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| From Pictures of the Day 2012 |
Usually I want till the end of the day to post the picture of the day. Just in case I get a better picture later in the day. I don’t have to worry about getting anything better. This picture is an amazing picture. It’s Melissa’s weight. Since she started this journey she’s lost 200 pounds. It’s an amazing accomplishment and I want to celebrate it with my amazing wife.
When I first broke my phone, I did a search for replacement parts for my phone and found that the screen was only between $40 and $50 to buy. This gave me hope that it wouldn’t be to expensive to get fixed. Of course when I contact local places to do the repairs I was presented with a price of around $170, I decided to put the repairs on the back burner and live with the broken screen. Then today I saw that HTC will probably be bringing Jelly Bean to the Amaze in the new year the desire to repair my broke screen return. So I did a search for ‘How to repair a HTC Amaze screen’ and found this video.
And this post: HTC Amaze 4G Screen Take Apart Repair Guide
Between the two it show’s that it should be possible for me to replace the screen myself. Though I’m not sure if I’m confident in my abilities to actually try. After all there were plenty of electrics that I took apart in my youth that never seemed to go back together right. Do I want to try it with my phone? Do I want to risk being without even my broken phone? It’s a tough call. For now I’ll leave it as is and see if HTC does indeed release Jelly Been for it, before I take such a big step. Of course it could be possible that Google will bring the cost of the new Nexus down low enough that I can just get a new phone(Shhh don’t tell Melissa I’m thinking of buying a new phone).
Last week the latest game in the Angry Birds franchise was released, angry birds star wars. It recasts the birds as Luke, Obi-wan Han and the rest of the hero’s from star wars. The pigs become the billions, from Sand people to Darth Vader. It amazes me how well Rovio has been able bring new life the series. Before the release of there last game, Angry Birds: Space, I had grown tired of the repetitive game play in the classic Angry Birds and even in Seasons. With the added complexity of variable gravity I quickly played through all the available levels. Of course even that got stale and Angry Birds was removed from my phone. I tried to ignore Angry Birds Star Wars, I didn’t look at the concept art, or early teaser video’s, until the day of release and I saw the Cinematic trailer.
The day winds down and I look at this blank post and I wonder why I ever told anyone about my goal of writing two posts a day. Some day’s it’s hard enough to get the picture of the day out let alone another 500 unrelated words. At least before I went and spouted off about what I was doing only me and a few of my family and friends would know of my failure. Now anyone who reads my blog knows that if I have just a POD and nothing else that I failed in my quest to write 2 posts a day for a month. And when does the first day that I’m really unable to think of anything happen, the very next day. Perhaps I knew that would happen and that’s why I was holding off writing about it. Perhaps it’s just bad luck. So instead of a real post you get this rambling line of thoughts about not being able to think of anything. It was this kind of post that made the move from writing a posting every day to just posting a picture every day easier 3 years ago when I last tried to really post every day. Hopefully I’ll get a better list of idea’s sorted out in the coming day’s so that I don’t find myself rambling on as the the day slips away.
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| From Pictures of the Day 2012 |
Today the temperature was in the double digits, so we couldn’t keep the kids in the house. So we headed out, Jacob with his skateboard and Violet with a scooter and enjoyed the warm weather.
If you are a regular reader of my blog you might have been a little surprised over the last 10 day’s at the amount of posts I’ve been doing on my blog. They have double, instead of my daily picture you are getting my picture and something else. Well the extra writing is for National Blog Posting Month, it’s supposed to be a challenge so I thought I had to do something then just my standard picture a day so my solution is to add a written post each day. Something more thought-provoking and longer then the usually 50 words I write with my picture of the day. My goal is to write a least 250 words, but I’m really aiming for closer to 500.
I’ve waited 10 days’ to explain this, for two reasons, the first is I didn’t know if I could take the added writing. It’s hard to just think of something to write about each day let a lone write it. The second is I was keeping it in reserve, I figured hey there will come a day that I really can’t think of what to write and on that day I’ll be glad that I have this to write about. Today my mind drew a blank as I sat at the computer trying to come up with something worth writing. I’m not sure if this is really worth it, but it’s a post and if you are interested in my blog it will show you what I’m hoping to do going forward beyond NaBloPoMo.
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| From Pictures of the Day 2012 |
Today Jacob and I headed to the mall with the number doors, Sherway Gardens, for what we thought we’d be a quick morning of picking up tickets for the Sanata Experience. It’s one of our favourite holiday outings. Santa reads a story to the kids and sings songs and does magic tricks. It’s a great evening. One we triThe kids get to sing and dance with Santa. Here’s my post from last year’s visit complete with some video I took POD: The Santa Experience. We arrived at the mall just past 8 to a line that stretched around the square in the centre of Sherway and down beneath the food court. Before they started selling tickets at 8:30 the line stretched out of the mall. Around 9 am, the first of Sherway’s employee’s wondered by saying that the line was 4 or 5 hours. I thought great, we should be out by 11 and easily make it home in time to get to Jacob’s hockey game. I didn’t get to the counter till just before 1pm. Luckaly Papa came and got Jacob around 12, so he didn’t miss his game. Still 5 hours in line is worth it to see the smiles on there faces when they get to see Santa. Of course the one quiestion I have is will Violet pose for a picture with the big man this year?
Geek, Father and Husband, these are the words I would have used to describe myself when I launched this blog 3 years ago. Over the years since then I have been trying to come up with other words. I’ve wanted to have a page dedicated to me, and one about my wife and kids. They have never been written. I’ve tried many times, but I can never seem to capture what I want to say. A while back it came to me how I wanted to describe myself here on my blog. I’ve chosen 7 words to describe me.
Geek, Father, Husband, Programmer,
Photographer, Writer and Runner
You can read about the seven words here, or by clicking on the Geek in The Family menu. I’m not sure if I’ll use the same style when writing a bio for my wife and kids over the next few weeks, but I will be writing something for them. With my renewed focus on writing on my blog this month I thought it was important to start filling out some of the other area’s of my blog. I’m hoping to add bio the rest of the bio pages before November is through, but will be happy if I get this up this year.
I upgraded to Windows 8 the first moment I could, with the low upgrade cost and new UI it was a no brainier. I like where Microsoft is going with windows. Sure I have some concerns but I think Windows 8 provides a better experience even on a desktop, then windows 7. So today I’m starting a new series of posts with a focus on windows 8 and it’s new metro style apps. Each week I’ll write about a feature of windows or an application. I had planned on writing up about the simple upgrade process for windows out, but I didn’t get any screen shots while I upgraded my system, so instead I’ve decided to share my thoughts on Windows 8 and the direction Microsoft is taking with it’s monopolistic OS.
Continue reading “Windows Wednesday: A Bridge to the future”
Tonight I headed out to GTA PHP User Group Meetup, there was a presentation about the Laravel framework. It was great to get out and be around programmers. I’m hoping to make it out to the meetups regularly. I’m sure if I will be able to make it work every month, but I’m going to try. No do I want to stick to the PHP meetups or perhaps see what other geeky meetups I could find and maybe alternate.
I’ve known about meetups for a long time, I attended a few years ago, but it’s been a long time. I got interested in this one because of the topic. I’ve started working on a personal programming project and have been looking at options for PHP frameworks. Currently I’m working with CodeIgnitor on a couple of project for clients and I was thinking this project would be a good chance to learn something new. So I searched the web and found the Laravel framework and it seemed like a good option, but I was having trouble getting started with it. So I thought hearing someone talking about it would be a good introduction. I’m happy to say it was, and I do think that I’ll give it a try for at least one project. Now if I can just choice a Java-Script framework for the front end I’ll be set.