The Family Blog

Yesterday marked my first day of what I’m calling ‘training’ for the MS Ride 08. It was a brief, eye-opening ride. I rode to Mary Ellen’s house and was pretty tired by the time I got there. The problem is that Mary Ellen’s house is only about 4 blocks away. To be fair, some of it was uphill…

In any case, my gear wasn’t ideal (jeans, sweatshirt, knobby tires, slip on shoes) but I figure any time on the bike is going to help. I’m going to try to ‘train’ as much as possible with Madelyn in tow. I figure that will help me ride easier when I’m not pulling her. I don’t have any mileage or speed information, but we rode around for a while and tried to keep moving. I’ve dug up an old Garmin Foretrex wrist watch-style GPS that I’ll try to take with me on future rides so I can start tracking how far I’ve gone.

I’ll be riding more as the weather improves (it will improve!) and hopefully I’ll be getting some updated gear to make the riding more efficient. I also joined the park district fitness center (which I generally don’t like at all) with the intention of trying to get into some spin classes, so watch for news of that pain. As of today, there are 98 days left to train!

Check out this ‘green’ automobile blog to keep up with the Auto Industries half-hearted attempts to appease the green crowd. Neat news today on a VW Diesel-Hybrid. The reason I think this is extra cool is that it would be conceivable to use bio-diesel and hybrid tech at the same time. Anyway, here is the link:

http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/hybridsalternative_fuels/

Saw this cool list of 20 tips to help people save money. A lot of these I’ve seen before, but it is a nice round-up.

http://zenhabits.net/2008/02/20-money-hacks-tips-and-tricks-to-improve-your-finances/#more-658

Bonus- ZenHabits seems like a cool little lifehacker-esque website. Found it cross-linked from parenthacks.

My experience with operating systems and computers is happily pretty varied. The first computer we had at home was a Texas Instruments keyboard terminal-type computer that you could hook a tape recorder up to when you wanted to save your work. My most recent computer (via work) is a MacBook Pro Core Duo that I thoroughly enjoy. In between, I was a Windows guy high school through college when I stared to learn Linux. In college I used Windows, Linux, and Solaris. When I graduated and went to work, I used Linux and Solaris, and Windows only as necessary for particular applications. When Apple switched their MacOS to a BSD core (it is linux like) I started watching them and when my trusty dell laptop died a few years ago, I ran out and got a Mac that I dual-boot Windows and MacOS. Anyway, the point of all this is that for quite some time, I’ve been non-windows focused. Recently I visited one of my favorite blogs Life Hacker after being away for a while. There were a number of top 10 lists that I looked at and I found some really cool utilities. I thought I’d post about them, just in case you happen to be interested.

• WinDirStat is a really cool little app that scans your disk and gives you a graphical breakdown of the contents, color-coded by categories. I’m always running out of space and this little app showed me exactly why. Plus, it is cute
• TaskSwitchXP is a replacement for the normal windows Alt-Tab functionality that lets you switch between apps. It shows you a picture of the app as you alt-tab through them. It is freaking sweet.
• Launchy is an application that scans all your program shortcuts and then gives you a little windows to enter their names. This lets you open new programs without using the mouse/trackpad at all. For someone who spent years using a CLI, I’m psyched to start using this more. I know other people use tools like this, maybe Slickrun, but for now, this does all that I need. If I need more functionality, I’ll open up Cygwin and rawk the bash shell!
• ALZip is a replacement for the included Windows Unzip capability. Windows unzip basically only understands straight zip format. ALZip gives you a graphical interface for many more formats. To me, the GUI is strongly reminiscent of WinZip (complete with the little tips at startup). Since WinZip technically charges you, I’ll try ALZip for a while to see how it turns out.

Who said representative democracy doesn’t work in the US? No, I know we don’t have a direct democracy and that the presidential voting we do is largely symbolic, I wasn’t talking about that. I’m talking about a Bill introduced by some representatives that seeks to balance out the heavily industry-weighted Digital Millenium Copyright Act, or the DCMA as it has come be known/hated.

There used to be the concept of ‘Fair Use’, meaning, if I buy it, I basically own it. I might not be able, for example, to buy a VHS and sell it to my friends, but I could buy a VHS and make a copy for my own use. I say used to be, because with the introduction of the DCMA, this basically doesn’t exist. You might buy software, buy you’re extremely limited in how you can use it. And if you want to use it in a way that breaks someone’s copy protection (like making a backup of a DVD), you’re in violation of the DCMA and can be fined.

Anyway, it’s mostly bad, trust me. So some representatives have introduced a bill that would ‘correct’ some of the problems with the DCMA, and I hope you’ll show your support by going to this site and sending a message to your representative:

http://action.eff.org/site/Advocacy?id=271

I just happened upon a scary article at Daddy Types that warns about the dangers of using plastics for food storage and consumption. Apparently the plastic can leach certain chemicals into whatever is being contained. Once consumed, even in very small amounts, the checmials can do ‘Bad Things’(tm) to you and yours.

Read the article for details (link below), but some general advice they give-

• Use PVC-free plastics
• Don’t store foods and liquids in plastic
• Use metal or glass containers when you can
• Use metal utensils (not glass ones)
• Throw away bottles when they become cloudy (like all of ours immediately following their initial boiling to sanitize them)

Here’s the link to TFA:
Daddy Types Article

Now this is thinking! This Baby Rocker is driven by a microwave turntable motor. Simple and sweet!

Another entertaining YouTube post about Pachelbel’s Canon in D and the Cello. Sounds like tons-o-fun eh? Well it is!

For those of you not in the know, free/stolen video clips are all the rage on the interweb. Several sites have popped up to help users provide their own content. Recently, Google bought one of the leaders (YouTube) for like 5 Billion Jr. Bacon Cheeseburgers. Anyway, here is an example YouTube video that is a Parody of the Mac vs. PC commercials. I’m not sure I enjoy the whole rubber glove aspect, and I have to say it is rather ironic since Mac basically has Linux under the hood now, but it is funny none the less:

Update:Let me just say- I’m so clearly the linux guy, that it cracks me up to no end.

I read about 4 blogs on a regular basis- Gizmodo, Engadget, Make, and more recently Toolmonger. I saw a great quote in a Toolmonger post on how owning any tools outside of a certain set qualifies as a toy (obviously, rubbish). Here’s the quote:

So ladies, don’t buy your man a tie or a belt that he’ll never wear. Buy him a tool for Christmas, after all Jesus Christ was a carpenter!