WonderWorks

Seen out the window in Orlando while riding back to the airport. Not sure if the picture is clear; it's made to look like one building fell upside down on another. Even had upside down trees and a Fedex box.

Update: WonderWorks has a website where you can see the building even clearer. Seems to be a big funhouse.

Fun badge flags

Got these at a conference. Most badge flags say something like Speaker or President. I think these are much better. I chose Computer Geek, but my favorite is Official Something.

Technolust

More stuff that is just so cool, you can't help but want it. At least, if you're me.

Rechargeable AA batteries, each with their own built-in recharger. They're NiMH, not those old tired NiCads (does anybody actually sell those anymore?) The coolest part is how they charge - pop off the top, they'll charge off the USB port of your desktop or laptop. This is ideal for my portable cordless mouse, which takes two AAs. For the AAA batteries used by my MP3 player, I guess I'll need one of these instead. For the opposite conversion (batteries used to power USB devices), check out these.

The Bioloid robot has to be seen to be believed, and ThinkGeek obliges with a video (same page). It starts off simple, showing how the robot can back up after meeting up with an obstacle, then goes to more complex examples: laying down and standing up again, and even a "self defense" mode, where the robot gracefully moves to block anything approaching its head from the front or either side. Very cool. As it should be, for a mere $899.99, assembly required. Bioloid is more of a kit than a prebuilt robot, but it comes with 18 servo motors, IR sensors, proximity sensors, a microphone and speaker. It also comes with three different software packages to program and control the robot, described in 77MB of PDFs.

Thomas Edison "talking tapes", Valentines edition. This is a truly geeky gift, with enough history to make you think it's educational, not just fun.

Hold the pointy end in your mouth, pull taut, and run a fingernail down the grooves. It might take a few tries to get the speed right, but you'll hear a voice in your head. Hold or tape the pointy end to a cup, balloon, empty box, or any other resonator and you can share the message with your friends and loved ones. You get 5 different messages per pack - 4 messages of love ("Be My Valentine," "I Love You," "Hello Sweetheart," and "You Turn Me On") and 1 message if you screw things up ("I'm a Jackass"). Hopefully, you'll only need the "I'm a Jackass" strip to make your Valentine's Day sweetie laugh. Hopefully.

Think of it as a linear version of a vinyl record player where your fingernail is the needle and you've got the general idea. The ThinkGeek page has another video demonstrating how it sounds.

No well-equipped desk can ever be considered complete again without a USB Laser Guided Missile Launcher. No, this is not a joke, but it does sound incredibly fun. The launcher has a real laser, and shoots three foam missiles. The package includes both Lite and 3-D software, and both versions are able to control as many launchers as you have USB ports on your computer. The 3-D software will even sound a countdown for each launch. Unlike the Cube Defender I wrote about previously, this one doesn't have an autonomous mode. I guess you can't have everything.

We are the web (2.0)

A quick post serving three purposes:

1. Occupy some time while I download some code from work.
2. Forward around a cool little video that explains Web 2.0 in a very non-technical terms. A great little primer.
3. Test a new blogging tool. (Performancing)

I really like the video, though you have to watch quickly as the text changes fast. It took me a more than a few seconds to realize that when the person writes something, then erases it and writes something else, both the before and after messages are meant to be read and absorbed. The soundtrack is nice, but you won't miss anything with the volume down.

Daylight savings time

The rules for Daylight Savings are changing in the U.S. this year, in accordance with the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

Clocks will be set ahead one hour on the second Sunday of March instead of the current first Sunday of April. Clocks will be set back one hour on the first Sunday in November, rather than the last Sunday of October. This will make electronic clocks that had pre-programmed dates for adjusting to daylight saving time obsolete and will require updates to computer operating systems.

Without being overly dramatic, this sounds like it could require some Y2K-style remediation. Now I'm not saying anyone should rush out and buy batteries, or restock their nuclear fallout shelters. There's not likely to be any national shutdown. I'm just saying it may require a lot of extra attention to old, old systems within the next month.

The dates when Daylight Savings starts and ends haven't changed since 1966. This is before even many of the Y2K-compliant systems were created. Certainly any Y2K remediation would have been finished before this went into law. However, there may have been many systems that either didn't need to be updated for Y2K compliance, or which may have been installed since then in ignorance of this new rule.

There were some changes to DST rules in the last year or so, as regions like Indiana and Arizona now follow DST where they did not before. I don't know if this was a result of the same law. If so, then hopefully the programmers read the whole law and adapted for this at the same time.

On the other hand, preventing an exception for Indiana is more about stripping out code than modifying it. What made Y2K such a problem was all the calculations that intrinsically treated dates as numbers, making it hard to identify where the rules were broken. For instance, it's a lot easier to find and fix a program like:

if (Today >= "04/01/2007" 
    and Today <= "04/07/2007"
    and DayOfWeek(Today) == "Sunday")

...but not so easy if they wrote it like this:

if (var1 >= 61 
    and var1 <= 68 
    and var2 = 1)

All that to say, if you're behind on WindowsUpdates, this would be a great time to get caught up.

My dad's favorite things

Hello, my name is Ethan. I am posting these pictures to my dad's blog. I chose these pictures because my dad likes electronicals.

I took this picture in my room. I think I look really cool. My dad likes to wear sunglasses lots of the time.

This is a picture of my dad. His shirt says SYN and the back of his shirt says ACK. That is the first thing that two computers say before talking to each other. My dad is a computer fixer. He is called a Computer Geek, but not the bad kind of geek. Geek is a fancy word that they used as an insult many years ago that they have now.

The Ant Bully is a life lesson. It teaches you not to be a bully, because bad things can happen to you. People will bully you back. But if you do nice things to the other people, then you will get nice things back. And also, weird things will happen to you.

This alarm clock is from the movie Cars. Also, the alarm doesn't work very good. It doesn't go off but it is good to look at. It has Lightning McQueen on it, and it makes noises. It says "Oh yeah, Lightning is ready!", and Lightning McQueen has lots of stickers on him.

These eggs are not called eggs. They are called Oggz. They are odd eggs and change color. They look beautiful, and if you put them on the charger they will run all day and all night. There are three Oggz and the charger looks like a triangle. I got them as a birthday present from Grandma Barnes who bought them at thinkgeek.com.

Here is a picture of my camera. Nothing unusual really. It's a regular old camera, except it runs on batteries, and can't be charged, but the batteries can be taken out and charged. I took these pictures off of my camera a few days ago, and blogged them today. The reason that I took a picture of this, is because I got the camera for a present. It was a birthday present.

Well, that's about everything. Oh, and the reason that I picked these pictures was because my dad likes technology. I love my dad a lot, and I hope you enjoy these pictures that I blogged.

Goodbye until next time I blog!

EJW/btw

Another goalie?

Emma seems to think she is. She hasn't figured out that she can stay near the goal and still kick the ball. All in good time...

Baby on the way

Yes, we are in fact expecting our third. Let’s get some vital stats out of the way:

• Our working due date is Aug 17.
• We know it’s not twins
• No, we weren’t trying.
• Yes, we are happy.
• Yes, we’re going to find out gender if we can.
• Morning sickness has been almost as bad as with Emma.
• No, you may not touch The Belly.

We found out ourselves about a week before all the Grandparents came out for Emma’s birthday. Trish did a fabulous job not saying anything to her mom so that we could wait until my parents arrived. We racked our brains for some fun, original way to announce it. We even called Jen for ideas - I still love her response — “Get out!” — when we told her. We talked about a “Baby’s First Christmas” ornament with the 2006 crossed out and 2007 written in, but we thought that might be too subtle. I was surprised at how many really cool “I’m Pregnant” t-shirts are out there (see this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and best of all this) (yes, you have to click on all of them), but we couldn’t get them in time, or in the right size, or both.

The night we picked my parents up from the airport, we stayed up a few minutes longer (2-ish in the morning) to hang five stockings over the fireplace, figuring this would elicit some questions. Unfortunately, that clue didn’t work as well as we’d hoped. Tricia’s mom picked up on it about 20 minutes after she got up, but my parents had to be “informed” by the kids (who also didn’t figure out what five stockings meant). Ethan went on about how “his dreams have come true”. Emma practically adopted the baby from the very first — we made the announcement on her birthday after all.

At the first OB appointment, we got ultrasound pictures. Sorry for the blurriness - it’s hard to take a closeup with a camera phone, especially on that darned shiny thermal paper. According to both the ultrasound and a website we found, the baby is about the size of a coffee bean.

At the second appointment, we got another ultrasound picture as a side effect of not being able to locate the baby’s heartbeat using the little doppler wand thingy. (What a pain!) Now we’re up to an inch and a half, head to butt. We wrote it on a piece of paper for Emma, and found that’s exactly the length of her pinkie finger.

Now in Tricia’s 13th week (LMP), the baby is supposedly about 2.5 inches (head to butt) or 3.5 inches long (head to toe), and the morning sickness is starting to fade. Tricia’s still offended by certain smells and foods and sounds, but has been weaning herself off the anti-nausea medicine.

Now we move into the second trimester, when we can seriously start shopping for houses, and also shape up this house to sell it (ugh!). We’ve talked it over, and we just don’t think it’s really practical for us to stay in this house with five people. We’re looking into public storage as a way to “declutter”, and some necessary repairs, plus getting prequalified for a new mortgage. (Spammers: buzz off.)

Whew! Got this one off my list. Not having set the famework has made it really awkward to think about posting, since I couldn’t make offhand references to what I hadn’t said yet.

Watch soon for a special guest poster. He’s got a camera and he’s not afraid to use it.