Part of why I don't use Facebook much, or blog more...

I found this slideshow here, in an article about Google not releasing a Facebook replacement, and I think it rings particularly true.  If this mythological Google social network could address the "circles" that the somewhat long slideshow goes into clever detail about, I might even consider using it...

Sparks :)

My son, pictured here working on his new laptop before christmas, told me that he'd been wanting a hug all day.  Needless to say, I was glad to oblige :)

Back to blogging?

I had a dream this morning that I woke up a little, looked out the window and saw that it was "just" raining, and decided I could get a little more sleep...  so when I woke up at my "everything is okay and I can sleep more" alarm time, and looked out the window, the foot of snow was something of a surprise.

This, for whatever reason, reminded me that I haven't been blogging recently, even though I have had quite a few things that I could say.  So I thought I'd get a quick start while I wait for a ride on this annoyingly snowy morning.

Thane said I should post this...

Reading books in this modern world...

I'll admit it.  I'm a technophile.  The more gadgety goodness I have in my life, the more exciting gadgets I want, and the more I think about the ways in which we can improve the functionality of the gadgets that are out there, setting arbitrary thresholds at which point I plan to dive into the technology, dreaming of the cool stuff we could do if only gadgets would do what I want them to.

Book Review: Callahan's Crosstime Saloon

I like to think of myself as an avid reader, and sometimes I even follow up on that.  Over the last couple of weeks, I've finally been reading a series of books that I've heard quite a bit about, but never actually started until this attempt.  "Callahan's Crosstime Saloon" by Spider Robinson.

This isn't serious sci fi by any stretch of the imagination, and in the author notes it's clear that he wasn't even really trying for sci fi when he started, and some people even wrote him nasty notes about wanting to cancel their subscriptions to the magazine they were published in since they weren't publishing science fiction anymore.  But it's still good.

Over the course of the 9 books that are loosely a part of this series (many of them taking place at Lady Sally's brothel, or in the bars that took over for Callahan's after it was destroyed in the nuclear blast), we meet a few time travelers, witness them all "getting telepathic," get an inside view of things at the weirdest sounding brothel ever, move to Key West, stow a toddler aboard the space shuttle, take on the mob, and generally deal with a lot of weirdness.

About a year of riding

I picked up cycling as a hobby and a habit in 2010.  I started out riding a beat up 10 speed that was so much too small for me that my 12 year old son rides it now, just back and forth to work.  After a month of that I was certain I needed to buy a new bike, and after another month I actually did.  My beautiful Trek 3700 and I did quite a bit of riding, but I wasn't really keeping track of it, and that annoyed me.

30 seconds with the Mac App Store

I realize that everybody and his brother is probably out there writing about the Mac App Store even as I type these words, but what's the point of blogging if it has to be unique? :)

Apple released their Mac OS App Store today, in an effort to annoy IT workers everywhere, and so I restarted my trusty iMac after running the update and gave it a spin.  The first thing I noticed is that it looks an awful lot like the iTunes Store inside iTunes.  Keeping the interface familiar is likely a good idea for this sort of launch, but I'll be curious to see if it evolves away from that model.