I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill

NJ gets such a bad rap in the media doesn't it? I have said it before and I'll say it again, the more I see of this lovely state, the more I like it. We spent a lovely weekend with our friends Tom and Ant, in southern NJ in a town called Voorhees. After stuffing us full of great food like coq au vin in a slow cooker, we decided to take a walk and they took us to a lovely little park close to home called Blueberry Hill. It's a trail of sorts that winds through some thick woods and leads to a hill.

At the top of the hill, one can stand on a rock and see skyline of Philadelphia which is about 10 miles away. We all, the dogs included, had a lovely time taking in the brisk autumnal air.

That reminds me, I must get the recipe for the coq au vin in the crock pot. It was sensational!

Here are some pictures of our hike up Blueberry Hill. The full set is here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sean808080/sets/72157609189719112/

Do you have a spot like Blueberry Hill close to home? Do tell...

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Quality and Quantity

Now that it's been over a month since we said goodbye to the 4 year old, we've turned our full attention to the older two kids. 

Brother and sister, they are bright, chatty, and charming kids full of love and light like kids should be.When they joined our home, the little one was the little queen of the house.  She required so much attention and would take it from anyone that walked in the door like little girls sometimes can do.Now that she's gone, I am seeing some interesting changes to the dynamics of the house.  For one, now that Rob and I have more time to focus on the brother and sister.

Observation 1: Now that school is in full swing, we've had to take the kids away from the TV and endless video games that they've been used to.  Talk about withdrawal symptoms!  They come whining into the room saying they dont know what to do and they're bored.  Libraries are our friends kids! We go and take books out and they seem to be coming around in that respect.

Observation 2: While they're such obedient and respetful kids, especially in school and compared to other kids, they're not such great students. Their study habits give us pause and even more challenging is that when they're wrong with their work they dont take correction well.  They pout and say they know they're right and of course at the end of a long day it's really the last thing a parent wants to have to deal with but deal with it we must!

Observation 3: Now that it's just the two of them they have turned their full attention on each other which means endless chatter and not being able to focus on _anything else_ whether it's the food in front of them, their homework, or getting dressed for school!To deal with this we've taken to separating them for homework time, and getting them to eat separately if/when they decide that they want to re-enact the View at the dinner table.  I think this is a good approach because there are benefits to having some time along and quiet time without someone else on top of you all the time.

I guess this is a long post to reiterate that each and every addition to a household is going to affect all members in different ways.  Makes sense doesn't it?

Keith Olbermann speaks on Proposition Hate [8]

Say what you will about Keith Olbermann, but he doesn't shy away from saying what needs to be said. 

Here he makes an impassioned plea for the rights of gays to marry.  He speaks eloquently and from the heart on this topic.  The folks who voted down gay marriage in Ca. should be ashamed.  Proposition hate indeed.

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Walking in Manhattan on a Sunday - a photoset

After staying overnight in Manhattan and enjoying a fantastic sushi dinner, my old friend, Eric and I went for a jaunt downtown on a sunny Sunday afternoon to do a bit of shopping and gawking. 

Here are the snapshots.

Enjoy...

 

 

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rave dance party in our living room

So we've got the 4 year old for the weekend. Within 20 minutes of her arrival, Rob turned on youtube on the AppleTV and this is the result.
Pass the glow sticks.

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Play the ocarina on the iphone or let someone else on the globe play yours.

Now this is one of those programs that makes you wonder, why didn't they think of this before?  iPhone Ocarina from http://ocarina.smule.com/

The concept is simple enough.  play a flute like instrument right on the iPhone.  Have you heard of the ocarina before? It's an old instrument with a beautiful and haunting sound. 
Duran Duran used one in Say a Prayer so you know it's good.

Here's some video of the iPhone Ocarina application at work.

The cool thing though is that if you don't feel like playing, you can turn over your iphone to someone else on the globe. You'll then hear them playing their ocarina on your iPhone.  Very nice and thrilling to hear someone else playing your instrument while it's in your hands.

So much entertainment and novelty and the price of the application?  .99 cents

How can you beat that for entertainment value?

Here's a picture of my iPhone being played by someone here in the USA.

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A retro commercial that makes you wonder, 'what were they thinking?'

Sick and wrong yet perfect for a Friday.

Enjoy

Hat tip:
http://weblog.xanga.com/DamienT98/681286777/item.html

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Obama gets 700 covers worldwide

Have you seen this site?

http://obama2008.s3.amazonaws.com/headlines.html

It's a visual of the 700 newspaper covers of Obama's victory worldwide. You can click on each cover to get a closer look.

A thrilling way to explore the worlds reaction to the election.

Here are a few screencaps of what you'll see.

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A macaroni and cheese recipe that looks insane!

I don't know about you but all too often ordering mac and cheese is a hit or miss affair.  Looking at the ingredients for this version though, makes me suspect it's a hit!

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on irc bots and twitterfeed a.k.a. TWITTERSPAM?

Do you remember IRC?  For those of us that used it regularly, one of the things that made it unusable were bots. These are software programs that repeat the same message again and again. 

Have you tried Yahoo chat rooms ever?  They've taken over and made that platform pretty much unusable as well.

Now that we've taken to twitter as the communication channel of the day, I'm thinking that the increasing use of tools like twitterfeed are going to make twitter unusable. 

In case you don't know, twitterfeed is a tool that lets you setup a pipeline such that a tweet gets sent to your followers every time you do something whether it's upload a picture to flickr, digg an article, or share an item in google reader.  [There are other similar tools but twitterfeed is by far the most popular.]

While this sounds like a good idea, let's think about this.  Twitter has a limit of 140 characters.  It doesn't take very long to construct a tweet message that communicates exactly what you want.  What is the real benefit of having your tweets generated automatically other than cutting your voice out of the process?

What does it say about your followers that you are willing to pass along tweets without taking the minute to review? 

I'm only speaking from experience here. I signed up for twitterfeed and had it autotweet my flickr stream.  I very quickly realized, actually it was brought to my attention by a follower, that twitterfeed tweets were noisy as heck and not pleasant for my followers.

So I killed my twitterfeed and the impact has been nil.  If I have something to post, I craft my 140 characters and get to the point.

Thoughts?  Twitterfeed and related services a blessing or a curse?

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