A New Hat: I am a Dirty Italian

So this is going to be a quick but necessary post. Erin and I just got back (ok really late Friday, but we slept for the last two days) from Hume Lake San Diego summer camp. Briefly, it was a great experience again (this is my third year as a counselor/leader) there were 4 or 5 first time decisions out of our 71 kids and probably a dozen or so rededications which were really monumental for the kids making them. So a good but exhausting week.

A completely selfish and self-centered hightlight for me is that I got a new hat. Sure I will still wear a baseball style hat with either a Yankees or Miami Hurricanes logo on it, but this hat is going to become a staple of my wardrobe. There is this crazy hat store at Seaport Village in San Diego and that is where I got it. We took all kinds of pictures with the kids trying on all kinds of different stuff and although I normally do not buy frivilous things like cool hats, at least six people told me that I had to buy it so who am I to not give in to that kind of demand? Enjoy the picture.

For the record, I do still have the skanky yankee hat for those of you who know what that is, but it is old and delicate and only makes special appearances.

Not Twittering

I just read Mark Artrip's latest life update post and among the other items he mentioned that he refused to believe that twitter was cool. I do agree with his point about it breaking down into the most mundane details about peoples life, however I do like a steady stream of stuff to read and keep track of.

I dabbled with twitter for a while and then realized that it would only be cool if I was a web developer in New York or San Francisco and hung out with all kinds of bleeding edge Technorati, which I am not, do not, and do not. However, despite my friends all not being OCD or egotistical enough to post everything about themselves has not detracted my desire to track lots of things going on all throughout the day. Presenting my solution.



Here is the combination that I use to get my fix of constantly updated relevant news in an easy to read visual format. RSS Menu, Amigo, Growl. Now you might think that I was issuing commands at you friend but I was not. Click on those links or just read below for how I integrate their functions to make my desktop the most up to date relevant place for me.

RSS Menu is great. I have become a huge fan of subscribing to RSS feeds from blogs and news sources over the last six months. This is for me the best way to stay current on things that I care about. Whether it is the New York Yankees Headlines feed or the latest Apple rumors, I let other people do the hard work looking up and researching all of their crazy stuff and then cherry pick off the stuff that i care about.

I also use a program called Amigo which is billed as a Facebook notification program. It does exactly what it says and you get a little pop up every time one of your friends updates their status on Facebook which I must say for some of you is way to often for you to actually be doing any work when you say you are working. I do wish that it would let you do your own updates without having to go into the site, but maybe they will roll it out in another version. Something that I should tell you about this software is that it is kind of free. Actually, as long as you don't mind being reminded every time you start up your computer how long you have been using Amigo without registering it, then it is free. I think it has been about 130 days or something like that. Let me do updates from my desktop and I will how about that.

Finally, there is the thing that makes both of these apps worth while. The Growl notification system plugin. This is definitely free although I do not know why. It is so handy for so many things. The way that this ties together is that every time one of these two programs updates or there is a new post or anything, a simple drop down (entirely customizable in the looks department) comes out of my menu bar with something like "new article for Uncrate" or "Nathaniel DeZago is in Afghanistan" or whatever. This is quite literally the program that keeps me up to date on everything because otherwise I would not know what is going on with all of my friends. Everyone posts on Facebook sometime, even the slackers out there like me and if you were using this, then you would know right away rather than the next time you actually take the time to go to Facebook. I also find that it is a good way to sort out if you want to take the time to go to a website or not. Since you can get a preview of the articles and headlines, I do not need to physically go to the blog and can keep right on working for real rather than going to check a news feed and then being disappointed.

So this is my Twitter. Sure it is not actually Twitter, but it is how I keep in touch with the constantly updating in real time world that I live in. Let me know what solutions you use for your own situation.

New Blog: Play With Traffic

So maybe this is self promoting, but I do not care that much. For the two of you that read this, take the 

opportunity to check out my new blog called Play With Traffic. 

I have been mentally keeping track of how different cars drive around town in various kinds of traffic anddrawing on all of my observations to see if I can predict who will be good to follow through a traffic light etc. Well to an extent it works, but I thought that I would open the project up to the entire internet and let you all share your stories and add to or debunk some of the stereotypes that I have built up that guide my driving experience.

I am posting as episodes happen to me usually just on the same 5 mile stretch of roads to and from work. Let me know what you think.

WWDC

If you know what those initials mean then you probably do not need to read any further in this post. I watched Steve Jobs Keynote address yesterday as it was happening on MacRumors.com and I have to say that I am excited for all the stuff that will be changed a month from now.

I think that the changes to the .mac/me.com service are overdue and it will be great to have that kind of functionality no matter which platform I am on. As the person who is in charge of creating workflows for our smaller size organization this new service could be a super affordable option for sharing contacts and calendars across the country without having to manage an exchange server of our own. Exciting.

Then of course there is the iPhone. What else do you need in life? Well I could use one to begin with, if you happen to have any extra money that you want to send my way I will use it for that I promise. Anyway on the fly highlights of baseball games during the game? A possibly viable gaming platform without them even having to enter the "video game industry"? That all sounds like a winner to me. I just need it to not be on ATT. The two people out here that we know who have AT&T are always cutting in and out on their phones. Even though those coverage maps clearly show Gilbert as having 3G coverage, I am still a bit leary. Also I don't have $300 for a phone, unless my boss were going to pay for it.

So did I add anything to the overall reaction to the Keynote address? Probably not. Am I really excited about pretty much every announcement including the tantalizing possibilities of Snow Leopard? Yes. I will have more posts later today, but I had to say something about this.