Category: Uncategorized

Both boys had birthdays last month (nine and seven!), and they set their sights on the new Nintendo DSi. That was a bit pricey, so we gave the boys a chance to earn some money towards their gift through extra chores. When the DSi finally came out a month after their birthdays, we picked up…

All I need to do is push “1”, and serious money awaits: https://clients4.google.com/voice/embed/embedPlayer

Pulitzer-prize winning historian Bernard Bailyn: Twitter is a one-man show. One has complete freedom of expression, including, if one chooses, the freedom to be scurrilous, abusive, and seditious; or, on the other hand, to be more detailed, serious and ‘high-brow’ than is ever possible in a newspaper or in most kinds of periodicals. At the…

Back in January, we set up the official Blogger account on Twitter. We had a general idea of what we hoped to accomplish – better interaction with passionate users, quick communication of known issues, bug fixes, etc. – but this was not a long planned deliberate move by us. If anything, it was a bit…

On my way out the door to SXSW, I walked past the bookshelf in our bedroom and took The Dark Tower off the shelf. I originally read the entire Dark Tower series in 2005, effectively back-to-back-to-back, and adored them. I can’t really recall a Stephen King book I haven’t enjoyed, but a few stand out:…

Took another crack at hacking my site’s template over the last few days, mainly to better understand what options are out there for Blogger users. I’d gotten pretty tired of the prior site’s design – too much padding between sections, very choppy presentation, and a general lack of consistency through the page. (Didn’t take long:…

I’d been invited to speak at a couple SXSW conferences but had conflicts each time. Ironically, I’m not speaking this year but given Blogger’s long history with SXSW, I was eager to come and see what the fuss was about. I’m glad I’m here. I’ve attended dozens of tech and industry conferences over the years,…

I leave for SXSW tomorrow, and will be there through Tuesday. While I really don’t like traveling over weekends without the family, Blogger has a long history at SXSW and I didn’t feel that I could miss this. We’re having a party with Google Reader Sunday night, so if you’re in the Austin area please…

Oh! what a tangled web we weave… (Sir Walter Scott, Marmion) Earlier this week, a friend of mine’s father passed away from a sudden heart attack. He blogged about his father’s loss, and I did what I normally do when I see a post in Google Reader that I find noteworthy, interesting or worth coming…

Forgive me a brief indulgence in some Illinois politics: there was a special election today in Rahm Emanuel’s old district. Twelve Democrats were running. Special elections are almost always hard to predict, and turnout will be low. Tonight, Cook County Board Member Mike Quigley won, and as Lynn Sweet notes, his campaign manager was Tom…