http://www.declan.net Wed, 23 Jul 2008 06:53:54 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Today's lunch in Santa Barbara. Holly kept it to make into a hat. http://www.declan.net/2008/07/22/scary-lunch/ http://www.declan.net/2008/07/22/why-to-ride-the-train/ http://www.declan.net/2008/07/22/this-is-smiff-being-social/ Playing with the new app This is Andrew. http://www.declan.net/2008/07/22/iphone-wordpress-app/ I am not a Mac head, but we've had some additions to the toy cache. The campus bookstore had a great deal on a 24" iMac, with a rebate on an iPod. So Elaine got the big Mac and I got an iPod Touch. It's a ton ... http://www.declan.net/2008/07/19/new-toys-24-imac-ipod-touch-iphone-3g/ We tried a new place for lunch yesterday called Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot (address: 4718 Clairemont Mesa Blvd, San Diego, CA 92117). It was very niiiice! Phelan (@imagium), a BarCampSD buddy, had requested a while back that when we declare a BarLunch on Twitter that we pick somewhere in ... http://www.declan.net/2008/07/19/lunch-at-little-sheep-mongolian-hot-pot/ Nathan was promoted to Brown Belt in Kajukenbo last weekend: Lots of cool action shots: Let's hope he uses his power for good... ;) http://www.declan.net/2008/07/19/nathans-brown-belt-test/ I can't decide whether this is cool or obnoxious: Five planes flying at high altitude in formation dot matrix printing the sky is geeky cool. Reading about insurance companies and bad radio djs in the sky is kind obnoxious. From www.skytypers.com: Five aircraft flying at 10,000 FT. emitting biodegradable vapor "PUFFS" in ... http://www.declan.net/2008/07/19/cool-or-obnoxious/ Twice. Twice the stupid dog fights with a skunk in the backyard. For the record, peroxide, baking soda, and vinegar take out about 80% of the stink. For the record, 20% skunk stink is still almost unbearable. Stupid dog. http://www.declan.net/2008/07/19/for-sale-cheap-stupid-dog/ I got to go to ALA (American Library Association) in Anaheim, CA this year. I've worked in Libraries IT for the last 5 years, but have never made it to an ALA. Anaheim is just under two hour's drive from San Diego, and Robert tricked me into teaching ... http://www.declan.net/2008/07/19/ala2008-in-anaheim/ Way back in June, Robert McDonald, David Minor, Ardys Kozbial, Chris Jordan, and I taught a day long seminar on Data Grids in Libraries for LITA (Library & Information Technology Association) in Anaheim, CA as a pre-conference for ALA (American Library Association). Anaheim = Disney, don'tcha know? All of the images from ... http://www.declan.net/2008/07/19/data-grids-in-libraries-lita-class/ I've redesigned the look and feel of the blog, mainly so I could play with a widget-able WordPress template. The credit for the design is at the bottom of the page. The bridge picture at the top is the Tower Bridge in London. I took this picture ... http://www.declan.net/2008/07/19/new-declannet-blog-template/ I'm way behind on blogging, so I set aside some time this morning. It's been a hectic couple of months, and appears to be the same in the near future. Lots of work and personal travel, Nathan graduating high school and getting ready for college, kid management during the no-school ... http://www.declan.net/2008/07/19/catchup-blogging/ To all of my fans across the world, especially the adolescent Chinese girls constantly IMing me, I'm not Declan Galbraith. Yes, I AM hot, and yes I can carry a tune, but I'm no Declan Galbraith: (5:56:54 AM) NAME: this is declan. right?! IM be back plzz!!!!! ilyssssm<333333 (5:56:54 AM) declansnwl : ... http://www.declan.net/2008/07/02/im-not-declan-galbraith/ Last Wednesday was a full moon very close to the summer equinox, so Erin and I went out to the park and waited for it to come up: Not great, but some cool color. I should have brought out the telescope, but it's too heavy for my mule... um, Erin ... http://www.declan.net/2008/06/22/full-moon-and-some-night-shots/ Congrats to Nathan (on the right - his buddy Gerry is on the left)! Nathan graduated from Westview High School yesterday. Grandma came out to see: And Diardra and Doug flew out too! Erin was thrilled to cheer on her brother: After the ceremony: (Can you spot Nathan? ;) We went to Adams Avenue ... http://www.declan.net/2008/06/13/nathan-r-a-graduate/ So many times I visit a city and think, "man, I wish I had my bike!" Well, with a little planning and the generosity and height of Joe Gross, I was able to borrow a bike and we did 55 miles from the Mission district, across the Golden Gate ... http://www.declan.net/2008/05/27/awesome-bike-ride-the-the-grosses-in-sf/ A few weeks ago, San Diego held its third BarCamp and Dan Tentler (@Viss) and Billy Marsh (@cannibal) made a mini-defcamp challenge. Gabe (@gebl), Holly (@pomopants), and I (@declan) won last year in about 2 hours, so Dan vowed to make this year's challenge much harder. He succeeded. ... http://www.declan.net/2008/05/20/barcampsd3-and-minidefcamp2/ Yes, I'm too young to have this going on: http://www.declan.net/2008/05/17/nathan-and-roses-prom/ Here's a very cool video about KPBS and the fire map they created during the October 2007 wildfires: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7y4MlYNBTI[/youtube] http://www.declan.net/2008/05/12/google-maps-and-san-diego-wildfires/ Some days, this is what my job feel like: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMGJB410Ccs[/youtube] found on boingboing http://www.declan.net/2008/04/24/what-is-it-you-do-here/ I went through all of my England Trip pictures and pulled out the best ones: http://www.declan.net/2008/04/23/best-of-england-trip-pictures/ As part of this England trip, the bunch of us hopped a train from Southampton to Salisbury, then a cab to Stonehenge: Oddly enough, it wasn't even 18" tall! By the time I got all the way around, taking way too many pictures (I'll upload once I'm in a country with bandwidth), ... http://www.declan.net/2008/04/09/stonehenge-or-stonecake/ I'm in London right now, actually in a north suburb called Watford. My aunt lives nearby. I've come over for 2 weeks, the first at a work conference called Open Repositories in Southampton. This week I'm on vacation in London, first in Watford, then heading over to Gillingham in Kent ... http://www.declan.net/2008/04/09/london-ruminations/ I took Erin with me to go to the San Diego Bloggers Meetup. Dan Tentler was on hand to take pictures with his new light boxes: She decided to wear a geek shirt to match my stylin' MacVeritas shirt! http://www.declan.net/2008/03/26/erin-and-declan-attend-the-sd-bloggers-meetup/ At a conference recently, Casey Bisson introduced me to the Lensbabies camera lens. I soon ordered one, and it came in yesterday. I took it out with the beer crowd tonight and got some fun shots: Here's Cooper, looking way cooler than he oughta, thanks to my lens: Schell wasn't amused that ... http://www.declan.net/2008/03/22/playing-with-a-lensbabies-20/ I was watching a couple friends flirting on twitter today and started talking to Gabe about a good word for flirting on twitter. I came up with "twirting" and looked around to see of someone else had come up with it. I didn't see it in ... http://www.declan.net/2008/03/21/add-twitter-vocabulary-to-wikipedia/ Last Sunday, we went to see our buddy Victoria from the libraries play in her drumming group called San Diego Taikos. We were late, as usual, so we missed part of the opening act, the Super Sonic Samba School. We got a standing spot a bit at ... http://www.declan.net/2008/03/18/taiko-japanese-drumming/ Jenny, Holly, Elaine and I took a trip to the Anza Borrego desert to take pictures of the wild flowers. I stole Jenny's "looking up" technique and got some pretty pictures: Here's a panorama of one of the flower fields with a mountain in the background. Click the image to see ... http://www.declan.net/2008/03/10/desert-wild-flowers/ This is a great video from CommonCraft, extolling the virtues of Twitter. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o[/youtube] http://www.declan.net/2008/03/06/video-twitter-in-plain-english/