Quinn is Flying

Here’s an example of how creative my son Quinn is. We were exploring the Oakland Museum of California yesterday when we ran across a wall with this light display to set a mood for the history of the 1960’s.  But Quinn thought the wall could be used in a different way… to fly. A little creative camera work with my iPhone and ten minutes later it was posted to YouTube.

Soccer Season is Here

Quinn is playing Soccer for the first time this season, and today was his first game. FC-Fremont does this (IMHO) incredibly stupid thing where both teams wear white and blue – but one is in a blue shirt and the other is in a white shirt. I think this is a bad idea – makes it hard to spot the kids across the field or even when watching the game. Glad I’m not a ref.

In any case, “Barcelona” won the game 9-0. The game was sort of a California variant of the “Pass it to the Italians” bit from Will Ferrell’s Kicking & Screaming. Nonetheless, Quinn seemed to have fun and definitely go more comfortable with the “herd” mentality as the game went along.

The 8:00 am starting time was a killer, but all the other games are later. We also got our “snack duty” out of the way today.

Here are some shots of Quinn today.

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Vacation Scavenger Hunt Photos

The Mercury News announced the winners of their Scavenger Hunt photo contest and we were not winners. We lost on some bad luck and a tighter than expected judging criteria. However, Riley’s photo with Church Bells did make it into the list of honorable mentions in their bonus slideshow (photo #14).

Here are our entries…

1. Covered bridge

Calgary AB

covered-bridge

2. Church with visible bell

Edmonton AB

church-bells

3. Sign that is intentionally or unintentionally funny

Jackpot NV

funny-jackpot-forest

4. Black bear (not from the wild)

Fernley NV

black-bear-diner

5. Lemonade stand

Yellowstone National Park (on July 4th!)

lemonade2

6. Water tower with writing on it

Drumheller AB

water-tower-drumheller

7. Festival celebrating food, vegetable or fruit

Potato Expo Blackfoot ID

festival

8. House that doesn’t have four sides

Bozeman MT

house-teepee

9. Mime

Fail!

10. Someone feeding pigeons

Great Falls MT (where they have very big pigeons)

feeding-geese

11. Ice cream truck

Drumheller Royal Terrell Museum

ice-cream-truck

12. Motel named for two people (i.e. Norma Dan Motel, Tenn.)

Fail!

13. Obscure historical marker

Emigrant Gulch, highway 89 Montana. It doesn’t get more obscure than this.

obscure-marker

14. Parked car with more than 10 bumper stickers? (Must be parked!)

Yellowstone National Park (believe it or not this family has six kids)

bumper-stickers

15. Building painted purple

Car Wash in Great Falls

Calgary store

purple-carwash

purple-building

16. Blank billboard

I80 Nevada

blank-billboard2

17. Closed store with “We’ve moved” sign

Calgary McLoud Trail

moving

18. Ferris wheel

Galaxyland Amusement Park in the West Edmonton Mall

ferris-wheel

19. Rainbow

General Paint store Calgary

West Edmonton Mall

Great Falls umbrella

rainbow-sign

rainbow

rainbow-umbrella

20. Something unusual not on the list

West Yellowstone MT, diner/bus

unusual-place

Traveling overseas? (You can sub out these for any three above; substitutions must be from a location outside of the United States or U.S. territories.)

1. Sign that includes foreign words and name of U.S. state

Chinese Cultural Center in Calgary (mentions Hawaii)

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2. Windmill

Alberta, Highway 2

windmill

3. Outdoor market selling food indigenous to that area

Calgary donuts

native-food

Year Long Music Project for 2011

tenacious-d-guitarwayI have decided to do a ambitious year-long music project for 2011. The idea is to help my sons (and myself) learn more about the history of popular/rock music by looking at one song per day for the entire year. The scope is to chronologically cover the history of rock and pop music from 1955 to 2010 by playing and discussing one song per day with my sons.

Here’s how the calendar will work. Each year in music will span six days, with five “miscellaneous” days for the end of each decade. This will cover exactly 365 days!  I’m really going to try and stick to the actual years the songs came out too, though I’ve got a little wiggle room if a single from an album was issued in the year after the album. Still, this will take considerable organization especially for musically-rich years like 1957, 1967, 1971, and 1983.

Here’s where I need your help

As stated above, the idea came about to give my sons a musical education. But then I thought maybe I should blog about the pick each day. Then it was suggested that I could record the discussion and make it available as a podcast (with the song in question maybe or maybe not included in the audio, depending on how much I thought this might get me in trouble with the RIAA). The blog post idea certainly makes sense because I’ve got figure nearly every song I’d select has some sort of video on YouTube that I could include as part of the post, or album art at the very least.

So, help me define the scope of the project. Please look and these choices and let me know where you think I go with this.

  1. Just a discussion with the kids
  2. Blog post on Kevdo.com
  3. Blog post on dedicated blog (e.g. SongADayForAYear.com)
  4. Audio podcast on dedicated blog (these episodes would be approximately 5 mins long)

Looking forward to hearing your comments about the scope of the blog. Also, if there are songs/artists (especially non-obvious choices) that you think I should cover I’d welcome that feedback as well.

Vacation Scavenger Hunt

My parents pointed us to this article in the Mercury News that is both a fun guideline for a vacation as well as a contest if you can document doing or seeing all of these things:

1. Covered bridge

2. Church with visible bell

3. Sign that is intentionally or unintentionally funny

4. Black bear (not from the wild)

5. Lemonade stand

6. Water tower with writing on it

7. Festival celebrating food, vegetable or fruit

8. House that doesn’t have four sides

9. Mime

10. Someone feeding pigeons

11. Ice cream truck

12. Motel named for two people (i.e. Norma Dan Motel, Tenn.)

13. Obscure historical marker

14. Parked car with more than 10 bumper stickers? (Must be parked!)

15. Building painted purple

16. Blank billboard

17. Closed store with “We’ve moved” sign

18. Ferris wheel

19. Rainbow

20. Something unusual not on the list

Tie-breaker: How many participating teams do you think will find all 20 items?

Traveling overseas?

(You can sub out these for any three above; substitutions must be from a location outside of the United States or U.S. territories.)

1. Sign that includes foreign words and name of U.S. state

2. Windmill

3. Outdoor market selling food indigenous to that area

Consider that our upcoming vacation will take us north into Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and Alberta I think we’ve got a great shot at a lot of these, including the “overseas” section in Canada.

We’re slated to travel all the way to Edmonton, so we’ve already have mapped our several “finds” for this list. The West Edmonton Mall has an amusement park with a Ferris wheel, for example. And we’re definitely stopping at Yellowstone Bear World for a little bear watching too.

As we check things off our list I’ll update this post with status updates. When we’re back from vacation we’ll have the full list of photos.

MacWorld 2010 Impressions

This Thursday and Friday I participated in the annual migration to San Francisco for the MacWorld Expo. I’ve been going each year since the early 1990’s and it’s always a great place to see what’s happening in the Mac marketplace (and the iPod, iPhone, and iPad marketplace…). The big news this year was that Apple was not participating, causing some other companies to avoid the show as well.

This year, for the first time that I can remember, I actually went for two days. Mostly this was due to the Featured Presentations that were made available to all attendees, including those with just Expo passes.  Director Kevin Smith was a big draw, and his Q&A session was hilarious but still very informative for those interested in film. I also managed to catch the Best of MacWorld session, Leo Laporte’s Late Night session, and bit of John Gruber’s session about Apple. All great stuff!

Kevin Smith
Kevin Smith
Kevin Smith
Kevin Smith

The Show Floor

A few observations. It was crowded, especially on Thursday. The show floor was smaller but it felt far more crowded. Many good companies offering their wares. I ended up buying a lot more stuff than normal this year (as a show of solidarity for the Mac community!).

Drive Savers Great Apple Logo
Drive Savers Great Apple Logo

It was nice to see Microsoft at the show, but they didn’t do much with their floor space except to have costumed icons running around. They announced Office 2011 for Mac on Thursday but weren’t even demoing in their booth. In past years they have done a good job doing presentations about their products but this year they weren’t doing any of that. Gotta give Microsoft an “F” for that. Or, perhaps, an “E” as in Entourage.

Entourage Icon
Entourage Icon

I definitely enjoy the smaller vendors too. Nicknamed “Tiny Town” this is often the best place to see small companies with interesting products. This year, I picked up BusyCal and an iPhone app for planning trips to Disneyland. You can get up close and personal with the developers who can still have demo computers and such to help sell their products.

Tiny Town
Tiny Town

On the other hand, there were problems in a new “Mobile Showcase” area that I am calling “Micro Town.”  Rather than one booth, we had four app developers in the same sized place. This place was crowded, though as you can see it didn’t stop some from including “Booth Babes” to try and perk up interest. One vendor we enjoyed checking out was selling a Slingshot game that we really liked.

Micro Town
Micro Town
Quinn Tries Slingshot
Quinn Tries Slingshot

This year Julie and the boys had the day off from school so they spent some time with me on Friday. Here are the boys about to head onto the floor of the Expo. Quinn even found a (fake) iPad!

MacWorld Here We Are!
MacWorld Here We Are!
I have an iPad!
I have an iPad!

The boys and I did also have some time to explore the Yerba Buena Gardens above the Moscone Center, including a very interesting play structure and their Carousel.

Moscone Center View
Moscone Center View
Big slides
Big slides

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Sea Lions at San Francisco’s Pier 39

Julie and had a date night and drove up to San Francisco for some sightseeing and dinner. We stopped at Pier 39 at sunset and of course had to visit the famous sea lion enclave. How little did we know that the wharf was teeming with sea lions!

The video was shot on an iPhone 3GS and edited in iMovie.

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Earlier we had a great drive up to the top of Twin Peaks for a clear view of The City. The rain yesterday really cleared out the sky and even though it was a little breezy the view was spectacular.

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For dinner we tried Joe’s Crab Shack down near Fisherman’s Wharf. The shrimp caesar salad I had was great! We had a nice view overlooking the street and wharf below.

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All photos taken with iPhone 3GS.

Great Photo of Riley

This is Riley’s Halloween costume as a Mad Scientist. Hair courtesy of yours truly…  Great photo by Julie showing his look with the props and such.

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Great Photo of Quinn

I can’t take credit for this awesome photo of my son Quinn. It was taken by Galen Cook, a Boy Scout and son of our Cubmaster Robert Cook. This was taken at our end of summer BBQ last week. More photos of the event on the Pack 163 blog.

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Frank’s Veggie BBQ Video

Here’s a fun and informative video featuring my father Frank Crossman. Check out the enthusiasm as he tries out the Mesh Grill-Top Chef’s Pan from Williams-Sonoma (a Father’s Day gift). I filmed this on my new iPhone 3Gs and edited in iMovie HD.