Dec 28
O is now counting to three: one, doo, eeeeeeee! I’ll try to get some video…
Dec 15
On a summer vacation to Ludington, we decided to try out a new advenutre: geocaching. The basics: someone hides a cache (usually a small box or bottle filled with a couple of small items or toys) somewhere. They then post the longitude and latitude of the cache on the geocaching.com web site. Others use those coordinates, typically on a GPS unit, to find the cache.
There is a wide variety of cache types; some simply have a logbook for you to record the date of your visit, along with any comments. Others ask you to bring a small gift to swap in with one of the treasures inside the cache. Still others may have “trackable items” that have traveled hundreds or even thousands of miles from the original cache their owners hid them in. Some caches are linked with others in a sort of geocaching easter egg hunt, with clues in one cache leading to another.
Caches aren’t just about what’s inside, but also where they are hidden. Some are hidden in order to share special locations with others. On our vacation we visited a cache that was hidden at a World War I/World War II memorial for local men who had given their lives. The memorial was erected shortly after the WWI ended in 1918, so it had been there for ninety years. It was still tended, as the site had fresh annuals and mulch, but the site around the memorial had undergone much change over the decades. As a result, the memorial was hidden back in the woods, an unlikely find for anyone who didn’t already know that it was there.
Caches can also vary wildly in terms of where they are hidden. Some are tucked away in the middle of a bustling metropolis (beware the muggles!) while others are stashed out in the middle of the wildnerness.
Now that we have some experience, some tips for beginners from beginners:
- Bring your sense of adventure. You may spend an hour crashing through the underbrush to get to a cache, only to realize there is a road or trail form the other direction that could have gotten you there in five minutes.
- Part of the fun of geocaching is in the trip and not just the destination, so expect to get lost. Many times.
- Be prepared to not find the cache. I think this may be particularly true for beginners, because we don’t really have enough experience to know what to look for.
- Additionally, geocaching, like most activities, has its own jargon, so hang in there while you’re learning.
- Due to #3 and #4, it might be a good idea to team up with experienced geocachers, if you can find some to partner with.
- Pay attention to the terrain and overall difficulty rankings on a particular cache. If you’re just starting out and have small kids along (for example), stick to the easy caches.
- Similarly, pick caches that suit your style. If you’re a city dweller who digs urban exploration, check out the street-bound caches. If you’re a country boy/girl who loves getting dirty, head out in search of the rural treasures.
Ready to get started? Geocaching.com has plenty of help in that regards. The first step is to sign up for an account. Once you have an account, you can either use the site resources to research which GPS you want to buy or to start finding caches nearby.
Dec 15
A look back on Bush’s eight years in office:
- sanctioned forms of torture previously prosecuted as war crimes
- reason for invading Iraq found to be false
- Iraq post-invasion reconstruction botched, leading to a much longer engagement
- damaged international reputation, alliances
- economy facing failures in the banking system not seen since Great Depression
- increased national debt by $3,000,000,000,000
- failed to provide adequate disaster relief after Katrina
- illegally spied on Americans via warrantless wiretaps
Dec 15
[Note from Kyle: this was an old post sitting around in draft status. I have no idea why I didn't post it, as it appears to be finished and ready to go.]
Kelly and I just purchased Iron & Wine’s Passing Afternoon. Why? It was featured at the end of House M.D.’s season finale. I Google’d the lyrics, took the artist and song information and confirmed I had the right song by watching/listening to the YouTube video. The last step was actually purchasing: I checked iTunes, but their copy wasn’t restriction-free, so I headed over to Amazon. Bingo! No restrictions, $9 (for the whole album) heading Amazon’s way.
Granted, I’m also not the typical music consumer, but Kelly is. More and more, the songs she buys she discovers through commercials and TV/movie soundtracks. There are still songs that Kelly buys because she heard it on the radio, but even that’s XM, not FM. She may not care about the intricacies of why DRM is evil, but she does get annoyed when it’s hard to share music with her husband or sister. Fortunately, iTunes has made it easy to find restriction-free tracks. If iTunes doesn’t have it restriction-free, there’s a good chance Amazon will.
Questions to ponder:
- Does “advertising jingle” still carry the same stigma for musicians?
- As a follow-on, are all ads created equal? That is, is an advertising jingle always a jingle, or are there some ads that transcend crass marketing?
- How should independent musicians (and I’m not talking about the few with mainstream success, the “Death Cab for Cutie”s of the world) tackle this brave new world of distribution? What’s the best way to address the issue of piracy, especially if DRM is a dead end?
- Will record companies continue to use DRM, or will the DRM-free market develop into a strong enough force to bring them around?
Oct 25
We spent the last week down in Chicago; Kelly at a conference while O and I played the part of tourists. During a restroom break at Shedd Aquarium, O found his favorite part of the museum: the lockers. He could have spent hours playing there if his parents weren’t big partypoopers.
More photos and a write-up on the entire trip to follow.
Oct 17
The NYT ran an op-ed piece called “Bulls, Bears, Donkeys and Elephants.”
The summary: if you invested $10,000 in 1929 and only left it in during the Democratic administrations, you would have five to twenty-five times more than if you left it in only during the Republican administrations. The implication is that Democratic presidents do more to stimulate the market and generate wealth.
The piece created quite a buzz on the internet, including some intelligent rebuttals. Most of the discussion centers around how the original NYT graph was interpreted or presented. That is, until a math and statistics geek started digging into the data.
Theodore Gray is one of the co-founders of Wolfram Research, the company best known for its pro mathematics package, Mathematica (we did some basic Mathematica stuff in our college math courses). He created a Mathematica simulation of the the scenario proposed by the NYT and began playing around with factors such as dividends, including the Roaring 20s, and accounting for inflation (ahem, Carter). On a side note, I wonder if Theodore is a baseball fan; this is exactly the sort of number-crunching baseball fans seem to relish.
It’s all fine and good, but the icing on the cake is his conclusion; like any good twist ending, I’m not going spoil anything, so go read it yourself.
Sep 23
Bad product naming aside, I was blown away by the video footage shot by Canon’s upcoming SLR in the short, “Reverie“. The video immediately takes on a film movie look, with depth-of-field shots and gorgeous color and detail in low-light settings. More after the jump.
Sep 17
As a new parent, I’m getting re-acquainted with an old childhood friend: Sesame Street. It’s the only TV show that O watches, in part because it’s the only show that holds his interest for more than five minutes. The web means Sesame Street is just around the corner, even at 3 AM. Nostalgia aside, I’ve been blown away by Sesame Street’s ability to present a simple children’s lesson in a sophisticated, pop-culture-aware manner that an adult can appreciate.
Sep 13
We slept in until 11:30 this morning, which is nothing short of a miracle. Owen woke up at 8:30, which would have been a very good morning in and of itself.
Shortly after breakfast, he climbed up on his crib (still not big enough to make it up and over) and demanded to be lifted in. Sometimes he does this when he wants toys out of the crib. Sure enough, he snagged some stuffed animals and began wildly gesturing in the general direction of the other half of the room.
“Up!”
Up he went, out of the crib and onto the floor. He toddled over to his stuffed monkey, his favorite sleeping buddy, added monkey to a growing collection that spilled out from under both arms, and toddled back to the crib.
“Up!”
Back into the crib. He immediately laid down and showed no interest in getting back up. Who were we to argue? Out went the lights and mom and dad beat a hasty retreat to the warm comfort of their own bed. Everyone slept from 9 until 11:30, and the world was beautiful.
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