Monkinetic Weblog

Our kitten Jake has been on a destructive tear lately. Tonight he managed to eat the "" key on Jodi's TiBook. Bad Kitty!

On the morning drive:

Jodi and I found a small antique dresser that needs a bunch of work done on it. I've already started stripping and sanding the old finish off, and we'll be painting it up to go with the (as yet to be determined) color scheme for LT's room. I'm enjoying it too, as it gives me something special I can create/restore for my future son!

Ok, so this is the part where Jodi starts rolling her eyes in dramatic fashion, but I've succumbed to the temptation of responding in audio to Dave Slusher's latest Evil Genius Chronicles audio post. So of course I couldn't just record it, I had to give it a name:

Just Keep Talking - Sept 27, 2004

I may try and figure out how to get that into an <enclosure> thingy, but for now I'll just throw it out there and see if it sticks.

P.S. Another link mentioned in the post: Hugo Schotmann's instructions for recording an audio post on OS X.

I had a dental appointment today, and (despite it's very low battery) decided to take the 'pod along to give me something to listen to behind the whine and grand of the drill. Shudder.

Surprisingly, the battery lasted all the way through the hour+ appointment, and I got to listen to some backlogged Gilmor Gang from IT Conversations. Cool!

Despite the occasional requests and comments from the dentist, and the inevitable experiments in bone-conduction, I found that I was able to follow the show and it really made the time go by faster.

I figured out a better solution for doing the audio blog thing. It's based somewhat on the system that Hugo Schotmann got going, and works pretty well. Dave Slusher is using the same system now for EGC, and notes in his latest audio post that there is some echoey stuff going on in the headphones. I had the same thing, but I think I got distracted by it, where Dave seems to have done just fine.

The trouble I'm having right now is that the drive makes too much noise when chewing through audio data, and without a proper external mic, I get all kinds of whiney noise in the recording. Grr.

This is kind of cool. MarsEdit will upload images to WordPress, if you install this patched version of the xmlrpc.php file.

BTW - this is Cathedral Rock, from our hike over Labor Day this year.

We're in late-night mode again at work. With deadlines upon us, we're scrambling to get stuff done, and wiring bits of applications to other bits as fast as we can. This is the part of software development that sucks, when deadline-driven production takes you off of replacing the tools that desperately need to be replaced.

Sigh.

So far, Jodi and I have experienced mostly great responses to our decision to adopt a toddler from Ukraine. This past week we ran into someone with an antagonistic attitude toward adopting from Ukraine. We were told that the health issues were bad, and that the age we were looking for was a difficult one, and there was just this antagonism that was really frustrating. Jodi and I were kind of taken aback - I mean, adopting is this great thing, and we're getting all this great feedback, and then this hits us. It was frustrating, and it hurt.

We talked it over, and decided that 1) we know we are doing the right thing, 2) we're not going to Ukraine to get the perfect child, we're going to get our child. We know God has a child there waiting for us - our L.T. - and we're trusting in him.

Pervasive Ambience: Networked Tile System - designboom:

>Each tile is embedded with electrical wiring and connectors. When placed together, the tiles form an electrical network that can span throughout entire rooms. This eliminates the mess of cables and cords that would otherwise be present. Designed to work with these networked tiles are "node" tiles, which include: lighting tiles, heated tiles, flat speaker tile."

NetNewsWire and MarsEdit public betas: "Heres whats new in 2.0 and here's the download page.

This is a test of the new MarsEdit blogging app, from Brent Simmons, of NetNewsWire fame.

So, Adam Curry's Daily Source Code has replaced NPR on my morning commute, and imagine my surprise to hear him mention me and my recent comments about link resouces for audio posts in today's show.

Jodi and I got to spend Saturday at an adoption-prep seminar/training put on by the agency we're working with - Adoption Journeys of Arizona. Lonore and Tina, the social workers, were really good, they led various activities, and spoke about the many challenges that adoptees face, physical, emotional, and social developmental delays. Not only did they help us understand to a greater extent the problems we may face, but they spoke encouragingly about ways to approach those issues. Also, getting to meet other families that are adopting or have adopted was awesome. The stories shared over lunch about past experiences and future hopes were enough to make it worth it.

Ok, I'm going to geek out for a minute here... I've been listening to Adam Curry's feed of audio posts today, and noted that he often mentions links to other's sites on the "show" (he is a blogger, after all).

|WordPress| got a mention on Adam Curry's Daily Source Code on Sept. 15. Find the MP3 here (mention occurs around minute 23), in the context of enclosure support and the users that are working on adding it to WordPress.

Frugal Baby: Fun Nursury Ideas.

So... Jodi and I had our first home visit today by a social worker from the agency doing our home study. I was really nervous, though Jodi did not seem too bothered by it all. Tina (our social worker) arrived around 1 o'clock, and just left at around 4.

NEW R.E.M.!

ongoing: Report From the Intel Community >...if I were going back to do it again, I'd seriously consider trying to get into the intelligence business. I could seriously spend a few decades working on technology for pulling important little facts out of oceans of raw data and never, never get bored...