A T-Rex dressed as a fairy
I love this latest artwork from the tyke. It captures exactly what I hope she will always have: a love of dinosaurs and fairies, all rolled up into one. The hard and the soft, blended to perfection.
It has been a while since I wrote anything here, but I just wrote a short post for the Cantina blog, so I thought maybe it was time to jot down some stuff here, too.
We just got back from a weekend in dirty, old New Jersey. My grandfather just turned 88.5; my mom has decided that it would be a nice thing to celebrate his semiannual anniversaries. He’s shooting for 90, which seems like a pretty good goal to me. We went down with the tyke to celebrate with the family. The kiddo got to spend some time with her G-ma and we had one of our not-often enough four-generations dinners.
Besides the eight human beings in attendance, there were also four iPads. And I must say, we spent a lot of time jawing about those amazing tablets. I don’t think I ever expected that I would find my mom, or her husband, that interested in a computer. EVAH.
It was also an interesting weekend for us car-wise: we grabbed a MINI Clubman from ZipCar for the trip. I have wanted a MINI ever since I first saw one, perched atop a van on Newbury Street. I don’t know what it is about those little cars. It may be the same thing that drives me to contemplate kidnapping my neighbor’s French Bulldog, Reggie. He’s cute and tough at the same time.
We figured that the best way to figure out if there was any point in going beyond the mere fantasy was to try an extended test drive under real conditions. And it was worth it. The MINI may be small, but the ride was really enjoyable and world’s better than our old Civic or the Subaru we’ve grown to hate too soon. We won’t be getting a MINI soon, unfortunately, but now at least I feel like I can really get one.
In the larger picture, things are going well. My job at Cantina is amazing, largely because I get to work with a crew of super smart, super funny and all around good folks. The tyke is wrapping up her last year of pre-school and the whole family is buzzing a little as we careen towards KINDERGARTEN. Wow, how time flies.
A few months ago I posted a showing the relative pixel dimensions of various Apple products. I created the graphic partially as an aid in my decision making process for buying a new MacBook Pro, but mostly because I feel a geeky compulsion to do it.
And now I’ve done a new version, available for anyone who might be interested.
Relative Pixel Dimensions for Apple Displays
This time I did the whole this using plain old HTML and CSS. I used it as an opportunity to play around with a few CSS3 features, too. The means the it works best using a modern browser.
I also corrected some errors from the original, too.
If you find this useful, let me know.
The last thing I expected for dessert was a 40 foot long tree trunk crashing into our tiny back yard.
The first sign that something was going on was a load “crack!”, followed by a series of sharp pops and bangs, and finally the unmistakable rustling and crashing cacophony of a tree falling to earth. We had just finished dinner, cleaning up the dining room table. Karen grabbed the tyke and hustled her into the kitchen. I’m not sure exactly what I did, but I recall that it was something lie jumping up and shouting “CRAP!” then scooting away from the back of the house.
A few seconds later, we gathered our wits and went to see what had happened. And all we could see was green. Leaves and branches had fetched up against the screen door of the open slider at the back of the house. The rain was still coming down and the back yard was a mess.
Mere hours before we packed the car for our annual vacation to Cape Cod, an old Ailanthus on our neighbors property succumbed to a combination of added weight from rain and a hefty batch of samaras combined with a dose of good ole inset damage. A giant branch, really a horizontal trunk, snapped free from the bole of and crashed down on the fence that lies along the property line between our cluster of townhouses and the house behind use. This monstrosity straddled the fence between our yard and the neighbor’s townhouse and managed to come down on a spruce in his yard and our kousa dogwood.
Amazingly, the damage turned out to be minimal. The fence and tree had caught the falling wood and the house received only a glancing blow. A scrape, really. There were smaller branches, still covered with leaves and clusters of samaras scattered about, torn explosively from the main branch. After we managed to pry away a couple of larger pieces from the door, I slid out to look at the aftermath while Karen called our neighbor.
All of the various stuff in the yard, my 25 year old bike, the Parisian cafe table, the tyke’s sandbox: all came away unscathed. It’s not exactly good luck when a huge tree falls into your lap, but if you can walk away from it with no real damage, that’s something.
The real problem turned out to be timing. We’ve been renting places on the Cape for a fee years now and this year’s trip was going to start in a few hours. And we have to figure out to get rid of an extra large log that has suddenly gone from provider of shade to total pain in the ass.
Fortunately, my friend Seth is a landscaper and I knew that he’d hook us up with someone who could help us out, fast. And by midday on Saturday, Ben the arborist and one of his guys were already cutting that huge hunk of newly minted firewood into chunks. By the time we packed up the car, the whole thing had evaporated like a bad, chlorophyll-tinged dream. And not long after that, we were one our way to the Cape, crawling down I-93 with the rest of the South Shore-bound traffic.
If you are involved in the creation of software, here’s a short list of things you can do to ensure that your software will sell a bazillion copies of your product, whatever it is.
That’s it. If you can do that, your path to fame, fortune and Ferrari’s is assured.*