My hostee, fellow Apple fan, and friend ***Will Farnham|http://pulchersentio.prwdot.org/*** is leaving for Japan to fulfill a one-year contract with the ***JET Programme|http://www.jetprogramme.org/***. Drop by his ***blog entry|http://pulchersentio.prwdot.org/001906.html*** and wish him farewell!
After wanting to read it for a while now, I have finally finished ***Corelli’s Mandolin|http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/067976397X/qid=1091057930/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-1093109-7623326?v=glance&s=books***, by Louis De Berniernes. I found it to be a very touching story with just the right amount of historical context to be interesting. Beware, however, it caused me to shed many tears!
Having just finished my latest book, ***The Blue Journal|http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0399148027/qid=1091056631/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_4/102-1093109-7623326?v=glance&s=books***, I have found myself without a new read. Normally, I’d just go to the Library and walk around until some title catches my eye.
I thought that today I’d see what you, our fine readers, might recommend to me. Leave me a comment and let me know your favorite read, or the most recent thing you read. That way I can go to the library with purpose. And maybe I’ll read somthing that I might not have otherwise 🙂
Oh, and I think that I would relegate my latest read to a list of beach books. It was somewhat enjoyable, but mostly I felt gypped by the ending. It was just a good, mindless, easy read.
So, the Democratic National Convention has taken the city of Boston by storm. This has thrown a bit of a wrench in my commuting habits. Nevertheless, I set out this morning an hour and a half early with hopes of a smooth trip into the city.
I was walking from the commuter train in Lynn to the shuttle bus that would take me to South Station, and imagine my surprise when I saw nice people there smiling at me! And there was a musician playing some happy morning music for us commuters. How nice.
On the way home, walking back to the train from the bus I encountered many more Lynn representitives who were handing out little gifts; a free subway token, a half-pint of lemonade, a Lynn gift bag (with some casino cruise tix, a stress ball, a pen and other stuff). Who knew that Lynn was so full of nice, cheerful people!?
Becky and I went to ***Chunky’s|http://www.chunkys.com/*** last night to see ***I, Robot|http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0343818/*** – and of course to have dinner.
The best performance in the movie, I felt, was by ***Alan Tudyk|http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0876138/*** in the role of Sonny, the moody, Three-Laws-Defying robot. We were pleasantly surprised to see ***Even Stevens’|http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0206511/*** ***Shia LaBeouf|http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0479471/***, albeit in a minor role. Will Smith had a few good one-liners here and there as the technophobic, anachronistic Detective Spooner. Overall it was an enjoyable movie with some good action sequences and special effects that at times drew attention away from the more weighty themes.
Now I want to go and re-read all of my Asimov. 🙂
I would also like to congratulate two other fellows whose blogs I follow:
***Chad Everett|http://jayseae.cxliv.org/*** (who also wrote the ***Bloglines Toolkit|http://jayseae.cxliv.org/2004/07/08/bloglines_toolkit_v1r4.html*** Mozilla/Firefox plugin) for winning third place in the MovableType contest for his ***Notifier|http://jayseae.cxliv.org/movable_type/notifier/index.html*** MovableType plugin.
***John Gruber|http://daringfireball.net/***, author of the ***Markdown|http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/*** MovableType plugin, who tied with Chad for third place in the same contest.
Kudos and congrats to everyone involved! As much crap as I’ve given SixApart for their changes to the licensing schemes, I think this contest was a great way to reward people for doing great work in the area of plugins.
Of course, since the contest was to write plugins for MovableType 3.0, I won’t be able to use the newest versions of these plugins… but I guess I can stick with the old versions for now.
Congratulations to ***Jay Allen|http://www.jayallen.org/***, ***winner of|http://www.sixapart.com/log/2004/07/plug_in_to_mova.shtml#more*** ***MovableType|http://www.movabletype.org/***’s ***Plug-In Contest|http://www.movabletype.org/contest.shtml***. Jay is the creator of the excellent ***MT-Blacklist|http://www.jayallen.org/projects/mt-blacklist/*** plugin. I use MT-Blacklist here at prwdot.org to help reduce and control comment spam.
Update: Jay chose the PowerMac G5 system as his prize! Woo-hoo!
Read the relevant entries on Jay’s ***personal blog|http://www.jayallen.org/journey/2004/07/plugin_contest_winners_announced_tonight*** and on his ***MT-Blacklist blog|http://www.jayallen.org/comment_spam/2004/07/mtblacklist_mt_plugin_developers_contest_grand_prize***.
I don’t think I’ve ever been this excited for someone I’ve never met!
Last night we had a rare gathering of the Wood family – my parents are up in the area visiting, my cousin Kim was back in the states, and Scott took a bus up from NYC to visit. John and Joan were there, and Mark came along as well. All told there were eleven of us who gathered at ***Concord’s Colonial Inn|http://www.concordscolonialinn.com/*** for dinner. The food was great, but the company was better. We had a blast chatting with everyone and catching up.
…of our apartment:
ppp|
Happy Third Anniversary, Bob and Leah!|ppp
(A day late, sorry!)
Some news items and issues to catch up on:
* The photos from our ***Niagara Falls trip|http://gallery.prwdot.org/niagara_falls_trip*** are online. Go look at ’em.
* I’ve upgraded our photo gallery to ***Gallery|http://gallery.menalto.com/*** 1.4.4-RC2, which has some interesting new features such as an ***RSS Feed for new photos|http://gallery.prwdot.org/rss.php***. If you plug that URL into your favorite RSS reader, it will keep you up to date with any new additions to our gallery. Pretty cool! There are a few little bugs here and there. For example, when viewing a single photo within an album, the photos is left-aligned rather than centered. Other than that, it’s looking good! Also, the Gallery has released an alpha version of Gallery 2, their next generation project. I have been following this major redesign for a while, as it is pretty revolutionary. Hopefully it will make users and permissions much easier to manage.
* The latest nightly releases of ***Firefox|http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/*** have a couple nifty features. One is a redesigned find feature. Hit ctrl-F, and a slim toolbar appears in the bottom of the window with a search box and some other controls. Searching occurs as you type, which is really great. There is also now support for RSS feeds, by way of a “Livemark” feature. When Firefox detects that a given page has an RSS feed or feeds, a small lightning bolt icon appears in the bottom status bar. The user can then click on this icon to display a list of available feeds, and upon selecting one, it can be added to a “feeds” item in the bookmarks menu. This item will then be accessible as a sort of folder, and within the folder is a list of the entries contained in the feed. Sweet!
* From what I hear, the Macworld Expo in Boston last week was a success! My co-worker Christine took off of work for a few days to go down there. She enjoyed taking some classes on GarageBand and digital photography. She was also nice enough to pick me up a t-shirt from the Expo – it has the expo name on the front, with a spiffy patriotic Minuteman logo in the middle. The expo has already been booked back in Boston for around the same time next year, so maybe I’ll see if we can plan to attend.
* Yesterday ***Apple|http://www.apple.com/*** released a new lineup of ***iPods|http://www.apple.com/ipod/***. There are now just two models besides the Mini: a 20gb and a 40gb. They sport a scroll wheel of the same design as the Mini, as well as a new shuffle songs feature. The 20gb model is $299 and the 40gb model is $399.
* Mac fans may be interested to hear that when we returned from our trip, I found a special package waiting in the mail for me. I can’t officially disclose the specifics of what was in that package, but I can say that it was sent out to seed-holding members of the Apple Developer Connection who did not attend ***WWDC|http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/***. Hee hee.
Just a quick post to let our readers know that we arrived back safe and sound in Beverly this evening. We had a wonderful time on our week-long vacation. I expect that Becky or I will have more details to post later, but for now, here are a few random thoughts on our trip:
* You Ohioans don’t know how good you’ve got it in the real estate pricing department. Or maybe you do, and that’s why you’re living there, and not in the Greater Boston area.
* Taco Bell IS better in Ohio. Being served by Customer Fanatic ***Will Farnham|http://gallery.prwdot.org/ohio_trip_day_2/IMG_8061*** was an added bonus.
* We dubbed a man at ***Niagara Falls KOA|http://www.niagarakoa.com/*** “Admiral Snorrington”
* On one side of our camp site we had Mark and Kirsten for one night, and another nice family the second night. On the other side, we had a different dysfunctional family unit both nights. Think drunken yelling at 3 a.m., or paddling of a child at 6 a.m.
* As tempting as it was, I did not, in fact, take advantage of our Kampground’s wireless internet access.
* Raccoons love graham crackers. Or any other type of food. They are evil.
* Among the words that I didn’t expect to be spelled differently in Canada: Jewelry -> Jewellery
The photos from the Ohio part of our trip are up ***here|http://gallery.prwdot.org/ohio_trip***, and the photos from the Niagara Falls part will be up ***here|http://gallery.prwdot.org/niagara_falls_trip*** soon – check back if it doesn’t come up.