Life is for the Living

2011 Holiday Letter

2011-12-30T13:28:00.003-05:00

Instead of a letter I sent out a timeline this year. Actually this is the first year I shouldn't be saying "I" since it's more of a "we" now...

First Winter Storm

2011-10-30T11:29:00.002-04:00

We just had our first winter storm. It was crazy early this year. It's before Halloween for goodness sakes! I think we broke all the early snow fall records in the area.

We got about 8 inches. That was on the low end for our area. Places around here got 8-24 inches. Even with our 8 inches we got a lot of tree damage and most places around us lost power. The problem was trees still had their leaves and this was very heavy sticky snow so it stuck on the leaves and brought the trees down.

Here are a few pictures from around our property. It would have been a much different wedding if it was just 2 weeks later :-)

Wedding

2011-10-28T06:21:00.003-04:00

Emily and I got married on Oct 15, 2011. The ceremony was outdoors and just missed some rain showers. By the middle of the ceremony I could see some blue sky! We had tons of fun at the reception and I've been told the reception was fun for others too. I'm putting some pictures up here.

Sorry there wasn't much more of an update here, but I'm keeping busy with a bunch of other things. Emily and I are going to make a photobook of the wedding and maybe I'll post a link to that if I can get a digital version of it uploaded somewhere. That's going to be months away.

Crazy Busy

2011-09-03T06:39:00.002-04:00

Things have been getting pretty busy around here. There are lots of work trips. I just got back from a week in Orlando. In week I'm going to Phoenix, and then shortly after that there's a trip to San Diego. I also have a wedding in just over a month. The rest of my time is spent on the Camera Axe and these weekly tutorials I make. Oh and if I'm willing to sleep less there is another top secret hobby project I'm working on. It's a good think I like everything I'm doing these days or I just might go crazy.

Birdfeeder

2011-08-07T11:42:00.002-04:00

Emily has been asking for either 17 kittens or a bird feeder for months. She is in Japan for 3 weeks and my plan was to surprise her with a bird feeder when she got back. It was this clear bird feeder that actually stuck onto the window ($10 on Amazon). I though it would be fun to see the birds up close and birds never interested our pets much. The squirrels found it long before any birds. At first they were just looking at it and I thought it would be squirrel proof since there would be no way in except by flying. I was wrong. It took just a few minutes for a daredevil squirrel to make a 3 foot leap from the deck railing into the feeder. Then he started to chow down. I don't mind the squirrels, but I thought our dog was going to have a breakdown due to all the taunting these squirrels did. Tookie just couldn't stand it and the squirrel didn't move for anything inside the house. Even when I tapped the window that the squirrel was an inch from didn't make them move. So no matter how much growling Tookie did the squirrels just keep eating. I don't think this bird feeder is going to work out...

White Mountains Trip

2011-07-17T07:29:00.002-04:00

Benj, Emily, and I did an 9 day hiking trip through the white mountains. Some of Benj's other friends joined us for some of the days. We spent our nights at the AMC huts so we didn't need to bring all our food (they fed us great breakfasts and dinners). We all brought only 1-2 days of cloths, but our packs still weight 30+ lbs with food and water. It was a pretty awesome trip. You can see Emily and my photos here, and Benj did a blog about the trip here.

Tookie Walk

2011-07-02T14:28:00.003-04:00

Took Tookie for a morning walk. Here are a few pictures I took during the walk.

A Saturday in 2011

2011-06-18T07:46:00.004-04:00

Here's my plans for today:

* Give blood at Red Cross
* Work on updating my ZenCart store front for Camera Axe (new browsers don't always work with the old version I'm using)
* Take Tookie on a long walk in the woods
* Work on solving a clean power supply issue in the next Camera Axe
* Fix some software bugs in the new version of the Camera Axe
* Work on Quickbooks integration with ZenCart

I expect some of this will spill over into tomorrow, but hopefully I can get most of this done since I have a different big list for tomorrow. Good thing I like being busy.

TechPhotoBlog

2011-05-30T06:59:00.002-04:00

In my quest to never have any free time, I've decided to add another weekly task to my list. I've started a weekly video blog about technical photography topics. This is something I've been wanting to do for awhile since I have lots of ideas, but had trouble motivating myself to find the time. Having this weekly schedule seems to be working. I've been doing it for six weeks now and it seems to be working. If you want to see some videos of me talking about photography things check out the videos at www.TechPhotoBlog.com.

Germany Trip

2011-05-30T06:36:00.002-04:00

I had a trip to Bremen Germany for work. Here's a gallery of my pictures from the trip.

Work and Family Travel

2011-04-16T16:26:00.004-04:00

Last weekend I traveled to see my sister and her new baby. Here are some pictures.

Then I came home for 24 hours and had to fly to Mountain View for work stuff. It's nice to get home. I don't see any more big trips until my work trip to Germany in about a month.

Signs of Spring

2011-04-04T19:57:00.003-04:00

This past weekend was busy. Emily was in a car accident so we spent most of that day finding here a new used car. She picked a Toyota Corolla. She had a Corolla as her second car many years ago and it was one of her favorite. This is a 2006 with only 30K miles. It should last a good long time.

Then on Sunday we went looking for places to get married. We think we found the spot, but it's still classified and I'm not going to mention it until we're more sure.

We also fit a few long dog walks and a yoga class into the weekend. Here's a picture I took.

New Microscope

2011-03-20T15:43:00.002-04:00

I got a new microscope that I plan to interface with the Camera Axe in the future. I have some pretty wild ideas brewing :)

Here are a few photos I've taken with the microscope.

Skiing

2011-03-05T07:46:00.003-05:00

A few weeks ago Emily and I went to Wachuset Mountain for some down hill skiing. Emily was a little terrified at the start, but got back into the groove after a few hours.

Last weekend we went with some friends to this chocolate and ski festival in New Hampshire. We stayed over night at a B&B that was built in 1785. Then in the morning we strapped on some cross country skis and skiied to a bunch of different stops where we could sample some chocolate. It was a lot of fun!

Tookie Goes Crazy on the Ice

2011-02-21T12:50:00.003-05:00

Here are some pictures I took of Tookie on a big ice lake. I think she likes all the open space!

Palm Trees and Snow

2011-01-30T18:26:00.002-05:00

I spend a week and a half on a business trip to sunny San Francisco.

Massachusetts has been hit hard this winter with snow storms. I'd estimate we've gotten about 5 feet in January and another 2 feet towards the end of December. Crazy.

I've taken photos of both of these things. I'll let you figure out which are which.

Snow Storm #2

2011-01-17T07:53:00.003-05:00

I'm a little late, but last week we had our second snow storm of the year. Emily and I missed the first one while we were in 80+ degree Texas. This second got Emily out work for a day and I worked from home. We got around 22 inches of the white stuff so it was a pretty huge storm.

This week I'm traveling to San Jose for work and Emily is at home watching over things.

Winter Dog Walk

2011-01-09T09:32:00.002-05:00

After a light snow Emily and I took Tookie for a walk. Tookie loves the snow. Especially when we point out some tracks in the snow from a mouse or other small varmint. Tookie always thinks we're so smart and have such great noises to be able to smell those tracks from so far away :-) Tookie then sticks her noise in the snow and follows the tracks for awhile. She has found a mouse in the past doing this, but today she found nothing.

Texas Trip

2010-12-28T11:14:00.002-05:00

Emily and I just got back from a week long trip to Texas. We did all sorts of fun things including birdwatching, visiting Mexico, seeing my aunt's ranch, and eating a lot of good food.

Here is an online photo gallery from our trip.

Everything is bigger in Texas.

2010's Letter

2010-12-28T11:13:00.001-05:00

I posted an online version of my annual letter here.

Droplets and Stairs

2010-12-13T05:43:00.005-05:00

We finished the stairs! I don't have time to take a photo now, but I'll try to get one when I have time. The last stage was just painting/staining them. Sounds easy, but painting the risers took 3 days for the primer and 2 coats of white. Then 1 day for the stain on the treads and 3 more days for the polyurethane. For the treads I'd do it at night and paint myself to the ground floor. Then use a ladder to get back up the the bedroom so I could sleep. When we woke up things were dry enough to walk on. It looks great!

I took this video with the Camera Axe this weekend.

Bullet Photography

2010-12-05T10:51:00.002-05:00

An article I wrote about high speed photography was published on a pretty popular photography website. Check out the article here.

A carrot painted blue being hit by a bullet.

BBBS

2010-12-05T10:46:00.002-05:00

As most of you probably know I'm a big in BBBS. My little and I went to the annual holiday party yesterday. Normally we like the summer piknic better because we can swim all day, but this party was pretty awesome. There were some karate people who came and gave a show and then taught us a few moves. Then all the littles got to break boards which was a lot a fun. Then at the end my little won a bike in the raffle. He was so excited! It was a great day.

San Diego and Flash

2010-11-07T15:22:00.002-05:00

I had a work trip out to San Diego last week. It was a big brainstorming session with lots of really smart in my company from around the world. We came up with a ton of great ideas. Normally I'm pretty pessimistic about the future of the company I work for because I spend all day looking at the problems we have. I'm probably going to jinx myself, but I think the future of my company looks pretty bright. We certainly seem to have the opportunity to do great things if we execute. Time will tell.

Since I like to include pictures I'll mention a personal project I have been working on. It's a custom made flash that creates a 1 inch spark to be used for photography. Why would I do this? Standard camera flashes use Xeon gas filled tubes which make for a bright flash, but the shortest duration is about 1/40,000th of a second. My flash uses standard air and needs much higher voltage, but it's duration is about 1/1,000,000th of a second. The downside is I need about 30,000 volts. I've done everything I can to make it safe and this flash still scares me. I'm sure I do a much more detailed writeup on my tech blog someday, but I thought I'd post a teaser picture of the device here.

Fall

2010-10-31T18:03:00.004-04:00

It's fall time. One of my favorite times of the year. Ticks are pretty back around Massachusetts this time of the year. I think ticks are making a last ditch effort to find a host. A few weeks ago we took Tookie on a walk and she got 25 ticks on her!! Since then we've been walking in less tall grassy fields until the first hard frost.

We painted our last room and now everything is pretty. Getting new windows prompted us to do that. I'll probably show a picture of our new windows when I get a chance. Our old windows weren't too bad, but there was a lot of rot around the windows. The condo is paying to fix the rot and I'm paying to fix the windows. The people putting in the new windows confirmed what I had suspected. The condos did a bad job putting the windows in originally. Oh well, at least they are being done right this time so they should last a very long time. It was a good excuse to get my $1500 tax rebate from the government. Silly government.

Next week I'm going to San Diego for work stuff and Emily is holding down the fort.

Apple Orchards

2010-10-10T13:00:00.002-04:00

Emily and I went to pick some apples today. Yum!

Camera Axe 4

2010-10-10T12:56:00.003-04:00

I've just finished making Camera Axe 4. Visit www.CameraAxe.com for more details.

Fall is Nigh

2010-10-03T18:29:00.002-04:00

Out hiking around we saw this little guy hoping across the trail. Luckily (for this guy) Tookie was off looking for a chipmunk.

Maker Fair

2010-09-29T20:02:00.002-04:00

Emily and I went to the Maker Faire in New York last weekend. We had a ton of fun!

Las Vegas

2010-09-29T19:58:00.002-04:00

I had work trip out to Vegas. Here's a few pics.

Electric Spinning Wheel

2010-09-06T13:19:00.001-04:00

I just finished the second version of my electric spinning wheel. Check out this site for detail.

Spider

2010-09-06T13:17:00.002-04:00

I saw this cute guy on a dog walk this morning.

Elk's Club Wedding

2010-08-29T06:14:00.003-04:00

Emily and I have been looking for places to hold our wedding/reception during the past month. First we looked at places were places we found online. They were pretty, but in Massachusetts at least they were crazy expensive ($75-$100 per person). We started looking for alternatives and found out that there were a lot of Elk Club Lodges in the area. These places are nice and much more reasonably prices (1/3 the price). We'll probably be reserving the place below.

What I'm doing...

2010-07-18T21:23:00.003-04:00

There has been a lot going on in my life, but nothing too huge. I just thought I'd list some of the things that I've been doing...

I'm still a big brother in BBBS. I probably see my little every other week or a little less these days. Today I went over and we played lots of outside things like soccer, squirt gun fights, and bikes.

I've been spending a lot of my time on my store that sells Camera Axe and the Electric Eel Wheel. Both of these projects have turned out way more successful than I thought. This is both a blessing and a curse. It's good fun to have a project that many people use and appreciate, but this is taking up a lot of my time. To make matters worse the engineer in me couldn't just leave well enough alone and I'm doing big redesigns of both of these projects.

I try and find fun things to do with Emily. Today we had some friends over and went swimming.

The CSA is really getting us lots of vegetables. It has been a great year for crops. I need to take my camera there some morning and get some pictures.

Work at Qualcomm has been getting a bit crazy. I've got a ton of projects going on that I can't talk about here. Sorry :-(

Last but not least I thought I'd post a photo I took a few days ago.

Engaged

2010-06-06T07:43:00.004-04:00

While staying at Brasov in Romania, Emily and I wanted to visit Bran Castle since we had heard it was Dracula's Castle. Turns out it was only a Castle that Vlad the Impaler (Dracula) had possibly visited once. This visit would have probably been to see if it was worth invading. Not exactly "Dracula's castle" if you ask me, but it was a very cool castle to visit.

The day started by figuring out which bus to take. Everything is a bit more difficult when most people don't know English. Like many things in Romania buses are cheap. An hour long bus ride cost just $3. When we got there we could instantly see the castle situated on a hill.

We explored the interior and exterior of the castle. We found out that Transylvania was an often invaded area since it was on the road to the "east". As a consequence they build many castles like this one for defenses and to collect taxes from the traders that traveled through Romania.

After thoroughly exploring the castle we took a trail down to a little pond. There was a scenic view looking up to the castle. As we sat there talking about about a wooden wooden bracelet she just got I asked if she liked jewelry. She said of course and then I asked her if should would like this. She was quite awestruck as I asked her if she would marry me. She said yes and then I asked her if she was sure. She was. :-)

She was expecting it someday, but not on this trip. As she had waved her ring finger around earlier on the trip, I had asked her if she expected me to buy a ring in Europe or something. Little did she know I didn't need to buy the ring because I already had one in my pocket. After a year of waving her ring finger around I thought it would finally be over, but I think it is now worse. She just has to show everyone ;-)

We've just started figuring out when and where we'll get married. We need to do some research, but maybe Fall 2011 in New England.

Trip to Budapest, Romania, and Lee/Natile's Wedding

2010-06-06T07:22:00.005-04:00

This was a monster trip.

Boston->London->Budapest
I had a week of business in Budapest so while I was busy with meetings Emily got to experience explore Budapest. Biggest memories were the great food and a hike we did up to the top of a mountain in the poring rain.

Brasov, Romania
Then we took an 11 hour train rid to Brasov and spent 5 days there. The things I remember most about this was proposing to Emily and how friendly the people of Romania are. I'll discuss the proposal in another post. Some of the nice things that the people in Romania did for us was giving us sandwiches, driving us around to another home stay when ours was full, and just being generally helpful/friendly. Romania is a great place to visit!

Budapest->Rome->Chicago->Green Bay
Next we flew to Green Bay for my friends' wedding. Great time was had by all.

Green Bay->Chicago->Boston
I was ready to be home.

Many more pictures from the trip are here.

Working

2010-05-03T06:43:00.002-04:00

I spent most of this weekend working. Although it was a bit of a bummer to spend such a nice weekend at work, I did accomplish the goal so that feels good. It's fun to be the workplace super hero, errr good employee.

I took this on a early morning dog walk on Saturday before going into work.

Ferns

2010-04-25T21:56:00.005-04:00

It's the time of the year when ferns are starting to come up. I've always thought these were some of the most beautiful spring time plants. I took these shots this weekend while taking Tookie on a walk.

First day working at our CSA

2010-04-25T21:41:00.004-04:00

CSA stands for community supported agriculture. The way it works is you buy a share in a local vegitable farm and then get a portion of the crops. Emily and I joined the Heirloom Harvest earlier this year. Everybody has to put in a few hours working on the farm. We spent the morning planting collards an Chinese cabbage. It was great fun, but my body is now reminding me farm work uses a lot more muscles than my desk job.

A picture of Emily working in the green house.

A picture of Emily riding back to the fields. (I nearly feel out of the truck taking this picture.)

A picture of Emily planting.

Bikram Yoga

2010-04-15T08:26:00.002-04:00

Emily and I have been attending some Bikram Yoga classes in Westboro. This is an intensive yoga in a highly heated and humid room. Every class is 1.5 hours long. I drink a large bottle of water and still loose a few pounds of water. Best sweating I've had since I ran my marathon. This isn't what I expected from yoga. Yoga I've done in the past focused on stretching. Bikram Yoga certainly has stretching, but it also strengths your muscles and bones. Fun fun fun! Peace!

Great Outdoors

2010-04-07T20:34:00.003-04:00

Here's another picture I took while outside in the great weather we've been having.

Milk Drops

2010-04-03T16:21:00.003-04:00

I photographed some milk drops. Read more about it here.

I think this one looks like the virgin Mary.

Signs of Spring

2010-04-03T11:21:00.003-04:00

Emily, Tookie, and I went on a walk this morning. It is a beautiful day with highs expected in in 70s. Here are some pictures from our walk.

Cambridge England

2010-03-26T13:17:00.003-04:00

I just got back from a trip to Cambridge in the UK. I was pretty busy there with work things, but I had some time for geocaching and a pub or two.

Two things I noticed were the large numbers of people walking/biking and the architecture is much more old brick centric than exists in the US.

GDC 2010

2010-03-14T18:46:00.002-04:00

I went to the biggest video game developer conference in the world last week. Learned a lot of stuff.

Electric Eel Wheel

2010-02-28T20:09:00.002-05:00

I just finished creating a new version of an electric spinning wheel. You can read more here.

Bookshelf

2010-02-23T22:50:00.003-05:00

This past weekend I build this bookshelf for Emily. I think it turned out pretty good.

Stairs project

2010-02-21T12:44:00.002-05:00

I put hardwood floors into my condo around a year ago. When doing that I thought it would be nice to have hardwood stairs, but doing the stairs is a lot of work so I didn't. Now I'm going to tackle the stair project.

This website sells reasonably priced custom treads and risers. I just placed my order so I'll give an update on quality after I get done with this project, but reviews say this place is good.

In order to know exactly what to order I had to figure out exactly how I was going to install the new stairs. To do that I needed to remove the carpeting, banisters, and handrail. It took a little figuring, but I got it done. It will be awhile before I can finish this project so the house is going to be in this incomplete state for awhile. Below is a timelapse.

New Office!

2010-02-21T12:03:00.002-05:00

My work moved to a new building last week. It is better is just about every way. In the old office my cube was tiny and it was right next to a very loud server room AC unit. When it turned on I had to actually shout for someone to hear me and I even wore earplugs to work a few times. I was working from home 4 days a week so I didn't have to deal with the working environment there. This new place is a pretty office, has great working conditions, and I even have an office with real walls :). Previously I had always had cubes. I have nothing against cubes, but I'm on the phone enough these days that it is kind of nice.

Here's a picture of my office.

Snowstorm Timelapse

2010-02-12T06:24:00.002-05:00

We were supposed to get this huge snow storm earlier this week. They canceled school, but it didn't even start snowing until school would have been out. It turned out to be just a few inches instead of the 12+ inches we were expecting. Bummer. I took a timelapse video expecting a huge storm, but even with this pretty wimpy storm the video turned out kinda cool.

Miami

2010-01-24T12:33:00.003-05:00

I "had" to go to Miami for work last week. It was great wearing t-shirt and shorts for a few days. Here are a few pictures from the trip.

New York New York

2010-01-10T17:32:00.004-05:00

Emily and I went into New York this weekend.

We arrived in Grand Central Station.

Then we stayed at the haunted Chelsea Hotel. We got the room right by the huge neon sign. Awesome!

We saw the biggest US post office I've ever seen.

Here's some miniature men painting a ginormous sign.

2009 Letter

2009-12-29T12:37:00.002-05:00

I sent out a paper copy of this to many people, but here is the ecopy so it can be remembered forever (or for as long as Google keeps blogspot.com active).

Christmas in Iowa

2009-12-27T21:20:00.003-05:00

I spent this Christmas with Emily's family/friends in Iowa. We had great times. Here are a few of the pictures.

First Snow

2009-12-06T16:18:00.004-05:00

While we've had a few dusting earlier, this is the first time this winter that the snow has stuck through the day.

2009-12-05T06:14:00.003-05:00

Today Emily and I will be going to give blood. I'm supposed to get a fancy pin for giving 3 gallons. Yah!

Then later in the day I'm taking Devon the BBBS holiday party. Fun Fun Fun!

I'm starting to work on a few new projects. Not much to say about them yet, but here are are few newer pictures I took with the Camera Axe.

Camera Axe

2009-11-23T22:59:00.003-05:00

I've launched a store to sell a new version of my Camera Axe. Check out the store here.

Last, but not least here is a new picture I took tonight with the Camera Axe.

Photo

2009-11-15T23:08:00.003-05:00

A local camera club is forming in Worcester and I tagged along on a field trip today. The people I met seemed pretty cool so I plan to keep attending. The club usually has one meeting a month and one field trip. Below is one of the photos I took on the fieldtrip.

Relaxing

2009-11-07T15:11:00.002-05:00

After being away from home for so long, I'm enjoying this relaxing weekend. Here is a picture I took during a Tookie walk.

I also just finished my nature photography course. I missed most of the classes because I was away for work, but I still got some decent pictures. I put the the photos here.

Finally Back

2009-11-01T21:00:00.002-05:00

My work trip out to California took a lot longer than planned. I finally got back. I can't say what I was working on out there, but I will say there are a bunch of cool phones with Qualcomm's chipset on the way.

I didn't have much time to take pictures, but I got some nice ones of Golden Gate Bridge just before I got on my plane.

Update From San Fransisco

2009-10-11T07:42:00.002-04:00

Lots of fun stuff has been happening lately. Emily and I went to The Big E last week. There was lots of interesting things there like the sheep shearer and lots of different foods to try. I've also been spending a lot of my spare time putting together a new version of my Camera Axe project and setting up a web store to sell them. It will still be at least a month more of my spare time to finish that. It's been fun doing the polish and documentation for a public release like that on one of my projects. I've also been in an outdoor nature photography course. Here are my first two weeks of pictures from that.

The reason I'm in San Fransisco is that we had a bit of an emergency at work and I had to fly out to California Friday night. I'm working through the weekend and hopefully we'll get everything fixed so I can come home next week.

Back from Phoenix

2009-09-27T10:25:00.004-04:00

I got back late last night or early this morning, depending on how you look at it.

It was a great trip. On business trips I usually find myself too busy to do much else, but here I went out hiking most mornings. Having meetings during the middle of the day worked our great because it was too hot for hiking then anyways. Also since my flight wasn't until noon on Sunday I got to enjoy the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix before I had to go to the airport.

I took a lot of pictures. Click here to see more.

In Phoenix

2009-09-20T17:11:00.000-04:00

I'm in Phoenix on a business trip. It is a lot hotter here than Boston, but that's ok since my hotel has a water park!

San Fransisco

2009-08-23T14:03:00.002-04:00

I was in San Fransisco last week for a few days. They sure have wonderful weather there.

High Speed Photography

2009-08-23T13:55:00.003-04:00

I built a home made air gun and got some neat high speed photography shots. Here's the gallery.

Kayak and Stop Motion Photography

2009-08-16T15:15:00.006-04:00

Emily and I went to Bigelow Hollows Park for a picnic with some friends.

I got my camera flash repaired and took a new set of high speed photography. Here is the full set.

Summer Time

2009-08-15T10:13:00.002-04:00

Yesterday, Emily and I went on a picnic and then today we went and picked berries in the morning at Meadowbrook Orchards.

Hiking

2009-08-09T13:25:00.003-04:00

Emily and I want hiking at Wachusett Mountain (an old favorite of mine). Here are a couple pictures I took.

Emily is Back!

2009-08-04T11:08:00.002-04:00

Emily got back Sunday night. It was great to see her and she's been sharing all sorts of neat stories. Here is a blog with some of her adventures.

Emily's first day back was not a good day for our cars. We knew Emily's car had a problem since when I tried to run it while she was gone it smoked a lot. The smoking was caused by a slipping belt. After reading about this on the internet I had decided it was most likely a problem with the AC pump and had hoped we could bypass the air conditioning with a shorter belt since she didn't use the air conditioning. My estimated cost for this was $200 including labor. It turned out that it was the alternator that had died which was an expensive part. Also since I hadn't been able to drive the car for two months the brakes seized and all four disk brakes needed replacing. Total cost was almost $1500 :(

Then at night I drove my car to a parking lot to pick up a cable for my computer. Came back to my car and it wouldn't start. It just clicked when I turned the key. At this point I started laughing because I just didn't know what else to do. After thinking about it for awhile I decided it might be the battery and had Emily drive me to a store (with her newly fixed car) to get one. Thankfully this fixed the problem. I guess my battery must have had a catastrophic failure during the five minutes I was in the store since had been working fine. Even though the battery cost $75 it felt like a bargain compared to what had happened with Emily's car earlier in the day.

Today should be a better car day.

Giving Blood

2009-08-02T07:24:00.002-04:00

I gave blood last week. It was my 24th pint so that means 3 gallons! Wikipedia says the human body has an average of 5 liters (1.3 gallons). That means I've donated 2.3 times my volume of blood!

Salamander Seeking Cat

2009-07-26T07:03:00.005-04:00

Ramona was out in the garage yesterday hunting and found this salamander. Luckily for the salamander Ramona is more of a poker than a killer and it eventually got away.

Sunset

2009-07-19T23:46:00.004-04:00

I've had a few people ask for more pictures. I won't promise future performance, but here is one from this weekend.

My Niece

2009-07-19T06:27:00.005-04:00

I've been an uncle for about a half a year now so I thought it was about time to show a picture of the extraordinarily lucky child who has the great honor of calling me her uncle. Or whatever...

Awwww, Margaret is getting cute now since the new born baby squished face syndrome that all newborns have is gone. One thing I noticed is that her head is kind of large. I wonder if she'll have trouble finding big enough hats like my sister did.

Eric's Visit

2009-07-12T21:56:00.003-04:00

Eric came back to Massachusetts for work stuff, but was able to spend the weekend with me. We did all sort of things like geocaching, mini golf, beaching, and swimming. Here are are few pictures from our adventures.

This is just a few of the thousands and thousands of tiny crabs we saw.

Happy 4th

2009-07-04T22:24:00.002-04:00

Thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday.

No supper exciting news to report. I went hiking today. Other than that I've been adding some shelves and better lighting to my laboratory in the basement. Also been spending time on my next project. It's a quadcopter, which is a 4 motor helicopter. Besides designing the frame structure I also need to write a control system since the design isn't naturally stable like an airplane. Fun stuff, but it's a big project.

Work Trip

2009-06-21T10:14:00.004-04:00

I've a lucky person to love my job. Qualcomm is a great place to work! Here are a few pictures from my work trip out to California last week.

My hotel in San Fransisco had this beautiful view of Union Square.

After San Fransisco, I went to Qulacomm's home base in San Diego. There must be at least 20 big Qualcomm buildings in this area of San Diego. Here's a picture of some I visited.

Camera Axe

2009-06-13T20:44:00.003-04:00

I've been spending a lot of my time over the past few months building the Camera Axe. Check out this article I wrote about it.

Emily to China

2009-06-11T07:58:00.003-04:00

I took Emily to the Airport a few hours ago. Her plane should have taken off a few minutes ago. She will change planes in California and then fly to Shanghai. In about 20 hours she should be there. She'll spend the next 7 weeks teaching English to students who will be coming to Worcester State next year. I'm excited for her; it sounds like a grand adventure to me.

She has started a blog to document her times in Shanghai. I am already starting to miss her, but I'm sure I'll find enough stuff to keep me busy for the next 7 weeks. Check out her blog at: http://messagesfrommyhappyplace.blogspot.com/

Herb Fest

2009-06-11T07:56:00.002-04:00

Emily is better at blogging than I am. Since she's a facebook addict she does her blogging there. Take a look at some pictures from our latest excursion on her facebook account.

Emily

2009-05-31T21:19:00.002-04:00

Emily and I went out on our first date on April 30th 2008. Things have been going great during this past year and we took a big step today. She moved into my condo. While I am not a big fan of moving stuff, now that the moving is mostly done it sure is nice.

She is going to China in less than two weeks and it will be a little lonely around here for the seven weeks she'll be gone, but I'll be waiting for her when she get's back.

Iowa/Wisconsin Trip

2009-05-25T10:24:00.002-04:00

I just got back from my week and a half trip to the midwest. The first half was spent in Iowa meeting Emily's family/friends. The second half was spent in Wisconsin with my family/friends.

Good times! I'm don't have time to write a trip report right now. Maybe Emily will post something in the comments?

Here are some photos from the trip.

Windsor Trip

2009-05-15T09:32:00.005-04:00

I went to Windsor on a work trip. Work kept me pretty busy, but I did find time to see the Windor Castle. The Queen was there, but I didn't see her. It was an amazing castle. Another cool thing I did was boat dinner. The boat went through a lock that was only 8 inches wider than the boat I was on. It was a tight squeeze. The work aspect of this trip also went very good, but I can't really discuss that.

Here is a link to a bunch more photos from the trip.

Hiking

2009-05-09T15:57:00.001-04:00

Emily and I went for a little hike with Tookie. Here's a picture I took of some of the wildlife.

Later today I'm flying off to England for a work trip. I plan to post a few pictures from the trip after I get back.

Painting and Flooring Time Lapse

2009-05-04T06:32:00.002-04:00

Here is a new time lapse video I made.

Here is a link to a higher quality version.

House and Photography Project

2009-05-03T20:48:00.005-04:00

Here is a nice finished picture of the hardwood I put in the downstairs area. I really like how it turned out. It was more work than I thought it would be, but definitely worth it.

In other news I've been working on a photography gadget project in my spare time. I will publish full details on it later on my Hobby Robotics site, but since it's been taking so much of my time lately I thought I'd at mention that I haven't been sitting at home watching TV or anything. The plan is that I will make the project fully open to the public (just like all my past projects). A secondary goal will be trying to sell it to a small manufacturer that I know. I'm not sure I'll be able to sell it, but I'm pretty sure it will gain attention online since it's a pretty new concept for photography tools. I might end up going the route I've gone with my electric spinning wheel where I build it and sell it directly. The electric spinning wheels I make work this way because I set the price high enough that I don't need to make very many and it doesn't take up too much of my time (sold two in two months). I'm a little worried this project might sell more than I'd be willing to make. I like designing not manufacturing. Emily was out of town this weekend so I pretty much spent a marathon session working on this project (around 30 hours). My goal was to finish the circuit board design and I did! I sent the board design to be made which will take about 4 weeks (perfect since I'm spending the next few weeks in England and then the Midwest). I just hope it works when it comes back. Even if the board works perfectly I still many-many hours of work left to write the software.

Pipe Problems

2009-04-27T08:52:00.004-04:00

Yesterday Emily and I were finishing installing the hardwood floor an upstairs bedroom. Everything was going great. We had finished the floor, and were just finishing putting the baseboard molding up. Then Emily tapped me on the shoulder and said, "LOOK". There was water seeping out from under the wall. She said she thought it was the toilet (bathroom was on the other side of the wall so I ran into there. Nothing. Then I ran to the water main in the basement and turned it off to stop the water. Most of the water went through the walls and into the basement. We collected about 10 gallons there. There is few minor water marks on the downstairs ceiling which will require painting the ceiling someday. After assessing this and mopping up a a little water here and their we started chopping holes in the wall to find the problem. It turned out that Emily had awesome aim with the nailgun and put 2 nails right through a half inch vertical pipe. Talk about bad luck. This probably would not have happened if the pipe was in the middle of the wall like it should have been...

Because I messed up while trying to find the pipe and cut another hole in it we had to replace a whole T joint section. Not a big problem, but we couldn't find a CPVC (C means it is safe for drinking water) T joint at HomeDepot (both stores we tied were out. We got a glueless "Shark" T joint which is normally used to join copper to PVC. While pricey ($8 instead of 32 cents) it worked great and if I ever want a quick fix (no need to wait 2 hours while the pipe glue dries) I would use them again.

Now I just need to put down some new boards where I ripped the old ones out and patch the hole in my wall and I'll be done (again).

This past weekend was awesome weather. Sunday was in the upper 80's!

Spring

2009-04-19T22:16:00.002-04:00

It's finally getting warm so I've been trying to spend time doing more hiking and geocaching. I will be going to England in a few weeks for work and then back to the midwest to see Emily and my family/friends. May will be a busy month, but until then I'm enjoying the nice weather.

Installing Hardwood Floor

2009-03-30T20:25:00.003-04:00

Here is a time-lapse video of my friends and I installing my hardwood floor. If you don't mind a 75 MB download get a much better quality video here.

And here are a few pictures of it almost done. I still need to install the new baseboards.

Bugzy

2009-03-15T13:13:00.002-04:00

Emily is dog sitting for a friend. So we took Bugzy on a 4 hour walk. Towards the end Bugzy was a little thirsty and accidentally fell into a stream. Pictures of beautiful Bugzy in the water are here.

Last week I also published an article about building a time lapse photography device on my Hobby Robotics site. The best part for most people is the pretty video.

Geocaching, Hardwood Floors, and My Unlucky Weekend

2009-03-08T13:42:00.003-04:00

The weather was great this weekend so Benj, Emily and me went out geocaching. We had just enough melting snow left to make this snowman.

The warm temps didn't look good for Charlie (our snowman) so we decided to put him out of his misery. You can see more photo's of Charlie and his destruction here.

In other news I've decided to install hardwood floors in my condo. After much deliberation I decided to go with stranded bamboo. It's environmentally friendly, I love the look, and it's supposed to be harder than oak. Here's a picture of the samples I considered. The stranded bamboo is on the bottom right. I plan to install it myself in a few weeks.

Now let my explain my unlucky weekend. It started on Friday when I took my car in to get it's MA state required annual safety inspection. In order to pass I needed to get some fairly expensive repairs to my exhaust and replace my front tires. Then on Saturday I tried to open my garage door and it it didn't open. After some investigation I found out the motor was busted and I went to buy a new one from Home Depot. When I got home from buying the garage door opener I went to cook some pasta an the handle broke off my favorite pot. This is a pot my mom gave me and it must be 40 years old. Geez, lots of things have been breaking lately. The good news is the weather is great, and now that I've installed that new garage door opener it does have some nice new features. Who would have thought garage door technology would still be improving!

Busy

2009-02-16T18:27:00.002-05:00

I've been crazy busy lately so I haven't had much time for updating this blog. Here is a list of the things I've been doing.

On Valentines Day I gave Emily this box I had made on my CNC machine. She really liked it and I'm glad. Making this small box took awhile, but it was worth it. It has been hand sanded and the wood is well oiled. It's baby smooth. The box is carved out of one solid chuck of red oak and is probably one of the simplest yet highest quality and perfect things I've ever made. Emily loves octopuses so I put one the octopus necklace inside.

Emily and I have been painting my house. We got about half of it done this weekend and hope to finish it next weekend. I have a few other improvements I want to do too. I'll post a picture when I'm done with them.

I've been working on a web app that helps knitters make patterns on sweaters. This idea was born from the fact that programs that currently do this cost $20+ and must be installed on a computer. I'm pretty sure I can make an app that runs in your web browser and is free. I am making progress, but I need to figure out how these web programming languages work as I go since I've never used them before.

I've joined a new gym so I can start getting back into better shape.

My new job at Qualcomm is going great and is keeping me busy.

I have lots of other projects I need to get to soon, but I haven't had time yet. Eeeek. I need to go and start doing some of this. Bye!

First Day at New Office

2009-01-29T23:04:00.002-05:00

The big news is that last week AMD sold the handheld graphics division to Qualcomm. Most people don't know Qualcomm because they don't sell products to consumer they sell products to other companies. That said they are good at what they do. The past companies I've worked for were always having financial troubles. It's nice to work for a company like Qualcomm that makes billions of dollars every year and has truckloads of money in the bank. Even in these tough times they keep making a lot of money. They have two big sources of income. One is that they developed a new type of cell phone technology that other companies need to license from them. The second is they make microchips that they sell to cell phone makers. They've been buying AMD's graphics IP for years and now they just bought our whole team.

I've very excited about this new job. It's similar to what I've been doing, but now Qualcomm values our team. At AMD we were always that other team that wasn't very important. I think there is huge opportunity for growth on the Qualcomm graphics team.

From college I went to work for ATI. Then AMD bought ATI. While I was hopeful that the AMD buyout would be good, it was never as good as working for ATI. Now my team was bought by Qualcomm. I really believe this will be a big improvement for me in a way that AMD never was. Time will tell...

Here's a picture of my new cube. The office is an old mill that was built in the 1850's. It's got deadends, odd shaped rooms, and doors to nowhere all over the place.

Johnny Appleseed

2009-01-26T07:54:00.003-05:00

Emily and I went to the birthplace of Johnny Appleseed this weekend in Leominster, MA. It was way better than Plymouth Rock. While in Leominster we also stopped by the grave of a man who was put in prison for one year because he was disturbing the peace with his beard (this was during a time when men were clean shaven), and we stopped by a magnetic hill.

Snow Monster

2009-01-22T08:44:00.002-05:00

Is a rare photo of the fierce snow monster "Tookie" in her native habitat.

Skiing in Utah

2009-01-14T19:38:00.003-05:00

I flew out to Salt Lake City last Wednesday through Sunday. Christy and Dan skied while Eric and I snowboarded. We skied/snowboarded at Snowbird, Solitude and Brighton.

The conditions were pretty good. They had lots of snow the week before we got there and then we got 10 more inches of fresh powder Thursday night! I had an awesome time.

You can see pictures from the trip here.

The only travel problem I had were on the way back when United lost my luggage for 3 days. This would have stunk big time on the way out, but since it was on the way back it didn't matter much.

My Present

2008-12-26T21:23:00.004-05:00

Here's a picture of a painting Emily gave me. It's a picture of Heathy. He was my chocolate lab when I was growing up. He's thinking of a rabbit because I told Emily about him and how he played with rabbits. Heathy would sometimes catch a rabbit in his mouth and carefully move it back to the middle of the yard. Then he'd let it run and he'd case it, catch it, and bring it back. He continued this game until it got away or the until the rabbit died of exhaustion.

2008 Holiday Letter

2008-12-21T18:24:00.001-05:00

Many of you have probably already received my 2008 letter, but if you haven't I put a digital copy here.

San Diego

2008-12-21T15:13:00.002-05:00

I happen to be out in San Diego for work. Here are a few pictures.

On my way back Boston had a snow storm and my flight got diverted to JFK. We took a bus from there to Boston. I got home 11 hours late, but I made it. After that snow storm of 8 inches we have another 4-8 inches coming down now. Lots of snow.

Ice Storm

2008-12-14T19:05:00.003-05:00

We had a huge ice storm in Massachusetts last Friday. I think it's the worst I've ever seen. In the Shrewsbury area the roads were not icy because it was too warm for ice on the roads, but the trees did not fair so well. Friday morning most of the side roads were impassible due to downed power lines and down trees. The major roads had already been cleared. Here are a few pictures I took.

Car Mishap

2008-12-10T08:18:00.002-05:00

Last night I was driving home and the person in front of me stopped suddenly. Then almost in slow motion I could see that the person behind me wasn't stopping quickly enough so I edged up close to the stopped car in front of me and pressed the brake hard. The person behind me almost stopped. We pulled onto the side and there were just a few scuffs on my car's bumper and a little gouge in the plastic from her license plate. I got her phone number so I could call her if I found any unseen damage, but I didn't. I'm so thankful that it turned out ok. Getting cars fixed is such a hassle. Makes me thankful that I have a 98 Civic so that I don't need to worry about a little scuffed paint on the bumper.

About 5 years ago I had the exact same thing happen to me. I was thankful then that I had an old mini-van from my college days. My worst accident ever was when some lady hit my car in a parking lot and I wasn't even in it. Thankfully she left a note because that was expensive to fix. All in all I've been pretty lucky with car accidents. Hopefully this post doesn't jinx me :)