We carved our pumpkins for Halloween tonight. I played around with the "night-time" shot settings on the camera, but couldn't really get anything crisp.. ah well.

The roasted seeds were good, as always! A little bit of garlic salt works well.

 Here's a quick link to the Image Gallery for our vacation this year!

For our summer vacation this year, we decided to mix things up - a few educational things the kids have been wanting to see or experience, and a few pure amusement things for all of us. I could wax poetic for a while on the benefits of home schooling, but suffice it to say that with our year-yound approach, the kids are still enjoying the act of learning.. and we're reinforcing their enthusiasm as best we can.

Our first stop will be in New York's Central Park to visit the statue of Balto (the dog that 'saved' Nome Alaska). Ever since the kids read about Balto, this has been on their list. We'll end the day at a nice campsite in New Jersey just a couple of miles from Six Flags.

I'm taking Rebecca and Jacob on the Six Flags Safari in New Jersey: an up-close and personal visit with some creatures like giraffes and elephants. I'm sure there'll be more - it's a 2.5-3 hour affair. Reasonably expensive, but as my wife and I discussed, we think it's a small price to pay if the kids really get something lasting out of it. Who knows... with their penchant for biology already, this might put them on the path of becoming scientists! Or, it could end up being just a very pricey T-Shirt. We'll see!

Other stops on the trip will include the Maryland Zoo, the Liberty Bell (we'll be eating at Geno's too), Washington D.C. (standard faire: Lincoln Memorial, White House, etc., but the kids will enjoy it), a nice looking aquarium (Adventure Aquarium), and also some Crystal Caverns.

Our 'final' destination is Virginia and Busch Gardens, Williamsburg, where we'll be camping and doing day-trips - Fishing and what-not.

In any case, we're all looking forward to this! I'll try to blog (or at least Twitter) daily. We'll see how this works out, though: wireless hotspots might be hard to find.

Bernie Dolan composed and shot this photo when a bunch of us were out drinking beer and shooting pool. I performed the B+W conversion, cropping, and touch-up work using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.

For anyone who doesn't 'get it' immediately, this is an homage to the Rat Pack poster that you can see over Keith's shoulder. Jim is Frank Sinatra, Chris is Dean Martin, Mark is Peter Lawford, and Keith is Sammy Davis, Jr. Bernie (the photographer) is Joey Bishop.

For anyone who's really interested (Bernie), here's a Flash file that displays the before and after versions of the picture. You'll need Flashplayer 9 to view it, but you should already have this anyway!

Ever since Amazon released their Kindle Reader, I've maintained that is pretty much a proof-of-business-concept for them; I don't think Amazon wants to be in the hardware business, and instead wants someone else to handle the device, while they sell the media. While the Kindle is very cool, it strikes me as a first-gen prototype that COULD have been designed a bit more gracefully. So, my theory is that Amazon, after waiting a few years for someone else to do it, finally lost patience with the slow pace of ebook up-take, and is jump-starting a new sales channel for themselves.

That's why this device called the Readius intrigues me so much. It's a very cool and sleek looking device based on the same display technology as the Kindle.. and it doesn't appear to have content partnerships lined up. Amazon wants to sell content, and these guys want to sell devices.. seems like a match made in heaven to me!

It only took me 400% longer than the box indicated it would (and only 200% over my original guess), but the swing set is finally all done. Except for sanding, and staining, and mulch.

Anyway, here's our picture gallery of the whole affair:

By the way, here are my modifed swing beam plans if anyone is interested. The original plans were not satisfactory to me, with the swings much too close together, and also too close to the overall structure.

And here's the layout diagram with dimensions, etc. 

My oldest daughter (she's 8 and a half right now) came up to me about 2 weeks ago as I was browsing the net, pointed to an online ad for swingsets, and asked if we could get one for the backyard. I've been meaning to build one for years, really, but the fact that the image displayed had some 4-5 year-olds playing on it made me realize that no one is getting any younger, and if I didn't do something soon, as in this summer, she'd never play on one in the yard.

Even though we have multiple projects going on right now, including a newly redesigned bathroom for the aforementioned daughter, my wife and I discussed it, and figured we could work it in somehow. So... the research began!

Our requirements:

• Wooden
• High-quality & safe
• Fort/club-house
• Monkey bars, a tube slide, a rock wall, 3 individual swing locations, and a 4th swing hookup for rings or trapeze. Rope Net optional
• Affordable

We decided not to go with the regular metal-style swingset (something like this) because they get boring, quickly, and I've never liked the idea of sharp edges on my kids' playthings - especially the slides. Besides, why go with just a swingset, when we could go with a play set, including a fort, rock wall, etc.?

I plucked a couple of "20% off and free installation!!!" coupons out of our regular "packet o' coupons to local businesses you've never visited" collection, and set off one Saturday while the kids were at Karate to visit the stores. I'd already seen some wooden kits for sale on-line at reasonable prices (I roughly set our budget at $1800 or so), like the ones offered at Gorilla, but thought that a local dealer might have some better offerings.

I'm really liking Firefox 3 - I was holding off on upgrading all my PC's due to some add-ons being listed as incompatible (like Tab Mix Plus, which I am a huge fan of), but have found updates on many of the developers' sites.

So, here's my list of plugins, in alphabetical order! I'm not really listing WHY I have them installed, but the links should be self-explanatory.. suffice it to say that some of these won't necessarily be of interest to anyone except a web developer/designer.

• Back IS Close (still incompatible)
• Ctrl-Tab 0.16.3
• CustomizeGoogle 0.72
• Download Statusbar 0.9.6.3
• DownThemAll! 1.0.3
• FIrebug 1.2.0b3
• Glasser 1.0.16
• Hide Menubar 1.0.20080610
• IE Tab 1.5.20080618
• Stylish 0.5.7
• Tab Mix Plus 0.3.6.1.080416
• Web Developer 1.1.6
• Yet Another Smooth Scrolling 2.0.8
• YSlow 0.9.5b2

Have any more I should install? Let me know!

My kids have been huge fans of the Star Wars Lego games since they came out. In addition to "the car game" (Trackmania) and the occasional session of Tomb Raider, they're staples of my kids' computer time. So, when Indiana Jones Lego was announced, I pre-ordered it, and installed it the day it arrived.

With a single (but very notable) exception, the game is great. The problem is with the controller selection.. if you're used to the Star Wars games, the secondary characters can be activated or deactivated as desired with the "F2" button. The problem in the Indy version is that if you use the keyboard at all, it assumes, very incorrectly, that you want to use the keyboard for character control, and deactivates your gamepad. VERY annoying. There seems to be no way to "lock" your controller selection from game to game, either. I have no idea why LucasArts and Traveller's Tales implemented it this way, and hope a future patch corrects it.

Anyway though, the graphics are fantastic and quite noticably better than the Star Wars versions: surface reflections are very well done. I also like the attention to detail in all the characters and their movements. The cut scenes are pretty comical and spot-on with what you'd expect in a Lego game. The "skills" of each character type are pretty good too (although Willie's "scream" is a tad over the top and annoying). The Bazooka wielder does have a tendancy to blow himself up.

I tuned into Gameday today to keep up with the stats on Boston's exciting win over the Reds (Yoooouk!), and noticed something odd... the 'new' Gameday for 2008 seems to have gone back to the classic look and technology stack. This is good for several reasons: 1. the Flash-based interface was (and is again) excellent and; 2. it looks like Gameday quietly dumped Silverlight.

Hrm. I wonder what the back story is here.

Supposedly, MS offered MLB a bunch of moola to switch to Silverlight, which they really had to do because Flash has a well-deserved strangle-hold on web multimedia. Go figure.. something that works, very well, on all platforms. Yeah, that must drive MS nuts - a standard that they don't control.. and Adobe is just too big for MS to swallow.

Anyway, for fun, I uninstalled Silverlight (having had it forced on me earlier in the season) and took a tour of the MLB site. Even though the system FAQ still states the Silverlight is needed, at no point during my browsing was I forced to install it. Even the 'Premium video' demo clearly indicates that it's using Flash..

I have to wonder if whatever original "considerations" MLB was given to adopt Silverlight are now being added to in order to avoid an embarrassing disclosure that it didn't work out after all.