Food Bloggers

Blogging about food is pretty popular. SFGate says that some restaurants don't appreciate some of the amateurs who post reviews. Personally, I'd rather hear from a few regular people who offer a balanced review than from a professional who may or may not be able to relate to people who don't eat in restaurants all the time.

If you think restaurant critics from mainstream newspapers, television and magazines are tough on the food industry, you haven't spent much time in cyberspace. Online message boards, gossip columns, city restaurant guides and food blogs are proliferating and having a profound influence on where consumers spend their eating dollars. The once-genteel discipline of restaurant reviewing has turned into a free-for-all, celebrated by some as a new-world democracy but seen by others as populist tyranny.

Gators still rolling

I am sticking with my pick of my alma mater, the University of Florida, to win the NCAA tournament. It's not going to be easy, but I think they have the best starting five and the most experience, which should be enough to win it again. Ohio State would be a tough opponent, but Florida has the inside and outside game to beat them. I don't think either UCLA or UNC or Georgetown can beat Florida, but anything can happen in one game and all the remaining teams have the players to win. I think that depth has been the difference between the teams that almost beat the #1 seeds and those teams that won, but at this point, experience will matter more.

Soccer season starts

The spring soccer season has started for our family. It's co-ed in the spring and usually the girls are a little better than the boys on these teams. It seems to be that way, anyway. One of my sons is on a team with 7 girls and 4 boys. The other guy's team is split 6 and 6, I think. Games start in about 9 days. It looks like one team may be competitive and the other one may be in it for the fun.

Lakers moving up

I'm not sure that the Lakers can win in the long run with Kobe Bryant scoring half their points every game, but they are looking much better now. With Lamar Odom and Luke Walton in the lineup, there is much better ball movement as well as two other guys who can score. And Kwame Brown is playing good defense and rebounding, so the team looks more like it did early in the season. Maybe it was just the injuries that caused them to lose so many games recently.

Candace Parker

I don't watch a lot of women's basketball, but I did see some NCAA tournament highlights this morning. Candace Parker looked very good -- she had 30 points, 12 rebounds and seemed pretty dominant. I think she was the same player who won the high school dunk contest a few years back. Ian Thomsen says she may be able to turn pro early, which would be interesting. I thought the WNBA only drafted women who had completed their eligibility, but apparently that's not the case. When I saw the headline I thought maybe she was leaving early for the NBA, but I guess we'll have to wait a little longer for that to happen.

No glitter on Twitter

I don't get the whole Twitter thing. I have no desire to be connected all day long and updating every little thing that I am doing. I can see some use for it, but it seems ridiculous in most cases. If you had a device that updated your location and that could be shared with a group of people, that might have some use, but not if I was an employee and my employer was tracking me. Maybe not if I'm a child and my parent wants it either. So maybe it's not clear to me what use it has.

Ohio State - Xavier

I don't understand why CBS keeps putting up a graphic which shows the history of the games between Ohio State and Xavier. They've played 3 times since 1933. The last game was in 1984, 23 years ago. They've established that Ohio State doesn't want to play Xavier, so they don't put them on their schedule. What else is there to say about it? Those games have no relationship to today's game. There's no tradition and the only rivalry you can cite is because Thad Motta used to be the coach of Xavier and is now coaching Ohio State.

Given that, it's nice to see Xavier leading in the game and giving Ohio State all they can handle.

Lakers fading fast

The Lakers are not looking like a playoff team any longer. They've tanked since before the All Star break with no signs of that changing. With a few more losses, they'll be looking up at 8th place and trying to hang on. Maybe they should just play the younger guys and wait for the lottery. Things started out great this year but they could end up worse than last season. I have lot interest in watching them now and would rather wait for a Suns game.

GTD apps on OS X

There seem to be lots of to-do managers and Getting Things Done applications on OS X lately. iGTD, which may have the best name, or at least one that's very easy to remember, seems to get 2 or 3 updates a day this week. It's free, but so is Actiontastic, which is also now open source. I need one of these which will allow me to access my things to do from two computers. It sounds like Actiontastic will do that eventually, but not yet. Maybe I can store the info on a thumb drive for now and do it that way.

Temecula getting smoggy

I looked on the Best Places to Live site and was surprised at how low Temecula was ranked. The one thing that stood out was air quality. Now, I chose Temecula over Riverside because the air quality is quite a bit better there. I can visually see the difference most days and let's face it, Riverside has some of the worst air in the U.S. and that's not going to change anytime soon. The brown layer I see as I drive to work is not appealing at all. But maybe Temecula's air is getting worse. I have noticed more smog lately and I didn't see it before. More cars and people might make a difference, but there is usually a nice ocean breeze around 3 PM to cool things down and clear it out. What happened?

Gators should win again

Stanford is out, Cal never got in, so I'll have to go with my other alma mater, the U of F, to win the tournament. They've got the same starters as last year and just like last year they are hot at the end of the season. I think they can do it again. There are some other good teams, but I'm betting on the Gators.

Tournament starts tomorrow

I know they had that play in game yesterday, but that's kind of a gimmick. The winner gets to lose on Friday. Stanford is actually playing in the first game against Louisville. Cardinal against Cardinals. I'd like to see Stanford win but I don't think they have much of a chance. Their team is a little young and if the big guys get in foul trouble they will have problems. Louisville is a better team and should win with no problem.

10.4.9 update

Apple released what should be the last OS X update before the next big update, 10.5. I'm waiting on this one because the last time I jumped on a big update, I didn't have smooth sailing. This one seems to include a lot of photo related stuff, which is nice, but I think I will wait a few days before I go ahead. At least I do have my laptop backed up, so it wouldn't be too bad if it went wrong.

58 mpg

I was able to get 58 miles per gallon on the way to work today. I'm not sure what the temperature was, but it was pretty hot, so driving without the A/C wasn't ideal. I'm not sure I can do that during the summer. I'm not sure where the extra two miles per gallon came from. The only thing I did was wash the car over the weekend. Still need to check the air pressure and the oil needs to be changed.

Poker Tables at CardroomSupply

Do you need a nice poker table for your weekly poker games? Cardroom Supply sells poker tables with free shipping on orders over $100, but they've also got gaming supplies and poker chips. Their selection of poker tables is tremendous, the prices are low, and 90% of the tables are in stock and ready to ship the day you order or the next day. Check out their March Madness sale and save 5% on your order. Cardroom supply is the place to go if you are serious about setting up a nice poker room.

A few similarities

I was watching the highlights of the Pac-10 men's basketball tournament where Bryce Taylor made all 11 of his shots, including 7 3-pointers. It got me wondering if he was related to the New Jersey high school player Brian Taylor. Turns out that he is -- Brian Taylor is his father and is now the principal at a charter school in Los Angeles. Brian Taylor was a star at Perth Amboy High School and I went to several of his games with my father, who was a sports writer for the Perth Amboy Evening News. Oddly enough, Brian Taylor and I have some things in common -- same first name, both born in June in Perth Amboy and both with a son named Brice (mine) and Bryce (his). That's where the similarities end though. He was a pro basketball player with several teams while I was fortunate enough to make my high school team. For a long time, he held the New Jersey high school record with 84 points in a game.

LA Times article on PayPerPost

Friday's LA Times had an extensive article about PayPerPost in the Business section. It was on the front page of that section in the lower half and included two photos. Most of it featured the top earner on PayPerPost, Colleen. I don't think it was a balanced article. It was similar to the one I was part of a few months ago where you are interviewed and you provide examples and respond to questions, only to find that you are portrayed in a negative light in the article. I guess that's the way it goes, but in this article, there are quotes from two critics of PayPerPost, which is good to provide balance, but the writer has a biased slant against it also, and that comes through in the way he describes the two PayPerPost bloggers who are part of the story.

Some of their fellow bloggers are critical, saying the industry is polluting the blog world and misleading consumers by blurring the line between advertising and unbiased opinion.

"The problem is the advertisers are trying to buy a blogger's voice, and once they've bought it they own it," said Jeff Jarvis, a City University of New York journalism professor who writes about technology at BuzzMachine.com.

"PayPerPost versus authentic blogging is like comparing prostitution with making love to someone you care for deeply. No one with any level of ethics would get involved with these clowns," said Jason McCabe Calacanis, an entrepreneur who co-founded Weblogs Inc., a network of blogs that includes popular technology site Engadget.

The problem with this quote is that the "fellow bloggers" quoted aren't really the same kind of bloggers as the ones who participate in PayPerPost. Jason Calacanis started weblogs, inc., which consists of a bunch of sites which have paid bloggers writing about specific topics such as electronics, video games, Apple, and more. Each of these sites contains lots of ads -- under the header, in the sidebar and in between the posts. I like these sites and check them frequently, but there is no disclosure on these sites like Engadget about what kinds of relationships exist between the writers and the products they write about. Jason Calacanis has frequently criticised PayPerPost in regard to disclosure, and he also has ads and endorsements on his personal blog with no disclosure. In fact, he attacks PayPerPost based on the LA Times article on a post on his own blog. I have to agree with the idea that disclosure at the top of each post is the way to go. I have done this with most of my posts and have tried to go back and correct the others. I do need to develop a better system to make it easier to do that.

Jeff Jarvis is a former reporter, a professor and not the typical blogger. He does have a very extensive disclosure on his site though.

There is no disclosure I could find on Jason Calacanis' site, just a bio written in the third person.

NoCal knocking out SoCal

It looked like both of my schools, Cal and Stanford, were going to take out the LA schools, UCLA and USC in the Pac-10 tournament. Cal did well and Stanford was up big at halftime, but then faded in the second half and allowed USC to tie it. Overtime is not looking good for Stanford which seems to lack the court leadership they need in games like this. I say put both of those Lopez guys in there at the same time and take away the inside from USC. We'll see what happens, but if Stanford doesn't pull it out they probably are not going to get into the NCAA tournament.

Shopping for Brilliant Diamonds?

Buying diamonds requires some serious shopping. Diamonds have a special meaning associated with them, and in some cases, a special price, too. Brilliant Diamonds is a site where you can find Diamonds For Engagement Rings as well as wedding rings, earrings, and necklaces. Brilliant Diamonds can help you learn about diamonds before you spend your money -- check out their 10 part audiocast on the ten things you should know before buying a diamond. The audiocast has a nice casual style and hits the important points. They tell you up front that when you are about to invest thousands of dollars in a diamond, you need to be informed. Their Diamond Buying Guide is also a good place to start if you don't know where to start. Once you are informed about diamonds and are ready to start looking, take a look at what's available from Brilliant Diamonds. This site is a one stop shop for learning about and buying diamonds, so if you are looking for a diamond for a special gift, put Brilliant Diamonds at the top of your shopping list.

Photography assault

Last night was our final class in the night photography course. People had some nice images to share and discuss, but there was one disturbing story. One of the guys in the class had been taking photos yesterday of some buildings in downtown Riverside near the jail. He had his camera on a tripod and his backpack was nearby with a can of spray mount in the outside pocket. The way he described it, three sheriffs who work in the jail completed their shifts, exited the building, and walked past him on the sidewalk. They walked a little farther, then turned around and came back and tackled him and held him on the ground. They claimed that he had tagged a building and was taking pictures of it. The problem with that idea was that he didn't have any spray paint and what they thought was spray paint was the spray mount he had with him to mount his pictures for class. He yelled at them and they threatened to handcuff him but eventually let him go. Given Riverside's dismal record when it comes to policing problems, even though these guys were not police officers, it's a very scary incident. They gave no warning and had no evidence. The guy was a photography student, not a tagger and he had done nothing wrong. He seemed willing to let it go, but if there are members of law enforcement in Riverside going around assaulting citizens on the street, someone should know about it.

night photo class ends

Tonight is the last meeting of the night photography class. It was only 6 weeks and I was sick one week and missed that class, so it has gone by quickly. At first I wasn't sure what I was going to learn that might be useful, but it ended up being very interesting. I was happy with what I learned and the assignments were very useful. I think I got way more out of it than I expected.

Dick Vitale for Basketball Hall of Fame

Bob Knight is campaigning for Dick Vitale to be selected for the Basketball Hall of Fame. I didn't know those guys were buddies, but I think it's a good idea. Dick Vitale is Mr. Positive and has done his share to promote college basketball. He is a little over the top at times, maybe most of the time, but he seems like a good guy to be around. I'd vote for him!

CS3 will be good for Apple

Blogger is not treating me well. I had my whole post disappear when it caused Firefox to disappear. According to MacWorld, Apple may gain close to a billion dollars in profits from sales of high end Macs to people waiting for the release of Photoshop CS3 later this month. I am not sure if I'll be buying CS3. I don't use it much, but it sure is faster on my MacBook Pro than CS2 and maybe with my new interest in HDR photography, it will be worth the upgrade. The academic price for CS2 is around $289, so if CS3 is similar, it might be something I can afford. I don't like buying expensive software that I don't use much, though, so I'll have to think about it.

Night photo

This was one case where combining images to create an HDR image didn't improve things. I think it was too dark and there wasn't enough variation. This is the Fire Station in Old Town Temecula. It looks old, but I don't know how old it is. There are separate sleeping quarters in an adjacent building. I think it's worth going back and getting some shots during the day, although the traffic will be an issue.

HDR prints

I picked up my prints of the HDR images. They were accurate since I used the printer profiles at Costco, so I didn't have any surprises, but the sharpness and lightness that you get on screen isn't there on paper. Maybe I could get better results at home with my Epson printer where I can more easily adjustments.

Phoenix Glass Repair

Driving can be hazardous to your car's windshield. Little rocks fly up, hit your windshield and you've got a chip or a crack, just like that. Well, if that happens in Phoenix, give Phoenix Auto Glass Company a call. They know everything about auto glass repair in Phoenix and are certified by the National Glass Association. They can take care of chip repair or if that won't do it, they'll replace your windshield or door glass. They are approved by all major insurance companies and are available 24 hours a day. There's no extra charge for their mobile service, so they'll come to your home or workplace and do the job there so you don't lose any time waiting. They offer a lifetime guarantee on parts, labor and materials which is good as long as you own or lease your vehicle.

Who's going to PostieCon

There should be a big crowd at PostieCon in Orlando in June. I'd like to go but I think think that's going to happen. If you go, I recommend a side trip to Celebration. I spent about 3 months there doing research for Apple when it first opened.

HDR photos

I ended up with a small number of HDR photos that I liked. There were a few which didn't turn out to be anything special. It seems like a wider range of aperture settings produces a better HDR image, even if you are only using 3 images. In some cases, I had 7 - 9 pictures and there wasn't enough range in there to produce anything interesting. The fact that most of mine were shot at night didn't help. The ones that looked best were shot at twilight.

Ready for a day off on Monday

I don't think I've ever adjusted to the new work schedule my wife has. She works every weekend as well as other days during the week. So for me, the weekend isn't a time to relax. It's a never ending grind of washing clothes, yard work, cleaning the house and more. By the time Monday comes around, I'm ready for a break, but it's time for me to get back to work. It feels like more and more things are not getting done that should be getting done and there is less time to do them.

California STAR Writing test

One of my sons is in fourth grade and will be taking the STAR Writing test this week. They get a few hours to read and respond to a story in a chosen format -- summary, friendly letter, etc. I think the test is more important for the school than for an individual child, although there is certainly some importance for both. What surprises me is how much my son knows about constructing an essay and responding to literature. He knows things that I didn't learn until my last year of high school. Whether or not these things have been taught because of the test or not, I think it's good to have that internal structure of an essay or letter and to develop as a writer over time. He seems to be off to a good start.

Lakers fading fast

I didn't expect too much from the Lakers this year, but they got off to a very good start with all those home games and things were looking pretty good. Then the injuries started and although they hung in there, right before the all-star break, they really hit the skids. They lost too many of their big men, plus with Luke Walton out of the lineup, they didn't have as many good passers. I think the lack of an experienced point guard also hurt at that point. It looked better when Lamar Odom came back, as he slowly got to where he was, but now he's out again and even though the Lakers are in sixth place, I think they are going to continue to fade. If Luke Walton gets back in the lineup and plays well, they may pick it up a little bit, but otherwise I don't see them moving up.

Best Buy secret web site

This kind of thing makes me reconsider whether or not I should ever shop at Best Buy again. I don't go there much but if I ever wanted to bargain with them based on a price on their web site, this would not make me happy. Best Buy maintains a secret web site with higher prices than you find on their public site, so when a customer comes in and asks for a price reduction based on what they saw online, a Best Buy sales person accesses the hidden side and shows that the allegedly lower price doesn't really exist.

From the Hartford Courant (via BoingBoing):

Under pressure from state investigators, Best Buy is now confirming my reporting that its stores have a secret intranet site that has been used to block some consumers from getting cheaper prices advertised on BestBuy.com.

and

This is not the first time the giant electronic retailer has gotten into trouble misleading customers. The firm, based in Minneapolis, operates more than 1,100 electronic retail stores in the U.S., Canada and China. It has more than 125,000 full-time employees.

Attorneys general in New Jersey and Ohio have accused Best Buy of deceptive sales practices, repackaging used merchandise and selling it as new, and failing to pay rebates and refunds. It paid $135,000 in New Jersey three years ago to settle that state's suit, which was based on hundreds of consumer complaints. The Ohio case is ongoing.

More night photography

I went to Old Town Temecula to photograph some buildings at sunset. Old Town does have some historical significance, and there are some buildings which are actually old, but many of them are just made to look old for the sake of tourism. It was interesting to be there as it got dark. I was able to get some good shots of a new building which is the home of a law firm. I wasn't sure if someone was going to run out and threaten to sue me for taking pictures. Across the street is a building which actually is very old. It had no lights, so my pictures there may not be as interesting, but the building has been sold and is going to be moved. I tried to shoot enough shots for some high dynamic range images. We'll see how that turns out. I think I should be using a heavier tripod to insure that the camera does not move at all.

NBA MVP

Kelly Dwyer at CNNSI says Dirk Ｎowitzki is the clear choice for MVP. He's a great player on the team with the best record, and maybe he will win the award this year, but my choice is still Steve Nash. Phoenix is the most exciting team, and Nash is the reason they win. He might not be the best player on his own team, but Ｉ think he's still the most valuable player. In another poll I saw, Nash was number 1 and Dirk wasn't even in the top 4. We'll see.

Ｓaving disk space

Ｗhen your hard drive is close to full, performance suffers. Ａpplications like to have room for virtual memory as well as to store temporary files and when you get down to just a little free space, it's a bad deal. Ｉ was reading an article today on the ＭacＷorld site about ways to get back some disk space that isn't really being used. Ｔhe author suggested Ｍonolingual for removing the many languages which are installed as part of ＯＳ Ｘ but which may never be used. Ｉ figured that was a good place to start and Ｉ saved 5 ＧＢ on my laptop and about 9 on my iＭac. Ｓeemed great until Ｉ went to actually use my laptop and found that Ｉ may have done something wrong and deleted the key layout or something. Ｎow Ｉ can't type a dollar sign -- Ｉ get this： ¥ -- and my text entry is in a strange font where the spacing is not right when Ｉ use capital letters Ｌike Ｔhis. Ｈmmm. Ｉ hope Ｉ don't have to reinstall the ＯＳ...

Ｐhotographing buildings at sunset

Ｉ spent some time taking pictures of the Ｂell Ｔower at ＵＣ Ｒiverside this evening. Ｉt was interesting how quickly things changed as the sun went down. Ｔhe Ｂell Ｔower is a nice structure to photograph, especially from the side in front of Ｒivera library where you can include the scalloped roof segments which repeat along with the columns along the walkway leading to the library. Ａnsel Ａdams took the same shot when he photographed ＵＣＲ in the early 1960's. Ｈe did a better job, but Ｉ did my best to get some interesting shots.

Ｓuper Ｄuper

Ｉ broke down and bought Ｓuper Ｄuper today. Ｉ figured Ｉ would back up my laptop with it. Ｎot so fast. Ａfter about 3 hours, it was only halfway done backing up the 80 ＧＢ drive. Ｉ'll have to do it overnight at that rate. Ｉ think Ｉ need to read up on how it works a little more before Ｉ start using it all the time, but at least this is a step towards regular backups.

The Cult of the Amateur

Dave Winer has a preview of the upcoming book, The Cult of the Amateur, by Andrew Keen. He read the first half of the galley of the book and doesn't have too many nice things to say about it. I was hoping this book might have an interesting perspective on the rise of blogging and related online activities, but it doesn't sound like it's that book at all.

MyPublisher BookMaker 2.0 for Mac

MyPublisher is a service to help you create your own books. I've read both good and bad reviews in terms of the quality that you get with their printing. I haven't tried this service myself. Yesterday they came out with a standalone application for putting together your book on a Mac. The PC version had been out for some time. I'll have to give it a try, but I think that Lulu and Blurb offer more printing options than MyPublisher. The advantage of MyPublisher might be that there are lots of coupons which bring the price down.

My Life as a Child

I was really looking forward to watching the new TLC series, My Life as a Child , on Monday night. Twenty children age 7 to 11 were given video cameras to document their lives over several months. They also recorded video diaries to go with the footage they shot. It sounds like a great show and even got a positive review in the LA Times. Unfortunately, the LA Times review also said the show was on at 7PM on Monday. It was, as long as you were in the Eastern time zone. In California, it was shown at 4 PM, so by the time I turned on the television, it was long over and they were showing some goofy show about video clips of kids doing goofy stuff. I'm sure the first episode will be shown again, so I'll look for that.

support for online learners

I attended a presentation by a couple of people from a company which provides 24/7 support for online learners. It was very interesting and certainly seems like a good business to be in considering the growth in online courses. What surprised me was that many of the support calls deal with logging in and managing passwords. In some cases, it can be 70% of the calls. I guess that's a good sign that you have a bad system and may need to do more usability testing. That kind of problem isn't going away until more people are comfortable doing things online.

phone moves

I went back to work today and found that my phone had been moved to my future office. I wasn't sure where to work, but when I checked the future office, I saw that all I had there was the phone. No chair. No desk. I figure in about a month or two I'll be able to move into the new location...

Palms for better test scores - dubious way to spend money

A "low-performing" school district in St. Louis has thrown their money at the Palm T/X in an effort to raise test scores. I found this one a little hard to believe. At $400 each, the T/X does cost less than a computer, but is there really any evidence that using one of these can improve test scores? Is there any software to help students with the tasks which are being tested? Is that even a good strategy to begin with?

A Jennings administrator acknowledged that the recent purchase was a gamble.

"We're rolling the dice on this," said Steven A. Schmitz, 53, the district's technology director. "It's unknown whether they'll raise test scores. But we're assuming."

Students in grades three through 12 are scheduled to begin using Palms in summer school.

The graphing calculator on the Palm is cited as the most useful feature for the students, but there's no research which supports a connection between this and test scores. The bigger issue is that it certainly is going to take years for teachers to adopt and integrate these devices into their teaching, and by that time, the test score issue will probably be a moot point. I don't think anyone is going to be happy waiting 3-5 years to see better test scores. This was a bad move. The million dollars would have been better spent on additional teachers, tutors, better instructional materials for math and reading or many other things which would have produced results in a shorter time frame than a hand held computer which has little or no software designed for students. Certainly there are successful projects like the HI-CE effort at the University of Michigan, but these use a totally different model of learning than one which would emphasize improving test scores.

BitTorrent goes the way of Napster

Napster never had much success becoming a paid service. I think it's hard to convince people who got things for free that they should start paying for the same things. Bittorrent is trying the same approach with their new service starting today. I believe their files use Windows Media DRM to allow for "renting" and of course that excludes non-Windows users. I think that's the same thing Wal-Mart is trying to do, with little success. I don't think this is going to be successful.

Another go with GoGoer

We bought some Runescape gold from GoGoer a few months ago. They advertise on their site that you'll get your loot in 15 minutes to 24 hours after you pay. In our case, it took 10 days and several email message and eventually some threats from me to write a bad review about their service on one of my blogs. After that we did get the money. I'm hoping there won't be any problems this time, but we'll see.

The blogging class that wasn't

Today would have been the meeting date for the blogging class I was going to teach. Only one person signed up, so the class was canceled, but we have another one scheduled in a couple of months. I will get started preparing for that class soon. There are already some people signed up for that one, so chances are better that it will be held. The one scheduled for today was supposed to meet at a satellite campus which may have had something to do with the low enrollment. The next one is at the main campus and is scheduled for the evening during the week.

new Mac models

It has been some time since Apple updated their computer line. With so much focus on the iPod and iPhone, it's easy to forget that Apple, Inc. is still primarily a computer company. I'm waiting on an update to the Mac Mini. Adding a Core 2 Duo would be enough for me to buy one and hook it up to my tv. I might need to get the Wireless N router also to go with it. says there may be a black iMac. That might be nice http://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifalthough I am content with white. If it's like the Macbook and you have to pay more for black, I'll pass on that. Nice marketing gimmick, however. When something only comes in white and then you offer black and charge a little more for it, I think you've pulled a fast one on people.

New Blogger bug remains

There is a bug in the new version of Blogger that is still there, a couple of months after I first saw it and reported it. I run into it every day at least once, but there is no pattern to it. I select some text and go to create a link using the link button. Instead of a link, I get a reference to the gif file which makes up the link icon and the link code isn't inserted. Plus, it erases part of the text that was selected, so I can't undo it. Normally when I re-do it, everything is fine.

iPhone ads during Oscars

I don't care for awards shows, particularly the speeches, so I don't watch them. The Oscars may not be as bad as some of them, but since I rarely get to watch a current movie in a theater, I'm usually not familiar with the movies and actors who are up for the awards. This year might be different though since Apple is going to advertise the iPhone during the Oscars. I'm not going to buy an iPhone and I could probably wait and watch the iPhone commercial on Apple's website, but it might be fun to see it this weekend.

Chinese Acrobats

We have a busy weekend ahead. Usually we sit at home and play Runescape all day, but this weekend we'll be going to two shows at the Pechanga Casino. Tonight is the Incredible Shanghai Acrobats and then Sunday is David Copperfield. It should be fun, although no photos are allowed in the auditorium.

another sick day

I am not sure if I've ever taken a sick day before yesterday. Although I've been working for a long time, prior to October, I only had a job which provided sick leave for 3 and a half years. Most of the time I either worked as a contractor or in academic jobs which didn't offer sick pay. Now I've taken two sick days in a row. Not that I'm getting used to it, but I may need one more before I get back to work. I feel good enough to do my work but not good enough to drive there and sit around all day in the same room.

Lakers trade

I don't think the Lakers are going to get Jason Kidd. I bet he doesn't get traded at all. The Nets want too much from the Lakers and Kidd has a huge contract. I don't see the Lakers giving up Andrew Bynum for a guy who may have 3 or 4 more good years left, if that. Bynum is too young to trade away. If they can get Kidd for other players, it would be a great deal, but that doesn't seem likely. Unless the Nets want to cut their payroll and start over with Richard Jefferson and let Jason Kidd and Vince Carter go, I'm not sure why they would make the deal.

posterino 1.0

I have been using the 1.0 version of Posterino to create a poster from the many photos I took about ten days ago at Astrocamp. It certainly has improved since 0.8 and there are no huge bugs, but there do seem to still be a few quirks I haven't figured out. Adding text seems to be incomplete as I can't add a background with it. When I leave a section of the poster blank to add the text in Photoshop, I end up with images in that area anyway. All in all, it does save a huge amount of time, but I've got to re-do mine because the output is too dark and I think that means I'll need to start over.

Home sick

I don't think I've missed a day of work because of illness in 10 years. That's probably because until this year I didn't have a job that had any sick days available. Yesterday there were two guys who work in the same office as me who were out for the week with some kind of throat related illness. They worked in the office over the weekend. Sure enough, I started feeling something funny in my throat last night and it was worse this morning, so I stayed home and used my sick leave. I hope it doesn't get worse because even though I've got the sick days available, I don't like missing work.

Nothing

operator error

Outlet shopping

Most of the time when you go to one of these shopping outlets, you don't get much of a deal. They produce lower cost stuff for their "outlet" stores, so you may pay less but you don't get the same stuff they sell in the regular stores. That's not always the case, but it seems that the real bargains are hard to find. Over the weekend I bought a reasonably nice pair of pants at the Haggar outlet for $12. That's a good deal, to me anyway. We'll see how these pants hold up, but they look pretty good. In fact, I'm wearing them today.

Hacked

Someone hacked one of my sites. They changed the homepage and that seems to be it, but it was liked that for 3 days before I noticed. I have been hacked once before. That one was a case of someone creating a folder and leaving links to some spam site in Russia. I didn't notice that for months. This one worries me more because I'm not sure how the person gained access. The previous time was due to a problem with the ftp settings that my provider had set up. This one might be a stolen password or maybe not.

Norv Turner coaching the Chargers

Getting rid of Marty Schottenheimer is looking more and more like a bad idea. The Chargers waited so long to do it that there were not too many experienced coaches left. So they hired Norv Turner, who does not have a good track record as a head coach, with an overall losing record. How is he going to do a better job? I don't see that happening. The guy who should have left was AJ Smith, the GM. At least there would have been some continuity with the coaching. I don't see the Chargers improving next year.

More Astrocamp photos

When it comes to school events, I figure that even though I might not rate a photo too highly, it still might be interesting to someone who knows the people in the picture. So I'm less choosy about uploading photos to albums which will be viewed by parents and friends and others. I use that approach with my school and sports photos. As long as it doesn't make someone look bad and it isn't flawed photographically, I'll upload it. I've just added Saturday photos from last weekend's Astrocamp outing. The good thing is that I have 200+ GB of space available thanks to DreamHost.

College student living in his truck

There was a period of about 2 months years ago when I had no place to live except the back of my old station wagon. I kept most of my stuff in two storage units, which I visited almost every day. I kept a small amount of things in my car and used the gym for showers in the morning. Eventually I found a place to live and ended my days of living in the car. The LA Times has a story in today's edition about a guy who has been living in his truck for more than a year. Andy Bussel has been doing it for 19 months. He's a full time student with a job at the local Apple store. To me, it would have gotten old and limited your options a little too much after that long. I guess the money savings part of it is nice, but the hassle of having to move around and knowing where the police won't bother you every night is too much work. I never had a problem myself other than being told by the police I couldn't park in certain places a couple of times.

All Star Game not in HD?

Maybe I've got the wrong channel on, but in my house, the NBA All Star game is showing in standard definition. It looks terrible. How can it not be in HD? I know they show some games, even on TNT, in HD. This looks bad and I have no idea why it's not in HD, and now that I have an HDTV, I'm a real HD snob when it comes to sports.

NBA All Star game entertainment

They really do it in style in Las Vegas. The pre-game entertainment was interesting while the halftime show was very good. I guess I thought Wayne Newton was a little older than he is (64). He can still put on a show, although he looks a little too good for a guy that old. The wonders of modern medicine, I guess. The Danny Ganz national anthem was pretty well done -- he's a good singer -- but it looked like they just picked 4 other guys out of the crowd who were wearing black to back him up. The outfits didn't match and one guy wasn't wearing black pants.

At halftime, everybody seemed good to me, but seeing Christina Aguilera's performance made me think of the contrast between what she's doing this week and what her contemporary, Britney Spears, is doing. Maybe she could give Britney some career advice.

Not really blogging

SFGate says that SF mayor Gavin Newsom's press secretary is in hot water for his blogging. You'd think a newspaper which actually has bloggers would understand what one is. Peter Ragone left comments about news stories about the mayor on blogs using other people's names. I don't think that makes him a blogger. Maybe a blog reader, maybe an anonymous commenter, but not a blogger. He'd need a blog to be a blogger. Maybe they just don't have the language to describe what he did:

Although the timing worked momentarily for Ragone, the incident left him with a mark on his record that no press secretary would want: For whatever reason, when first questioned by reporters about his blogging, he was less than truthful.

He was dishonest, but he wasn't blogging.

Green Options is online

I don't know whether Al Gore and his movie deserve credit or if it's just a mass movement at this point, but there does seem to be a much greater recognition recently of the importance of the impact people have on the earth. Certainly this is very true in the United States, where people consume more of everything than in other parts of the world, although I believe China has just passed the US in oil consumption. Green Options is a website that has come along at the right time.Green Options: Greening the Good Life is a kind of portal for everything green -- news and stories about energy use, hybrid and electric cars, the high tech industry, wind power, the environment and more. There are a number of contributors to the site, so it's very up to date in terms of content.

As far as the organization of the site goes, it's not overly complex. There is a blog, discussion forums, the Green Life Guide, the Green Report and the Home page. Each section has a clean design and is reasonably easy to use and nicely illustrated with images and graphics. to The blog is collaborative, with short, readable summaries of longer pieces which are posted 3 - 7 times per day so far (6-10 posts per day is the goal, but 3-7 seems more in line with what's actually happening). The full article is available through the headline link, and has comments by readers visible. This article about the Chicago Auto Show is a good example of what you can find on the blog.

The site's discussion forums have a wide range of topics like solar energy, home and garden, and recycling. Some appear to be pretty new with very little activity while others have a little more activity. I'm sure as the site gains in popularity, this area will pick up and become more widely used.

The Green Life Guide is designed to help you apply some of the ideas on the site to lessen your impact on the environment. Each section is set up as a wiki, so it can be edited. The solar panel section has lots of information, although I'm not sure I could use it to put solar panels on my home.

The Green Report is a news headline page, with items that should be relevant to the purpose of the site. This may be done through an RSS feed or other automated system, which might explain why there's an article about the Duke men's basketball team ending their five game losing streak. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with green issues, but maybe one of the staff members is a Duke fan.

Overall, I think the Green Options site is nicely designed and has a good balance of content. I will definitely bookmark the site and revisit it weekly. I'll also add the blog to my RSS reader, but where's the subscribe button? That should be prominently displayed near the top of that screen and it's nowhere to be found. There is an RSS feed for the site, but it's not easy to find.

One other nice feature of the site is that it uses a Creative Commons license for the content, so you can share and remix the materials with attribution. That's a great thing for bloggers who might want to link to or excerpt from the site.

Astrocamp photos online

I finally got some of the AstroCamp photos online. I've divided them up by days for now - Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Since most of the photos are from the group of students I was with, they may not appeal to everyone. I did try to get pictures of everyone, so there are still quite a few from other groups. They can be found here and I will be adding more today.

Link spammers

I got a couple of emails and comments recently from people who wanted to exchange links. I put the links on my blog but didn't see anything on theirs, so I'm de-activating the links. I'm also not sure there is much benefit from these kinds of links unless the other person has a quality blog. Not sure if these are quality blogs.

Electrolux vacuum

We have an Electrolux vacuum cleaner. It's about 11.5 years old, so I think it has lasted as long as we figured it would when we bought it. At the time, it seemed very expensive, but it has done a good job over the years and hasn't been much trouble. However, recently, it has started to break down a little bit. The tube has a hole in it and there are some missing pieces of plastic where the attachments get attached. We also have an Electrolux carpet cleaner which we bought used about 9 years ago. It has also started to fall apart a little bit, although it does still work pretty well. We don't have much carpet, and what we do have should be replaced, but the cleaner at least makes it acceptable for a few weeks at a time. Electrolux seems like a very conservative company. The equipment we have is non-stylish, in contrast to the vacuums from Dyson. However, the Electrolux website is full of Flash and moving stuff and color, so maybe they are making a move into the 21st century. When I look for a new vacuum, I'm not sure I want to spend a huge amount of money again, but I'll take a look at what Electrolux has to offer since their products have been so reliable.

Scottie Pippen comeback

I don't think Scottie Pippen is the Roger Clemens of basketball. He doesn't seem like a guy who's going to come in mid-way through the season and perform at a high level. The conditioning factor for someone who hasn't played for 2 years seems like it would be a huge thing. On the other hand, he does seem like a guy who could help a team like the Lakers since he knows their offense and has played for Phil Jackson. Whether his contribution would make much of a difference is hard to say, but you can always use another guy who can pass the ball and play defense.

NBA All Star Game

The NBA All Star game is usually a no defense high scoring event which gets close in the fourth quarter when guys try to win the MVP award. I think I prefer to watch the skills competitions like the 3 point shootout and the dunk contest, although the dunk contest has that goofy rule where guys can keep trying over and over to make a dunk. That was not fun to watch last year. I don't care much for that 3 person team event with one old guy and one woman and a current player. Probably the best event this year will be the Dick Bavetta - Charles Barkeley race. I'm putting my money on Bavetta.

Global Warming

I guess George Bush and his guys are still debating the existence of global warming. They didn't do much to help that with their policies and pseudo-science. While everyone else in the world seemed to see the evidence, the US was in denial. Well, it's 86 degrees here today in the middle of February. Not necessarily evidence of global warming but it's still an odd thing in the middle of winter.

Learning from mistakes

I realized after the fact that I could have done a better job with some of the action photos I took at Astrocamp. I knew that I wasn't getting what I wanted at the time I was taking the images, but I wasn't really sure how to correct the problem. My night photo instructor had some good tips which would have been even better if I had them on the spot. Next time I'll be ready but for now I did at least get a few good shots. I plan to have my DVD done by this weekend and will hand some out next week.

Vegetarians not visible for school events

One thing I've noticed over and over is that local school events which involve food almost always assume that everyone eats meat. I know that vegetarians make up a small percentage of the population, but since I'm in that percentage I notice it more when there's nothing on the menu I can eat. My wife and sons are going to a spaghetti dinner tonight at the school and the two options are meat sauce or butter. I'm not sure what kind of restaurant is providing the food, but is butter really the way most people eat spaghetti? What happened to olive oil or marinara sauce? Maybe they can bring their own or just eat it plain like we did at Astrocamp...

Subsitute teacher convicted for school tech screw up

The story of Julie Amero and her conviction for exposing 7th graders to porn on a classroom computer is like something written by Kafka. The school's spyware license hadn't been updated because the renewal was sent to an incorrect email address. She allowed students to use the computer and they inadvertently clicked on a link that generated a bunch of pornographic pop-ups. She didn't know how to deal with it although she tried to keep the students from seeing what was there -- she had been told not to turn off the computer for any reason. So she ends up being convicted for exposing students to pornography. The whole thing is absurd and the prosecutor didn't do his job. The computer wasn't checked for spyware and adware by the prosecutor and an expert for the defense who did check it wasn't allowed to testify about it. There is a potential 40 year prison sentence in this case, but the whole thing is ridiculous.

Talk of the Nation - life logging

NPR's Talk of the Nation had a program today called life logging and the generation gap over privacy. I only caught a couple of portions of the show, but it seemed to be about how younger people who use MySpace, Facebook and blogs to document what they are doing are often exposing things about themselves that their parents might not think should be put online. Of course, this includes blog entries about personal things as well as photos of activities that might best be kept private. One of the points made by one of the guests was that standards in this area may change and what's considered bad taste today might not be in ten years. I think that is probably true, but I still think there are some things which don't need to be shared with anybody who can get online.

Talk of the Nation does not seem to have a podcast, so you have to listen to the show using RealPlayer online.

Chargers need a coach

After firing Marty Schottenheimer, the Chargers have to scramble to hire a coach. SFGate says they are looking at a couple of 49ers coaches, Mike Singletary and Norv Turner. Turner has been a head coach before and was a finalist for the Cowboys job a few weeks ago. Sounds like he's the frontrunner unless they can persuade Pete Carroll or Jimmy Johnson to give it a shot. If the problem with Marty was that he wanted too much control, then that's probably going to continue to be a problem with these guys.

The Missing Link

Something went wrong with this one.

End of Marty Ball in San Diego

It did seem odd that the Chargers would lose both their offensive and defensive coordinators at the same time. Both got head coaching jobs. Two other assistants also left, and despite their 12-4 season, the Chargers fired Marty Schottenheimer today. The timing seems bad since most of the other coaching vacancies have been filled at this point, so you either will get a guy who hasn't been a head coach before or a retread who didn't get any of the other jobs. Maybe Bill Parcells will change his mind and give it one more shot with a team that has a great chance to win next year. I don't think it's the right move to fire your coach because he can't get along with the general manager, but maybe the owner felt the general manager was more important.

AstroCamp and behavioral issues

One of the things that was very clear after spending 2 days with about 50 5th graders is that when even a very small number of the kids have behavioral issues, it can really have a huge impact on the entire group. I don't think I could deal with the stuff I saw during the two days on a day to day basis, and it did seem like the teachers involved had become immune to some of the stuff and just dealt with the more serious transgressions. Lots of kids in the group need medication just to get through the day -- or, more accurately, they have been giving medication to get through the day. I wondered how much of the bad behavior had a biological basis to it and how much was psychological or of some other origin. Some kids were just disruptive all the time, constantly seeking attention in one way or another. It drove me crazy. And in almost every case, the behavior could be related back to the parents or absence of parents. It's easy to get upset with the repeated bad actions of the child, but it's probably the absent parent who bears much of the responsibility.

ArtText or TypeStyler

One thing I have not figured out is why it has taken so many years for the OS X version of TypeStyler to be released. It's still not out yet and I'm sure they have long since lost many customers because of this. It's been "coming soon" for years now. I really liked the program years ago when I used Mac OS 9, but that was about 7 years back. Today on MacZot, you can get a new competitor to TypeStyler, ArtText, for 33% off -- $19.95. I will give it a try and if it can do most of what TypeStyler did, I'll buy it. Too bad for TypeStyler, but how long can you wait?

AstroCamp photos

I took 1250 photos in 48 hours at AstroCamp. There have to be a few good ones in there! Actually, I've got them all imported in to iPhoto and tagged and I've rated about half of them. I'm hoping to have enough variety to make a nice poster using about 80 of them. I will also upload the good ones so other people can have a look. This is going to take a couple of days, but I think it will be worth the effort. The challenge was in getting pictures of each of the 4 student groups since I was spending all of my time with one group. I think I managed to do it, but maybe next year the school will allow me to go up and just take pictures on Saturday without being a chaperone. We'll see.

Return from Astrocamp

Our AstroCamp weekend in Idylwild wrapped up today. We made the bus trip back down the mountain in the rain. In fact, it rained all day today and was cold which made the last day a little rough. Overall, it was a good experience for most everyone involved, although there were more than a few meltdowns by a small number of students. Oddly enough, most of them were by students in my group of 12.

AstroCamp

Day one of AstroCamp is coming to a close. We had a nice bus ride up here and enjoyed some fun activities. Getting hoisted up about 40 feet in the air and then dropping and flying along a line was a good one although it hurt a bit when the harness dug into my thighs. I got some great pictures of the students doing this one as well as a couple of others. I need to clear my memory cards tonight and recharge my battery so I can take more pictures tomorrow, which should be a long day.

Shouldn't that be "enigmatic"

Another one of those "rush to be first" stories with a strange error. From the home page of SFGate.com, under a picture of Anna Nicole Smith:

Anna Nicole Smith, the pneumatic blonde whose life played out as a tabloid tale, died today at age 39 after collapsing at a hotel. Famous for being famous, she went from being a dancer and centerfold to billionaire's widow and reality TV star. Talk about it in NWZCHIK.

According to dictionary.com, and my own common sense, pneumatic isn't normally used in reference to someone's personality.

Top 5 definitions of pneumatic from dictionary.com:

1. of or pertaining to air, gases, or wind.

2.	of or pertaining to pneumatics.

3.	operated by air or by the pressure or exhaustion of air: a pneumatic drill.

4.	filled with or containing compressed air, as a tire.

5.	equipped with pneumatic tires.

Steve Jobs and DRM

I read Steve Jobs' essay on DRM and iTunes yesterday. Innocuously titled "Thoughts on Music,"it was interesting and certainly not what you would expect from a CEO of two huge media companies, but then I don't think Steve Jobs is the typical CEO. He's the only one I know who laid me off, but that's beside the point. I didn't interpret his essay as a call to end DRM. I don't think that is going to happen. With the pressure from a couple of countries in Europe to remove the iTunes DRM to make the music available to other players, this essay was just a way to deflect that criticism and put it where it should be -- on the backs of the music publishers.

Podcast plus PDF

I knew that iTunes supported PDFs, but I hadn't really used the feature or thought about how it might be useful. Until today, that is. I set up my first podcast on my work blog and went to iTunes to subscribe to it, just to check that it was working. When I did, I also got the PDFs I had attached to previous posts on my blog. Since I am creating materials and making them available in PDF to various people, this is a nice way to distribute them. I only need to figure out how to be sure that people subscribe, but I don't think that is too difficult. At least in theory.

BeeDocs Timeline

BeeDocs Timeline is an interesting program (Mac only). It makes the creation of timelines very simple, so it's a big timesaver. You can use it for free for up to 10 items. We have used it several times for school reports and it works well. You don't really get much more with the paid version other than a much longer timeline. At almost $40, it's a little out of my price range, but today you can get it for $24 at MacZot. I think the developer is working on a new application which will extend the features of Timeline quite a bit, so I'm going to wait for that and continue to use the free version.

PE.com commuting blog

One of the local newspapers recently started up some blogs written by a few of their reporters. One is the Commuting Blog, written by Phil Pitchford. Phil only has a two mile commute, but he does cover transportation, so he knows the freeways even though he is smarter than many of us who still have to use them to get to work.

Phil's not getting the traffic that Steve Lopez gets on the Bottleneck Blog at the LA Times, but commenting on the Bottleneck Blog has slowed down quite a bit since that first entry which got hundreds of comments.

Really hot weather

They should have held the Super Bowl around here instead of in Miami. No rain and it was over 80 degrees yesterday. Today may break a record with the forecast for 87 degrees. Tomorrow it will start cooling down and by the time we leave on our school field trip on Friday, it will probably be cold again in the mountains.

Prince at Super Bowl

For a guy who is getting close to 50 years old, Prince looks good and moves incredibly well. His music was also good and he had a number of guitars including one with that weird symbol he used to use for his name. I thought the halftime show was good, considering it was in the rain and you can't really get good audio from something like that. Is Prince a football fan? I guess he might be a Vikings fan, but he doesn't look like a guy who would have played much football, although of course that has nothing to do with being a fan.

Super Bowl - Colts win

At least this Super Bowl was competitive for a little while. The Colts dominated but the score was close until late in the third quarter. The commercials were typical for a Super Bowl -- beer, cards, GoDaddy.com, and a bunch of other stuff that I don't remember. Nothing really jumped out at me. No Apple/iTunes ad. I'll have to go back and watch them again. There were some funny ones like the Taco Bell commercial with the two lions. That might have been my favorite

Senora Ross' grading scandal

The LA Times has a story today about 20 USC students, mostly athletes who were denied credit for a summer Spanish course. They took the course at a local community college from Señora Ross, who, to put it nicely, had a liberal grading policy. There were 5 B's and everyone else got an A.

"I've never given an easy grade in my life," she told The Times in a recent interview. "You come to my class and work, and I see you want to learn, I'll give you an A. I see some lazy ass, coming late all the time, acting like he doesn't care, I won't give him an A. I'll give him a B."

I really like her teaching philosophy, though:

"Ross, meanwhile, remains feisty and unbowed, stoutly defending teaching methods she has used for more than 40 years.

"The most important thing in learning is that everyone likes the teacher," she said."

I thought the most important thing was that the students learn something in the class.

Ginobli -- turnabout is fair play?

After the very strange 1 game suspension of Kobe Bryant for hitting Manu Ginobli in the nose after a jump shot earlier this week, it will be interesting to see what happens after tonight's Suns - Spurs game. Ginobli just nailed Amare Stoudemire in a very personal area with his knee. It sure looked like a very unnatural basketball move, so if Kobe Bryant's hand to the nose was enough for a suspension, this move should at least be reviewed. I liked the commentator's statement "that every man in American can feel the pain right now".

Disable Snap

Those Snap previews get to be a pain in the neck after a while, especially when they are very slow to load. Lifehacker points out today that there is a download on the Snap site which will disable the previews. It's a cookie, so it only works until you clear your cookies, but it does the job. I tried out the Snap functionality for about two days and then turned it off. For a while I got emails from them asking why I didn't have it working on my site. I think it turns out to be one of those things that seems pretty cool at first but just quickly becomes a pain in the neck and on sites that use it I find I don't even look at the previews.

Classmates.com - service or fortress?

I have a free account at Classmates.com and every time someone I might have gone to school with visits the site, they send me an email reminding me to visit the site. When I do, it's just one wall after another where unless I pay for a real membership, I can't do much. Can't get someone's email address, look at their photos, see how they answered some survey, etc. It seems that the whole purpose of the free membership is to try to get you to pay up for the full thing. Some people I went to high school with are setting up a reunion and one guy posted a message and said email me to get the details. Can't do it without a full membership. He can't show his email address.

Bottleneck blog - one hit wonder?

Steve Lopez' Bottleneck blog about LA traffic is up to an incredible 602 comments on his first post, but comments have steadily declined since then. Subsequent posts have 116, 52, 19, 5, 0, and 2 comments. I guess he made a big splash and then dropped back to reality. Or maybe that first question was just so good that nothing could match it. I'd still be happy with 5 comments on anything I've written. On the other hand, googling "Bottleneck Blog" comes back with the original site at 1 and 2 and this site in 3rd. Maybe nobody else wrote about it...

Blogger Bug

Blogger isn't in beta any longer, but there are still some bugs. I've got one blog which will not convert to the new blogger. The first time I tried to convert it, I was locked out of all my Blogger blogs for a couple of days, which was not good. This must have had something to do with my participation as a beta tester for Google. The blog that won't convert was "upgraded" during the beta testing and then put back to the old version, but something must not have gone right because each time I've tried to move to the new Blogger, things have gone wrong. Now I can't even try as the system locks me out of the upgrade. I guess I'll have to leave that blog in old Bloggerland.

A Crowded House at Coachella

The Coachella Valley Music Festival is coming up in April and people are already getting excited about it. It's one of the top ten Google searches for this past week as tickets went on sale. It's a huge event over 3 days. Australian band Crowded House are reforming after ten years' of non-activity and their first appearance will be at the Coachella Valley Music Festival in April. I get them confused with the British band Madness who did a song called "Our House" and really they aren't very much alike. One group wears funny hats and the other one is from Australia and they didn't do that "Land Down Under" song but did have some other catchy songs.

Tennis and golf dominated by two guys

It does seem like Roger Federer and Tiger Woods win all the big ones in their sports, like they did today. I don't think I remember a time when tennis and golf were dominated so much by one person in each sport. Women's tennis had Steffi Graf and golf has had Annika Sorenstam more recently, but men's golf and tennis, especially the major events may be a little predictable. It's always a bunch of other guys trying for second place, or so it seems. I don't mind much and if Tiger Woods isn't playing I probably won't even watch golf. I think it might be better if one of these guys was a jerk, but they aren't, or at least don't appear to be. We may have to settle for another 5 years of this.

Stanford - UCLA men's basketball

I had a feeling that Stanford would give UCLA a good game today. It didn't look good in the first half as Stanford couldn't put the ball in the basket. The second half was a different story as Stanford played much better on offense and defense. Those two Lopez guys are already pretty good but in another year they should be unstoppable. I'd like to see them both on the court at the same time, although they are both playing the same position, so that may not happen too much. It was nice to see Stanford beat UCLA, something which used to happen frequently but hasn't been so common lately.

Haircut

One of my sons had gone a long time in between haircuts. His hair was pretty long, which was fine with me, but his disdain for showers was the problem. His hair wasn't too clean and no amount of suggesting that he just have it trimmed so he wouldn't have to worry about washing it every day was going to change his desire to have long hair. This situation went on for a couple of months and although he did get it trimmed, resulting in a mullet, there wasn't a lot of joy related to his hair. For me, at least. The other day I came home from work and was surprised to see that he had decided to get a haircut. Not just a trim, but a crewcut, similar to what his brother has. In fact, I thought he was his brother at first glance. The good thing about this is that because it was his decision, there is no more complaining about his hair. Now, we'll see what happens when it grows back enough to where he needs another haircut.