I accidentally discovered that whenever Bryan gets fussy about pretty much anything, a nice gentle leg massage usually calms him down quickly. He likes to feel our palms brush gentle strokes from both sides of his butt all the way down to his toes. That soothes him.
He’s also spending more time staying awake during the day, which has consistently translated into better sleep for us at night. Ahhh~ Sleep… ZZzzzz…
Carl was nice enough to share with me this nice site — Cambridge in Color. The photographer also shared some technical information as well as some techniques.
I REALLY miss photography. But going back to film is inconceivable since the cost of film and development (not to mention all the film needed to produce the images) is much higher than that of digital photography. My latest fixation is the new Nikon D70s. But the Fujifilm S3s is still my #1 choice.
I didn’t think something like this would exist for Wintel, but it does. After sending back the video capture card to Buy.com, I gave up on MythTV (for now). But knowing something like MediaPortal exists for Windows is comforting (for Windows users). But the whole me doing MythTV was so that I could do away Windows altogether.
I still can’t figure out why Apple hasn’t included features such as “priority” to its Mail app. Fortunately, MailTags solves that problem (and then some). This app reminds me of Carl — a super duper organizer who can’t live without sub-sub-categorizing his files and emails.
via [DownloadSquad]
I don’t have one. And reading about it doesn’t help with the pain.
The article doesn’t really go into depth on how to do it. Nonetheless it’s interesting to see how other people set up their boxes and their justifications for their setups.
via [TUAW]
Ever wonder where you can get a digital your favorite classical literature? Project Gutenberg probably has one of the largest collection of ebooks online (all 16,000+, free for personal use in the U.S.). A quick search on “Mark Twain” turned up dozens of the late author’s work. Not only does the site have everything in text format, it also includes (in an awkward way) the scanned pages of the original book. Very nice.
via [TipMonkies]
Three years ago I got a third Mac and took the plunge for a PowerBook. Though I didn’t get AppleCare, I understood its importance thanks to Murdza’s persistent reminder. Before the warranty expired, I got AppleCare as an insurance policy.
And what a fine decision that was. Second year into the AppleCare warranty (after which the original one-year warranty expired), I started to notice the bottom of the LCD screen showing some dark gradations, as if the monitor was slowly deteriorating from the bottom up. I called Apple. What followed completely exceed my expectations from a tech support stand point (having dealt with Dell frequently in the past).
The toll-free number that came with AppleCare was actually answered by a human operator. Within 5 minutes, I was already dishing out 411 about my PowerBook. Within a couple of minutes of that, a dispatch number and a case number were issued for follow up (also available online).
That same afternoon, Grace called and said someone from Apple had stopped by trying to pick up the PowerBook for repair. But since I wasn’t there, he left with me a box, some packing material and an nicely illustrated instruction on how to specifically pack the PowerBook for shipment (paid for by Apple, or should I say “pre-paid for with my AppleCare purchase”).
After I shipped the package to Apple, I expected them to take a week to go through the repair queue, perform the repair then return it. Ten days, tops, I thought. But by the fourth business day, my PowerBook was back in my hands. WOW!
It took a total of four business days for the repair, including shipping!
The PowerBook came back with a repair slip on everything that was done to it. And as expected, the LCD panel was replaced, but Apple was being nice and gave me a couple of extras:
1. Replaced the entire casing on the bottom half of the PowerBook; it didn’t look too bad before (very little chipped paints), but after the replacement, it appeared brand new.
2. They replaced the DVD drive which was making some funny sounds from time to time.
All in all, AppleCare paid for itself easily. Replacement of the LCD screen easily costs $350+. In the lifetime of any problems on a Mac, if anything goes wrong, AppleCare often saves the owner more money than the cost of the AppleCare itself.
In light of cost cutting measures to boost bottom line, many tech companies have instituted company sanctioned DIY self-service kits. Basically the customer would call the company, go through a problem-diagnosis procedure with a live tech support guy, and then they send the customer a kit to repair the specific problems.
Apple is also moving forward in that direction, but it is doing it way better than anybody else (given its excellent user-friendly processes). The new iMac G5s are made with built in self-diagnosis hardware for easy troubleshooting and replacement.
A great pizza billboard ad from down under.
Good thing they had the good sense of not using a picture of the King of Thailand.
via [Octopus Dropkick]
I was looking for a site that I can quote from regarding attendance to infant cries (and its importance). I came across this site that outlines developmental stages of early childhood. I thought I’d share that information here for easy access.
The site breaks the child’s abilities down to four main categories: physical, mental, language and social.
Finally got around to upgrade my blog to WordPress 1.5.2 (from 1.5.1.3). While I was at it, I also upgraded Brian’s blog to the latest version since I am hosting it anyway. Good thing WordPress is fairly easy to upgrade, unlike phpBB, a good (but hard-as-hell to upgrade) forum application.
Speaking of Brian’s blog, It seems like all of a sudden Brian unleashed all the drafts he’d saved up for the past few weeks. I guess I got my reading cut out for me tonight.
I finally got around to publish some pictures online. Sorry for the delay, friends and family. There should be enough pictures to keep you guys entertained for the coming weeks.
See the pictures here.
Comments and feedbacks are welcomed. Video clips coming soon.
