devin?

Paul (or Pablo, I really don't know: I always knew you as Paul in the "good old days" back at Rother's Bookstore), I just had a quick look at your flickr site. Is that your baby? If so, congratulations. If not, congratulations. Bye.

Anti War Protest, Austin TX 2005.31.8

Anti War Protest, Austin TX 2005.31.8
Originally uploaded by Pablo Mercado.

ari im kindergarten 006

ari im kindergarten 006
Originally uploaded by shanedenson.

so, I think I've figured it out. Here's the picture of Ari. If this works, I'll send a couple of me and Karin tomorrow. It's late here and I've got to go to bed now. Good night,
Shane

hi from germany

Hi everyone, and thanks Paul (or do you prefer Pablo?), Killy, and Ryan for the e-mails. Thanks for the invitation to join, Killy. I don't have a lot of time to write right now, but I wanted to let you know where I am, what I'm doing, etc. I've been living in Hannover, Germany for the past six years now (after a year in Poland). I did a master's in English (more specifically, American studies--the irony) and philosophy here, which I finished last September. Now I'm working on my dissertation (on Frankenstein films and human-technological interfaces) and trying to get funding. I've been teaching language classes (writing, translation) at the English department since I've been in Germany, and this coming semester I'm teaching my first seminar (on, what else, Frankenstein films). And yes, the rumors are true: I got married in 2001 to a wonderful woman named Karin, and we have a 3-year old son named Ari. I'm attaching a recent picture of Ari. I'll post pictures of myself and Karin soon. Gotta run, though, talk to you all later,
Shane
PS: I don't really know what I'm doing yet, so I hope I didn't just upload a gigantic picture.

Nikon D200

Specs for the upcoming Nikon D200 are out. Simultaneous RAW and jpeg recording ... neat-o.

I like my little sd-10 (a lot), but there's no denying i would love a digital SLR for myself.

Building Good Karma Rumors

My co-worker says that on his way into work this morning he saw a sign on at Gallery Furniture:

Louisianna Residents stay here free

It's also reported that 'refugees' from the Superdome are going to be moved into the Astrodome.

The world's first photo

The world's first photo was by Joseph Niepce
The other day Killy made reference to it. The link leads to more information. (Update: Thanks for noticing the busted link Ethan. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the link I intended to put in, which had the latest news about studies of the image. Instead I have updated it with a link to Google Images.)

Adolph's Louisiana Family News

The most affected:

• My grandmother, aunt, uncle and two cousins live in Slidell. Slidell is on the northeastern shore of Lake Pontchartrain and has been hard hit by the hurricane. They are headed for Dad and Talbot's house in Shreveport. Shreveport is in the far northwest corner of Louisiana and has been unaffected (weather-wise) by the hurricane (State Map).
• I haven't heard about my godfather who lives in Metairie, which is more directly part of greater New Orleans and is also flooded.
• My Mom's former husband Kurt, who lives in Houma, is with Mom in College Station. Houma is about 50 miles west of the hurricane's landfall in Buras.

Identity, Law, Remote Detection of Infringement

Transcript of copyright infringement hearing:

6   THE COURT: -- I live in perpetual fear that something
7   I don't know my kids are doing is going to come back and bite
8   me in the butt.

UUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGH

I am sick and fed up with feeling crappy.
This weekend I felt like this picture.
No more I dont think I can cope with another day of illness, or allergies, or anything.

Today, I am 3 years old

my little angel boy is three years old - i worried and fretted over his birthday party over the entire week - a result of poor planning on my part - i swear - every year i promise myself that i will do better next year - it seems that every year my preparation just gets worse - i mean - i was STILL cleaning the house when my boss drove up - i even forgot to put on deoderant and didn't remember until after i hugged my bosses wife as they were leaving at the very end of the party
BUT
my little angel boy had a wonderful time
I still can't believe that it was three years ago yesterday that he was taken out of my belly
i can still remember the tugging and the pulling sensations as the doctors worried him free
the steady humm of electrical current in the background that ensured everything was working in that cold bright room
the love of my life sitting next to me - bleary eyed and excited
then
the sudden overwhelming chasm of emptiness i felt paired by the rainbow of emotions flickering across my husband's face
"...the camera...the camera..."
i chanted firmly, calmly
i saw my husband raise the camera in slow motion
two decisive clicks
"...i can't see..."
and then there he was
hovering over the blue screen
all the colors in the world formed a protective halo of life around your wrinkled giant baby body - your mouth bigger than life screaming for the comfort of the world you grew inside of for nine long minute months
you were here
to change my life forever

Prayer Technology

tilton5b
Originally uploaded by Chainbreaker.

Check out this Flickr set before it gets C&D'ed for copyright violations.

La Vuelta a España

The Vuelta is one of the hardest races on the calendar to handicap, primarily because it is usually dominated by Spanish riders who are relatively unknown outside of Spain. This year could be a little different due to the structure of the new Pro Tour series, which has brought in a number of big name foreign riders who would not otherwise be there. Here is my fantasy squad for this year's edition:

1. Erik Zabel (Ger)
2. Francisco Mancebo (Spa)
3. Roberto Heras (Spa)
4. Brad McGee (Aus)
5. Carlos Sastre (Spa)
6. José Azevedo (Por)
7. Oscar Sevilla (Spa)
8. Tom Steels (Bel)
9. Igor Gonzalez de Galdeano (Spa)
10. Aitor Gonzalez (Spa)
11. Santiago Botero (Col)

After two stages (or one stage and a prologue, if you prefer) my best pick is Brad McGee who is coming off a tough Tour de France. He placed third in the prologue and second on today's road stage.

Today, I am 3 years old

Today, I am 3 years old
Originally uploaded by CarolinaDivina.

Adolfo Fidel Chavez IV is three years old today. As i type this, he is fighting carol to open his birthday presents. He is having a complete meltdown. We went to the bedroom and i laid down with him to calm him down. Talking-down a very angry three year old is like trying to get the keys from a drunk man.

The past three years have been the greatest of my life. Facing the challenges of raising a child has brought out the most wonderful and darkest places within myself. Thank you Adolfo IV for being.

Happy Birthday To The Amber!

Happy Birthday To The Amber!

Cats. In Sinks.

Cats. In Sinks.

www.catsinsinks.com

Optical Illustion

Go here and follow the instructions.

McSweeney's

McSweeney's

"The Hare Foolishly Lowers His Guard and Is Devastated by the Tortoise, Whose Prowess in Battle Attracts Many Desirable Mates"

From: Klingon Fairy Tales

Bluegrass

Sara's post about Nickel Creek reminded me of a great band that I have been listening to lately called Open Road. They play very traditional bluegrass. Click here for an idea as to just how traditional...

Like most good bands, they are not playing in Houston any time soon. If ever.

Sweet Javascript: MochiKit %u2013 Demos

MochiKit has some sweet opensource javascript for download.

GTalk on OSX

GTalk uses Jabber, which is a protocol in iChat, so use this guide to set up GTalk on iChat.

For Colin

Soldiers
Originally uploaded by Taggart & Elizabeth.

Here are some more, be patient.

ADOLPH'S WEDDING

I AM SHOCKED HOW GROWN UP EVERYBODY LOOKS, IN MY HEAD WE ARE ALL STILL AKWARD AND LITTLE. BUT ACCORDING TO ALL THE PICTURES ON THE FLICKR WEB SITE, WE ARE ALL GROWN UP AND MATURE. EVERYONE LOOKED SO GREAT. I WISH I WAS THERE FOR IT, I WON'T MISS THE NEXT ONE. IT LOOKED AS IF IT WAS A GREAT TIME, AMBER AND ADLOPH LOOK SO HAPPY, I WISH YOU TWO ALL THE BEST.

tank

tank
Originally uploaded by Taggart & Elizabeth.

Friday Paul Bardagjy and I shot a Russain Curio and Deli for a editorial piece of Russian stores in Arlington, Texas. I scored a deal on a set of matchbook covers from the Soviet Era.

Found things

Came across this and thought someone with music on the brain might like it. Here's the official site

mil

mil
Originally uploaded by 伯虎.

i love this guy's work - i had fun going through this set - check it out when you get a chance

wedding

wedding
Originally uploaded by 伯虎.

this is one of the cutest sites i've seen!
The detail!
the expressions - so simple...

Tee Shirt Sale

Tee Shirt Sale

A buddy of my Sister's from Saint Louis has started up a line of t-shirts.

Check em out at : http://www.kickstartclothing.com/ (wait for the flash to load ...)

Some of the designs are pretty sweet. The illustrations are swell too...

Wedding Adventure

Leaving Austin
Originally uploaded by Amber & Adolph.

See the adventures of Adolph and Amber thus far on Flickr!

Everything I need to know I learned in Elementary School

did you ever get in trouble in elementary school so that the teacher made you write something like

"I WILL NOT TALK DURING CLASS."

over and over again in long-hand about 1,000 times on the blackboard...

i did
i always had to do that and i would wonder - why should i be doing this - what valuable life lesson will this experience give me
i'm not sure now if there was a valuable life lesson
but today i am sitting here writing

"VP/ASS'T SEC'Y. OF JCH INVESTMENTS, INC. - GP"

over and over again in long-hand about 1,000 times

except now i'm getting paid for it

Bonjour á Canada

Good morning guys! Amber and I arrived in Quebec yesterday. Flight delays kept us in Newark Sunday night. One of the features of the hotel we are staying at that I have been looking forward to is the breakfast basket: it is a little wicker suitcase filled with croissants, muffins, yogurt and juice.

Quebec is a lot like Mexico in that lots of people speak English and you occasionally overhear it on the street, but mostly you hear something other than English, in this case French. Yesterday evening, Amber and I stopped at a gas station for snacks and I accidentally said gracias when I meant to say merci.

Flickr

Flickr

What tags are y'all going to use on flickr for the adolphs wedding?

I put mine up here

Map to Breakfast

Map to Breakfast

For those of you looking for a good breakfast the day after Amber and Adolph's wedding, here it is.

Last Night - Tree study #3

Tree study #3
Originally uploaded by killy.

We braved mosquitos and walked to the park yesterday evening. because of the recent rains, it was cooler than it usually is. On the way he picked up a large stick and waved it in the air all the way to the costa rice bridge, where (as usual) he discards what he is carrying and runs to the center of the bridge and pokes his little head through the guard rails and looks down into the "...green water..." as it makes it's way towards White Oak Bayou. It's usually a couple of minutes before he tires of this and we are on our way again.

He ran the final 10 yards towards the jungle and gym and immediately climbed the white bars to the top. he is fearless. he ran back and forth and up and down and around and under... he would climb down every now and then for a sip of mama's water, but immediately climb it again. "come on, daddy! come on!" and i would follow in his footsteps on the soft brown mulch that surrounds the gym.

to south of the park, near the baseball fence, was a tree that i had never noticed ... i took the camera from carol and spent a good amount of time with it.

The guys

The guys
Originally uploaded by killy.

Here we all are with notable exceptions: dave, colin, ethan, scott, francisco.

I wish it wasn't so rare that we were all together.

Help Menus

At what point did i become so distrustful of help menus? It may have been with my first mac (Captain Pinky Winky); i seem to recall that the help menu took forever to open and i hadn't the patience to wait. Even now, when i am forced to troll support pages to solve problems i get a knot in my stomach. usually, i will call tech support (read: adolph, paul, todd... in that order *sorry todd*).

Apart from the books (thanks, adolph) and numerous online tutorials on action scripting, the Flash Help menu has been an incredible resource. I never knew a help menu could actually help. Today i found the 'Action Script Language Reference' and found a (simple) solution to a problem that i had encountered early on. Todd was considering a zip code map for a media company on which a user would roll over and get feedback on particular zip codes. The problem was that the zip code areas were irregularly shaped and so when performing a movieClip.hitTest(), the hit test would read the entire bounding box, not just the shape. Turns out that the moveClip.hitTest() has this syntax:

my_mc.hitTest(x:Number, y:Number, shapeFlag:Boolean)

the Boolean value at the end determines if the hitTest should read the bounding box (false) or the true shape (true).

isn't that neat?

It's a beautiful day!

It's a beautiful day!
Originally uploaded by CarolinaDivina.

See the adventures of MarshmallowHead

(Not Quite) Latest Taggart News

Yesterday evening on our way back to Austin Taggart gave us a call: he is in the hospital for gall stones and is having his gall bladder removed this morning. Keep him in your thoughts. He says that it is a short surgery and that he will be out of the hospital tomorrow.

Why the Red Delicious No Longer Is

Why the Red Delicious No Longer Is:

Who's to blame for the decline of Red Delicious? Everyone, it seems. Consumers were drawn to the eye candy of brilliantly red apples, so supermarket chains paid more for them. Thus, breeders and nurseries patented and propagated the most rubied mutations, or 'sports,' that they could find, and growers bought them by the millions, knowing that these thick-skinned wonders also would store for ages.'Did they do it because it has less flavor? Obviously not,' said Eugene M. Kupferman, a post-harvest specialist at Washington State University's tree fruit research center in Wenatchee, Wash. 'They did it because it has better legs and they are getting more money for it.'

The other day, someone made mention of that book The Wisdom of Crowds. The story of the red delicious is an obvious counter-example.

Oh no, not again...

Oh no, not again...

Tap Water Goodness

Tap Water Goodness

This NYT Op/Ed piece will only reinforce my habit of choosing to drink tap-water over bottled-water. Its not that I know one to better or worse; rather, after living in Mexico for years I have just come to appreciate and to love the luxury that is having potable water delivered out of the tap.
We are truly blessed here. I mean, there is free, potable water everywhere! In the parks! On top of mountains! In the malls! Its incredible!

The Commute

This morning I made the epic commute from Austin to Houston. I left at 5:30, stopped by the Starbucks at Guadaloupe and 38th, took 290 and 610, stopped by the Starbucks at the Kroger on Kirby and arrived at the office at 8:45. It wasn't a bad drive and the traffic on 290 and 610 wasn't bad at all. On the way in I was listening to the local NPR station talking about how bad the sprawl and the long commutes people make are.

I'm not so convinced. The drive wasn't hurtful, although I'm glad I don't do it every day--mostly because I'm not inclined to wake up at 5 am. I think a lot of the pollution issue could be solved by higher mileage vehicles. I don't think you are going to get all of these people to where they want to be during the day (i.e. the office and lunch out and the grocery store on the way back and the dry cleaners and the Montessori school at a specific time) by bus and train without drastically altering the commercial and social landscape in unfeasible ways, even with "Transit Oriented Development" and the most odious use of imminent domain.

I've talked bad about Starbucks putting in a store at Guadaloupe and 38th, but it proved handy when I wanted caffeine this morning. I'm all for Starbuckses along the vast wasteland of a drive to Dallas, but putting in a store in a neighborhood with a good coffee-spot ecology is not sportsman-like behavior. They already have one at 24th street for the campus folks, why put one in to compete with Spiderhouse, Mojos, that gelato place and Moxie-coffee (where I haven't been but I think is at 38th and West St.)?

On the other hand, what other coffee place in the neighborhood opens up for morning-time working folks? Spiderhouse doesn't open up until 8:30 am. I'm not certain when JP's opens, but when Amber and I went there about 7 am on a Saturday, it took a half hour to get coffee even though there was only one person in line in front of me. The one sleepy guy there wasn't enough to really be open. At Starbucks this morning there were two staff, one prepping and one ready to whip out coffee right after their posted opening time.

Mighty Mouse?

Mighty Mouse?

I think it makes noises. Noises? Wha?

Link

Home Slice Pizza

Home Slice Pizza

Home Slice Pizza is a genuine new york style pizzeria that is hopin' to open come September/October. Meet the Queen of Pies (the animation is great!) and get yer free slice of coupon!

Discovery of the Day

I went to the grocery store during lunch and found that bulk honey was marginally less expensive than shelf-package honey (like 30 or 50 cents per pound) but that bulk peanut butter was 30% more expensive than shelf-package peanut butter. I guess you could say that the bulk is "freshly ground," but the shelf-packaged peanut butter that was a buck less expensive was the all natural variety, virtually identical although you do have to stir it up.

AppleInsider | Intuit to release Quicken 2006 with .Mac support

AppleInsider | Intuit to release Quicken 2006 with .Mac support
It isn't very often that you order software before it appears on the rumor websites, but Amber and I pre-ordered Quicken last night in a fit of we-want-to-be-organized.

QuirksBlog: style vs. className

An interesting article addressing how to use Javascript to adjust a web page element's style: QuirksBlog: Benchmark tests: style vs. className
I hadn't thought of changing the class to adjust the style, but it makes sense. One of the things that threw me for a loop about Todd's Javascript problem of last week was that the script adjusted style by appending a class: at first it was class="on" and then it was class="on over".
I generally look at the Quirksmode website whenever I am trying to do something in Javascript, but I obviously need to start keeping up with the blog there. I found the Quirksblog entry from following the Surfing Safari weblog, in which the principal developer of Safari recognized the performance problem noted by Quirksblog as a bug in Safari.

Aluta Simius

Aluta Simius
Originally uploaded by CarolinaDivina.

i did it - i made a sock monkey - i did it for the month of softies at loobylu - i wanted to name him Troglodytes Aedon until I learned that the name of King Friday's pet is actually latin for the common wren - i guess i could have named him wren in latin - but i decided that i would give him his own proper latin name