Blog

  • From the NFL to WordPress themes

    Drew Strojny, former NFL player for the Eagles, Giants and Rams, had been moonlighting as a designer and open-source WordPress theme developer for years. The theme business, which is supported via support-membership-subscriptions (great business plan) is really taking off.  So much so that he and his wife are doing that full time via The Theme […]

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  • Our garden, so far

    A quick and very, very dirty panoramic image of our garden so far (as of last week). Watch for a short video from Eliza in the near future. See also: Video: Our backyard, so far.

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  • A short review of White Fang by Jack London

    London’s White Fang – a story about a wolf whose mother was part dog and father full-on wolf, told mostly from the wolf’s perspective – is full of detail. I don’t know what inspired London to write White Fang but whatever it was it must have driven him to climb into caves, chase small animals […]

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  • Goodbye Dreamhost

    As you may have noticed this website has been unavailable or erring for over 36 hours. This isn’t the first time that Dreamhost has had issues and it has effected my site. Over the years of my using Dreamhost there has been a lot of problems, a lot of downtime, a lot of headaches. Any […]

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  • Our backyard, so far

    Eliza and I have been hard at work on our backyard since spring. Whenever we get the chance, and energy, we work on our backyard to spruce it up and make it a nice place to get outside. So far we’ve put in a stone patio, planted grass, put in a fire pit, planted a […]

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  • Tiny Desk Concert with Weird Al

    An instant classic in NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series is with Weird Al Yankovic. He covers three songs. I recommend the entire series of Tiny Desk Concerts. NPR music is pretty much the best place on the Web right now.

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  • 365 photos by Marisa McClellan

    Marisa McClellan is shooting a photo per-day and posting it to her blog (and Flickr account if you’d prefer). Most of her photos are fairly drool worthy but the above tips the scales (you know, because of the cast iron). She’s up to 38 or so. I’ll be watching every single one. Other projects like […]

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  • Photos of extremely small seeds

    Photos by Seed Morphologist Wolfgang Stuppy of seeds from angiosperms.* /via NPR. *Flash is required but the photos are still boner-worthy.

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  • Three years with the first-generation iPhone

    Three years ago at the King of Prussia Mall in Pennsylvania Eliza and I were nearly at the front of what became a very, very long line at the Apple Retail Store ready to buy two first generation iPhones. For six years prior to that day Eliza and I hadn’t owned mobile phones. We were rebels […]

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  • Astronomy Photo of the Day

    I’ve been subscribed to NASA’s Astronomy Photo of the Day for years. I’ve linked to both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial shots that have been featured from this very blog many times though nearly all of them are fantastic. It is sort of like an art blog where the featured painter everyday is God.

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  • On the iPad

    After using the iPad exclusively for 10 days (that’s right, I haven’t used my Macbook Pro yet) I am getting a pretty good feel for the iPad. I figured I’d jot down some notes in no particular order. The great The utility of the iPad exceeds a laptop in so many ways. And I believe […]

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  • Bees that make nests out of flower pedals

    From the "coolest thing you’ll see all day" department – these bees in Turkey make their nests out of carefully folded flower pedals. Striking. /via Jason Kottke. On NPR, of course.

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  • From the iPad

    I’m typing this on my brand new iPad courtesy of my lovely wife Eliza. If this isn’t the future of computing, I don’t know what is. When Steve Jobs said, at the D8 conference, that the next era of the personal computer was just around the corner (whether it was the iPad or not) and […]

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  • Steve Jobs at D8

    The unread count in Google Reader went from a relatively low number to an incredibly high number yesterday evening because Steve Jobs got on stage at D8. You can either read the transcript or watch the videos if you want to catch up. My favorite bits are the real story behind the iPhone’s inception (which […]

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  • Cod fishing in Gloucester, Massachusetts

    Earlier this year my friends and I took a short trip to Gloucester, Massachusetts to do some cod fishing on the Atlantic. I took some random video clips during the trip and have finally stitched them together. (Watch in HD by clicking on HD on the player.) We all had a great time and ended […]

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  • Duck eggs and bacon breakfast sandwich

    This is a must link because there is cast iron, bacon, butter, duck eggs and cheese in this video. And, although I use chicken eggs, is pretty much exactly how I make my breakfast sandwiches. Warning: The video is a bit long and may lead to extreme hunger and jealousy.

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  • Top ten annoying things to say to a wildlife photographer

    Fun list. I love the "yeah, OK" tone of it.

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  • Video: My guest appearance on Wine Library TV

    For those of you that follow me on Twitter or have read my post on the Viddler blog you’ll already know that I was a guest on Wine Library TV on Friday. This episode was a long time coming. Gary and I had tried to align our schedules for a pretty long time but never […]

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  • Ducklings in the evening sun

    They love them some clover.

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  • Bottling

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  • Compress your CSS and Javascript with Pack

    Lead Designer at Viddler, Andrew Smith, has released Pack via the Viddler blog – which is what he uses to compress Viddler’s CSS and Javascript for deployment. Pack is written in Ruby and runs from the command-line. However, you could easily daisy chain it to Capistrano when doing deploys, like Andrew has done for Viddler, […]

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  • I eat way too fast, still

    Not two days ago I told Eliza that I eat too fast. Five years ago I said the same thing. Another habit that needs to die. So, how am I going to slow myself down? I’m going to count my chews. I know, that sounds a bit crazy but if I do it I can […]

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  • Old habits seemingly die easy

    Sometimes you wonder if the habits you have today will simply always be your habits. I’m here to tell you that old habits die easy. Five years ago I was going to sleep at 5am and waking up mid-afternoon. In a very short period of time the opposite is now true. I like to be in […]

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  • The moon over my patio

    Last night I spent some time on my patio working and reading.

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  • Northeastern Pennsylvania is still behind the times

    As I sit in our local Panera Bread, belly full of warm soup, after a day of traveling, meetings and recording an episode of Wine Library TV with my friend Gary – I’m reminded of this post about Panera and how it fills a void in our area. As I read the post I began […]

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  • cp /world * /goog

    Not the best syntax in that title but you get the point. Someone’s copy machines are working pretty hard. AppleTV = Google TV. App Store = Chrome Web Store. Amazon S3 = Google Storage. There are a few other examples coming out of Google I/O this week too. Granted, though, that some of these products are […]

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  • LOST is nearly over

    Five years ago I said that I had never been more anxious to watch a show each week. That anxiousness has lasted ever since. By Monday it will be all over. Or, The End.

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  • Man I hated Tommy Maddox

    In 2005 Tommy Maddox was the starting quarterback for my NFL team of choice the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was horrible. At least in my opinion. I really, really disliked him. A few choice posts from that time period make this glaringly obvious: My prediction that the Steelers will run the ball in November 2005. And, […]

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  • My morning ritual hasn’t changed in 10 years

    Wow. This is sobering. Five years ago, while I was still working at 9rules, I mentioned how much I enjoyed waking up in the morning, having a cup of coffee, checking my feeds and getting the day rolling. That ritual didn’t start five years ago. It started at least five years before that (somewhere around […]

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  • Twitter, Facebook and soon the world!

    OK, maybe not the world. But, this is simply a friendly housekeeping / reminder post to let you know how easy it is to keep up with the latest posts from this here site. In order of my recommendation: The RSS feed. – This gives you everything. Notes, links, photos, videos, etc. I suggest Google […]

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  • The most widely read magazine in the world

    Spoiler: The Watchtower published by Jehovah’s Witnesses. The New York Review of Magazines has an excellent article about The Watchtower, its history, publication and distribution. I recommend giving it a read. Disclaimer: For those of you that do not know, I’m one of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

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  • Viddler and VP8

    Google has open sourced VP8 and is using it as a basis for an entire open web media project. We at Viddler believe in our customers having choice. That’s why, hot on the heels of our support for HTML5 playback using H.264 on the iPad/iPhone, we’re announcing support for encoding into VP8 also. I’m really […]

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  • Give Dropbox a try

    I’d be remiss if I didn’t recommend Dropbox to all of you. It has been a rather silent, but dare I say deadly, tool that I’ve come to rely on much more than I thought I would. And, it is practically invisible. So far I’ve used it to share files to and from my iPhone, […]

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  • The Web is a shopping mall not a concert

    The social eruption on the Web has had many small eruptions over the last few years. The most recent eruptions have been Facebook for Websites and Twitter’s @Anywhere services. Adding these features to one’s website is now easier than ever but that doesn’t mean you should add it to your website. The entire Web needn’t […]

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  • HQ Garage

    We’ve got a brand new parking garage at Viddler HQ, which is annexed in the excellent Ben Franklin Technology Center, and it is pretty nice.

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  • Todd’s UI is sweet

    Believe it or not Viddler‘s "Super Sys Admin" Todd Troxell uses this text-based, window-less UI full time.

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  • Greyson Michael Chance

    [ad#Adsense: Horiz 468] So: Dude sings a song at a talent show-thingy, puts it up on his YouTube channel (there are a lot of fakes), everyone says he’ll be the next Bieber, Ellen sees it, has him on her show. Stardom awaits. But wait, did you catch the brilliant move that Ellen is now doing? […]

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  • Out to sea

    Gloucester,Massachusetts. (Taken with a SeaLife SL320/SL32.)

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  • Secure video hosting for business

    A new video for Viddler’s secure video hosting for businesses. We’ve got a lot in store for Viddler B2B this year and this video is only the tip of the iceberg. More tomorrow, next week and for the rest of this year.

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  • The \”What To Do When You’re Bored\” list

    I can honestly say that I can not remember a time when I was bored. I hear many people say that they get bored, especially younger people, and it baffles me. Let’s face it, we all have a measure of ADD but isn’t the world filled with enough to do to save us from boredom? […]

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  • The \”What To Do When You’re Bored\” list

    I can honestly say that I can not remember a time when I was bored. I hear many people say that they get bored, especially younger people, and it baffles me. Let’s face it, we all have a measure of ADD but isn’t the world filled with enough to do to save us from boredom? […]

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  • The \”What To Do When You’re Bored\” list

    I can honestly say that I can not remember a time when I was bored. I hear many people say that they get bored, especially younger people, and it baffles me. Let’s face it, we all have a measure of ADD but isn’t the world filled with enough to do to save us from boredom? […]

    Continue

  • The \”What To Do When You’re Bored\” list

    I can honestly say that I can not remember a time when I was bored. I hear many people say that they get bored, especially younger people, and it baffles me. Let’s face it, we all have a measure of ADD but isn’t the world filled with enough to do to save us from boredom? […]

    Continue

  • The \”What To Do When You’re Bored\” list

    I can honestly say that I can not remember a time when I was bored. I hear many people say that they get bored, especially younger people, and it baffles me. Let’s face it, we all have a measure of ADD but isn’t the world filled with enough to do to save us from boredom? […]

    Continue

  • The \”What To Do When You’re Bored\” list

    I can honestly say that I can not remember a time when I was bored. I hear many people say that they get bored, especially younger people, and it baffles me. Let’s face it, we all have a measure of ADD but isn’t the world filled with enough to do to save us from boredom? […]

    Continue

  • Gmail’s drag/drop image insertion

    Looks like my recent switch back to Google Chrome is already paying dividends. The Gmail team has now moved a much loved lab feature that allows you to drag and drop images from your desktop onto a new message and have it automatically attach and/or insert directly into the message out into the open. I […]

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  • OneWay, FTP in the Finder

    On the heels of the release of the great Transmit 4 comes OneWay a simple FTP utility (upload only, you can’t download anything) that works right from within the Finder. Need simple? OneWay. Need something a bit more? Transmit. Side note: OneWay is open source so there’s that. /via TJ Luoma on TUAW.

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  • The \”What To Do When You’re Bored\” list

    I can honestly say that I can not remember a time when I was bored. I hear many people say that they get bored, especially younger people, and it baffles me. Let’s face it, we all have a measure of ADD but isn’t the world filled with enough to do to save us from boredom? […]

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  • Wood hull

    Gloucester,Massachusetts. (Taken with a SeaLife SL320/SL32.)

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  • Chrome is faster than lightning

    So Chrome is faster than Safari again. Not one month ago I said: "I’m back to Safari. I still love Chrome but Safari’s latest update made it edge out Chrome for speed. Speed, it seems, is the killer feature for me in Web browsers." It seems I’m going to follow the speed and it turns […]

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Writing helps me think more clearly and to form or transform my opinions. I write about what interests me such as blogging, photography, technology, social media, and my personal creative projects.


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