Whatever Strikes My Fancy

This looks like a really interesting tool

Have you ever wanted to send a file directly to someone else in the room, but don't want to go through the hassle of firing up IM clients and sending it that way?  Or emailing it to them, but the file's too large for their ISP's email account and they don't have GMail?  Try WiPeer, it's free.

A flight of fancy for a birthday

My in-laws have been in town for the week.  It was also just after my father-in-law's birthday.  We had decided to get him a gift, but something as simple as a digital photo frame, while nice, just wasn't enough to express our appreciation for all he's done for us. 

When speaking to him about Stephen Hawking's recent weightless trip, I asked him if he ever wanted to go into space.  He indicated that he didn't, but that he loved the idea of being able to fly unassisted (without wings of any sort).  I mentioned hang gliding at Lookout Mountain, but that wasn't the type of adventure he liked.  Then I mentioned a biplane ride, and his face lit up.  Bingo!

We called our friends over at Biplane Rides at McCollum Airport, and soon had a reservation for the day of the week that had the best weather.  Yesterday, he went to the airport along with my wife and her mother.  He got to ride in a Waco UPF-7, and could shift between the two forward seats to get a view out of either side of the plane.  He chose to fly around downtown Atlanta, and noticed all sorts of landmarks like Turner Field, the Georgia Dome, and the Coke building.

Overall, the gift was a great success.

A small hike

  Jenn's parents have been in town this week.  On Friday, I took the day off from work so we could all go do something together.  We decided to go to Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, which is not too far away from our house.

The weather was just beautiful, and the sky was so clear, we could see Stone Mountain and downtown Atlanta when we were only halfway up the mountain!  Now, I want to make sure I'm clear on this point ... to me it was clear.  My parent-in-laws remarked about how hazy it was and how they couldn't see the buildings clearly, but they don't know how bad it usually is.  I was happy just to be able to see the skyline.

When we got to the top, we walked around with the twins in back and front packs along the paved trail that follows the ridge line.  When the kids got to the end of the paved trail and realized that an unpaved section continued ahead, and that it went down the mountain, they just had to go.  So, I handed my twin over to Grandpa, and followed Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel down the rocky mountain dirt trail.  Grandma decided to be adventurous and follow us, as well.

We reached the road coming down the mountain after about 15 minutes or so, and promptly crossed it to continue on the trail.  At that point, we realized that we were heading towards little kennesaw mountain, which I had never visited before.  I should have taken that as a warning sign, but I didn't.  At that point, the trail became crushed rock, and was an easy, sloping walk down and then up again as we neared the summit of the mountain.

At that point, I began to wonder how far the trail continued.  Fortunately, Jacob had a small map of sorts with him, so I stopped to get my bearings.  I then realized that we were heading in the wrong direction.  We should have taken the road down the rest of the mountain if we wished to rejoin Jenn and Grandpa at the visitor's center.  Instead, we were heading towards the south end of the park about two miles away.

Amidst grumbling and complaining, we turned and headed back (now uphill) towards the road.  What had seemed like a gentle downhill slope now became a lot more difficult.  Fortunately, the kids slogged on, and we eventually reached the road again.  At that moment, Jenn and Grandpa were just driving down the mountain, and pulled up to where we were to give us a much-appreciated lift down the rest of the mountain road!  Talk about good timing. :)

Now this is a great way to win a bet

In England, there are bookmakers that will allow you to place a bet on almost anything.  One man bet them $240 at 250/1 odds that he would live to be 100.  Yesterday, he collected $60,000.  Three people have placed and won this type of bet.  The bookie has now raised the age limit on these bets to 110!

Life imitates comic books

A new mineral was discovered in a Serbian mine.  The miners took it to a mineralologist to analyze its chemical composition.  The mineralologist realized it was unfamiliar to him, and googled the results, only to find out that that particular compound was first mentioned in a comic book!

Will I ever be able to pump gas in peace and quiet again?

Westinghouse Digital Electronics is about to dispense PumpTop TV at gas stations across the country, according to Gearlog.  How long before people start hacking them (they run over a wireless network), leeching bandwidth from them, or just plain stealing the displays?

16-month-olds Feeding Themselves Prunes

Any ideas what that will look like?

Ruby is on the left, and Rose is on the right.

The funny thing about this is that Ruby liked the prunes, but Rose would have nothing to do with them.  When I handed her a loaded spoon to play with, however, she emptied it into her mouth and wanted more!

Guess the location

At work, I manually update my desktop background image daily.  For some here, it has become a habit to stop by my desk and guess where the location depicted in the image is.  It's fun to see what techniques they use to rule out and rule in possible locations, and I'm constantly amazed at their ingenuity.

Here's today's image.  See if you can figure out where it is.

Maps for the Masses

One of the major barriers that has prevented wholesale usage of both Google Maps and Microsoft's Virtual Earth across the blogosphere is that you have to be a programmer to understand and use their APIs.  Most bloggers either are not skilled enough in JavaScript and dHTML to pull it off, or do not have the resources or relations to get someone else to do it for them.

Well, fret no longer.  Google has just announced their new My Maps tool.  Their blog is claiming that you can make your own custom version of their maps by merely pointing, clicking and drag-and-dropping.  They will then give you a unique, public URL so you can share it with others. 

Note their self-interest here ... for every person who creates and uses one of these custom maps on their site, Google gains a partner site that drives traffic to maps.google.com for free.  Every visitor to a site with a link to a custom Google map will also count as a unique visitor to the Google Maps site if they click on the link to the custom map. 

This is a brilliant move on Google's part because it short-circuits the losses they've been sustaining by providing free background images to mashups without gaining anything in return except publicity.  By hosting these new, customer-generated mashups they increase their share of unique Internet users, pageviews and site stickiness, and thus increase their market share ... which translates into both dollars and clout.

P.S. Google, if you're listening, please fix the JavaScript error on the page.  It's embarrassing.

Word 2007 is confusing!

If you're like me, using Word 2007 the first 50 times or so is bound to be an unpleasant experience.  None of the menu options are where they used to be and most of the shortcuts don't work anymore.  You can't even find the silly print button.  They hid it behind a large circle that doesn't even look like a menu option.  This upgrade to Word is not really an overhaul of Word, it's more like a complete and utter replacement.

Today, I ran across an article that finally explains the new Word 2007 menu system in plain English.  Now, the world makes sense to me again.

Let me know if this answers your questions, as well.

Ever have a brain fart?

I hope this doesn't mean that I'm getting old.

I was casting about looking for a blogging tool that would work among my myriad of account when I discovered Windows Live Writer.  Actually, I should say that I rediscovered it, since I found a blog post I had made almost eight months ago about it.  I don't know how one could do this.   Hopefully, it just means that I have too much on my mind. :)

Anyway, it works with all of the different blog servers I could try it with, except for Microsoft's own Sharepoint server.  Go figure!  It has a simple plug-in architecture and SDK, so any competent dotNet developer should be able to extend it easily, as many have apparently done.

I've installed it on all of my computers, so now I'll see if it passes the Wife Test.