Wow. Seven years as of yesterday.
Seven years ago, I had a great job. A career in IT.
Seven years ago, we hadn’t been in our new house even a full year.
Seven years ago, we were churchless.
Seven years ago, we were childless.
Now, I do not have a career in IT, but I do have a job: being a stay-at-home dad. And it’s awesome.
Now, we’ve been in the house nearly eight years.
Now, not only do we have a church, but that church has given me my best friend, and yet another purpose: leading some of our collegians in Bible study.
Now, we have two wonderful boys, six and thirteen months. They are absolute joys.
I’m blogging less. Twittering more. Chasing a little guy all around the house. Having fun.
It’s not all a bed of roses, but there are more ups than downs, and I thank God for all of these blessings.
Tag: site
Today marks the conclusion of six years of blogging at Retrophisch.
Two thousand, two hundred, sixty-three entries.
Two thousand, two hundred, sixty-three bits of myself, revealed for passers-by. Two thousand, two hundred, sixty-three things I thought you might find interesting. Or funny. Or serious enough to care about. Or to do something about. Or just for me to think about. Or to do something about.
Now to press forward in to the next six…
So today marks the eighth year I’ve done the blogging thing. I won’t go in to any great recap, as I did two years ago. (And I completely failed to note the seventh blogoversary last year.) Needless to say, some things have remained the same, and some things have changed quite a bit.
For one, I’m blogging less, mostly because of Twitter, and if you want to know what I’m up to, or what I’m thinking, in short snippets, you should definitely follow my Twitter account. For another, I’m paying slightly less attention to politics, which used to constitute a good amount of posts. Finally, some days, I just don’t feel like I have much to say in a blog form, so why bother with some drivel to the blog that’s better suited for the 140-character limitation of Twitter, or not for public consumption at all?
Still, I have hopes for more thoughtful posts. I just don’t know when those might begin appearing, though I can guarantee it will be some time in the next eight years… 8^)
Oh, did I forget to mention my wife’s become a blogger?
And that she did so last year?
Whoops.
Well, that takes me out of the running for Husband of the Year™.
(And if you think that’s all I’ve done to take myself out of the running, I have some beachfront property in Scottsdale I’d like to talk to you about.) <rimshot> But enough about me…
The missus began blogging last May as an outlet for the angst and excitement she felt as a result of our seeking to add to our family through adoption. She’s also been talking about our struggles with infertility as we seek to add to our family on our own. At some point she began sharing little tidbits about our life at home, missing her mom, and other things outside the realm of adoption, and I suggested a name change for the blog.
In private conversations with friends, nearly all online, I’ve often referred to our home in general, and the study, from where I compute, in particular, as “the Phisch Bowl”. Seeing how I have no intention whatsoever of allowing the fish (phisch?) meme, courtesy of my anagramed moniker, to die, my abrupt suggestion to her was, “Life from the Phisch Bowl“. So there you go.
A small word of warning. The missus tends to use some shorthand and acronyms she’s picked up from motherhood/pregnancy/infertility forums over the years, and some might not be readily decipherable. Trust me, there was a time when I was constantly asking her what this acronym or that one meant. Should you need similar help, drop me a line, or better yet, drop the missus a line over on her blog, and ask her. Better still, just drop her a line and say hi.
Her latest post also deals with an issue near and dear to our hearts. Once again, Kel will be participating in the March of Dimes’ March for Babies, formerly known as WalkAmerica. Due to a commitment with the little phisch, I won’t be walking this year, but Kelly will, and she’s raising funds.
(Much to my chagrin, she’s already raised more funds for this than I need in total for my mission trip to Juarez, to build houses for the poor there, in June. This includes monies from my own mother, who was asked, along with several friends and family members, to support my trip prior to Kelly beginning her fund-raising. Hrmmm. Perhaps I should outsource my own fund-raising to the missus, since we all know she is far, far more charming a person than I….)
So, drop by her blog and say hi, and if you’re led, help us with the March for Babies.
I love you, sweetheart.
So I got off my duff and finally got around to putting in to place the redesign (realignment?) of the blog that I’ve sat on for the better part of two years. Those of you who normally read the blog from the RSS feed can click over to see the new look. (If you care, that is.) Those of you who read the blog by actually going to it may have noticed the new look over the past couple of days. (Or maybe not, and if that’s the case, I’m left to wonder whether or not that’s a good thing or a bad thing.)
One thing you might notice on the main page is the Twitter section at the top, marked “Recently”. If you are a regular reader of the blog, you may have noticed that my blogging has taken a huge dive in recent months, with most posts consisting of the daily links posting from my del.icio.us account. The reason for that is I’m doing a lot of micro-blogging over on my Twitter account. I say micro-blogging, because Twitter limits each post to 140 characters. (This is largely due to the number of character one can put in to a SMS message, and Twitter has excellent SMS compatibility.) So now you when you visit this blog, you can also see my latest on Twitter.
There’s further tweaking ahead. I likely won’t leave all of those links in the sidebar. They’ll get spun off to a separate page, like the reading list and photos. I’d like to integrate a linkblog in to the main page, a la John Gruber and other bloggers, instead of relying on my del.icio.us account to automatically spit them out each morning. The linkblog would allow more immediate posting, and any comments about the link wouldn’t be limited to del.icio.us’s text field.
The biggest tweak, however, will be under the hood, as I upgrade to Movable Type 4. Hopefully, this will be transparent to you, dear reader, but will empower me and make my blogging life easier in the long run. Let’s hope it doesn’t take another two years for these various tweaks to be made reality.
I have quite a few people to thank for their input and help over the past two years. So many, in fact, that I dare not name them all here out of fear of leaving someone out. Needless to say, those of you who fall in to this category know who are. You occupy prime positions in my instant-messaging buddy list and e-mail address book. You are my friends, and for putting up with my endless questions of “How does this look?” and “What do you think of this?”, or the myriad times when I failed to even ask a question and just IMed you a link with no backgrounding of any sort on my part, you have my sincerest thanks.
If you absolutely hate the new look of the blog, well, that’s your opinion, and you should place any blame for your dislike firmly at my feet. If you absolutely love the new look, it’s because of the wonderful people, mentioned above, who took time out of their lives to share part of mine with me.
Oh, and if you happen to be nostalgic for the old look, you can still find it here, for a little while.
My favorite blogging client has now been revved to version 2. I’ve been using MarsEdit ever since original developer Brent Simmons rolled out the 1.0 product, and I’ve been very happy with it. A couple of months ago, I began beta-testing new owner Daniel Jalkut’s upgrade of the client, and wow, was I ever blown away. Brent never really had the time to devote to MarsEdit, what with the popularity of NetNewsWire, and Daniel has definitely taken MarsEdit to the next level.
One thing I’ve noticed, being on the beta test lists of a few independent and small-shop Mac developers, is the level of responsiveness from those developers. You’re talking directly with the individual responsible for the product, not some project manager or mid-level flunky who really doesn’t get what’s going on with the application. Daniel is no exception, encouraging great participation from those on the beta list, and he always maintains a professional, and very friendly, attitude. It sounds like the the upgrade release is a hit so far, and no wonder, because MarsEdit 2 is a great product.
Great job, Daniel!
(The obvious answer is “Flash sucks, that’s why”.)
Brent Simmons:
We all know that the iPhone doesn’t include Flash. Various theories have been aired.
I have a theory that I haven’t heard yet: Flash wasn’t included because it crashes so much.
I detest Flash. It’s a resource hog, and there are very few Flash-based sites that are well designed to begin with. I hope Google moves YouTube to H.264 video for the “regular” Internet, not just for the iPhone’s access.
Roughly Drafted makes the case that the iPhone is a threat to Flash, as well as to Windows Media and Real. Why? Because H.264 is an standard video codec that doesn’t rely on a software processor, for one. In laymen’s terms, by using H.264, your system doesn’t have to work as hard, because it likely has a hardware processor capable of decoding H.264 without having to hit your general processing unit, which means you get more battery life, use less power, etc.
If you’re a content provider, you don’t have to worry about providing multiple video formats. You can simply output a single, MPEG-based H.264 video that you know users won’t have to have a plug-in for, like Flash, Windows Media, or Real. The other upside is that you don’t have to pay any licensing fees for those three formats, either. Sounds like a win-win to me.
[Wave of the phin to Lee for the Roughly Drafted link, via IM.]
I believe genealogy fascinates a lot of people. We’ve all thought about “Where did I come from?” Most of us have no memories of family beyond our grandparents, maybe our great-grandparents. (I was able to know two of my great-grandmothers, both on my dad’s side, as a child.)
I came across Geni through some random blog readings, and I started a family tree with myself, in the hope I can help my son understand our family history a bit when he gets older.
The cool thing about Geni is that as you add people to your tree, you can invite them to sign up for the site (it’s free, at least for now), and they can add to their own tree, which in turn adds to yours. Think of it as MySpace meets the family tree, social networking making genealogy more practical. After all, my dad knows a lot more about his grandparents and great-grandparents than I do, and he can add a lot more information himself that I might not even think of.
I won’t go in to the whole spiel, because why say what’s already been said? Suffice to say, postings of a certain nature will increase in frequency here, because they are no longer being posted there. Links which appeared in the side bar there will be appearing in the side bar here. Some of you won’t care, some of you will. That’s just the way it is.
I confess I’ve been sucked in to the world of Twitter. It’s kind of addictive, watching what folks like John Gruber, the Iconfactory boys, Maury McCown, and even Darth Vader, are up to.
I’d love to know if my friends have accounts, so I can add you as a friend to mine, and please feel free to add me as a friend to yours. Ping me via IM, drop me an e-mail, or leave a comment.
One cool thing Twitter did last week was they created a Macworld account. By adding this account as a friend, you could follow the postings of those at Macworld Expo as Steve announced the latest and greatest tech from our favorite fruit company. There were so many messages coming in to Twitter through AOL Instant Messenger that Twitter exceeded its allowable AIM traffic, and that service was unavailable for about a day. (To clarify, you couldn’t post to Twitter via AIM; Twitter and AIM were each unaffected.)
You can post to Twitter via your Twitter page, by instant message (Jabber or AIM), or by text message from your mobile phone. (Text message charges from your mobile provider apply, but there’s no charge from Twitter.) If you’re a Mac user, you can also use Maury McCown’s TwitterPost, or the just-released-today Twitterrific from those aforementioned boys at the Iconfactory. Both apps are freeware.
So the question remains, what are you doing?