Year: 2008

Update: February 2, 2009: I need more offers! Although some of the offers have been intriguing – I really haven’t found anything that truly fits and that I would feel happy to promote. So if you would like to advertise your product or service for an entire year on a blog post that gets (as of today)…

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If you know Justin Blanton you probably know two things about him: 1) He works way too hard. 2) He has a critical eye.  Neither to a fault. In fact, I believe this makes for a combination suited for reviewing. In this review Justin describes his experiences with the BlackRapid R-Strap, a shoulder strap tailored…

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Eliza and I enjoyed a relaxing week at my brother’s house in Lincolnton, North Carolina. Here are a few photos from our visit there. To view more photos, see the entire set on Flickr. Date taken: December 20-24, 2008

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It is [no secret](http://cdevroe.com/?s=benjamin button) that I want to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Due to traveling to and from my brother’s house in North Carolina – circumstances, unusual or otherwise – have kept me from getting to the theatre. Sameer Barkawi, friend and film-student (oh, and actor), has written his thoughts on…

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Unfortunately this video was not made embeddable by the folks at the HubbleSite Web site, so I’ve ripped it and put it up on Viddler. If there is an objection to this – please notify me. [viddler id-644be607 h-346 w-540] I’ve shared the video here because I think this is an incredible video. The visuals…

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For the last three days I’ve been using Weightbot to record my weight. Weightbot does a few simple tasks in an elegant and easy-to-use interface that makes me want to record my weight on a daily basis. First, it records your weight. Two taps, and you’re done. Second, and even more importantly, it asks you…

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This is a fine, fine list by Mr. Murray. I wouldn’t change a single one, though I’d add a few.  The first one would be similar to Garrett’s first rule, about setting yourself as "away". However, I’d say the opposite is also true. If you are not away, please do not sign on as "Away" all freaking…

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This is a fine, fine list by Mr. Murray. I wouldn’t change a single one, though I’d add a few.  The first one would be similar to Garrett’s first rule, about setting yourself as "away". However, I’d say the opposite is also true. If you are not away, please do not sign on as "Away" all freaking…

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This is a fine, fine list by Mr. Murray. I wouldn’t change a single one, though I’d add a few.  The first one would be similar to Garrett’s first rule, about setting yourself as "away". However, I’d say the opposite is also true. If you are not away, please do not sign on as "Away" all freaking…

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This is a fine, fine list by Mr. Murray. I wouldn’t change a single one, though I’d add a few.  The first one would be similar to Garrett’s first rule, about setting yourself as "away". However, I’d say the opposite is also true. If you are not away, please do not sign on as "Away" all freaking…

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This is a fine, fine list by Mr. Murray. I wouldn’t change a single one, though I’d add a few.  The first one would be similar to Garrett’s first rule, about setting yourself as "away". However, I’d say the opposite is also true. If you are not away, please do not sign on as "Away" all freaking…

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This is a fine, fine list by Mr. Murray. I wouldn’t change a single one, though I’d add a few.  The first one would be similar to Garrett’s first rule, about setting yourself as "away". However, I’d say the opposite is also true. If you are not away, please do not sign on as "Away" all freaking…

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This is a fine, fine list by Mr. Murray. I wouldn’t change a single one, though I’d add a few.  The first one would be similar to Garrett’s first rule, about setting yourself as "away". However, I’d say the opposite is also true. If you are not away, please do not sign on as "Away" all freaking…

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Vince Laforet is working with some photo-gadget people and has been playing with this bad boy. Just stare at it awhile, let it sink in. Five dollars and twenty-five cents says that by the end of a day shooting with this – you’d have huge guns. And by guns I mean biceps muscles on your arms. "The…

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Speaking of KISS (you may or may not have seen my Waking Ideas post from last week called Meeting Gene), here is a really interesting gallery from Ron English called The Secret History of KISS. In the above art I count 4 Gene Simmons, 2 Paul Stanleys, a ton of Tommy Thayers, and only one…

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I just Twittered (well, actually Brightkited) a link to this post on Henry David Thoreau’s journal – the entry from December 20, 1851 that I thought was particularly timely for me. "Say the thing with which you labor. It is a waste of time for the writer to use his talents merely. Be faithful to…

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One of the things I’m refining every time that I start a new art project is my process. I realize I have a lot to learn, and so posts like this really go a long way to help me learn without trial and error. Eric Fortune goes over his process from sketch to finished piece.…

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From the car.

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This game has been talked about everywhere but I simply have to link to this. Rolando, a game for the iPhone by ngmoco:), is quite easily the best game for the iPhone or iPod touch (if not the best iPhone application I’ve ever installed and used). The gameplay is great. The game has no "controller"…

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As if January wasn’t shaping up to be a fantastic month on television (with LOST beginning its fifth season)… now Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations is starting up an all new season on January 5th! My goal for this season is to cook a dish native to the area of each episode. So, as it seems…

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What do you get when you combine my favorite video podcast and my favorite tshirt retailer? An episode of WineLibrary TV on Threadless TV with Gary Vaynerchuk featuring a bunch of wines from Illinois. [viddler id-7342c537 h-348 w-540] I think I should start featuring a "you may not have seen this video" video here on…

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From left: Gene Simmons, Kathleen Kinmont, Alana Curry. In the summer of 2003 the company I was working for at the time hired KISS for an event in Atlantic City, New Jersey.  I learned a lot during that entire process and I’ve finally found the time to write about one specific thing I learned by…

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I’ve already written about Eat Weird, so I’ll spare you those details and just link you to the latest episode of Eat Weird, Episode 3, which is Master Chef Dave Ciminelli’s Wild Goose Breast Salad. [viddler id-10ea1cad h-348 w-540] I had the privilege of producing this, and the next four, episodes of Eat Weird. I…

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When I used to watch X-Men as a young lad my favorite character was Gambit. Three X-Men movies have come and gone, no Gambit. Since then, Hugh Jackman has won me over as Wolverine and has quickly become my favorite character of the live-action movie series. Hugh Jackman reprises his role as Wolverine in X-Men…

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I think it is safe to say that my nieces and nephews do not read my blog, so it is also safe to say that I will be making some sympathy dolls for them in a few weeks to send them out as gifts. The idea came to me from Bre Pettis‘ Make podcast, embedded below, where…

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Troy Rutter, actor, blogger, author, and podcaster (busy man), was inspired by my most-recently blogged about watercolor, The Owl (which is for sale on my Etsy shop, btw) and posted this oil painting. One of the great things about the Web is that inspiration can spread in ways it never has been able to in…

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[ad#Adsense: Horiz 468] Speaking of Bob Ross, you can watch a ton of his episodes online. Not all of the videos are complete episodes, so you’ll have to watch the duration closely. But, there are some gems. I blame Troy Rutter for me taking a stroll through my memories and wanting to watch a ton…

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Why not? I ask myself that a lot. Yesterday I thought, why not put my art on Etsy? Etsy is the place to sell all things handmade, I am going to do a watercolor per week, so why not? I’ve only put The Owl on there for now, but I plan on putting other odds…

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I’m loving that I’m able to write for Waking Ideas on a weekly basis. This week I cover my recent journey through the entire LOST series, again! 83 hours of television-watching goodness. Here is an excerpt: "I mean what else could I have done with roughly 83 hours of free time? Stretched out this is…

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Note: This pieces is now for sale in my Etsy shop. I’m going to try to keep doing watercolor paintings, maybe even one each week. This week I really wanted to do an owl, so here I present my fifth watercolor in this new effort; The Owl. I tried a few techniques this time that…

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As a follow up to some of the hijinks on Twitter between Heroes star Greg Grunberg and writer/actor Wil Wheaton, that I wrote about the other day, here is an interesting comic from – well, Hijinks Ensue. This comic shows them all on Macintoshes – which may only be partly accurate. I know that Obama…

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I was able to write a guest post on Waking Ideas, a site run by two of my friends Daniel Nicolas and Jake Dahn. I thought it’d be fun to write about the recent event in our Solar System where Jupiter, Venus, and our Earth’s Moon had a little party. Source: Jupiter, Venus, and Earth’s…

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On Sunday I thought it’d be a good idea to turn on Feedburner, the service that helps you track the number people subscribed to your feed ((Among other things like; what they subscribe with, what they click on in those feeds, etc.)), since I had turned it off a few years ago. Turns out, my reasons…

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Date taken: July 15, 2003 – New York City.

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My long-time friend Chris Fehnel has launched a new video blog called Eat Weird. The premise is simple; Live well, Eat Weird. You see, many times us Americans (and perhaps many of you reading this that are not Americans) tend to think certain foods taboo. That is, you think they’re weird. Maybe you grew up…

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David Recordon, who is the Open Platforms Lead Tech at Six Apart, has written one of the most insightful and interesting ideas for the adoption of OpenID I’ve seen in awhile. David suggests that your identity belongs in the browser. It is already in there anyway. For any of us that browse, for the most…

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I’ve been waiting for WordPress 2.7 to be released before upgrading this site’s underlying software. In fact, I was considering even waiting as long as the first iterative release after 2.7 came out before upgrading. But it seems like the WordPress development team is really taking its time with this latest, and incredibly different, release. Which is…

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Wil Wheaton, geek, actor, writer, etc. etc., was asked by Greg Grunberg, the actor that plays Matt Parkman on Heroes, to star in an upcoming episode of Heroes in a cameo role. Last night Eliza and I watched the latest episode of Heroes that starred both Seth Green and Breckin Meyer as cameos (perhaps there…

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Speaking of watercolor painting – I thought these pieces, and prints, by Oliver Jeffers were rather inspiring. Source: Picture Book Prints by Oliver Jeffers. Via: OMG Posters.

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Although I do not do a lot of this sort of thing much any more, I remember spending many an hour in Excel fighting with various bits of data that I exported to make subtle edits to thousands of rows. After a little bit of experience I began to build Visual Basic scripts, or Macros, that…

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Fluid, the site-specific browser that I use for things like Google Reader, Brightkite, Gmail, and also named one of The Best of 2008 on this site, has been updated to version 0.9.5. Reading the changelog you can see that this is a fairly large release when you weigh it against previous versions. You can also…

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Although I’m a fan of Subversion as my version control system of choice, I have a few friends that are gushing all over Git. In order to begin my migration to Git, I’ll be needing to install it locally on my Mac. This script, by Martin Bergek, seems to be the simplest way I’ve found…

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Everyone and their mother has linked to this, so you’ve probably already seen the photos that Jeff Bridges took when on-set for Iron Man. But, if you haven’t, you can say you heard about it here first. As I "thumbed" through Bridges’ book I can’t help but think that more people, like Jeff Bridges, should…

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You may have heard the news (since both Twitter and Pownce is flooded with links to Leah Culver’s blog post) that Pownce is shutting down on December 15th and that a few of the team members; namely Leah Culver and Mike Malone – are joining Six Apart. One could sit back and try to analyze…

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Well, if you count watercolor paintings that I’ve done when I was younger then maybe the title of this post is a bit off, but I’d rather just start counting now. Oh, and I’m not counting the LOST invitations either. There isn’t much of an inspiring story behind either of these pieces. The orchids painting…

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City Hall – Carbondale, PA Last night my friend Sameer Barkawi, mentioned here a few times, and I wanted to take our cameras for a spin around our hometown of Carbondale, Pennsylvania. He recently picked up a Nikon D90 and I was using Eliza’s Canon Digital Rebel XTi. I put a few of the photos…

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[ad#Adsense: Horiz 468] I’m all for independent developers charging for their applications. In fact, I don’t mind really good indy devs to charge a premium for their product if they’re going to do their best to support their customers and build a great product. I do mind when applications that cost money, which include a…

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Silouette of my bud.

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I’ve been subscribed to Sarah Marchant’s blog, dreamdust, for a while. I believe Mike found her photos on Flickr, suggested her profile to me, and it went from there. That was years ago. Recently, however, Sarah has been on fire on her blog. She posts about her life, plain and simple. It isn’t that her life is…

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