Over the last few months I’ve been working on a new way to update our collection of waterfall photos. Previously, we would add new waterfalls by hand into the respective state and county indices. While this worked for a few waterfalls, now that we have well ~140 falls it had become hard to manage. Instead, I decided to build a small database that would hold the important info (state, directions, photo, etc.) and write some PHP code to build the pages for us. I’ve been wanting to learn a bit more PHP code and this seemed like a good excuse reason.

As you might have guessed, I’ve finished the first version and our redesigned waterfall site is now automatically generated. Anytime we have an update we only need to add the data to the database and let the scripts do the rest of the work. Sweet.

We’ve gotten great use out of our Samsonite luggage over the last few years, and while they’re in surprisingly good shape, on a few occasions I’ve wanted something a bit more mobile. Over the past few months I’ve been researching convertible bags, i.e. bags that let you have both backpack straps as well as a wheeled option. This weekend I finally settled on one and we purchased a 22″ Osprey Meridian Wheeled Convertible pack (reviewed favorably by Outside online among others). I like that the bag has wheels for the airport, backpack straps for moving through rougher environments, and a removable daypack for sidetrips. Plus, as long as the daypack isn’t full, the entire bag is carry-on sized.

On the left you see the main bag with the daypack attached; on the right, the front of the bag with the straps stowed behind the flap. Below you see the main bag separate from the daypack.

Leandra and I have been gradually paring down the amount of stuff we bring on our trips, and my goal is to use this bag exclusively on our 11 day Barcelona trip this summer. Fortunately I’ll have a few chances to try it out on smaller trips before then!

I’ve been eying a new receiver for our home theater for the last year, and after a good bit of research, I decided to get an Onkyo (TX-SR705). Of course, I needed to get a good deal on it, so for the past two months I’ve been watching a number of websites for deals and discounts. This past Tuesday I saw a price I liked at Circuit City and brought my new baby home!

Leandra helped me with the initial install last night (she’s getting quite good at cable stripping) and I’ve got all the major parts working. It sounds good already, but I’m sure I can get it better with a bit of tweaking and optimization.

Unfortunately, this upgrade means our our master Harmony 880 remote is temporarily out-of-sync, so we have to use individual remotes until I get a chance re-program. I’d forgotten how much the Harmony remote had automated things and I can’t wait to make it the only remote again!

I’ve spent a good chunk of today in the air, flying to Oregon for an interview this week. Thankfully I had my Zen media player with me, allowing me to watch several episodes of the Long Way Around, episode 5 of Ken Burns’s Jazz, and listen to some music too. I watched over 6 hours of video on one battery charge… I love my Zen.

Over the next two days I’ll be plenty busy, and I’ll head home on an early afternoon flight on Wednesday. I’m sure my head will be swirling even longer!

For those that don’t know, for the past several years a format war has been taking place over the next generation of DVDs. The two competing formats are HD DVD and BluRay. Both offer a high-definition version of movies that look great, but I’d put off buying a unit until one format became the standard.

I’m still not sure which format will be the eventual winner, but in advance of Christmas the price of HD DVD players has dropped so low in the last few days that we couldn’t resist the urge to buy one. Most deals have been for limited quantities so we missed a few, including Leandra’s trip to a Walmart at 7:45a on Friday (Leandra: grrr!), but we finally snagged a great deal on a brand new Toshiba HD-A3 this Saturday.

We can’t wait to watch Top Gun in its full high definition glory!

Eric surprised me with a Garmin StreetPilot c530 portable unit as an anniversary gift this year. He told me to be expecting a UPS package because he ordered an extra drive for his computer.

Silly me for believing him.

When the nondescript brown box appeared a day early, I opened it.

Surprise!

Not a computer drive!

Oops! :)

So he didn’t get to see the look on my face at that very moment, but I have been raving about this thing all weekend. I love it. Now we have instant maps and a compass (which my new model of VUE had eliminated), as well as turn by turn direction capabilities and points of interest.

Another feature is the fact that the entire thing is completely removable, so if I’m in a sketchy area, I can remove and hide all traces of something worth stealing.

For those that don’t know, Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia that is editable by nearly anyone on the internet. It is a great resource - but, as with any information source, some skepticism must be applied.

A good reason for skepticism was published today via an AP story about wikiscan, a website that tracks the IP addresses for revisions to Wikipedia entries. Basically, the site makes it easier to find cases where a company, government agency, etc., may have edited a story in their own interest. Wired has a good list of some of the best finds - for example, one unusual edit of the Israel entry was made by a computer on Al-Jazeera’s network. Because Wikipedia is so popular these sorts of edits aren’t going to stop (people could just make changes via coffee shops or other networks for example) but it does make people aware that they can view the history of a page, especially if they are suspicious. Hopefully this will make it even less likely for these edits to remain hidden and improve the truthiness of the site.

I attended my very first un-conference today. The setup is as follows: a whole bunch of like-minded people show up (in this case, mostly programmers), and pitch ideas for sessions which then go up on a huge board, only to get constantly rearranged according to space constraints and interest. Fueled by free lattes and food, attendees contribute to every session by either leading it or helping in the discussions.

I got up at a crazy hour and drove to Raleigh to help with name tag creation and the handing out of t-shirts before the pitches and sessions started.

(sneaky photo by Wayne, our volunteer coordinator)

The first session I attended was on learning to juggle. No really, actual juggling! I got the hang of it (even after a cup of coffee and a vanilla latte! caffeine! whee!) just in time to move on to a session on GTD and then a discussion on setting up a start-up company, which turned out to be a little less useful for me. After lunch I attended two talks: the dangers of too much technology (a lesson from the Luddites) and a discussion of open source web tools.

Although (and perhaps, because) I was surrounded by folks who were way more technically inclined than I am, I certainly learned a few things about what’s current and what I need to learn to further my career in web design. And a few people even suggested I pitch a talk on working with designers… maybe next year. :)

When deciding on a game console a few years back, both Eric and I thought long and hard between the GameCube, Xbox, and PS2 and because we are such fans of the Nintendo-brand games (Zelda, Mario, etc.), we went with the GameCube (which has since provided us with hours of entertainment). We knew we wanted the Wii as soon as we heard about it and have been trying to locate one for months using a method that would not involve us standing in long lines at ridiculous hours of the morning.

Two weeks ago, Eric got an web-alert that Circuit City had a bunch in stock online, so we quickly ordered one (happy birthday to me!) and waited impatiently for it to arrive.

Because it’s the way thing work, we received the Zelda game and extra remote early last week, but no Wii. It took until Saturday to arrive and we tore into the box with great anticipation. After three hours of playing tennis, boxing, and bowling on Saturday night for upwards of three hours, both Eric and I were very sore. This is not your traditional sit-on-the-couch video game system… I certainly do not feel lazy playing video games on this thing!

One of the neatest things is creating characters that look just like us. :)

Papers published in journals are important scientific milestones, and this weekend I received the official acceptance on a paper in review for the past few months. This copyright form is the last bit of paperwork!

Unfortunately, a license to publish is not nearly as cool as a license to kill, or many other licenses for that matter. In case you are wondering, the paper is “Divergence in expression between duplicated genes in Arabidopsis.” Interesting, no?