Now that Barack Obama has been elected to the White House, I can breathe a giant sigh of relief. I feel true optimism and hope for this country, and our children.

So, Gabe's Halloween costume this year is a skeleton, drawn in white dimensional fabric paint [1] on black clothing. It's coming out great. Wikipedia supplies the artistic inspiration for the authentic skeletal design.

Front http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/Human_skeleton_front....
Back http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Human_skeleton_back.s...

[1] http://duncancrafts.com Tulip paints available at WalMart

See the video of Max and Gabe in their halloween costumes:

When you're going to make a full day out of going to a Patriots Football game, you might want to let someone else do the cooking instead of trying to play with fire in the parking lot.

I was surprised that Google's map didn't show much information when searching for places to eat in the vicinity, so I created a map of places to eat around Gillette Stadium.

Linux is taking the ultra-portable market by storm with releases like the Everex Eee PC or Cloudbook, in part because they run free operating systems and cost $400 instead of $1800 for the Macbook Air. Still, for my money, I'd buy an older IBM Thinkpad X31 which I just saw on Ebay for $280 and get a full-size keyboard. But regardless of what form-factor and notebooks are the best buy, the real story in portable computing is the story of Portable Apps.

A simple way to spread peace. Carve a peace pumpkin and display it proudly for all your neighborhood trick-or-treaters. I did last year, and will do the same this year. Share this page with your friends.

I also found a nice "Peace Pumpkin video" on YouTube with the same idea.

Video: Cooking pumpkin seeds (expert village)

I got a Flip Video camera, and now I have to figure out what it can do on Linux. According to my early research, playback of the 3ivx "Thriv-ex" format shouldn't be a problem. However, the included software which runs only on Windows or Mac is obviously not going to work. More info on the 3ivx MPEG-4 format used is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4_Part_2

"A human being is part of a whole, called by us the "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

- Albert Einstein

Most of your small-engine equipment (think lawnmower, weed whacker, leaf blower) are typically equipped with what's called a recoil starter which is a rope and pull handle which you tug in a starting ritual that becomes personal as the equipment ages and the user adapts to various idiosyncratic choke and primer bulb rythms. Inevitably, either the starter rope or the recoil spring will fail. These are cheap (e.g. the rope costs about a buck) repairs the handyman can do himself with a little effort and patience.

Saturday, April 26 2008
Max had his first baseball game today, playing for Chase and Lundt Insurance. He was so excited that he urged me to get up at 7am so we could go practice for the 1:15pm game. We got Gabe off to Demi Wack's birthday party at 10am and headed over to Perkins field with our gear. The weather was nice and sunny, resulting in a mild sunburn on my arms. We practiced hitting, fielding and catching in the dry dusty infield and ended up using the outfield grass for more training. I taught Max pepper and how bunting could help with hand eye coordination at the plate.