Here’s a great short by Disney Animation.
I haven’t yet shown it to my little girl but I am sure she will love it. It’s something I picked up from my RSS feed via Fro Knows Photo.
I follow Jared’s feed for really good RAW editing advice and photo tips but watch the video and you’ll understand why he shared it.
Crayons and imagination, what else do you need? Oh yeah, a dragon really helps too.
This cool animation is a double bonus as my little girl loves to draw and make things.
The boy? He’s currently into WW II tanks, planes, submarines… You get the idea. 
Thanks to the Mary Sue for posting this.
Update: Sometimes I DO over think a problem and a solution. Which is odd because SSL is also one of my (supposedly!) strong points. Skip to the comments below for something that Andrew Nacin pointed out. 
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Part of my professional life is to think about topics like data leakage. That’s when you do something and, without realizing it, you transmit information that you hadn’t intended to.
For example, my company may have an internal web page with this URL:
And on that page is a link to a NY Times DealBook blog posting as a reference. One of the readers in my company clicks on that link without hesitation. Why wouldn’t they click? That’s what the link is there for.
When Dealbook processes their web access logs, they’ll see a URL as the HTTP referer (I’m spelling it correctly after this) that the company or person who clicked that link may not want them to see.
And poof! the Tin Foil Hat is in place. Any links in your post content or comment text will have their links sent to your very own link shortner and the remote site will only see the short link as the referrer.
Read on to see how it works. More
Tim Daly’s always good, but add Nathan Fillion and it’s just plain GENIUS.
The show is well produced and my favorite part is take 2 with Michael Rosenbaum.
For years I’ve been using the Logitech MX Revolution mouse and it’s gotten long in the tooth. The pointer would stutter, the mouse buttons wouldn’t click, the click would release at the worst time, etc.
I could read the signs and it was time for it to go.
I was leaning towards getting the Performance Mouse MX but I figured I’d give Microsoft a shot and picked up the Touch Mouse. Naturally I got the “artistic” version. Both versions are expensive.
The Touch Mouse is supposed to be the Microsoft version of the Magic Mouse. The materials are nowhere near Apple standards but it’s a good plastic attempt. The ergonomics are acceptable and it’s comfortable to use. I prefer to be able to rest my hand on the mouse and it’s just the right size.
There is just one little drawback. It really only has one physical button so mouse button combinations are not doable. When you want to right mouse click you need to lift your finger off of the left side and there is no middle button. This is not really a problem and I’ve been using the Apple Magic Mouse like this for a long time. By installing AutoHotkey I’ve already started making macros for Apple like mouse-keyboard combinations.
I’m bringing this up for one reason. In FPS games, I frequently press and hold down the right mouse button to zoom into my target while pressing the left button to fire. This is a good strategy while hiding behind cover.
. . .
Okay, that will take some getting used to. I’ve already mapped the right mouse button to the left control in one game and with a little practice I’ll be back to normal. It’s a good thing I haven’t purchased MW3 yet.
Update the very next day: I returned the Microsoft Touch Mouse to Best Buy and picked up the Performance Mouse MX. It’s on sale and the price now matches the Touch Mouse. It was the buttons or lack of buttons that made me do it; this is not a mouse for anyone who plays games.
So while I was putzing around with my SSL sites and getting some grief with mod_gnutls, I realized that my life really would be much easier with a valid wildcard SSL cert.
So naturally I went to StartSSL and went through the process for a Class 2 Validation. I had meant to do it for a long time and have been using their free Class 1 certificates for ages.
The process was easy and once I logged in, I uploaded some documentation and waited for the administrative work to complete. I used PayPal and shortly afterwards I received a phone call from Startcom. It was Eddy Nigg personally calling me to ask me the control questions.
I couldn’t help myself and I laughed out loud. I have been long admiring what he and his company have been doing with affordable SSL certs. I regard what other CAs charge as quite a successful scam and StartSSL’s efforts have been well on par with the other “Big names”.
So now I’m successfully validated, using a wildcard SSL cert for my entire domain, and I am officially a satisfied customer. I can’t recommend them enough.
ThinkGeek has something really good coming in December. Seriously, I’m thinking of getting this for the holiday season!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZXM_g3mqew
Google’s car navigation for Android phones is pretty good.
The majority of my work is 9 to 5 weekdays but when I need to make (fully approved, vetted, it’s-not-my-fault-and-I-won’t-do-it-again) production changes I have to wait for after 5 PM. Depending on the potential impact, I have to wait until Saturday. This weekend the group I work in was doing Big and Potentially Terrible Things™ and I was part of that.
Yesterday I left the house at 5 AM, drove to Queens and Chinatown to pick up 2 co-workers, and drove 2 and a half hours to Princeton, NJ. I got home after 8 PM. And I used the Google Maps Navigation for Mobile Beta (GMNMB?) as my tool to get there. I turned on Bluetooth (I was in the car), Wi-fi, and GPS and plugged my phone into the car charger. The cup holder doubled as my GPS mount.
My phone has GPS, Verizon assisted, and Google assisted location services and I turned it all on. I did not expect wi-fi to work exactly but I wanted to use that to narrow down my position. It worked fantastically and suggested routes that I would never have thought of. Before 8 AM the drive was uneventful and except for my pal who knew better, the navigation worked well.
When I drove home, instead of suggesting the painful Holland Tunnel to BQE which it did on the way there, it lead me to Staten Island and eventually to the Belt Parkway. It took me just 2 and a half hours to get home about 100 miles away.
Yes, that doesn’t sound breathtakingly fast but I drove through New Jersey, Staten Island, and Brooklyn on a Saturday evening. Fellow New Yorkers who drive will know what I’m taking about.
The map data does not live on my phone and it’s all downloaded and cached from off of the Internet. This entire solution is dependent upon good connectivity. If I were driving to a desert in Arizona then I would use a Garmin or TomTom. But for driving in a metropolitan area this solution can’t be beat.
