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Cool Things

I've been running into a lot of cool things lately. Lots of them courtesy of Life Hacker and the balance courtesy of StumbleUpon,which is where I found Life Hacerk in the first place. Here's a quick summary of some new faves:

  • Google SMS –This is a demo of the Google SMS system that allows you to text GOOGL (46645) with queries like weather Denver, CO and it will text you back with the results. Damn cool.

  • Send to Phone, in sort of the same vein, is an extension for Firefox that allows you to highlight text in your web browser (say directions, or prices on an item) and send them to your phone as a text message.

  • DHTML Lemmings is a fantastic time-waster … the classic Lemmings game played right over your web browser … yowsa that's cool.

  • Adventure Quest is a cool, free, online RPG that you play in your browser. It's not exactly complicated, but it is entertaining.

  • BackPackIt is sort of a web-scrap book where you can keep lists, notes, and if you're willing to shell out some $$, photos and files.

  • Sims 2 for your phone is showing up this September and from the looks of it, I think it will be very cool

  • The Hipster PDA organizes you in simplicity and style

Share some of your own favorite links!

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Life Poster

In my travels around the web, I surfed onto the Mike Matas blog. As a tech aficionado, Mike has been in my periphery for some time. He's been designing user-interfaces that are awesome for some time now and he's exceptionally remarkable since he's so young … 18 now I believe. Anyhow, I ran into his blog and saw a tutorial he posted on making a life poster and it caught my eye. A very cool idea, especially for summing up a year. Not being a mac user, I set out on my PC quest to make a life poster. I decided the only reasonable medium was Picasa. Picasa is a very cool free photo cataloging system for the PC, from those geniuses over at Google. I started playing with the collaging features of Picasa. While it's an excellent program, they made it a little too user friendly (i.e. cut out a lot of options that would have been nice) so you have to sort of work within its confines. Here's how I did mine:

1. Start by gathering images that you like or that go together for some reason into a folder. You'll need 54 of these for the size I made. These should be pretty good quality images. 1000×1000 dimension minimum. Try to vary your images. You don't want all people or all landscapes. Choose your best images, most colorful, most special. Try to get some outdoors ones … these tend to not be so white/bright. Continue reading “Life Poster”

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Happiness is a Green Kitchen


Well, it may have taken us a whole week, but it was definitely worth it. We started last Sunday by stripping the wallpaper. That took four of us (thanks Mom and Kell) the whole day. Monday, Kelly, Matt and I primed and painted the first coat. Wednesday, Matt and I managed to get the second coat on and Saturday, Matt and I (more Matt than I) did some touch-up.

I thought I had a photo of what it looked like before with me, but I don't. I'll see if I can find one when I get home and post it, but if not, you'll have to use your imagination. It was a very light greeny tan burlappy sort of paper. Pretty really, though the whole house is earth-tones which doesn't quite fit what Matt and I like. The real problem though, was that the wall-paper was totally un-suitable for the kitchen. It absorbed …. everything. We had a few grease spots even and we're not really messy people (or people who fry things). It is good to get it gone and it makes us smile everytime we look towards the kitchen. We LOVE IT!!!!

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Pop Quiz, Hot Shot

Q. What do you call a baseball game where you spend 7 innings in the bar, 1 inning at the game and 1 inning driving home?

A. A good time.

Yep, that's pretty how much our night went. Matt, my mom, my sister, and I were invited to the Rockies' game by our friend Mikey via one of the sub-contractors that he works with. We all gathered at Fado and had some fish and chips and some drinks. When the game was about to start, Mikey, Holly and Mikey's parents left to go enjoy their catered plush seats. We were going to go too, but the nice gentlemen hosts way-laid us and enticed us into having some more drinks. We joined them … for what ended up being more than just a few drinks (some of us more so than others … ahem) and a helluva-lotta laughs. We rolled into the game in the 7th inning and saw our Rockies' score two points on a home run.

Baseball was never this much fun! Continue reading “Pop Quiz, Hot Shot”

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The Bionic Dog


Since Loki is so very spirited, it's been difficult for him to settle down long enough to heal. And he's been a bit frustrated because of it. His “box” which he used to love to nap in has become hated and he stages a sit-in every morning at the door to the garage, silently demanding to be taken to Doggy Daycare to play. Even with his tranqs, he's still pretty unhappy and he was scratching his incision with his back leg and making it bleed. So we took him back to the vet and they wrapped the lovely green bandage tightly around his tummy and a trip to the dollar store yielded his fetching footwear (and diminished his stopping-power by 70%).

And now he can be on tranqs less and cavort happily(ish) around the back yard. We're hoping that with the aid of the bandage that by Monday he can get the cone off and return to Doggy Daycare … for all our sakes.