Did you feel that?  I’ve moved andrewlawrence.us to a new webserver.  If you’re seeing this message, then congrats!  Your browser/ISP found it.  If you’re not seeing this, well, then that doesn’t make sense.

Big thanks to my friend Jeff Patton who continues to let me host my website off of his server.  Give him a visit at http://www.agileproductdesign.com.

It has been a frequent occurence over the last 15 years or so for the evening to come to an end with me sitting on the computer doing something (programming, work, playing games, internet) and Elena by herself watching TV or reading.  In fact, many times it results in me staying on the computer until midnight or later and Elena falling asleep on her own.

But now the tables have turned…

Last Saturday Elena discovered two items that have brought the technology of the internet into the forefront: Facebook and a site called Good Reads.  Elena has spent a number of evenings since then on the computer and I have been the one relegated to the bedroom to watch TV.  She’s spent a number of hours inputting the 150+ books that she has read into Good Reads.  And she’s spent a number of hours hunting down friends on Facebook.  Every day some new friend has connected with her.  Some of them are people that I haven’t heard from for nearly 18 years.  (Uhhh… wait… I’m not that old, am I?)

Always good to see my wife embrace the technology.  Well, unless I want to use the computer at least.

Hey hey!  A new look for the blog site!  (If it looks funny for you, refresh the page…)

I’ve been working on this for a few weeks off and on.  It’s been a good learning experience.  I’ve gotten a lot better with my CSS skills and I’ve even learned some PHP code.  All to bring a more “alive” experience.  The quotes at the top of the blog are randomly chosen from a database of quotes that I will maintain (so they’re only quotes that I like!)  And the iPod item at the side will refresh with a new selection from my iTunes database.  Pretty cool.  And finally, the picture in the upper left corner will also change from a selection of a few of them.

Hopefully it is all working.  I know that the Archives option at the top is not working yet.  I will get to it soon.  But I’ve tested everything else in both Firefox and Internet Explorer and it seems to be OK.  But if you see otherwise, please comment and let me know.

I bought myself a new flatbed scanner with the birthday money I got. I’ve been wanting to get one so that I can start to scan in the piles of old negatives that we have. I bought a Canon CanoScan 8400F, and so far it’s been great. It took a number of test scans and changing the configurations around, but I finally got it working pretty well. Some notes:

• Don’t scan higher than 1600dpi.
• Don’t let the scanner do all of the fancy color correction stuff.
• Let the scanner do the dust/scratch fixes — it works better than in Photoshop Elements.

It’s fun to go through old photos, and it’s good to be making progress on getting through them. I contemplated spending more money to get a 4800dpi scanner, but now I’m glad I didn’t. It’s not needed for what I am doing. It takes about 2 1/2 minutes to scan a negative, so this is going to occupy my time for a while!

Well I finally finished a new layout for the blog. Still very similar to the old one, but at the same time a little new. (Nice lookin’ mug shot of me up there, eh?) Some better fonts, spacing, colors, etc.? It also gives me a spot at the top to post various quotes that fancy me.
Changing things has sure given me a good lesson in simple PHP and CSS. Very powerful stuff, but it definitely takes some getting used to. And the multiple browser thing is always a pain, but it is a lot better today than it was 5 years ago. And let me plug Firefox right now. The DOM inspector tool that comes with Firefox is a lifesaver. Makes the identification of what CSS blocks are where very simple. Long live Firefox. If you don’t have it, get it.

Last week I read an article where Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and billionaire investor, said the following:

“Anyone who buys that (YouTube) is a moron”

Reading the article, I kind of agreed. YouTube has a huge liability on its hands in terms of copyright material. I would agree with Cuban’s opinion that it is one of the reasons YouTube hasn’t gone public yet.

So today, a new article hits the web that Google is in talks to buy YouTube for $1.6 billion. (It’s still a rumor.) So, using the transitive property of equality that means Mark Cuban thinks Google is a moron!

I still think Cuban is right. And he commented on the rumor today as well. If I were a Google shareholder, I would be leary of a purchase of YouTube. (Of course, to Google, $1.6 billion is pocket change…)

Update: Well now it’s true — Google has agreed to buy YouTube