O (b LOG N)

Angry Lawn Gnome

Valentine’s Day

Tara and I celebrated a late V-day tonight. I know I’m supposed to say “Tara and me”, but I prefer to say “Tara and I” so piss off. We did a late V-day because getting a babysitter on V-day is challenging. I had a great time tonight, but the best part of V-day was taking Ashby out yesterday. Look at this:

And this:

Need I say more? Other than rainbow legs rule.

Ashby was so happy to go out for V-day with her daddy. She felt so special and pretty in her V-day outfit. I wish I could help her feel this way everyday until her last.

Tara and I took Ashby for some bangers and chips at Shakespeare’s pub. She was most pleased to be with her daddy in her heart outfit and sandals that Mi-Mi (grandma) supplied her. Tonight T and I went to a pleasant Lebanese restaurant and then went out for drinks. Ashby was with Michelle, our babysitter, whom she really loves. I just checked on her sleeping in her heart pajamas. So sweet…

Tweets for 2007-12-31

• There is this strange smell of ozone today in downtown san diego. It smells like ozone..or maybe brake pads. Very odd. #
• This must be the cause of the funky smell in downton: http://tinyurl.com/ynu2s9 #
• Man, it really stinks like chemicals or brake pads downtown. This can’t be healthy. Tara and Ashby aren’t going for their run outside. #

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Map my vacation, please?

If someone wants to make a useful “Web 2.0″ application I’ve got a cool idea for you. Make it really easy for me to map my trip route, then with drag-and-drop ease place my Flickr photos on the map, add notes, and save the map in a re-usable format (KML, I guess). As a ‘++’ make it easy for me to review stuff along the way. Oh, and make each component in decomposable, clean re-usable formats (atom, kml, hReview, etc).

I just got home from a week long vacation with Ashby and Tara. Of course, we took photos the whole time. Every day I shot a dozen or so photos to Flickr and Facebook from my iPhone. I was moblogging so much in fact that Brett sent me this hilarious plea for assistance in makinig my moblogging less noisy in Facebook. He said he loved me, but I had turned his Facebook into the Fulkersonbook. Check out Brett’s Facebook news view:

OMFG, ridiculous. I thought Facebook provided a digest of these things! Apparently adjusting the Notes feed slider in facebook doesn’t effect the mobile notes. Facebook needs to fix this. Anyway, I felt like a spammer. I’m shocked no one else has complained. I suspect you’ve all just blacklisted me. Well, I couldn’t figure out a way to prevent my moblogging from being so noisy so I cut back on moblogging to facebook and now I shoot most of my photos to Flickr only. Back to my cool idea.

Prior to leaving for my vacation I mapped the route. Along the route I shot photos using my digital camera and my iPhone. The latter, as mentioned, I sent directly to Flickr and Facebook with the occasional note. The bulk of the photos didn’t get uploaded until I got home. Upon my return I wanted to blog about the trip and I thought a cool thing would be to provide a map with:

• trip route
• replete with geotagged photos
• , notes
• and maybe even some reviews.

We packed groceries and didn’t eat out much, but it would be cool if I had provided the occasional hReview of the few restaurants we did stop in as well as of the campground we split from in favor of a crappy motel room that had a great view in Morro Bay. If it were easy to generate hReviews I would do it more often. Especially if I could do it on the spot.

One could fulfill my dream by mashing a few services from different providers. Google Mapes, Flickr, Big Tribe… By providing some connective tissue it shouldn’t be too hard to come up with something really useful. All weekend I’ve scoured the Internet for an easy way to do this and every service I’ve found either doesn’t meet the aforementioned requirements or is too time consuming. What I found was that Greasemonkey scripts can make geotagging photos easier, but I can not find a way to easily map photos, with notes, and route. I think I found a way to do this by paying, but this service was borderline unusable, and I’m still not clear how easy it was to map routes, or if I could. I also had to re-upload my photos instead of using those on Flickr. Lame. Also, there was a fee and I’m not going to pay until I know it works. Then I might pay Flickr prices. Other alternatives didn’t allow me to display only my stuff and again routes were an issue. The only option that did allow me to do everything I wanted, I think, was such a pain the ass I’m not going to do it. It involved Greasemonkey scripts, Google Earth, and some serious hackery. I don’t have time for that!

Optimally I would have a service that I could use to map my trip. While traveling I could map photos based on my location. Use a mobile app for creating reviews along the way; otherwise I probably won’t review. And then I could polish it all off with additional photos when I get home. This would be killer, right?

Dopplr or some of these other travel services should implement this. I would then actually want to use the service. Currently I can’t possibly muster the time or energy to waste. Mind you, I’m the target audience for services like this being I typically travel a couple times a month for work.

Oh, here’s my vacation photos. I suspect this blog post is the closest I’m going to come to realizing my dream of a digital vacation scrap book with a map interface.

Hot Dog

The greatest thing in the world is snuggling up with my 15 month old daughter, Ashby, in the morning and watching TV. Unfortunately the only time she doesn’t mind snuggling is when we watch the ’stupid box’. There is a new Mickey Mouse Clubhouse television show on the Disney channel. It’s awful. Neither Tara nor I can stand it, but Ashby loves it. It’s all computer graphics. At the end of every episode there is this insipid song they sing, which sticks to your brain like starch on rice. You can’t shake it! Allow me to share:

“We’re splitting the scene, we’re full of beans.” Huh?

Powerpoint is lame, Craig Newmark kicks ass

I just attended a keynote from this this guy Ben McConnell. His Powerpoint was killer! It was exactly what PPT should be. The slides were emotional or visual reinforcements of what he was talking about. Every 2nd or 3rd slide had text, but rarely did a slide exceed 5-7 words of text and the most text I saw was about 11 words. Very impactful. I had to split out early because Roy, who is sitting outside of sessions hurriedly finishing off the product we’re launching tomorrow, notified me he was sitting across from Craig Newmark. So, I rushed out to get a photo with Craig and thank him for his product and not sellng/cashing out. True to form, Craig was responding to support requests from Craigslist users, but was willing to pause for a moment and take a photo with Roy and I:

I’m pissed I didn’t think to have us face the light. Damnit, bad photo! Anyway, Craig is more handsome in person! At first I wasn’t sure it was him. LOL. Newmark kicks ass.

Here a some shots of the hotel. The arcitecture is stunning and designed to reflect the mountains. I wish Tara and Ashby were here sitting by the pool.