Aidan and I sat on the same side of the table – a rare occasion – usually that’s Gabrielle’s spot. But she was gone at Gems camp, and Aidan, sitting there, decided to loop his little arm over mine while having breakfast. Teresa captured the moment:
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OK, so it’s Hallowed ‘een, or more modernly, Halloween, but that’s just a recent invention of the last 100 years or so. As Chaucer said, “men evere seeke newfangle.” In any case, here are the artistic efforts of the Koetsier household this trick-or-treat season. (More accurately, that would be the art of one Teresa...
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I hadn’t been keeping up too intensely on matters astronomical the past month or so, so late last week when I went for a night run and saw an unusually bright “star” in an odd location, I assumed it was Venus. It was intensely bright and yellowish-hued – I could barely help seeing it...
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This article on the Online Asian Times by a European financial analyst (who also has posted the article on his blog) summarizes many of my fears about the United State’s current direction. Ill-advised wars without clear endpoints, money flowing out the door like a river of cheap paper, a focus on the short-term benefits...
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I like this Steve Jobs quote: “a technology in search of a problem.” Saw it here, and doesn’t it ring a bell when you look at some of the consumer electronics products available today ….
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Teresa took this wonderful shot of a wading duck about a week ago, near a Langley farm. It’s not really visible in this small pic, but the whole image is razor sharp, and the contrast of the orange beak and feet with the rest of the photo’s rather monochromatic tone really appeals to me.
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Most Wednesdays I like to play noon-hour drop-in hockey. There’s a rink only minutes away from our Bellingham office, and a good bunch of guys who play there … Today was a great game, lots of people, a couple of shifters, and a high tempo. No goalies, unfortunately. I was just starting to think...
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It’s a big day … we’ve recently launched our new calendar-creation site, and today we had our first orders! The site is an incredibly simple way to create a quality wall calendar with your own photos … and benefit schools as well. (Each calendar bought means $5 goes to a school of your choice.)...
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All the speculation and rumors about Google base is hitting the web right now, and I’m as intrigued about this as most. But lots of people are looking at this and ‘finding’ evidence of a master plan … that Google is going to marry this with Froogle and start competing with Craigslist and eBay...
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Went to the Vancouver Enterprise Forum tonight. There were a couple of great presentations … Dick Hardt’s on Identity 2.0 was very cool. What is identity, who are you, and how the heck other people, sites, and processes know who you are. He’s the founder of Sxore and Sxip, building various identity services for...
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I learned a new word last Friday. Mike Suto, one of our company’s trainers, left a great job a few years before coming to our company. It was a high-paying, high-profile, high prestige job that was also a high-stress job. Mike had cancer, his personal life was not where he wanted it to be,...
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Most days when I get back from the office, my 2-year old son Aidan greets me in the hall or kitchen. I’ll walk in, and sometimes he’ll run to meet me, his little feet pounding the floor eagerly. “Daddy, are you home?” he says without a trace of irony as I sweep him off...
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I just saw this tease of an intro at MacDevCenter.com: Editor’s note: When I recently saw the new iMac with the iSight built in, it reminded me of a project we’ve been working on. In a nutshell, Matthew Russell and I have been talking about using the iSight to take and classify images, such...
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You know, aside from all the standard idiocy you can find in GM and other North American car makers (note that their home page is currently promoting the Yukon, a massive, heavy, gas-guzzling monster), there is always room to be surprised by fresh instances of complete cluelessness. Case in point: Note the little icon...
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To the woman in the white GMC Envoy on Marshall Road, near the McMillan turn-off, who did not like it when I passed her … The reason I passed your air-choking earth-killing SUV is because it was big and fat and slow. Plus I didn’t want to breathe your fumes.
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Welcome to Sparkplug 9, John Koetsier's blog on technology, social media, education, innovation ... and anything else that catches my fancy.