Same drill. A lot of folks I know are having Babies either now or in near future. This (Coast Innovations Itzbeen Baby Care Timer) was also in Wired (still cleaning out desk). It seems pretty cool and useful. I have no children here or on the way so "seems" is the best I can do. I decided however to send one to my sister who had a baby (my niece) in mid October. I'll get the inside scoop.

Dad-turned-inventor Greg Sheldon engineered the Itzbeen multitool to track all those baby-care details that can escape your sleep-deprived mush-brain. Last feeding, nap, diaper change — it's all there on the backlit display. It has a light to ease late-night navigation and a right/left breast indicator to remind Mom which side last served up the goods.

Those of you that I know who are having babies soon or just had one, please don't buy yourself one, you'll rob me of my best gift idea. I promise to have it at your place on Day 1 home from the hospital.

Shawn, resist the baby Gadget. Jonk, that goes for you too

I'm sure someone is thinking I'm just doing product plugs to drive traffic to my amazon affiliate setup. My response is, "yeah, bite me".

I am once again cleaning out my desk and came across this page that I ripped out of Wired. I've been looking for a decent BBQ option that doesn't take up too much space in my apartment and is easy to deal with. I'm putting it here so I can recycle the paper.It's called the Sagaform BBQ Metal Bucket Grill 10.60-dia..

A candid view of one of the women workers touching up the U.S. Army Air Forces insignia on the side of the fuselage of a "Vengeance" dive bomber manufactured at Vultee's Nashville division, Tennessee (LOC)

This is unbelievingly cool. Flickr has begun a collaboration with the Library of Congress called the Flickr: The Commons. The stated goal being:

Back in June of 2007, we began our first collaboration with a civic institution to facilitate giving people a voice in describing the content of a publicly-held photography collection.

The key goals of this pilot project are to firstly give you a taste of the hidden treasures in the huge Library of Congress collection, and secondly to how your input of a tag or two can make the collection even richer.

This needs little introduction if you just click through and check out the rich library of images. I'm thinking some flickr widget-ing is in order to explore these beautiful photos.

In case you're curious the Library of Congress has as blog.

Thanks to foo for pointing me to TechCrunch.

Everyone needs a curling sweater. In fact, with any luck, this blog may be providing coverage of the 2008 U.S. Club National Championships in Mankato, Minnesota in March! My mother-in-law's team is in them. Go T-Dawg!

I was out bid... I am crushed. The bidding started at $20, I had it for $25 with a max price of $40, and it went for $41... Did I mention I am devastated?

Sometimes on my way to work I'll swing some tunes or a podcast. And sometimes the podcasts are tunes. While I am not an Apple fanatic I do own an iPod Nano - old school. And in fact that is the only thing I think iTunes does well is their podcasting.

So, let me start by sharing the two music podcasts I keep up with:

CBC Radio 3, Canada

New Music Canada Track of the Day Podcast
You have to click into their site, no direct link

Both are great sources of tunes and I've heard more than one great song that has lead to further discovery of a band. Today the tune that caught my ear was Walcott, Insane Mix #2 (5.6 MB so take it easy on my server) which I heard on KEXP Song of the day. It's a great way to get up to speed on the way to work.

Love to hear what people are into or discovering music wise. Please leave a comment and/or a link to some stuff you listen to.

I don't know if I've mentioned it before but you've probably figured out that I have an amazon.com affiliate account. So when you see a link on my site to a product on Amazon I get a percentage (4% currently). But I logged in to check my clicks and found the following:

So, let it not be said that I have shame, and if all it takes is 7 more items to score me another 2% - sure. Here are the last 7 items I bought from Amazon

But seriously, if you're thinking about buying something from Amazon and like what you see here, think about clicking through on one of my links and making your purchase, it doesn't cost you anything - and I'm up to 6%. So, by now you're probably wondering how much I have made of the affiliate program - well I'll tell you: $ 0.48. Yep, I'm rolling in it.

Um yeah...there is nothing there. I think I might just delete (if I can) my profile.

SMUTTYNOSE ROBUST PORTER

GOLD MEDAL WINNER - Porter , 2001 Great American Beer Festival

JUDGED GRAND CHAMPION - Best Porter in the USA - 10th Annual US Beer Tasting Championship

This hearty, mahogany colored ale is brewed to evoke the dark, full-bodied ales that were a favorite of dockworkers and warehousemen (hence the name "Porter") in 19th century London. It is a good bet that when Dickens' Mr. Pickwick sat down for a pint, we would have been drinking an ale much like our Robust Porter.This is a smooth and very drinkable beer, characterized by its well-balanced malt and hops, plus subtle notes of coffee and chocolate.

Full-bodied and malty with undertones of coffee and chocolate and a bright, hoppy finish, in style it's like Cary Grant's accent: the best of British and American
- The Boston Globe, November, 2005

VITAL STATISTICS
OG: 1064 TG: 1018
Grain Bill: pale 2-row, carastan, dark crystal, special "b," chocolate
Hops: Cascade
IBU's: 15, ABV: 5.7%
Color/Number: Dark chocolate brown

I am in love. Over the weekend my wife and I were all snuggled in enjoying a sleepy Saturday. Earlier I had gone out to have some keys made and stopped at my local Deli, Heliopolis, which has the best beer selection in Astoria, and picked up some of their Smuttynose Robust Porter. We had a couple of this magical elixir and just wanted more and more. The stuff is so good - I am having one right now.

Actually, everything I've had from theSmuttynose Brewery is fabulous. This includes their Old Brown Dog Ale, their Smuttynose IPA, and their Smuttynose Hanami Ale (which may be the only fruit flavored beer I like). Additionally, their Smuttynose Pumpkin Ale beat out the Dogfish Head Pumpkin Ale in my Pumpkin Ale-off this fall.

A friend of ours moved to New Hampshire whom we have yet to visit. I'm thinking a trip may be in order.

I've fired off an email to them asking where their beer is sold in New York City. I'll publish their response here. But in the mean time, if you find yourself picking out beer and see some Smuttynose you can't go wrong. Or, if you can't wait... they do have an online store for all your merchandise needs - sorry no beer.

I've actually already taken considerable advantage of the Netflix movies on demand functionality. I didn't really watch Heroes when it came out, but it was available on demand from Netflix - you still can't do more than save it to be added to your queue. So I was able to catch up to the current (last) season. Luckily I did so just before the season finale otherwise I'm sure I would have driven myself mad. I try to avoid getting hooked on series that don't have several seasons available on DVD already. This prevents me from being a slave to television, or at the very least keeps it on my own terms.

At any rate, Silicon Valley Insider has a tidbit from the AP about the news.

Netflix isn't taking Apple's charge into movie rentals lying down. The AP reports Netflix is set to announce unlimited streaming of films and TV shows on Monday, a day before Steve Jobs rolls out iTunes' movie rental service at Macworld.

Previously, Netflix had capped the amount of time of TV/films that users could stream based on their subscription plan. Under the $16.99 per month plan, for example, users could stream up to 17 hours of programming. Now just about all of Netflix's 7 million subscribers will be able to stream as much as they want, an interesting test of the subscription model, especially compared to Apple, which is expected to offer 24 hour rentals of films for $3.99.

A Netflix spokesman conceded this will raise costs considerably; the financial impact of the switch will be addressed on the Jan. 23 Q4 earnings call. Presumably, the fees Netflix pays to Hollywood and for bandwidth go through the roof, but it could mean fewer DVDs sent in the mail, which would lower some physical costs and postage.

Unlimited streaming is the second recent initiative to defend its turf from Apple. Before CES, Netflix teamed up with LG to build a box to bridge the PC-TV divide, a clear challenge to Apple TV.

Now, I've never bought anything off iTunes - and hopefully will never have to because Netflix will protect me. Presently I have 5 at a time from Netflix which is perfect for having three series (currently on Six Feet Under - The Complete Fifth Season disc 3 of 5) and two movies. I also don't do cable television so Netflix is my primary forms of media consumption.

I was reading a great post on Coding Horror, programming and human factors by Jeff Atwood, a great blog if you're looking for one, and came across some great think about the software development process. I'm being a bit coy because I am intending to make that post the subject of my next post, but I then happened over to Bruce Eckel's blog and read his post entitled Java: Evolutionary Dead End.

I got to reading and felt he makes some really great points about the thoughtfulness that goes into putting a feature into a language. I'm loathe to quote the whole thing here, but I'll give you a little sampling.

Since the beginning I've complained that, at the same time that it claims to be simple, Java is too noisy as a language. Code is read much more than it is written, and this noise directly translates to real costs in software development. Brain cycles are a very scarce resource, and anything that uses them up without benefit -- even something as seemingly innocuous as the extra verbiage in System.out.println() -- takes those cycles away from somewhere they could be useful, and reduces the programming efficiency of the language ( Steve Yegge recently wrote about this problem ).

In his presentation, Josh said that the last-minute addition of wildcards to Java generics may have pushed the complexity of the language too far. Neal Gafter has suggested that we reify generics. Both were originally unequivocal fans of Java generics, based on their responses to the criticisms I wrote about the topic. Now there seems to be a shift, and I've also seen other people begin to say "generics are still great but ..." (Although Tim Bray recently called them a disaster ).

People lived tolerably for many years, then suddenly it became essential that generics be shoehorned into the language. This was remarkably coincidental with the appearance of generics in C#, which also appeared to produce several other features in Java 5. It seems that the urgency of these features came not from solving true problems in the Java language, but in Sun trying to maintain the perception of competitiveness against Microsoft's C#. This is probably not so far off the mark, because the reason that Java had to be rushed out in rough form in the first place was the belief that there was a market window that must be captured. A programming language designed by following marketing impulses is eventually going to end up chasing its tail.

I don't pretend to be an expert on anything JAVA. Being generous, I'm a neophyte when it comes to JAVA. Being honest, I was going to pick it up this year, but never got around to it. I'm a C# guy who moved over from VB.NET who moved over after about 3 months from VB6 who had just realized that I had outgrown VBA. Quite a pedigree, I'm sure. And yes, I do give the JAVA developers at work a hard time at every opportunity, but one thing that I am sensitive to is the evolution of languages and what features make it in and what don't. I've recently started to work on .NET 3.5 after just getting used to .NET 2.0. And the way it looks from all the hoopla .NET has picked up a whole bunch of stuff that is "going to make my life easier" - and I'm sure some of it will. However I'm sure the list of things that I think are just stupid bolt-ons is going to get longer.

So as JAVA marches on and it's proponents start to proclaim to have heard it's death knell - it appears that Mr. Eckel is pushing Scala. I wonder how long it will be before I'm feeling the same way about C#. Now I know as a "Microsoft Guy" I'm supposed to drink the cool-aid and hook my WPF app up to my WCF endpoint to execute some work using WF and serializing the whole mess using LINQ, but my relationship with Microsoft is a bit more complicated than that. Sure I make my living by spinning their threads in to yarn and weaving a beautiful tapestry to fill my application space (that's for you Noam), but it's really more like:

Truly I don't get the MS zealots.

Actually, Noam had shared another post from Coding Horror entitled The Magpie Developer, also a good read, talking about the technology crush* and going on to rightfully making fun of the ramblings of some technology company blog I refuse to ink to here because of how closely their ideas correspond to Junior High social dynamics. This unnamed "thinker" (if you really want to know give codinghorror.com some traffic and the proceed at your own risk) spouts some inane drivel about the perceived ecosystem of "elite developers" fleeing to new technology as the "riff-raff" show up.

So I guess in that estimation I'm the riff-raff, wondering if my language is still what the cool kids are using. The amalgam of these two posts has inspired a technological malaise that will take several ticks to snap out of. Do I bother learning a doomed flawed language, JAVA? Is my current language of choice no longer cool? But seriously, JAVA dead or alive can pay my bills. If C# isn't being used by the cool kids anymore, what will us former drama dorks do?

Oh yeah, now I remember, if I smell something in the office, it must be the rotting corpse of Java...

*Technology Crush: if you write software you know the one - the feeling like we're close to every possible acro-nymonic combination of letters to indicate a functionally infinite number of technologies it's my business to keep abreast of, else I fall behind and have to support my family by shining shoes or apples (I'd shoot for the midtown location - shorter commute).

For those of you who got here by searching for "Dave and Busters Phoenix"

Here is the information you're looking for:

The Dave & Busters (formerly Jillians - I think) is located in the Desert Ridge Shopping center at the south east corner of North Tatum Boulevard and East Deer Valley Drive. It is in the main part of the shopping center.
Address: 21001 N Tatum Blvd Suite 44-1400 Phoenix, AZ 85050
Phone: 480-538-8956
Hours:

Mon - Thurs 11:30am - midnight

Friday 11:30am - 1:00am

Sat 11:00am - 1:00am

Sun 11:00am - midnight

Happy Hour Mon - Fri 4:30 - 7pm

Late Night Happy Hour Sun - Thurs 10pm - close

Power HourTM Mon - Fri 4:30 - 7:00pm

House Policies: (6 minors to 1 adult maximum). 18 and up; Guardian age 25; Non-smoking.

If you got here because you happen to follow my blog

Over the past few weeks I've actually been getting a lot of traffic (relative to the minimal amount of traffic that I do get) from people searching for "Dave and Busters Phoenix". At some point I've seen my blog linked to as the second item on the second page of google search results. This really surprised me because the post I did on Dave & Busters (Dave & Busters Did I miss something) was about how lousy I found it to be.

So at the very least I'm pandering to traffic. I'm planning on doing a post on the web analytics and the blogging related stuff I'm using and on my site . Kind of a state of the blog thing - it is that time of year isn't it?.

Actually, the thing that interests me the most is how a random set of words can get you on the search radar. Although, those aren't really random words they encapsulate a certain intent. I guess on angle to SEO is figuring out what those intents are and lining up behind them. I'm somewhat curious what would happen if I just spent time writing posts about directions to the third tier of common places. By third tier I mean things that are not 'A' list places (e.g. Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building) and not 'B' list places (e.g. JFK, stadiums). There is just no way I'll get on that radar, it's too huge. But what about the third tier - shopping malls, Chuck-E Cheeses. Every national chain store site has their store locater but they are all driven around national coverage. What if I decided I was going to do detailed location information of Staples Stores in mid-town Manhattan ("Staples midtown")... Hmm.

Man do I want one of these! How cool would it be to just adjust the mood lighting on a whim?

• IR remote can turn bulb on/off and adjust colors, transitions, brightness levels
• 4 transition effects - flash, strobe, fade, smooth
• Access to 16 specific colors (including White, Green, Blue, Red, Orange, Turquoise, Purple)
• Fits into a standard lightbulb socket
• Input voltage: AC110/AC220V, 50-60Hz
• Bulb Dimensions: 4" length x 2" dia.

Um, yeah! I just love ThinkGeek

Airzooka is the 'fun gun' that blows a harmless ball of air towards any object, person (or animal!). The airball will travel up to thirty feet and beyond...

I'm actually dangerously close to buying one of these. I played with one at the Pacific Science Center, Seattle WA a while ago and was really impressed. If I recall correctly I would have bought one but that was back when I thought I had to still act like an adult in front of my future wife. Mercifully, I was wrong. It's going to come down to this, I'm going to find something on ThinkGeek I can't live without (say a LED Light) and the Airzooka is going to make the order as well. It's not quite an order-just-that item.

I'm a web developer, and while there is a constant march of new tools and techniques that have made my life better, one thing that still tops the list is FireBug (the Firefox plug-in). Seriously, if you're developing web applications without Firebug you're working too hard.

Now, I think I may have another top 5 item. It's called Xobni (inbox backward - pronounced Zob-nee, so I can tell). I've been playing around with it for about two days now and it seems to solve really well some of the most basic outlook problems. The first and probably most annoying is the age old "I know he sent me a copy of it but where is the email". Until now I've been using Google Desktop and/or the Google Desktop outlook plug-in to do my find, usually searching on the person or something about the conversation to find a list of emails from the person. Their search results are really weak, it give me the email from the person with a from line a subject, maybe a couple lines of text and an icon indicating if there was an attachment. This approach breaks down if you're looking for something in even the semi-recent past or if there were multiple attachments flying back and forth between you and the person. You have to poke around. Xobni solves this by pulling up a file list of everything that the person has sent you in an email when you select that person when they are selected - amen.

The other problem I run into occasionally is trying to track down a phone number for someone. I'm pretty picky who I put in my contact list in Outlook but at the same time I need to find a phone number. Xobni automatically extracts phone numbers from all the email someone has sent me and displays it with a Skype tool menu. And if I have a phone number for the person in my contacts, it displays that.

Here is their little demo video that is pretty thorough:

Check it out, I'm pretty happy so far (Day 3). The Performance is good on my desktop, a little lack-luster on my laptop, but it doesn't hang up Outlook. There is a bunch more to it that I've left out and am still discovering, but I think they hit the nail on the head. I don't usually gush about stuff, but digging around Outlook has got to be one of my least favorite things ever, and this may keep me from having to do it ever again. Whoop Whoop! Give me a week or so and I'll place it in my top 5 tools of now.
hat tip to Drit for pointing it my way