cds with it. I had really been intrigued with it and wanted to try it.

So I downloaded a copy - it’s even better now, it’s a 61 day trial on the Flexbuilder (eclipse based) program. So after scouring around the livedocs and other sites around the net I came up with a hacked little program that allows you to enter a rss feed and it’ll go get it and show you a teaser for the entry you select. It seems to me, rss readers are becoming the replacement for the standard ‘Hello World’ creation.

Posted in Flex, Programming 1 Comment »

On my drive home last night, the atmosphere was rather scummy. Call it what you will, smog, crud, inversion, whatever you want it was setting in pretty good by about 6pm. It occurred to me that it would probably be pretty foggy this morning.

So while we were having a birthday party for Syndey, I asked my dad if he wanted to go out and do some shooting in the morning. I told I thought it might be foggy and so it might be fun to get some foggy shots. He agreed and so we decided to go early, like at 7am.

Of course I stayed up real late catching up on stock piled TV shows and didn’t end up getting into bed till about 2:30am. Yes it hurts and I’m tired, so I’ll probably get a nap in sooner or latter.

Posted in Photography 5 Comments »

So, another book already. This one went by in a flash - a few trips back and forth to work and it finished right before I got home. Perfect!

Coming from Duma Key, there was a huge difference in style - granted it may have been the narrator or the speed of the book but you knew it was different right off the bat.

The story, was rather familiar to me even though I haven’t seen the movie yet. I have though seen parts of “The Last Man on Earth” and I’ve seen the complete “Omega Man“. Oh forget the classic “Homega Man“.

Listening to the story, you feel it’s dated. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a great part of the story, and listening in general. There wasn’t an over endulgence of sex or gore it was very subdued. I think the other piece of it was the technology/terminology used with in the story dates it quite well. You may not even notice it’s dating unless you really pay attention to a couple of things like twin beds in the parents room and the use of a record player. It doesn’t matter though, it doesn’t distract from the story.

Posted in Books, Reviews 3 Comments »

There was a time that I wasn’t happy with the works put out by Stephen King. It came to a head with the ending of the Gunslinger series. Sure, it was the only way he could end it - but it doesn’t mean I was happy with it, it just seemed like a cop out.At any rate, and it may be that when I was younger, I’m talking middle school Stephen King books were captivating, scary, and offered a great story. But Misery was the starting point of what I felt was his downward spiral. Maybe I was just getting older and it didn’t have the cachet it did when I was younger.

Posted in Books, Reviews 6 Comments »

You heard me right, I said tomatos! Sometime ago I had come across an article talking about 3rd party firmware running on linksys routers, and it planted a seed. Then it started to grow, and last night I seized the opportunity of a free night to start.

So I grabbed the dusty white box that housed my old Linksys WRT54GS (v1.1) router, an extra network cable and sat down at my computer to see what I could do.

I was immediately rewarded with a username and password screen that I couldn’t remember, so after hoping it was something more common and even trying the default ones, nothing. So I pressed the little red button on the back and reset it, which did the trick and allowed me to log in (192.168.1.1 blank/admin).

Posted in Computers, Networking, Wireless 2 Comments »

So there was a void for a side dish tonight. Then there was a bunch of carrots julianned, my sister in law cut up. So I got to thinking, “What would make these carrots even better?”.

Yeah that’s right - butter, brown sugar, and a secret ingredient that I will reveal. So let’s start with the recipe.

2 cups julianned carrots (you can substitute baby carrots if you want)
1/3 stick of butter
2 tablespoons brown sugar
ginger**

So, get the butter melted down in a skillet then add the carrots. While you saute the carrots grate the ginger over the carrots, now I guess that I used maybe 1/2 tablespoon of grated ginger but you can do it to taste. After about 5 minutes of stirring the carrots around, add the brown sugar. Give it another couple three minutes and you should be ready.

Now you have carrots that have absolutely no nutritional value but taste SUPER good with a hint of zip from the ginger.

Posted in Cooking No Comments »

So here I am eating a turkey and bacon sammich, and tooling around on the laptop - bored, oh yeah you could say so. The dialog of a Barbie Princess (and yes, it IS Martin Short playing the villian) movie playing the background along with merry musings of both my boys building something out Imaginext.

But, as I was cruising through Amazon’s mp3 downloads (no DRM, decent prices - did I mention NO DRM?), I found myself looking in the International section, listening to some pretty fun Buena Vista Social Club (mental list, # 5) and then I found something that caught my eyes. It was a lullaby version of Bob Marley tunes. It wasn’t as good as I thought it might be (granted I only listened to a few songs), but something way better caught my eye lower on the screen.

Posted in General, Music 6 Comments »