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What daily comics do you read and enjoy? I have my favorites from the newspaper, like Zits and Baby Blues. Ironically I can relate to both of those comics. However, my favorite comic, Pearls Before Swine, is usually only in the large market newspapers. Fortunately comics.com allows you to read all of their daily comics so I can catch Pearls. Usually Pearls is one of the more edgy comics I read, but extremely funny. Sunday Stephen Pastis, the write of Pearls, went a different direction with his comic. Apparently Stephen lost his father-in-law and decided to dedicate that comic to him. It is a poignant moment in this comic and I am impressed Stephen was so willing to be that vulnerable in a public forum. My condolences to Stephen and his family on losing his father-in-law. From what was written in the comic that day he sounds like an awesome guy. Perhaps some of that has been passed on to Stephen and will continue to be passed on in his work.

Sunday Comic

After much hype Apple announced the iPad, a tablet PC that looks like a large iPod Touch. At first glance I was not impressed with the product since it looked like a big iPod Touch. After watching the videos on the Apple website I am much more excited about the product. Aside from its horrible name the iPad packs some really awesome features. Some of its native applications like email, web browser, picture viewing, and calendar have all been made over to take advantage of the larger size touch screen. The way each of these applications is tailored to the multi-touch screen makes using them very intuitive and easy. It will be interesting to see how iPad developers create more applications for this specific device. All existing iPod Touch and iPhone applications will work with the iPad and it even will run them fullscreen. Seeing a game running on that size screen is pretty darn impressive! New with the iPad is an eBook reader. You will be able to purchase a book from the iBook store the same way you purchase music from iTunes. Although there is no keyboard attached to the device a full-size keyboard will popup similar to the iPod Touch. You won’t want to do word processing with this device, but you certainly can do email, browse the Internet, keep your calendar, read a book, listen to music, and watch a movie.

If I were in the market for a new netbook or a low-end laptop I would seriously take a look at the iPad. Most folks are looking for something that is easy to use. Having used netbooks with their clunky, small keyboards, their Windows XP, and their tiny screens I find nothing about them easy. For now I’m only going to be able to lust this device from afar. Perhaps when the second generation of the iPad comes out I will have collected enough pennies to finally hold one in my own hands!

Fellow Netizens (all two who read this blog). Please go to http://savetheinternet.com to learn about a piece of legislation that of all people, John McCain, is sponsoring. This legislation, if passed, will allow the internet providers of the world, Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, etc., to block certain type of Internet traffic unless the customer pays more. This sounds a lot like current cable service, doesn’t it? So if you want to see Hulu.com, YouTube.com, and the other video websites, well you are going to have to pay extra for that. Oh, and for you folks that may be using VOIP services like Vonage, Comcast may decide to block that and tell you that you can only use Comcast’s VOIP services.

Can you smell the stink on this legislation? If this is passed then it is going to be open season for the big Internet providers to do as they please, charge what they want, and block what they want. Sorry for you folks who love talking to Mom and Dad on Skype, Verizon has decided to block that. You can pay for the premium service to receive that traffic though!

Honestly, I don’t get that worked up about much when it comes to technology, but this bill that McCain has proposed is ludicrous and will only take away the freedoms that have fueled so much innovation. He is obviously in the big Internet providers back pocket.

My fingers would fall off documenting all the ways an open Internet has created whole new business models (eBay, Amazon, Netflix), new social avenues (Facebook, Twitter), new technologies (Google, Firefox), and so much more.

Please, take a couple of moments to go to the link I provided above. Get educated on the issue and then do the right thing and contact your congressmen, heaven forbid, over the Internet!

Shawn

Ever since I joined the Cult Of Mac I have been actively migrating all of the applications I use from Windows to Mac. However, there were a couple of applications I had to have, but could not find Mac alternatives. One of those applications is Picasa the absolute best photo management software there is. It wasn’t until recently that the folks at Google decided to deliver Picasa to the Mac. I was hesitant to move to the Mac version at first because some of the features were lagging behind the Windows version, but Google quickly brought it in line.

I was hanging on to that Windows version until the other night when I found out the Facebook and Flickr plugins had been migrate to the Mac version. Woot!!! I was so excited! Now I can have my cake and eat it too. With these plugins you can publish your pictures to Facebook and Flickr with one push of the button. Picasa has a lot of great features like that so I recommend you check it out. Oh, did I mention the price? Free. Picasa love, baby!

Caught the new show White Collar on Hulu last night. What caused me to push the play button was that Matthew Bomer, Bryce Larkin, of the awesome show Chuck is starring in it. It was well worth the hour. White Collar is a very smart show with a good dose of humor and some interesting characters.

I give it a sound two thumbs-up. If you have cable check it out on USA Network, otherwise head to the Net and watch it on Hulu.

Most of you probably have already seen the Disney movie Up, but I got my first viewing on Saturday. I am still digesting the movie, because it was very different than I thought it would be. I’d like to throw together a quick review of the movie and perhaps I will find out if I liked it!

Will I like it?

If you are an adult. The first sequence of the movie was geared totally toward adults. Neither my six or eight year old really understood what was going on for the first third of the movie. Once we got past that I think the movie became more enjoyable for the younger kids.

Will my kids like it?

Some of it, see above. There are certain elements that the kiddies will like. The little boy and the dog were really funny. In fact I think Doug (the dog) was the most endearing character of the whole movie. Movies need to have characters that the view can connect to. The old man was a character I could sympathize with, but not one I could connect with.

Will kids want to see it again?

I don’t think my kids would, but I guess I should ask them. I would like to see it again, but with the lens that it isn’t so much a kids movie, but an animated movie for adults.

It’s PG, but how PG is it?

This movie was very intense in a couple of spots. My six year old missed the viewing and frankly I’m glad.

So bottom line is: Up was a good movie that seems to lean more toward adults themes that some younger kids may just not get. There are some great and funny moments that everyone laughed at, but in the end there seemed too many scenes that a younger crowd may not connect with.

As always, my humble opinion.

As a geek dad I of course read the GeekDad blog (check it out fellow geek dads). A recent article hearkened me back to when I was a kid. I remember how exciting it was every year before school picking out a lunch box. I don’t remember specific lunch boxes from year to year except for the awesome Scooby Doo one I had. Those lunch boxes seemed to fade with the times and were replaced by bland vinyl coolers. I think lunch boxes were one of those cultural markers that marked a very special time in American history. Or maybe I am just feeling nostalgic. Here is a link to the GeekDad blog entry on lunch boxes. I would be interested in hearing what kind of lunch boxes you had as a kid?

I know this blog is starting to sound like the TV blog, but I had to share a new show on the SyFy channel. Warehouse 13 is a new SyFy channel show with a clever twist on a science fiction theme. The United States is housing a giant warehouse of artifacts from history. These artifacts have some sort of energy which can cause strange things to happen. Saul Rubinek, a familiar character actor, plays the curmudgeonly head of the warehouse. In the pilot two secret service agents, played by Joanne Kelly and Eddie McClintock, are recruited by the warehouse to recover these artifacts.

The chemistry between the actors was good right off the bat.  After a couple of shows they have added another major character named Claudia who is very cool. The show is a pretty light snack, not much violence or tense situations and so far, no major skin scenes. It brings some very clever material with a good wit. So I look forward to each episode and would highly recommend as a good summer show.

If you don’t get the SyFy channel then check it out at my favorite online TV website, Hulu!

With the season end of all my favorite TV shows I went hunting for something to watch on Hulu.com tonight. Right on the front page was Land Of The Lost, one of my favorite shows when I was a kid. Hulu is becoming a treasure trove of movies and TV shows. It’s no wonder the Internet providers in the U.S. want to put a cap on your Internet bandwidth. With all the movie and TV content making its way to the Internet, eventually people are going to figure it out and start watching. Hulu is the king of it all, no close competitors in sight.

With all the attention Twitter has gotten with celebrities like Ashton Kutcher and Oprah signing on some might say it has gone mainstream. I say it went mainstream this morning when I found references to it in two of my newspaper comics. Zits and B.C. both had Twitter references in their strip today which surprised me. Not even Facebook has gotten the kind of momentum that Twitter now has in the Internet and pop culture meme. I am not really sure why, because though I have a Twitter account, I cannot figure out what to do with it.

My favorite podcast, TWIT (This Week In Tech), has been talking about Twitter for almost two years now so it has been around the tech culture for quite awhile. Now, it looks like Twitter has truly gone mainstream.

Not much good television these days, especially if you don’t have cable. Chuck is one of those rare shows that gets it right. Good writing, inside jokes, action, romance, comedy. So this is my little campaign to have NBC renew Chuck for at least one more season.

If you are a Chuck fan then go to http://chucktv.net/about-2/chuck-campaign-watchbuyshare/ to learn how you can let NBC know you like the show! If you are not a Chuck fan then go rent the season 1 DVDs or watch it online at the WB.

Being a geek and a dad I watch the GeekDad Blog. Like the Tweetbot post the other day I often find very interesting topics there. One of the topics today was a blog called 1001 rules for my unborn son. This topic of the blog is advice from a father to his son. Now, I don’t necessarily endorse everything the blogger has to say, but I appreciate his sentiment. What 1001 pieces of advice would I give to my sons?

I saw a cool article on Geekdads about something called a Tweenbot. A Tweenbot is best described as:

Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.

Check out the video to watch how people interact with this little guy.

Let the grunting begin, because we are at Man Camp 2009. It looks to be a great weekend with activities like a zip line, full court gymnasium, paintball, trap Shooting, and archery. On top of it we get to grill our own steak, there is a MAN LOUNGE with March Madness basketball games, great worship and a speaker! I will post pictures as time allows.

You know your blog is neglected when you don’t even stop by to look at it once and a while! I thought I would just make sure some joker had not hacked it, when I saw my Merry Christmas post. Pathetic. I am starting to wonder if Facebook isn’t the death of the individual blog. It is alarming how many people are congregating to Facebook. I see a lot of the same type of activity that I used to see from blogs. I guess Facebook just makes it simpler. Personally I think a blog has some of your own personality in it. Even if you are creating a blogger.com blog you can at least pick out the themes you like.

The adopters are still out there blogging strong. Go adoption bloggers!!

Perhaps no one will read this since it is not on Facebook… perhaps I should go post the link there!