kahunaburger

Let’s assume for a moment that Santa Fe was at the bottom of the ocean (yeah, I know it does feel like it every once in a while) and that the spill happened right above us. Pictured above is the area that it would occupy in New Mexico. No further comment required. (via http://www.ifitwasmyhome.com/)

RM Auctions in London will auction off the last remaining James Bond “007″ 1964 Aston Martin DB5. It comes with revolving license plates, fake machine guns and other gadgets. The auction is on October 27th, which leaves enough time for me to win the lottery …

Pia’s Kindergarten teacher was diagnosed with cancer. He left the school at the beginning of May to begin his treatment. Pia was sad, because she really liked Mr. B. a lot. They already had a going-away celebration for him, but he’s coming back for the last day of school in a few days. I asked her, if she wanted to get something special for him. She responded that her teacher really liked marbles. So we went over to Tesuque Glass and got Mr. B. a magic, get-well-soon marble and a cylinder. Those are known to cure cancer if you believe in it …

Tesuque Glassworks Marbles

Since I got my Motorola Droid, I’ve been using the OI Shopping List to keep track of all things I needed to get from grocery store and other places. The application was simple and did exactly what it was supposed to do: replace the paper shopping list.

There was one thing that always bugged me about it, because I had to enter and check off all information on the mobile device itself. Too often did I think of something to purchase while sitting in front of the computer and by the time I had the Droid back in my hands, I had forgotten about the item.

I finally found a lean, no frills tool that addresses this shortcoming.

UpVise comes with a web application as well as mobile clients for a lot of different platforms. All my information (shopping lists) lives on their servers and both the web applications as well as the mobile applications tap into the same information. Adding an item to a list while sitting at my desk will show the same item when I launch the mobile application the next time. Everything is synchronized now and there less of a chance that I miss something during the next visit to the grocery store – well that is, if I remember to bring the Droid

Since she saw Avatar, she has bugged me about getting her own bow and arrow. Last week we finally found a place in town (Big5) where they sold one her size. She’s been going out in the evenings (and sometimes mornings) to practice …

Every once in while we take the BMW to get the mail. My brother Marcus shot us while we did so a few months ago …]

PS: the following command helped me to rotate the Quicktime movie by 90 degrees clock-wise and convert it into AVI at the same time:
mencoder -o out.avi -ovc lavc -oac pcm -vf rotate=1 IMG_0159.MOV

I got her that Pogo Stick a bit over a year ago. Initially she was not heavy enough to compress the spring and she was too uncoordinated, making each session last for two-three jumps. Just recently she really got the hang of it. I think I’m going to get one for myself and then we can pogo together …

Baguette

My vacuum cleaner died recently and I ordered a refurbished model from overstock.com. During the checkout I was asked whether I would like to throw in a bread maker (also refurbished) at substantial savings. I had toyed with the idea of making my own bread before and after some quick research I found out that the price offered was less than half what a new model would cost. So I added the Cuisinart CBK-200 to the order.

I only have the device for about a week, but I already made 4 loafs of bread with it. Yesterday I tried the baguette recipe where the bread maker is only used for the kneading, rising cycles and the bread is baked conventionally in the oven. The baguette as well as the other loafs turned out great. Pia loved the bread so much that she had only bread and olive oil for breakfast until her tummy hurt.

Reminds me of Flash around 1998 …

With Adobe CS5 being released yesterday, a number of hosted applications also went live.

One of them is particularly interesting. It’s called SiteCatalyst NetAverages and provides an up-to-date view (with pretty charts) what the Internet landscape looks like: browser versions, OS usage, screen resolutions, etc.

(via Geek and Poke)

I’m not sure of this one: Volkswagen open for Apps.

Apparently Volkswagen will introduce an in-dash infotainment system and is asking developers/designers for input on applications that they would like to see on the screen. Sounds like one car earn 14,000 euros for an application that ends up on the device.

I don’t want to know how much extra in insurance premium you have to pay for a car equipped with this system. A few chess moves at the red light?

From today’s WSJ – Apple to Charge a Premium to Put Ads in Mobile Apps:

“… Apple is seeking high quality ads from big-name marketers for the launch, ad executives say. The ads will go through an approval process, and Apple will build the ads itself during the first couple of months to make sure they work well and attain a certain aesthetic and functionality, ad executives say. Eventually, Apple plans to create a developer kit so that agencies will be able to design and create the ads themselves. …”

“Uh, your company logo is not aesthetically pleasing. Your ads will not appear on our devices!”

Steve’s “Thoughts on Flash” – it happens rarely that he posts a front-page “thoughts” article. I wish I could point out all the inaccuracies in the post …

Later: Jesse Warden points out some of the inaccuracies.

Webdirections posted “The State of the Web 2010” – the results of a survey consisting of over 50 questions detailing how web professionals work the web these days.