Saturday, May 30, 2009

Google Wave

Lars Rasmussen is the engineer behind Google Maps and the lead engineer who rolled out Google Wave on Thursday at Google I/O conference.

The below 1:20:12 presentation shows how truly amazing software engineering can be. You probably won't hear about Google Wave going live for a few months, but you can sign up for a new account at http://wave.google.com/


Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Vietnam Veterans Memorial "The Moving Wall"

This is a half sized replica of the Vietman Veterans Memorial wall in Washington D.C. It has been touring the country for over 20 years. Seen here at Mayfair in Allentown, PA

Vietnam Veterans Memorial "The Moving Wall"

Vietnam Veterans Memorial "The Moving Wall"

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Baby sparrows


Baby sparrows, originally uploaded by -SPK.

These little guys (5 of them in total) were hatched 2 days ago in my bluebird house. I know, they're not bluebirds, but they are fun to check out.

If you look closely at the one on the left, you'll see a little treat in his beak.. maybe a left over leg from a spider or cricket?

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Letter from a Dodge dealer

letter to the [American Thinker] editor, and totally worth the re-post.

My name is George C. Joseph. I am the sole owner of Sunshine Dodge-Isuzu, a family owned and operated business in Melbourne, Florida. My family bought and paid for this automobile franchise 35 years ago in 1974. I am the second generation to manage this business.

We currently employ 50+ people and before the economic slowdown we employed over 70 local people. We are active in the community and the local chamber of commerce. We deal with several dozen local vendors on a day to day basis and many more during a month. All depend on our business for part of their livelihood. We are financially strong with great respect in the market place and community. We have strong local presence and stability.

I work every day the store is open, nine to ten hours a day. I know most of our customers and all our employees. Sunshine Dodge is my life.

On Thursday, May 14, 2009 I was notified that my Dodge franchise, that we purchased, will be taken away from my family on June 9, 2009 without compensation and given to another dealer at no cost to them. My new vehicle inventory consists of 125 vehicles with a financed balance of 3 million dollars. This inventory becomes impossible to sell with no factory incentives beyond June 9, 2009. Without the Dodge franchise we can no longer sell a new Dodge as "new," nor will we be able to do any warranty service work. Additionally, my Dodge parts inventory, (approximately $300,000.) is virtually worthless without the ability to perform warranty service. There is no offer from Chrysler to buy back the vehicles or parts inventory.

Our facility was recently totally renovated at Chrysler's insistence, incurring a multi-million dollar debt in the form of a mortgage at Sun Trust Bank.

HOW IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA CAN THIS HAPPEN?

THIS IS A PRIVATE BUSINESS NOT A GOVERNMENT ENTITY

This is beyond imagination! My business is being stolen from me through NO FAULT OF OUR OWN. We did NOTHING wrong. This atrocity will most likely force my family into bankruptcy. This will also cause our 50+ employees to be unemployed. How will they provide for their families? This is a total economic disaster.

HOW CAN THIS HAPPEN IN A FREE MARKET ECONOMY IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA?

I beseech your help, and look forward to your reply. Thank you.

George C. Joseph
President & Owner
Sunshine Dodge-Isuzu

We're changing to Disqus [commenting system]

Disqus, pronounced "discuss", is an innovative commenting system for bloggers, newspapers, and publishers of web content, etc. It allows you, the reader, to create a free account and be able to track your "comment conversations" across the web in your personal Disqus dashboard.

Lots of folks read and comment on blogs from Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr, etc and each of these sites has their own login system and when you comment there, they are held captive. Imagine all of your comments aggregated in one place. Hello: Disqus.

What pushed me abandon the default Google Blogger commenting system is this little addition: When you connect Twitter to your Disqus account, anytime you leave a comment *anywhere* it can automatically update your Twitter account with a link to the article you just commented on. Check it out here.

As a publisher, this is great news because that means each Disqus commenter's Twitter page will now have the person's comment and a link to the blog post they commented on. The more people who comment, the more exposure my site gets.

For those of you looking to get "quality" updates on your Twitter page, why not create a Disqus account and start by leaving a comment on your favorite blogs?

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Forks Flag Football League (FFFL) Game

Below is the slide show, For best viewing results: Click to play, then click the box in the bottom right corner to maximize to full screen. Enjoy!



You can also view the entire Flickr page here.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Crow vs. baby rabbit

Who knew crows would do this? They should be ashamed of themselves! Taking a poor little bunny foo foo and eating it like chicken.

Saturday, May 9, 2009

My new favorite shirt.


My new favorite shirt., originally uploaded by -SPK.

Monday, May 4, 2009

Facebook on the go

Facebook is really trying to make itself more useful while it's users are on the go. A few days ago, I noticed this new link appearing under the profile pictures of my friends:

Subscribe by SMS. When I click it Facebook tells me "Jeff's status updates will now be delivered to your phone via mobile texts." Cool.

Here are some other things you can do while on the go. I particularly love the "Get cell phone #" option. Way useful while on the go. Here's the full list of what you can text to FBOOK (32665):

Update status: is at john's party
Message: msg john smith whats up?
Get profile info: srch john smith
Get cell phone #: cell john smith
Wall post wall: john smith happy bday
Poke: poke john smith
Add a friend: add john smith
Write a note: note this is a mobile note

Since Facebook is so easy to use on the web, this is their way of heading Twitter off at the pass in the mobile arena. Twitter is growing (by double), but even my Mom's on Facebook.

I don't know about you, but I miss George Bush

Saturday, May 2, 2009

This is so funny! Kaitlyn fell asleep at dinner

Photo assignment: Kids Co-Op

The girls' teacher asked me if I would take some photos so they could update their website. I'm pretty sure it was the first time I was on an "official" photo assignment. Here are a few of my favorites from the set.

Kids Co-Op

Kids Co-Op

Kids Co-Op

Kids Co-Op

Kids Co-Op

Kids Co-Op

Kids Co-Op

I've got so much to learn, but this was fun. The lighting was pretty low, so the ISO was up to 1000 (hence the grainyness). Hope you like.

Friday, May 1, 2009

Microsoft's Facebook Demo

Well, well, well. Microsoft has some tricks up it's sleeve with Silverlight (and maybe .net, we'll see), but take a look at what they did in just 72 hours with Facebook's new API.

It' s not open to developers (yet) but when it is - who the hell is going to actually GO to facebook.com? It'll be like Twitter how I get my data by using TweetDeck and Twittergadget.