May 2007 - Posts
Small-town America on Memorial Day can't be beat. Nice parade this morning and a flyover by an F15 (from Selfridge, I assume). I -- along with most everyone in this town, apparently -- salute all the people who are serving or have served in the various armed forces, and I'll throw in police and fire forces as well. Our great country couldn't be what it is without the dedication, hard work, and sacrifice of those who will defend and protect us from whatever may threaten our way of life.
Caleb caught his first fish yesterday, matching Joshua's first fish -- catching himself a tiny little bluegill on the Saline River. Unfortunately, I did not have the camera with me.
EDIT: We went back to the river Monday, and Joshua caught a rock bass, and Caleb caught himself a healthy sucker.
This is really pretty amazing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uw7uA9QExc
Generally, you only see footage of the lions taking their prey and that's that. Well, the cape buffalo in this video not only don't care for that plan, they decide it is time to take a stand. Those 'stupid' animals sure seem like they're less than stupid here...
I have always been enamoured with the idea of traveling with only my power to transport myself. Time and other priorities have gotten me away from some of my favorite things to do when I was much younger (running and bicycling). When I was high-school age, I would ride 15-20 miles fairly regularly, and during cross-country and track seasons I rode less and ran more (probably average of about 5-8 miles a day during seasons). My real love, though, was extended rides (not so much runs...) like from near our home in Grand Rapids to Grand Haven State Park and back. I road a couple of tours of that length, and always enjoyed the ride, especially the one time that Bill (one of cross country compatriots) and I rode in the draft line all the way from GH back to Grand Rapids -- I think we averaged like 28 or 30 MPH (and taking our turn in the front was a trip -- two teenagers cranking at more than 30 MPH leading a draft line of about 75 competitive cyclists -- yeah!). One trip that I never took that I hope perhaps one day I might was to ride from Grand Rapids (or now, perhaps Milan) to The Mackinac Bridge and back. That is significantly more daunting of a ride, and would certainly require being much more equipped (camping gear, foul weather gear, not to mention food and water), but would be a ride that would not only be beautiful (driving it in a car on the freeway it is pretty!) but would provide a significant mental escape from all the BS that gets me down.
Speaking of getting away, I will finally mention what made me post this rambling, self-indulgent post. I came across this site recently (through the website of a former employee) that is run by a couple who used to work for Microsoft, but decided they wanted to do something different. So they got married, sold off their belongings, purchased nice touring bicycles, and set off to ride their bikes around the world. Pretty ambitious. They have done a driving tour of the US, then started the trek in earnest -- biking New Zealand, Thailand, Cambodia, and now Vietnam, so far. They plan to go through China and India next. Their blog is well written, their photos are alternatively beautiful and frightening, and the whole concept intrigues me.
Check it out and enjoy their tales of adventure. For most of us (especially those of us with young children now) we can only live vicariously through people who have enough confidence and bravery to attempt such a wonderful adventurous trek.
I recently joined the iPod set, getting myself an 80GB video iPod. In short -- I love it. I have an older Rio MP3 player that I can put a SD card in that will still get used for running and whatnot, but the iPod is quickly becoming a go-everywhere, gotta have it with me device. We listened to some audiobooks in the car when we drove to GR last weekend, and it is really nice not to have to bumble with CDs while driving.
At this point, I have my library pretty hooked up, so 'syncing' isn't a big deal at all, but I really don't care for the way iTunes works. Perhaps I am just stubborn, but I'd like a little more granular control of the library on the iPod itself. I'd also very much like to be able to "Refresh" the iTunes library to drop references to moved files and the like.
I have seen a bunch of things online that might be better (Anapod Explorer is supposed to be nice) but I think I am going to do the completely geeky thing and try to write something that works exactly how I want it to work. So far I am coming up fairly empty on finding much information about the file store on the iPod, but I think that is the route I'd like to take. I played with the iTunes API, but that essentially requires that you only work with one computer, so that's out, I think.
Anyone have any links to technical information about the filesystem or DB that would be helpful?