Poppy’s Room, Now With Mural

My mom and her friend Joanne painted a wonderful mural on Poppy’s room. I decided to play with a very fun tool called photosynth to stitch together several photos into one unified picture or the room in 3-D (sort of). It will not work except on IE and FF and you may need to install a viewer (it’s safe, but an annoyance). Regardless, this is my first photosynth and I may make more… not sure at the moment.

Or view it on the photosynth site at: Poppy’s Room

Crazy Base Jumping Video With Wing Suits

This is an absolutely crazy base-jumping video, with wing suits. If I didn’t have the life and family I have now, I could see myself wanting to do this, but there’s too much risk involved for me and I’ve got too much to loose. Still - it’s awesome to see.

wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.

Home From Houston After The Holidays

We went to Houston this year, for Poppy’s first Christmas and spent almost a week with my family.  Everyone loved and was amazed by Poppy, of course and she did splendidly.  She traveled quite well, sleeping for the first part of both flights and playing quietly for the second.  She also did a remarkably good job dealing with all the people she didn’t really know and the back and forth craziness of going from house to house to house.  We of course had a great time and look forward to seeing all of the family again this summer for the bi-annual reunion (every two years).

Obama’s 27 Year Old Speech Writter…

Helping to Write History
By Eli Saslow
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 18, 2008; Page A01

During the campaign, the buzz-cut 27-year-old at the corner table helped write and edit some of the most memorable speeches of any recent presidential candidate. When Obama moves to the White House next month, Favreau will join his staff as the youngest person ever to be selected as chief speechwriter. He helps shape almost every word Obama says, yet the two men have formed a concert so harmonized that Favreau’s own voice disappears.

“He looks like he’s in college and everybody calls him Favs, so you’re like, ‘This guy can’t be for real, right?’ ” said Ben Rhodes, another Obama speechwriter. “But it doesn’t take long to realize that he’s totally synced up with Obama. . . . He has access to everything and everybody. There’s a lot weighing on his shoulders.”

Especially now, as Favreau and the rest of Obama’s young staffers begin a transition that extends far beyond new job titles. Three months ago, Favreau lived in a group house with six friends in Chicago, where he rarely shaved, never cooked and sometimes stayed up to play video games until early morning. Now, he has transformed into what one friend called a “Washington political force” — a minor celebrity with a down payment on a Dupont Circle condo

Inspiring to see someone so young accomplishing so much, through composition alone.

Wonderful Subversive Advertising

15 Ingenious Humanitarian Subvertisements: Creative Advertisements that Advocate Global Causes

more: http://weburbanist.com/2008/02/05/15-ingenious-humanitarian-subvertisements-creative-advertisements-that-advocate-global-causes/

We Refinanced Our Mortgage Today

We have refinanced (or at least started the process) and locked in at 4.96 after paying a point (it was 5.6 without the point, lenders wanting up-front money and assurance in today’s market). We are rolling in the point and closing costs into the new loan and we’ll still be saving $140/month over our current loan (and if we hadn’t rolled in the costs, it would only have saved us $21/month more).

Obviously, this may be biased, but here’s an article that helped me make up my mind:

Say Hello to the Best Rates in History
by Victor Burek
Posted Dec 17 2008, 08:11 AM

In today’s economy things are changing very quickly and you can chase rates for a while but you don’t want to miss the boat. I would advise all readers, determine a rate that makes sense as far as what it costs and how much you are saving. Once rates hit that level, lock, close and move on with your life. Rates can and will go lower, but there is much more room above for rates to go higher then below for rates to go lower. And keep in mind, LIFE happens, things can change, you could simple forget to make 1 payment to a credit card and your credit could fall and now you don’t qualify. One month ago, rates where 1% higher then they are now, 2 months ago rates where 1.25% higher then now. So, as you can see, things can move quickly.

Repost: If Programming Languages Were Religions

A very funny post for the programming nerds out there:

If programming languages were religions…

By amz - Monday, December 15, 2008 at 14:52

PHP would be Cafeteria Christianity - Fights with Java for the web market. It draws a few concepts from C and Java, but only those that it really likes. Maybe it’s not as coherent as other languages, but at least it leaves you with much more freedom and ostensibly keeps the core idea of the whole thing. Also, the whole concept of “goto hell” was abandoned.

It’s Been A Busy Couple Of Years…

The Mates Of State, The Story Of Taking The Family On Tour

There’s a great video done by Dan Harris of ABC news on the Mates of State and what the family does when they go on tour.

I love the wholesomeness of it and it fits right in with what I think they would be like.  This band is one of my absolute favorites and that’s only encouraged by this peak into their good parenting and family priorities.

http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerindex?id=6318255

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=37203373110&ref=mf

Poppy Is Walking Like A Champ

So there’s no going back… Though she’s still holding on to fingers when offered (or when produced after her sometimes insistent request) she is walking all the way across rooms without assistance and often without falling.  For the most part, when she does fall, it’s fairly controlled and without incident.

All of our childproofing is being reassessed now.  It’s a best effort thing anyway - for the most part, she’s going to get into whatever she can, we just try to remove the most dangerous and delicate things from 4 feet or lower.

Recently Read An Excellent Article On Walmart’s Perception As Evil.

An excellent article on Walmart being evil or not - a fairly objective seeming overview of the major points of discussion for the different camps on Walmart.

That’s a good thing, right? If a company achieves its lower prices by finding better and smarter ways of doing things, then yes, everybody wins. But if it cuts costs by cutting pay and benefits–or by sending production to China–then not everybody wins. And here’s where the story of Good Wal-Mart starts to falter. Just as its Everyday Low Prices benefit shoppers who’ve never come near a Wal-Mart, there are mounting signs that its Everyday Low Pay (Wal-Mart’s full-time hourly employees average $9.76 an hour) is hurting some workers who have never worked there. For example, unionized supermarkets in California–faced with studies showing a 13% to 16% drop in grocery prices after Wal-Mart enters a market–have been trying to slash labor costs to compete, triggering a protracted strike. The $15 billion in goods that Wal-Mart and its suppliers imported from China in 2003, meanwhile, accounted for nearly 11% of the U.S. total–contributing, some economists argue, to further erosion of U.S. wages.

Where you stand on Wal-Mart, then, seems to depend on where you sit. If you’re a consumer, Wal-Mart is good for you. If you’re a wage earner, there’s a good chance it’s bad. If you’re a Wal-Mart shareholder, you want the company to grow. If you’re a citizen, you probably don’t want it growing in your backyard. So, which one are you?

Try To Stay Out Of The Doghouse

source: JC Penney: Beware of the Doghouse

Birth Control Pills Affect Women’s Taste In Men

I thought this was a very interesting article

Birth Control Pills Affect Women’s Taste in Men

It’s all about scent. Hidden in a man’s smell are clues about his major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genes, which play an important role in immune system surveillance. Studies suggest that females prefer the scent of males whose MHC genes differ from their own, a preference that has probably evolved because it helps offspring survive: couples with different MHC genes are less likely to be related to each other than couples with similar genes are, and their children are born with more varied MHC profiles and thus more robust immune systems.

A study published in August in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, however, suggests that women on the pill undergo a shift in preference toward men who share similar MHC genes. The female subjects were more likely to rate these genetically similar men’s scents (via a T-shirt the men had worn for two nights) as pleasant and desirable after they went on the pill as compared with before. Although no one knows why the pill affects attraction, some scientists believe that pregnancy—or in this case, the hormonal changes that mimic pregnancy—draws women toward nurturing relatives.