Well, it was bound to happen I guess. I have basically decided to close up shop here at Vox.com and continue blogging elsewhere. Likely you will be able to find new updates over at www.doccomoli.wordpress.com, as I already own that URL and am doing nothing with it. I will leave this last post up as a guideline to the new spot. I also need to step back and think about what I would like to speak about. I require focus. It was my intention to be "all over the map" with this blog, as I do tend to know a little about a lot of things. But I now realize that this plan does not work all that well. So I will sit back and narrow the focus a bit perhaps. We'll see.
For anyone who did read this spot when I consistently wrote here, thank you. As for Vox.com, this started as an experiment based on hearing about Vox.com on a TV show (Call For Help, on G4 Tech TV in Canada), and deciding to do a little more with my computer, without sitting down and learning a bunch of code. I think Vox.com is great for blogging. I just prefer Wordpress now that I have investigated "the big world" of the interweb.
See you elsewhere.
Kids, I apologize for the length of time between emails. I said in the last one that my little baby girl Catriona would likely take up most of my time. And I was right, more than I knew at the time. She is now an amazing 10 month old, capable of self propulsion, with the occasional "pull up" as the saying goes. She has gone from a cute little attention getter, lying on a blanket, to an equally cute little attention getter, that can leave the room should she desire.
(Jump ahead by a few days)
So while I was originally typing the previous paragraph, while on call for my job, I was called in. Thus the abrupt ending to my first blog posting in months. All was well. It's just the nature of the job to get called at 11:00pm at night to help someone breathe. However, that is a topic for a blog posting at another time.
Point is this: Catriona is beautiful, fun and full of personality now. I can't even imagine what life was like without her. And I don't want to. Thankfully I also don't have to. I get to see her (usually) smiling face most mornings, and often get to put her to bed. I love being the last face she sees before she dreams her dreams. Jenn and I share this duty so it is not exclusively MY job (not really a job at all to be honest). Recently Jenn stopped breast feeding Catriona and we have switched her fairly easily to formula. While I'm sure that Jenn feels that she has lost what was a specific "mommy & daughter bonding time", I am happy to feel more useful in giving Jenn was is a well deserved break from HAVING to be the one to feed Catriona before bedtime. It opens up more possibilities and allows me to experience something that has been thus far, an impossibility. Plus it lets me be even closer to my little girl.
10+ months in, and without a hint of irony or sarcasm (weird for me I know), being with The Cat just gets more fun, more interesting, and more rewarding. What is amazing is that there is so much more ahead than behind at this point. I can't wait to see what interests she will have, what toys she will love/not love. I look forward to providing her with information, with ideas, with suggestions that she can take or leave. I look forward to seeing movies with her, reading with her, walking and talking with her. In short, there is very little I'm not looking forward to doing with my Catriona.
But first I'll let her be a baby. She's still entitled to that.
If you wish to see up to date photos of my little girl, go to www.flickr.com/doccomoli/sets. This should get you where you want to go. Until next time, and next topic. Aloha.
This is a short post. While I have struggle to maintain this site, it's because I've been busy updating our brand new daughter's blog site, Bundled Joy. So this site will be updated sporadically, I'm sorry to say. I have something that is taking up MUCH more of my time. And I'm loving it...I mean her.
Finally. A blog posting all about THE NEW MATH! No I'm kidding, but it is a post to announce that there is a new addition to the Doc family of blogs. Bundled Joy is the new kid on the block, and it is a Wordpress blog that I'll be working on to celebrate the coming of Jenn's and my REAL new addition, who for now is known only as "iBaby". Please check it out. It is only in it's...ahem...infancy (pun OBVIOUSLY intended), but once the child arrives, content all over the place. For now, it's a holding area. I will continue to post on here as well (mostly inane stuff probably), but that spot is dedicated to iBaby and all events iBaby'ish. Unless I get the bright idea to move everything there. But for now, here I am. Enjoy!
I've been a fan/friend of these guys forever (well OK, I sat beside Dan, the lead singer, in band in high school, in the best damn trombone section ever). The Brown Hornets started in their first incarnation in my high school, and that might be the best thing my high school could ever say about itself. They are amazing. Here's a live snippit that I happened upon on YouTube. Enjoy.
Hmmm. That would be a better title for the Adult Entertainment Awards, more I think about it. Nevertheless.
Tonight, my beloved Oscars return for another year. And like millions of people, I have a ballot all filled out with my picks. Unlike most people in the world, I will be officially competing against 1 other person in the world, my friend Keith's sister, Kylie. Unofficially I also will be taking on the picks that my wife, Jenn, made yesterday. What separates these two as being official or unofficial? There's a trophy involved. And no, not an Oscar. The trophy in question is an alien garden gnome piggy bank, purchased in Las Vegas, with a personalized mini-license plate around his neck that reads "Oscar". For the past 2 years, Kylie has won the trophy (even though Jenn cleaned both of our clocks 2 years ago with her picks, she is not in line for the trophy. After my description of it, you can imagine her sadness over this...). So I have some work to do. What has also been a trend in recent years, is that Kylie and I have done a very poor job of seeing even a few of the movies involved in the Oscar balloting. I personally have seen 3 at the time of this posting (Pursuit of Happyness, Cars, and only just last evening The Departed). Was a time where I had seen 4 out of 5 Best Picture nominees, and a whole lot more. However, life has other things to offer with alleged adulthood, so my personal knowledge of the films involved, must be supplemented by the Internet, magazines, and good old keeping my ear to the ground. So we'll see how we do. I hope to be back here telling you all how I guessed right on EVERY CATEGORY, and "ISN'T THAT AMAZING!". I suspect this will not be the case.
If you love the Oscars, enjoy! If you love all the shows that the Oscars pre-empt, and therefore hate the Oscars, then I offer forth this plan: rent/go see a movie! Oscar winner or not, there are a ton out there that are incredible.
I haven't had a lot to say on here lately. Frankly, since I got the iMac, I've been doing a lot of cleaning around the house, or had things to do, or have simply been spending time "learning" how to use OS X properly and fully (with a bit of time spent having fun with the iSight camera built into my computer. As you can see.
One thing I did manage to hear about during this time however is a little website/application (I guess) called Twitter. It's not terribly useful and it's only for Mac OS X, but there is something a little bit fun about it. Basically, you get a free account, and you punch in what you are currently doing. Then other people can see what you are up to. Now, if you are an extremely private person, this is NOT the thing for you (and frankly you wouldn't likely sign up for this anyway). Most of the time I forget to change it, so I went and downloaded an app for my Mac called "Twitterific" which puts a client on the desktop, so that I can change what I'm doing, without having to go to the website.
I know it all sounds ridiculous. As I said, there is something fun about it. It's not new technology by any stretch (MSN Messenger has allowed you to alter your "Personal Message" for a long time now), but it reminds me that every application on a computer doesn't have to be for a reason. It's just fun (and I suppose, an effective stalker tool, but I digress).
One more thing: If you are a fan of old DOS based shareware games from the early 1990's, check out Scorched3D. Ya, it's an update of Scorched Earth, the tank battle game from around 1992. It's awesome AND it's free. For all platforms. Take that, Halo!
Well the iMac arrived 2 Tuesdays ago, and life hasn't been the same since. It is not often I can say this sort of thing but it is exactly as fun and exciting as I had hoped it would be (you know, for a computer). Contrary to the popular "Get a Mac" commercials from Apple, I didn't automatically sit down and create a Hollywood epic, nor record a Grammy Award winning album within seconds of pulling the thing out of the box, BUT it certainly has been very intuitive thus far, with a moderate amount of difficulty getting certain printers working (but that was more of a "networking with a WinXP PC" thing. And I've been lazy, and too busy playing with various iLife programs on the Mac).
So far, my greatest surprise has been how easy it was for the Mac to see my Windows machine (and it's various shared drives). That led to a networking revelation, and a major change to what Jenn can see on her WinXP laptop, from my downstairs computers. I have also been impressed with how integrated all the software that comes on the Mac is with each other (ie: pulling in iTunes tracks for a slideshow in iPhoto; allowing the use of GarageBand tracks as soundtrack for use in iMovie HD; etc). This is the exact type of "cross pollination" that I had always wished for in the Windows beasts, and never really got (autonomous programs, was the term I believe I used at one point. In sports terms, a group of players, rather than a team).
I did go back and switch my iPod to being a Mac iPod VS a Windows iPod (as I did with Jenn's too), because frankly,
Here's the most impressive thing of all: we ordered the iMac on a Friday. It was here, and ready for pickup 5 days later. Now I realize that I didn't order anything too outrageous (increased RAM to 2 GB, and upgraded the video card to the best available), but 5 DAYS! Wow! They told me that they guaranteed my having it by Jan 24th (which would have been 3 days ago, a full 8 days AFTER I actually got it). This would fall under the category of telling people something that you KNOW you can achieve, and then wowing them when you do it EVEN quicker. Much better than the alternative (which I believe I had with my WinXP system. No wonder those guys went out of business).
In short, I'm happy happy happy with my choice. Still to come, hopefully some original projects, more installation of software (Delicious Library and Parallels, you may be next), and if I can wean myself completely off the XP box, possibly switching my old box to Linux of some sort (or at least a dual boot system). In the meantime, a happy (moderately crazy) picture of the new owner, and his new friend.
I'm sure my wonderfully patient wife, Jenn, is sick of hearing me speak of this, so I will instead share it with the world.
As of Friday evening, I have taken my first steps into the world of Apple. Well, that is not technically true, as I've owned a 4th Generation iPod (40GB) for the last couple of years. But it will be the first time that I have ever purchased a computer that wasn't a Windows based machine. Naturally, with a ton of friends who are almost all Windows users, I'm asked "Why, Doc, would you want to spend a crazy amount of money, on a system that isn't compatible with ANY of the software you currently own? Why would you do that?".
Well I think that timing is the issue. For years, you could buy a Mac, and that's what you had. And you spent a heck of a lot of money on it. Granted, Apple Computers have always come with amazingly good software right out of the box (well in recent years anyway), something that Windows can't necessarily brag about, with the possible exception of Solitaire (and to a lesser extent, Minesweeper). Windows machines have always had a more modular intent. You want a new hard drive? Go out, buy a bigger hard drive, and bam! new drive space. A new cool game won't play with your current video card? Go get one that will work. Mac's (with the exception of the current Mac Pro's maybe) don't do this. They are a pain to do anything to, and you pretty well void the warranty if you try. On current iMac's, about the only upgrade you can make, would be to memory. So again, why do this, and why now?
Now I can put Windows on my Mac, and either run it natively through a program that Apple themselves promote called "Bootcamp". This allows me to essentially have a dual boot system, where I choose XP or OS X at bootup (let's be fair, I could also choose some form of Linux, if I wished as well). OR I can purchase a program called Parallels which allows me to run Windows in a window (ironic), from OS X. While this second choice is not 100% of the speed of a native Windows boot, it is apparently pretty darn close. Close enough to run most Windows functions anyway. Sure there are pluses and minuses to both ideas (and I'm not going to toss out my current Windows machine...though it may be a Linux/Windows dual boot before long), but the bottom line is I can run EITHER Operating System on a Mac. I can't run OS X on a Windows based machine. So if you want them both, there is really one choice.
Also, I find that more and more of what I do with a computer is either net surfing, email, word processing, digital music or digital photography oriented (though you wouldn't know it, based on the lack of photos on here. I'll work on that). There is also a plan in the near future to get into digital video. While the first 3 items can basically be done on any computer at this point, it's the last 2 (and the future endeavour) that really swayed me to a Mac. I want to be able to pull down video, alter photos, edit music, possibly create podcasts, or any mashups of those various applications, with style and ease. Frankly, my experience with Windows, in this regard has been just OK. Not great, not horrible. So the Mac, along with the iLife 06 suite which comes with the Mac, won a lot of points with me for those types of projects.
Lastly, the iMac specifically has always interested me. Of all the history of Apple Computers, only the iMac has interested me enough to want one. No tower. Just a big beautiful screen on my desk with a couple of wires coming out of it. No one can deny that an Apple computer LOOKS beautiful. It's a functional piece of art. And I can't wait to get it.
SO, the next posting I have on here, will likely be some documentation of my receiving the iMac. My thoughts, opinions, photos of setup, and general commentary. I expect I'll be a little bit giddy. Hopefully sooner rather than later (Apple claims before Jan 24th, but I'm hoping for next weekend.).
I had to blog this article that I saw on Digg. It would seem that the self-created holiday of the Costanza family on Seinfeld has rung true with the real world. Please check it out, and then prepare for the feats of strength, and the airing of grievances.
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