Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category

  • 2010 Resolutions & 2009 Recap

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    Before I go over my resolutions for the upcoming year, I thought I would revisit the ones from last year:

    • Exercise more - Other than snow shoveling last year, I didn't get much done.  Not sure how it will work out with a kid coming soon, but it is still a good goal. - Failed, no excuses here just didn't do it. The only "exercise" I did regularly was walking across campus twice a day.
    • Be a parent - Not just being a Dad, but baring extra responsibility to help Rebekah stay sane and have quality time with Will. - Success, Will was born March 16th and we have stayed relatively sane.
    • See 3 movies in the theater - Success (Watchmen, The Invention of Lying and Avatar)
    • Finish one novel a month (First I have to find a novel each month, but we shall see) - Failed, I did read about 8 but not one per month
    • Keep up my blog at a reasonable pace - Leaving out the end of the year lists, I had almost 100 posts through the year.  I would like to keep up about that pace.  Something that should help is: Failed, just not the time I used to have for writing
    • Album of the Week - Replacing the Pick of the Week will be an Album of the Week.  Current or from the past, I will pick an album each week to recommend. Failed, I gave up about halfway though the year due to the annoyance of getting album covers for each post.
    • Write more about music - If the Top 10 Lists showed anything, my traffic goes up when I write about music, so I will work on writing more about music. Success, what I did write, it was mostly about music.

    For 2010, I have had some difficulty in thinking of resolutions. The first reason is that I have learned over the last 9 months that you cannot anticipate what your kid is going to do next. I hate to think of a resolution that seems reasonable now, but in a month is totally unreasonable do to a change in Will's routine or behaviors. That being said, here is what I have:

    • Better manage my personal budget - I am not terrible at it, but it is a place I can improve
    • Decide on a technology for my web site - I am close, I think
    • Create my new web site - I have to decide what content I want, how I want to present it and then actually implement it.
    • Write 4 posts on my site each month - Some weeks are tougher than others for posts, so monthly might be more attainable
    • Engage a new music genre - After getting crap about my top 25 list of the decade being too similar, I figured it was a good excuse to investigate a new genre to keep expanding my music tastes. I had some success with jazz last year, so I am open to suggestions.
    • Beat the Metroid Prime trilogy - This one is pretty iffy I think, but if it is the only game I play I might be able to do it.
    • Most Important: Be the best husband and dad I can be - Nothing specific here, just want to feel like I did the best I could for the year.
  • While I Wait

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    As you may have noticed, this blog hasn't had much activity lately. This isn't because I don't think about it, in fact it is just the opposite. Not a day goes by without me thinking of doing something to my web site. The main reason for this is that I really hate it right now. I thought I had a good idea of what I was doing the last redesign, but it turned out to be too much work to do it right. Then I kinda horked it up with the Disqus comments system and now it is such a mess I don't want to deal with it.

    The other reason I haven't done anything is because I want to have it be really really really easy to post to. Lots of times during the day, I want to take a link and post it with a sentence comment, or toss an image up there because our son is just too darn cute. The problem is the barrier to entry. I have to copy the link, make up a title, add some tags, edit an excerpt so all 3 people who go to my site directly get a witty comment and then post it. This is not a difficult process, just time consuming. This gets even more frustrating because I see how easy it is on Facebook to post something, and I want that. Just not in Facebook because then my stuff is trapped behind the 21st century "Great Blue Wall".

    This led me to look at Tumblr. Looks pretty close to what I want, but the problem is that not many folks I know use Tumblr. That makes many of the features on there useless to me, and therefore makes me less interested in it. What I really want is a self hosted Tumblr with Disqus support (and have Disqus be able to get comments from Facebook as well). All that just so I MIGHT blog more often.

    All of the things above are just about my blog. I have other ideas for my site as well, all taking much more time and effort. The big theory I have is treating my web site as a place that I can organize my digital content. To contrast, Rebekah is fantastically organized in real life. Without her, I am pretty sure the house would be falling apart around me. I can be organized too, but I have to do it in a rigid manner that allows flexibility in how I view my data. Yeah, I know it is impossible to have both of those, but bare with me.

    Let's say I have some comics. These comics have all sorts of data with them, things like writers, characters, publish dates, series, etc. They also have things like story arcs which span series, have read orders and their own plots. Today, if I want to read a story arc, I first have to find all of the titles, see if I have them all, then grab them and start reading. I think it would be fantastic if I could go to my site, grab a story arc and it tells me where I need to look to find all of the books for it. I don't have that today, and the frustrating thing is there are data sources out there for much of this, but getting it all put together is time consuming AND I don't have a framework to stick this data in without writing it myself. Oh, I also want there to be some consistency between my blog design and these comics.

    So that is the deal, I am too ambitious with my site to get started at any sort of revision. So it suffers, and I tweet and star things in Google Reader until it becomes easier. I really think the next big thing on the web is making data that exists all over usable. The problem is I can see it coming, but I want it now. And while I wait, this site sits, bright blue and waiting.

  • Still here…

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    I am still here, just working some thoughts about this site out. Albums of the Week are on a hiatus for awhile while I figure out the best way to do stuff here. But this should be me out of the oldest post on your RSS reader!

  • Catching Up

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    It has been just over 5 weeks since William was born and I realize there was a whole 2 blog posts in that time. Well, I figure it is time to start catching up with adding some content on here. I am planning on doing this three-fold. First, moving over the Guide to Soccer for Americans from hidden pages to posts. Second, catching up on Album of the Weeks (I need to figure out 6 albums to get caught up). Third, posting more about Will, which will be right now.

    Basically there are three big things about Will:

    1. He is awesome. He amazes me every day with some little thing new. This is only going to get more and more as he continues developing. That being said, for now him looking at me and really focusing is super cool.
    2. He is awesome, but he doesn't do much. He eats, poops and sleeps. A lot. This isn't a huge surprise, but it does make me anxious for when he can start really interacting with us.
    3. Sleep has changed forever, and not for the better. I have changed my "goals" for sleeping each night to hoping that I can get at least one 3 hour stretch of uninterrupted sleep. A month and a half ago, I would have clobbered someone who limited me to that much sleep. It is amazing how your body can adapt to such huge changes.

    In addition, we do have plenty of photos of Will and are adding more all the time, so feel free to check them out.

  • William James

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    Just a quick post to let everyone know that there will be a lull in album (and other) posts in the near future do to the birth of our first kid, William James. He was born March 16th at a weight of 8 lb, 7 oz and a height of 21 in. Here is a picture of him, with a whole collection of him at Flickr.