April 17th, 2012
Andy Baio’s Waxy.org is one of my favorite blogs and it recently celebrated its 10th anniversary. Baio recalls a few posts from each of those 10 years in his post marking the milestone. I can remember where I was when a few of these posts were published. I’m just happy I, and our team at Viddler, were part of a few of them; notably Code Rush.
November 28th, 2011
Happy Anniversary (sort of) to Om Malik of Gigaom for a decade of blogging. I haven’t shared much about Om on this blog save this experience from Wordcamp 2007 in San Francisco when I wasn’t feeling very well at all (travel often makes me sick).
When lunch break hit, I was hurting pretty badly. So I ended up sitting just outside the Swedish American Hall for a while and finally, while Om and I were speaking outside, Om said: “Go get some rest buddy.” Good advice.
That is Om in a nutshell. Easily one of the nicest and hardest working guys around.
His and Fred Wilson’s post made me try to figure out exactly when I began blogging. My best guess is somewhere in 1997. Unlike Om I haven’t been blogging every single day and I only made my living on blogging for a short period of time in these last 14 or so years. Someday I’ll have to write up my experiences though… it’d be fun.
April 29th, 2011
During Kickstarter’s first two years I’ve watched a few projects and backed only one (which was the largest project to-date I believe). I think I’m going to make a point to visit weekly to fund some interesting projects. Maybe even make it a goal to successfully back 12 projects a year, or something. Awesome idea, very well executed.
Here is my profile on Kickstarter.
January 10th, 2011
Tomorrow my parents will have just hit their 42nd wedding anniversary. Happy Anniversary to them.
/photo credit: Peter Devroe.
September 10th, 2010
Congratulations to Letters of Note for hitting it’s 1 year anniversary. Last year Letters of Note made my The best of 2009 as told by me list winning The Best New Blog Award.
What I said then still stands now:
“Letters of Note is pretty much the perfect blog. Blogs, unless they are personal journals, should focus on a very specific topic. You’ve probably noticed that the most popular blogs are focused on technology, gadgets, startup companies, knitting, cooking, design, etc. There are very few popular blogs that focus on many things while there are a ton that focus on one thing. Letters of Notes knows where it fits and focuses on a really fascinating topic; letters, notes, memos, and even telegrams that are in some way notable.
I have yet to come across an uninteresting post at Letters of Note.”
It goes without saying but I’ll say it anyway; I recommend you subscribe.
August 31st, 2009
For our 10th anniversary, which was on the 27th of August, we received an incredible gift from Eliza’s mother Carla – an anniversary party in our favor. Since she told us many months in advance that she was going to throw us this party we were able to help with some of the planning and, something I thoroughly enjoyed doing, the invitations.
Since we were planning on inviting a few hundred people I knew that we couldn’t do anything like the LOST invitations (since they took a long time to do) and certainly nothing hand-drawn like the thank you card that I had done in the past. This had to be something digital, printable, personal, fun, and reflect our personalities.
My favorite set of photos of Eliza and I are ones that we took in a photo booth. To be honest I don’t even know where we were when we took these photos (I’m sure Eliza will leave a comment below answering this) but I just know that these were some of my favorite photos of us. I decided to extend that idea into the invitation and started to browse around online for inspiration.
I ended up finding several examples of people that had taken photo booth generated photos to use them in “film strips” as ways to create things like invitations and other fun projects. Once I had the idea in mind, I opened Photoshop and got to work.
The idea and execution is amazingly simple. Take a single film strip, duplicate it as many times as you want, move them around to make them look like they are sitting on a table, and pop in some photos. But we had a problem. We knew we needed to have text on the invitation for things like the date and time, location, and RSVP information. So Eliza had the idea that we’d hold up blank sheets of paper and I’d then be able to add the text later. This worked out really well since we were able to position the information anyway that we wanted it and spread it out over the invitation as we thought would look neat.
So Eliza and I fired up Photo Booth, an application that comes with all Macintoshes, took a few hundred random photos of us doing silly faces, normal faces, holding up wine, cats, and blank sheets of paper. Then, I slowly placed us into all of the film strips and rotated them until we were happy. Then we saved the file and sent it off to Overnight Prints – a simple and inexpensive printery that we’ve used in the past.
The invitations turned out to be a pretty big hit and now I’m looking forward to putting something together for the thank you cards that we’ll be sending everyone.
April 30th, 2008
GGW! Normally that accronym would be reserved for late-night commercials about incredibly inexpensive DVD-sets with future women that will sue Joe Francis.
But not this time.
This time GGW refers to NASA’s celebration of the Hubble Telescope being launched 18 years ago! Â And so they’ve put together a site of awe-inspiring images that Hubble has captured of galaxies that are “merging”. Â They wanted to put up photographs of galaxies that were “in love” since they are “in love” with Hubble. Â Truly touching, isn’t it?
“As this astonishing Hubble atlas of interacting galaxies illustrates, galaxy collisions produce a remarkable variety of intricate structures.”
Indeed.
Source: Merging Galaxies.
March 27th, 2008
Eliza Devroe, my wife, captured a nice photo at a 50th Anniversary party that we attended this past weekend. I’m linking to this photo for two reasons.
Great shot babe.
(Source: Love on Flickr – Photo Sharing!)
February 28th, 2007
MeToday, the Flickr group where a group of us have been posting a single photo per day and one of the ways that I “blog”, has reached a milestone of 3-months. To celebrate, I’ve put together a short video highlighting some of the photos I’ve posted there, as well as a few that were not released.
The video is only a few minutes. Enjoy.
The MeToday group was founded by Luke Dorny (luxuryluke). Since then we’ve grown slowly to over 38 members and we’re still looking for more people to do this, so if you’re interested – join the Flickr group and start tomorrow!
Happy Anniversary MeToday-ers!
[tags]metoday, flickr, photos, video, viddler, anniversary[/tags]
[slug]metoday-3m[/slug]
January 3rd, 2007
My telescope
Last night the moon was nearly full and the sky was crystal clear. So I decided to take my Meade 114 eq-asb telescope that Eliza bought me for our seventh wedding anniversary out for a spin to do something relatively simple; look at the surface of the moon.
At least I thought it would be easy. The moon being the nearest celestial object to Earth one would think it would be easy to zone in on it, look at its surface, and get back inside. Not when you have no idea how to properly use your telescope it would seem.
I did manage to see a little bit of what I wanted but I really need to start taking this telescope thing much more seriously. Here is a photo I took of the moon last night that really does not do any justice for the brilliance of the moon. As with all good things in life, using a telescope takes time and effort to master – and I look forward to trying again on the next clear night.
Oh, on a somewhat related note I read over on Wil Wheaton’s blog today that a free eBook is available called What’s Up – 365 Days of Skywatching which gives you a quick, easy, and printable reference of the night sky for each day of the year for 2007. Brilliant.
If you have any other tips, tricks, or resources that you’ve found useful – please feel free to pass them along. I’d love to get better at using my telescope so that it is much more enjoyable and less frustrating next time.
November 1st, 2006
Originally published in early-May 2004 with the title of “The story of my iMac”.
I’d say that it began in July 2002. My wife Eliza and I like to catch the live Apple Keynote’s whenever we can. The July 2002 broadcast introduced the iMac 17″ flat panel, preloaded with OS X. I mentioned to Eliza that I thought that this would be a great machine to get acquainted with Apple’s products. Seeing some of the functionality of OS X, I knew that I wanted to get in somehow and the iMac seemed like a cool piece of hardware to being that journey.
On August 27th 2002, at Carrabba’s Bar and Grille in Orlando, Florida – Eliza and I exchanged anniversary gifts. I am not going to mention my gift, because over the last 4+ years of marriage (now 7+ years as of this writing), Eliza has always outdone me in the gift department. But I digress. So she hands me a small box as my anniversary gift. I open the wrapping, tip the box to dump the contents, and I am greeted with a small packet of some type of chemical used to keep the contents of a package “dry”. Hmmm.
You can ask Eliza, I put the box down thinking that there was no gift in the box. She told me to pick it up and look inside. I did. Inside was a small, cut out, paper iMac. Again I just stared at it, having no clue what it symbolized. And then I looked up at her and realized that she had actually gotten me an iMac for our anniversary. It literally took me 30 seconds to figure it out. I was floored.
At first, Eliza thought that I wasn’t excited about the gift. On the contrary, I was unable to process the reality that I now owned an iMac. Or even the fact that she bought me such an elaborate and expensive gift. Never did I expect this gift. Truly one of the biggest surprises I have ever received in my life. It’s not everyday that your truly surprised. Even on days when you expect to be surprised, you usually have an inkling as to what is coming.
Excitement turned into absolute torture as I knew that I wouldn’t be able to play with my new toy till after our vacation. Imagine this and put yourself in my shoes. Twelve-hundred miles from home, having driven instead of flown, and about 4 days from heading for home. Little did I know, the iMac was waiting for me at home already. Ugh! Matt (who was with us in Florida too) and Eliza both can attest to the fact that I was in extreme pain for the entire ride home. Picture this, I drove the better part of the trip home, and then didn’t go to bed for a few days as I played with the iMac. Literally.
To Eliza: Thank you for one of the greatest gifts ever. You are truly the best gift giver, and maybe someday I can surprise you as you’ve surprised me for so many years. I love you.
It has now been a almost 5 years since I’ve delved into the Mac OS and I have yet to turn back. I owe my computing bliss to Eliza.
October 4th, 2006
The best type of gift to give someone is the type of gift you also benefit from. Eliza has always wanted to see her favorite NFL team, the Green Bay Packers, live and in-person. I’ve also never gone to an NFL game (at least not in my adult-life) so I was equally as excited to give her the tickets as she was to receive them.
What makes this gift all the sweeter is that I didn’t have to drive either! We opted to take a bus trip down where they provide food and drink, a movie on the ride to and from, and the tickets – all in one package. I am not a big fan of driving let alone driving in Philadelphia during an Eagles game.
Pre-game at Lincoln Financial Field
We had great seats. We got an email one-day prior to the game asking if we’d like to upgrade our seats for only 10-additional dollars. After consulting the seating chart we both decided it seemed like it was worth it, and boy was it ever worth it. Our seats rivaled those closest to the field – yet we both feel we had a better view.
Panoramic view of the field from our seats
Even though the Packers did not win, we still had a great time and were treated fairly well by both fans and staff. We’re looking forward to doing it again sometime.
[tags]football, anniversary, gifts, eliza devroe, colin devroe, philadelphia, eagles, packers, monday night football, lincoln financial field, photos, panorama, nfl[/tags]
August 29th, 2006
Last week I was 192.2 pounds, this week I’m 192.0 pounds. Am I discouraged? Not in the least, listen to the week I had.
Tuesday of last week, weigh in day, Eliza and I drove to New Jersey to visit with some family. We at mall food-court food, and Friendly’s Ice Cream. Then on the way back from New Jersey, out of sheer desperation, we ate McDonald’s. This was the night I became ill from eating fast food for the first time in many weeks.
Wednesday rolled around, and we decided to drive to Allentown to visit her Mother who is doing training down there. We at at a Perkins, and I got a huge breakfast and a cookie! Also, remember that I usually play basketball on Wednesdays – so I missed that and ate instead.
Thursday was semi-normal, but still no basketball. By the way, some of these days Eliza and I did go walking/jogging – training for my goal of running a mile. But I don’t burn near as many calories doing that as I do playing basketball.
Friday I did get to shoot some hoops, then we came home and played Pictionary.
Saturday we ate breakfast at a diner, then I ended up running my mile with Chris and James. After that, we played some football (1 on 1 with full time QB). Then, we went to a fair and ate fair food. We had a bloomin’ onion (oh my god I love these things), a sausage and pepper hoagie, ice cream, and some funnel cake.
Sunday was our seventh wedding anniversary. Naturally Eliza and I wanted to have a nice dinner out somewhere, and we chose to eat Japanese at a Hibachi. We ate and drank until we thought we couldn’t anymore, then went and had dessert at Krispy Kreme Donuts! Hey, when the sign says “fresh hot donuts right now”, we go.
So now you are getting the picture why I am not upset, at all, that I managed to maintain my weight this week. This week was definitely not our normal, everyday, routine that we’ve been successful with. However, now we’re back on track, our lives are slowing down a little, and we’re ready to start our routines again.
Next week, I’ll hit my original goal.
[tags]diet, the-diet, weigh in, pictionary, basketball, running, walking, jogging, exercise, fair, food, anniversary, new jersey, allentown, football[/tags]
August 25th, 2006
For those that do not know Eliza’s track record, allow me to simply tell you that she is far better at gift giving than I am. She’s incredibly thoughtful, and when she gives gifts she has the ability to hone in on one’s desires better than anyone I’ve ever known. Obviously, I’m biased. But there’s proof in this here pudding. I will not list every gift she’s given me. If I did, you’d call me spoiled (which I am) but I’d rather you not know the entire truth of it all.
This year, for our 7th wedding anniversary (which isn’t until Sunday but we can almost never wait to exchange gifts until the day of), she didn’t fail to amaze me with great and thoughtful gifts.
The first gift she gave me was one that I had specifically requested. We do this thing where we tell each other what we’d like and it is up to us whether we follow that list or not. Seasons 5 and 6 of The West Wing was the first gift, and since I already own Seasons 1 through 4, it was great to get these two. Yes I realize I am slightly behind the times, but I like the West Wing and I had not had the chance to watch it on TV.
My second gift was a huge Steelers blanket made out of sweatshirt material. It commemorates not only the Super Bowl victory of the Steelers but also the 40th anniversary of the Super Bowl itself. In a word, its sweet.
The third gift (yes, I got three gifts, I told you she was good) was a Meade telescope. Read that sentence again, I’ll give you time. I can’t even remember how long I’ve wanted a telescope, it has been that long. This is the first telescope I’ve ever owned, and so after I do an ample amount of research, testing, and playing with my new toy – I will write more on the subject of telescopes and in particular my telescope. Haha, a telescope!
Eliza, I know I’ve told you to your face more times than you’d probably be able to tolerate – but thank you for all the thoughtful gifts, I love you, and I can’t wait until next year.
[tags]anniversary, gifts, eliza, telescope, west wing, blanket, steelers[/tags]
August 14th, 2006
I’ve set and exceeded many goals over the last few months, why not add one more?
Last night Chris and I went for a run, and while he had no trouble with the effort at all, I had absolutely no desire to run the entire mile. My lungs didn’t burn, my legs didn’t give out, nor did my heart ache – rather I simply gave up. Call it a lack of motivation.
See when I play basketball I have a goal – win the game. After 3 hours of basketball if the game is tied with one shot to go, I have no problem exerting myself. When running, even though I have a goal to finish, I don’t have the desire to overly exert myself. I can’t quite explain it. So I’m going to ignore my own thoughts and works towards a specific goal.
So I’ve decided to set the goal of being able to run (read: jog) an entire mile without letup before my 7th wedding anniversary (August 27th). Where I’ll go from there, who knows.
[tags]goals, running, exercise, jogging, the-diet, diet, anniversary[/tags]
