Curtis Bridges

I just came across this article by John Hamelink  providing a recommended app list for freelance web developers on Ubuntu. While some of the apps detailed in the article are aimed at a web developer, there is a lot of information there for power users and lower level developers as well. Nicely written, John.

via OMG! Ubuntu   Ubuntu from Keith Kenniff on Vimeo .

Following up my previous article which speculated on the update to Apple's forthcoming Xcode 4 (and my excitement for it) here is the official page now being previewed at developer.apple.com. What's New in Xcode - Developer Tools Technology Overview - Apple Developer I'm really interested in giving it a spin, particularly the new interface itself, integrated Interface Builder, the new llvm compilers and debugger, and native git scm. If you want more news regarding Xcode 4, be sure to check out all the related videos on iTunes from the WWDC 2010 conference. I believe they are in the iTunes U section under the WWDC category. Of particular note are " Session 300 - Developer Tools State of the Union " where Xcode 4 is announced around the 10 minute mark of this roughly hour long session. Additionally, check out Session 307 and 308 which deal specifically with Xcode 4.

The Passionate Programmer , Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development by Chad Fowler A couple of months ago, I had a crisis of attitude (for lack of a more scientific diagnosis) regarding my career and how it has progressed over the last decade. For some reason, once I got married to my wonderful wife and had two amazing kids, career development took a back seat to the norms of every day life. I had lost the 'fire' of learning and strengthening my skills in software in favor of parenting, cooking and cleaning. I found had to salvage those few precious hours left in the day for pure 'downtime'. What I didn't notice, is that my attitude about work and technology had changed in this same time period. The less I invested in technology, the less I enjoyed my work life which would then later reflect in my overall mental health - being less happy at work was impacting my home life in a negative way. When my product line at work was discontinued and the com...

Canon Digital Learning Center - EOS 5D Mark II Shoots House M.D. Season Finale My knowledge of cameras and lenses are in an infantile state, which made this video particularly interesting. If you have any interest in DSLR and video, this conversation will be fascinating. Too bad most of us can't afford a 5D Mark II, which would be overkill for my family videos... but fun. I thought listening to the director of photography speak about his work was riveting and an unusual perspective on the movie and TV industry. Often, the public only hears the actors, directors, writers and producers speak about a specific project or their work. In this case, hearing the details of technology being utilized in unconventional ways is very inspiring, no matter the specifics of your profession. The coining of the phrase "NinjaCam" was awesome and I can understand how that might be a creative movie maker's dream. If you haven't watched House, M.D. as a show, you really ...

The Perfect Pour: Christian Ross – Purveyor of Awesome I love coffee, this is a great infographic about many of the common cups of joe. Personally, I'm just a Basic Black, with the occasional Cafe Mocha. My love affair with infographics rages on.

Good insight into Oracle's Java stewardship, which is obviously very important to me. James Gosling's opinions are well know despite there being no evening news sound bites coming from him. Oracle's importance to Java's future overstated | Languages and standards - InfoWorld Ultimately, Oracle could make a huge difference in moving the platform forward but isn't likely to leverage this ability. In the long run, Java's community process and all of the development and tools that exist outside of Oracle will guarantee the language's relevance in the future. It just doen't have a really great champion anymore. RIP Sun.

Just a quick post about the outing I took to the local mall today, I toured all the major phone resellers including Best Buy , Best Buy Mobile, Radio Shack and the carrier stores: Sprint , Verizon , AT&T and T-Mobile . Ok, and here were my thoughts: First thought: There were no less than seven places to buy T-Mobile phones... in one mall! The Verizon HTC Incredible didn't feel as cheap as I remember it feeling the first time I picked one up. The Sprint HTC EVO 4G was no where near as heavy as I remember the first time I held one. This may have been due to the "anti-theft-strap" you see on most smart phone displays. The EVO isn't  too big. The AT&T HTC Aria was entirely too small to be used as anything but a phone. Web browsing, email, or anything requiring screen space would be too tiny for normal man hands. If you are somewhat iPhone 4 agnostic, don't pick one up. That screen will sell you instantly. Holding my iPhone 3G next to it made me ...

Bill Shrink put together this awesome info-graphic for the current batch of top smartphones on the market as of today. I find it interesting that the new AT&T minimum plan is the cheapest TCO of the bunch, which is my current plan. Note: This does not include Verizon's announcement of the Motorola Droid X, being announced very shortly. Find the best cell phone plans at BillShrink

As most people know, I'm fairly computer and operating system agnostic, I generally have three systems running, consisting of a Mac, a PC running Linux and a laptop running some version of Windows. The screenshot pictured here is from my Mac connecting to an SMB share on my home server. Notice the BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) pictured. Even more ironic is that this is actually my Ubuntu Linux machine, not an actual Windows box so BSOD will never actually happen. You just get the occasional kernel panics (ok, ok...rarely) or like what happened to me last week, a corrupted initramfs image via Update Manager in Ubuntu 10.10. Such are the hazards of playing with pre-released software...

AppleInsider | Inside Apple's new Xcode 4 development tool This is very exciting to me as I've always thought that Xcode has lagged behind popular free IDEs such as Eclipse or NetBeans , at least in its design and layout of the tool itself. It is ironic to me that, for a company that so prides itself with standards and even publishes a well known application style guide , would break all the rules when it comes to its very own IDE. This is the very tool that application developers use to create and should be the flagship in following Apple's design rules. And yet, it is one of the oldest, non-Apple applications you'll ever encounter. From a technical standpoint, the new tool is very exciting as a developer. The new compiler, llvm has hit the big time recently in newer Linux distributions and will finally be leveraged for OS X. I have yet to see a single bad comment regarding this compiler compared to gcc (ignore the complaints about people having to update their o...

It amazes me that when people think about public broadcasting, most don't think of leading edge technology and social media. Once you become a long time listener, you soon realize that perception couldn't be further from the truth. As I remember it, PBS was one of the first national stations to move to an all digital broadcast and NPR seems to be a leader in some of the best mobile apps for the iPhone/iPad/Android based devices. But above all else, you can tell there are plenty of people at NPR that have their finger on the pulse of the internet. I present to you: Who knew these people had ever heard of Auto-tune the News or Chatroulette or unboxing videos? Enjoy.    :-)

Current : $30/month for unlimited usage. DataPlus : $15/month for 200 megabytes. DataPro : $25/month for 2 gigabytes. Tethering : $20/month plus DataPro . Looks like I might be able to get away with the $15/month data plan just announced from AT&T Wireless. That's 200 mb/month which I only went over once since nearly all of my network usage tends to be through wifi - that's a decent savings from my current $30/month plan. The only problem with this is tethering; I've wanted to tether my laptop with my cell phone for as long as I can remember, it just makes sense to use your phone as your connection to the outside world for everything and it will be available on June 7th. The only problem is, it will cost $45/month for this feature and I'm just not willing to pay that much for it. Let's face it, serving data directly to the phone or using the phone as a proxy doesn't change AT&T's cost in the slightest. Google's Android announced offi...

What I'll miss the most, will be John Hodgman . Whether you like them or hate them, Apple ads always deliver. From the iconic "1984" to the Think Different campaign and now its newest retired series, Get a Mac. We all know, Justin Long will be just fine with his budding movie career . It does make you wonder, however - what does Apple have planned for the next big ad campaign? My guess is they will change focus from battling "PC" to battling Google, mostly in the mobile and small form factor (tablet) space. It begs the question, if the Get a Mac campaign was given its Batman Begins reboot - who would play the "Google Geek"? And to Mr. Hodgman - we all look forward to seeing more of you in the future; your humor transcends your geek roots. We love it.

How did it take me so long to come across this ? I found mention of it in Tim Bray's latest blog entry while I was examining his find/grep alias (by the way, Tim, I find the syntax below to work fine on my Mac) I've spent my life using: $ find . -name *.filetype -exec grep pattern {} \; -print But no more! I spend a lot of time doing cross-platform development and haven't always had a good find/grep implementation (I'm looking at you, Windows and have never liked cygwin) so this tool will come in handy. And the Bill the Cat references just seal the deal.

By the way, the language is named after the BBC show “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” and has nothing to do with reptiles. Making references to Monty Python skits in documentation is not only allowed, it is encouraged! from Python Tutorial

One of the many reasons I love Google and Chrome.

Yesterday, I spent almost the entire day improving my git knowledge and migrating all of my old software projects from cvs. I'll admit, I cheated a little since I only really cared about the latest 'release' of each project's codebase, I simply exported the latest from cvs and created a new baseline for it in git. Additionally, I am going to host the code in my Dropbox account so that the computers I use regularly will have access to the latest code (assuming I've pushed it from whatever computer I used last) and essentially, I get a free git code host with unlimited projects but unfortunately, not unlimited space. First, I created my .gitignore, so I could add everything in the project without the unnecessary cruft clogging up my projects. You can download it, if you want. It basically tries to ignore all backup files, generated binary files, filesystem metadata (such as CVS dirs and Mac DS_Store) and any non-essential development environment files. Here is...

http://craigmod.com/journal/ebooks/ An in-depth analysis of ebook design and typography, very well researched and documented. I particularly liked seeing the side-by-side screenshots of iBooks compared to the Kindle.app. I plan on using the Kindle.app extensively when I finally receive my iPad. Comparing it to the Kindle 2 should be interesting as well.

Use this link to sign up for Dropbox and you'll get an additional 250 megs (on top of the 2 gigs everyone receives). In fact, we both will. -->  Dropbox referral signup  <-- I love Dropbox, I use it on three platforms; it allows me to keep data sync'd from Windows to Mac to Linux.  I can also access my files from my iPhone or even through the web interface. Sign-up and install the client on each computer you want connected to your account. This will create a folder that will automatically be replicated in the cloud and on each computer you run the Dropbox client. Lifehacker readers have voted it the #1 online backup tool . Here are some other uses for Dropbox: Remote, automated torrent client . Simply drop a torrent file in your Dropbox (say, at work) and setup a computer at home to monitor a folder in your Dropbox for torrent files. A simple way to have large downloads waiting for you when you get home. (I use this for linux distributions, it works well.)...

Dropbox Homepage Slide show from the founder, and his startup lessons learned. http://www.slideshare.net/gueste94e4c/dropbox-startup-lessons-learned-3836587

It doesn't seem quite right to me, that I live 5 minutes from the largest city in New Hampshire and this is my selection of TV stations. OTA TV Stations for Southern NH Essentially, ABC and PBS. A population of around 100,000 people in Manchester alone, maybe 250,000 in a 50 mile radius and this is the best we can do. I'm really about 45 miles north of Boston and I can get only one of the major networks. Shouldn't all major metropolitan areas receive the basic broadcast channels of ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS and Fox? How is this possible? I'm sure this is NOT what we had in mind when the digital changeover was legislated. We can do better. And no, I don't consider cable and satellite companies as better; I should not have to shell out $1,000/year for internet and broadcast television stations.

Pixar Offices Here are some famous companies and how they approach office design. As you can see, these aren't your barren office cubicles from generic companies you may have worked for in the past. Check them out.

If you are using Subversion, stop it. Just stop. Subversion = Leeches. Mercurial and Git = Antibiotics. We have better technology now. Joel on Software

Sunday is where memories are made. -Phil Mickelson

I need to work on my card throwing, this is just amazing:

The Setup I love this site; not only does it have some major geek heroes on display, the web design is gorgeous. I love the horizontal picture ribbons for each interview, I love the content of each article. It is simply amazing the exact specs of the machines that most of these people use everyday and the awesome quality of their work. Very inspirational. Now it is time for me to get to work on something tangible and stop wasting time with TV and random web sites!

ThinkGeek sent me their monthly love-gram via email today, and in addition to their usual array of awesome geek toys, was this: Moshi Voice Activated Clock Check it out in action!

It is amazing to me, how divisive eReaders have become - I just don't see the controversy. If publishers are dissatisfied with their margins for books sold in the eReader market, the simplest solution is to find a way to sell higher volumes. Profits for eReader content increase far faster per unit than equivalent print units. It costs nothing to produce units #2 through #1,000,000 electronically. Even at a theoretical dollar per unit cost of print media, that's $1,000,000 of lost profit in manufacturing and shipping. Don't be underhanded in how you sell your products or your consumers have the power to react in a manner detrimental to your business. Deal with the modern realities of social media and electronic distribution or lose your bottom line. It really is that simple. "I speak from pained experience as an author when I say that we have absolutely no say on when our books are released, in what format and at what price." Delayed electronic edition Wh...

This is a topic I've committed myself to for a week now (informally) and since I've decided to strive for this path, I've found a few websites with some helpful information: http://www.becomingminimalist.com/ http://mnmal.tumblr.com/ http://minimalmac.com/ http://simpledesks.tumblr.com/ I'm finding it easy to convert my computers, installed software, workspaces, and design but having a much more difficult time changing my life . Despite that, I am finding myself a lot more productive around the house and have a much happier wife with the small changes I've managed so far.

A truly inspiring and very astute look at gamers and the gaming mentality.

A fun look at man's getaways:

http://www.predators-movie.com/ Robert Rodriguez will do this right, I have confidence in him. Predators

A follow up relating to my previous blog post: Google TV Should Finally Push Apple TV Beyond A “Hobby”

F I N A L L Y. Google and Partners Seek Foothold in the Living Room - NYTimes.com At least, I think so. Meaning: when this was 'announced', my immediate thought was that AppleTV will finally get a swift kick in the ass to implement some new features and finally develop as a platform, less as a hobby. I have said for so long that AppleTV was poised to be the next big thing. Apple has not prioritized it properly, placing it on the back burner while they addressed iPhone (which was important) and now the iPad (which isn't). Enter Google; Apple's new worst enemy. If Google enters the market, and aims at one thing: getting media to the TV, both from within the household: Ripped CDs 'backed-up' DVDs Digital photos and maybe more importantly, from without: Movie streaming from NetFlix, Apple, Amazon Online videos from YouTube, Hulu, etc. Music streaming from Pandora, Last.fm, etc Download audio and video podcasts (ok, maybe more for people like me) But most import...

Check this out, it looks amazing. Since I am in the software industry, and I know how difficult this is to implement, I'm amazed at how well done this is.

Corporate Information - Our Philosophy A very interesting read, worth the time to see what Google's founders envision for their company and its products. Nobody can argue that Google is bringing a very different approach to computing, I love their products but it can be scary how much data they have in their hands. I keep trying to decide if that is good or not. It is certainly convenient to have virtually all your data in one place, in the cloud, but is it smart? Currently, I think so. At present, I am using many of Google's services: Google Search GMail (w/Tasks) Google Reader Google Docs Google Calendar Picasa and Picasa Web Albums Blogger Buzz Google Voice Google Wave There are certainly replacements available for all of these but none are as convenient or cost effective. I just have to decide how much data I want in one place.

Happy Meal is ageless: no decay in a year on a shelf - Boing Boing Ya, I'd say they bake in enough preservatives, don't you? That stuff HAS to build up in your system, and it can't bode well for long-term health. This is seriously scary.

Stick with this to the end, it is extremely well done.

Ty Warren thinks long term Ty Warren is one example of the types of players the Patriots pride themselves in calling one of their own. I wish we had more of them.

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/15-noteworthy-websites-that-changed-the-internet/ I would amend this list; as far as I know, Slashdot.org was the first “news portal” that I ever used. I suspect that is very true for almost all tech-types.

alexalbrecht : This is beyond EPIC, Leo is the man!

Out to breakfast with the kids. They are very impressed that they got travel coffee cups for their OJ.

There really isn’t anything much cuter than a 5 year old singing, “Hey There Delilah”.

Casey: Daddy, can you get up and come downstairs with me and I will play trains and you can do whatever you want. Me: You got a deal, mister!

Honestly, eTrade’s commercials were getting old to me but this new one was a nice return to form.

I’m amazed, I’ve never seen throughput levels like this before. I was so amazed, I double checked my speeds on speedtest.net. That being said, go-go-gigabit to my doorstep please!

http://www.berkeleylug.com/?p=485 A very interesting argument against Apple. I still have mixed feelings about the companies direction despite using their products.

Giz Explains: How You're Gonna Get Screwed By Ebook Formats I really enjoyed this description on what ePub is and isn't. This is good to know in the coming eReader "wars".

New Cisco Router I’m not sure it will ‘change the internet as we know it’ but it certainly allows a little room for growth in the future.

You can call what major motion picture studios and TV manufacturers are doing ‘3d’ but until you can accomplish what this guy did (on a standard LCD by the way) it just isn’t the real thing. This is how your eyes work, anything less is just trying to steal your hard earned money.

Lifehacker: 9 Ways to Handle Interruptions I need all the help I can get, so tips like these in this article can be very helpful.

I think my five year old daughter is trying to tell me something. Wow, it starts early…she asked if we could hang it outside our house. I told her to send it to her grandfather.

Tech Savvy Students <3 eReaders This market for eReaders seems like such a no-brainer to me; the cost of manufacturing such low run text books is ridiculous, I always hated spending $80-$120 for a book that I would use for 4 months and then rarely would ever pick up again. I can remember always having a large backpack with 30 pounds of books slung over my shoulder, walking around campus. You bet, I would have been an early Kindle DX owner!

I wish I had pirate ship bounce-house to play on when I was a kid.

Stop making it complicated! All very good advice. I am currently reading “Getting Things Done” by David Allen, and will finish it despite this article so I can compare and contrast the two but I suspect it really does boil down to just making things simple and just doing.

Jamie Oliver presents Food Education The Naked Chef gives a presentation on food education. The wheelbarrow of sugar representing sugar in school milk was a great idea.

I saw this interview from a few years ago about The Goonies and I just wanted to share it with everyone.

Neil Patrick Harris agrees to Smurf movie Say what??? A SMURF movie??? What???

Flash is leading security exploit

CNN on 'Real Food' Very interesting idea, my father always grumbled about this when I was growing up and it has only gotten worse now that I am a dad. Real food is so hard to find!

mnmal : Why DRM doesn’t work . All the old time readers know that I really really hate DRM. It just doesn’t work. I don’t support piracy, that’s bad, but DRM is NOT the solution.

CNN on social media and news More Americans get news from Internet than newspapers or radio, survey says.

How to Help Your Focus “There’s a really simple tip almost everybody can use to increase productivity tremendously. Not only is the tip free, it might even make you a bit of money. *And* it’ll make you smarter. It’s really easy, there’s only one step involved: Sell your TVs.” (via mnmal )

Evidently the Dunkin’ Donuts kids think I’m an excessively heavy butter user with my bagel. I guess it is time to get back into that running regiment.

Is it better to live as a monster or die a good man? Shutter Island (movie, not in the book)

You know you’re going a bit stir crazy when you wish you had access to your college physics and engineering text books (they are home, on my bookshelves) because time and non-use has rotted away many of the formulas from my brain. We lost power on Thursday night and it is now Sunday morning, I’m on my second book but that much sustained fiction reading is getting tiring. On the bright side, the kids haven’t really noticed anything is different since Friday when they got a little bored and wanted to watch TV. Once we finally explained (it took a while…) that no power=no tv, they’ve been great. On the down side, I think my wife is losing it!

What does one do without power for almost 48 hours? This… Kindle 2 Mighty Bright light An unspecified amount of red wine. One large fiction done, might as well start another.

Ok, Apple and AT&T. I’ve been patient. I have not complained. I have paid my bills including the extortion level data plan and the slap in the face texting fees; isn’t it about time you enable tethering? I’ve been without power along with 300,000+ people in my state and I’d like to connect my laptop for like an hour or something. I don’t plan on streaming video and then walk away from the screen with an evil laugh, I would just like the luxury of typing on a real keyboard and to send out some (plain text!) emails. Sincerely, Your loyal (locked in) customers

http://focusmanifesto.com/getting-amazing-things-done/ Good advice. I should actually do it. (via mnmal )

The era of the standalone smartphone company is over. To say it plainly: To make the best phone, it’s not enough to simply make the best phone. John Herrman, Gizmodo

Welcome to Mississauga (via MercerReport ) Wow. I love this woman. Someone put her in a music video already.

There is wisdom in age. This rant about computer/software complexity mirrors my sentiments exactly. Probably because I’m getting old and crotchety. Well, at least old because I just get more mellow as I age.

Grape Nuts, nothing else like it. I actually really like Grape Nuts!

inothernews : DROWN; UP The ruins of a church in the Andean town of Potosi in January 2009 (top) and now. The 25-metre-tall church and ruins of a town flooded in the early 1980s have emerged from the Uribante-Caparo reservoir after a drought reduced water levels.  (Photo: Reuters via the Telegraph)

http://zenhabits.net/2010/02/deadly-sin/ I’m mostly horrible about changing habits but I’ve always found the bullet points listed in this article to be very true. Thought I would share.

Kornheiser suspended Yet another shining example of things getting blown out of proportion in our overly politically correct world. Which isn’t saying that his comments weren’t out of line, just the over-reaction by ESPN. Next time Hannah, just rip him back on your show… Relax and enjoy the vacation, Tony. I’ll be looking forward to you getting back. Hopefully we aren’t subjected to two weeks of Le Batard.

onecoolthing : They are so cool you’ve probably already heard of ‘em, but if you haven’t- Pomplamoose. Could be the future of music and its videos, certainly is the present. My other favorites are Single Ladies and Mrs. Robinson … Ya, I’ve seen a few of their videos, they are really fun and innovative. Check it out! My personal favorite is still Beat It!

Mariana Trench to scale Sometimes it is amazing to put things in perspective.

I just finished the book, Shutter Island , by Dennis Lehane . Quite simply, I absolutely loved this book. I don’t want to give anything away about the plot but I will say that I am so very glad there is an author with the guts to write story lines that are so non-American. I mean this in a good way! You see, I plan on going to see the movie next weekend, and I have really high hopes in it being a good adaption of the book - I’m worried because of a similar plot that drove the book I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. The movie butchered an otherwise amazing story probably in large part because major studios don’t think the American viewing public can handle an adult ending. Luckily, I have faith in Martin Scorsese to have enough pull to deliver in this situation. I can’t wait!

Had one of the coolest Dad moments just now with Casey (Pam and Ally went to Boston to see The Lion King). We watched Star Trek while doing puzzles, he was really into it!

Tea party in full swing.

When you want me to go fast, say “Washington”. Casey Bridges, 3 years old

Given the current storms in D.C. area lately, I was curious what some of the biggest snow storms of all time . I’ve seen a few that I thought would qualify… as it turns out, I have! For #9, I was in college in Worcester, MA and I remember it well as it shut down the city for effectively 5 days. I also have always heard about the “Blizzard of ‘78” from my parents.  I was alive but I guess I don’t remember it since I was only 5 years old.

Ya, I would have geeked out if I could have put these up in my room as a kid.  Then again, I would have had to take down either the football (L. Taylor , P. Simms , E. Dickerson ) or military jets ( F-14 , F-16 , SR-71 ) down to put them up. Ya, it is sad, no bikini babes were on my walls…

Broadband is the dial tone of the 21st century. -Derek Slater, Google

I like the stark contrast between Tom Brady and Drew Brees pre-game. Brees: your teamates aren’t dogs that need to be verbally excited to perform their job. If my manager came into my office on Monday morning and did this, I’m not sure how I would react.  It certainly wouldn’t motivate me to program faster, better, (stronger?). Of course, I think he knows this which leads me to believe he only does this for the cameras and your average Sunday couch potato, which is even less appealing to me. Brady time and again puts his faith in his personnel to be the professionals that they are, perform at their best and put wins and losses behind them. I only post this because Brees post-game finally softened my opinion of him with this: Don’t get me wrong, his ability as a quarterback are unquestionable. Top 5 in the NFL currently, his SuperBowl stats were even more impressive and he played one hell of a game. Just drop the show-boating. Ray Lewis already owns it anyway.

Honestly, this is the first phone /device that has made me pause for a moment in my iPhone induced bliss.  It’s compelling. It’s Geek-Chic.  Yes, admittedly, I am a Google fan-boy in most things but the iPhone has made me very happy for quite a while.

I’m not sure I’m going to go this route since it would only be optimum on my AppleTV but at least the rest of the family could watch movies without my intervention.

In the summer of ‘88 or ‘89, I started making a strip-plank cedar canoe with my Grandfather.  I started high school the following year and life got busy and stayed that way.  The half done canoe sat in my parent’s basement for (eek) 20 years. A family friend, Laughnie has picked up the project and is now finishing it.  Look how awesome it is!

I came across this blog entry because I was curious to see an analysis on the costs of books.  Specifically, I wanted to see what percentage of the cover price went to manufacturing the book itself, and therefore should not be included in the price of eBooks.  I was surprised to see it was only 10%…

I just finished Dan Brown 's The Lost Symbol which was entertaining but I can't help but feel like Brown is starting to loose his magic that peaked in Angels and Demons and did passively well in The Da Vinci Code . Like I said, it was entertaining but not one I would recommend anyone go rush out and read. That being said, Brown always explores many incredible topics in his books and weaves between fact and fiction flawlessly.  This was one I had to read about after finishing the book, I give to you........ Kryptos .

http://science.howstuffworks.com/10-biggest-snowstorms1.htm Given the current storms in D.C. area lately, I was curious what some of the biggest snow storms of all time. I’ve seen a few that I thought would qualify… as it turns out, I have! For #9, I was in college in Worcester, MA and I remember it well as it shut down the city for effectively 5 days. I also have always heard about the “Blizzard of ‘78” from my parents.  I was alive but I guess I don’t remember it since I was only 5 years old.

http://gizmodo.com/5466822/beautiful-planet-posters-are-space-geek-catnip/gal... Ya, I would have geeked out if I could have put these up in my room as a kid.  Then again, I would have had to take down either the football (L. Taylor, P. Simms, E. Dickerson) or military jets (F-14, F-16, SR-71) down to put them up. Ya, it is sad, no bikini babes were on my walls…

Broadband is the dial tone of the 21st century. Derek Slater, Google

I like the stark contrast between Tom Brady and Drew Brees pre-game. Brees: your teamates aren’t dogs that need to be verbally excited to perform their job. If my manager came into my office on Monday morning and did this, I’m not sure how I would react.  It certainly wouldn’t motivate me to program faster, better, (stronger?). Of course, I think he knows this which leads me to believe he only does this for the cameras and your average Sunday couch potato, which is even less appealing to me. Brady time and again puts his faith in his personnel to be the professionals that they are, perform at their best and put wins and losses behind them. I only post this because Brees post-game finally softened my opinion of him with this: Don’t get me wrong, his ability as a quarterback are unquestionable.  Top 5 in the NFL currently, his SuperBowl stats were even more impressive and he played one hell of a game. Just drop the show-boating. Ray Lewis already owns it anyway.

http://www.google.com/phone Honestly, this is the first phone/device that has made me pause for a moment in my iPhone induced bliss.  It’s compelling. It’s Geek-Chic.  Yes, admittedly, I am a Google fan-boy in most things but the iPhone has made me very happy for quite a while.

http://techsupport.foreverwarm.com/how-to-add-your-dvds-to-appletv I’m not sure I’m going to go this route since it would only be optimum on my AppleTV but at least the rest of the family could watch movies without my intervention.

In the summer of ‘88 or ‘89, I started making a strip-plank cedar canoe with my Grandfather.  I started high school the following year and life got busy and stayed that way.  The half done canoe sat in my parent’s basement for (eek) 20 years. A family friend, Laughnie has picked up the project and is now finishing it.  Look how awesome it is!

http://ireaderreview.com/2009/05/03/book-cost-analysis-cost-of-physical-book-... I came across this blog entry because I was curious to see an analysis on the costs of books.  Specifically, I wanted to see what percentage of the cover price went to manufacturing the book itself, and therefore should not be included in the price of eBooks.  I was surprised to see it was only 10%…