March 30, 2004
Thanks to my net friend Dan, I have an amazing new Photo Gallery. It's simple to add photos, and the features are great -- expect to see a lot more photos and more frequent updates. One feature I love is the ability to categorize photos. Each category becomes its own gallery. Two special categories I added are Bailey's Birth Day and KJT's January/February Birthday Party. And of course, there is a gallery dedicated to Bailey -- it has 86 photos!
March 22, 2004
Bailey's able to sit up, with support, and for some reason, I thought it would be cute to take some photos of her sitting up in various odd places around the house. These two were taken after a trip to Target and the grocery store. I'll probably add some more of these type pictures over the next couple weeks.
You wouldn't know it from all the media attention it's still generating, but it's been well over a year since Bono's f-word fiasco at the Golden Globe Awards. Honestly, I'm sick to death of hearing about it. I'm also sick of hearing Bono lumped in with Howard Stern and Janet Jackson because he dropped the f-bomb once on live television, as if that's the whole picture of him as an artist or a man. So I was happy to see him speak out on the controversy, in a NYT article that appeared on Sunday:
I guess I don't speak American, but I thought I did. There are some obscenities in our culture, and this is nowhere near the top of the list. I never meant to be offensive. That language was genuine exuberance. It was a great moment for our band. If you're Irish, you love language, and if you do, you're going to fall on the occasional expletive; it's the percussive side of language. For me, it is preposterous to have good, conservative people whom I like and respect taking on an expletive while the right to pack heavy ammo goes by. It says something eloquent, if not pretty, about where we are.In other Bono news, the University of Pennsylvania has selected him to give their 2004 commencement address on May 17th. They are also awarding him an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. Cole Slaw, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to crash the commencement and obtain an autograph and info on the new U2 album from Bono.
Finally, Bono was recently interviewed for O, the Oprah magazine. It's one of his best interviews from the past few years. He talks about joy, musical inspiration, surfing his jet lag, and says "Amazing Grace" is his favorite song.
March 15, 2004
Bailey is such a happy little baby. And last night she made her parents very happy. She slept in her crib from a bit after midnight until a bit after 1:00pm today, waking only once for about an hour to eat. We slept better than we have in a long time.
Impaled on motorcycle handlebars, N.C. man proposes:
Lying on the ground with his motorcycle handlebars sticking 6 inches into his abdomen, Brian Shipwash wanted to make sure he did one more thing in case he died. So he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small box, broken and blood-spattered, with a ring inside and asked his girlfriend, Shandra Miller, to marry him. She said yes.
Since I built this website close to two years ago, I've been updating our photo gallery manually. I go into Photoshop to individually crop and resize and create thumbnails. I code the HTML for each page by hand. I take a lot more photos than ever make it onto the site because of the time commitment required to post a new set of photos, and I really can't do it anymore. I'm looking for an open source or free photo gallery program with at least a moderate amount of customization allowed, and I'd like your suggestions.
March 12, 2004
UNC lost to Georgia Tech by 1 point in the ACC Basketball Tournament this afternoon. How many times in one season can a team lose by a basket in the final seconds of the game? North Carolina has been breaking my heart this year with games like this. When they bring their best game, there's not a team in the country they can't beat, but they have been consistently inconsistent all year. They still have a berth in the NCAA Tournament, though, so maybe their fortunes will improve. I do think Roy Williams is doing a good job, and I can't wait to see where this program is three years from now.
This afternoon I managed to get this shot of Bailey holding her bottle during her mid-afternoon feeding. She's been putting her hands up to it and trying to hold it I guess for a few weeks (having a baby has caused me to lose all sense of time) and she's really getting good at it. Usually it's too heavy but this afternoon she was laying down to eat so that wasn't an issue.
After she finished eating, she was wide awake, and I thought I'd try something new. I still had the digital camera handy, so I held it up where Bailey could see the LCD on the back and started scrolling through the pictures I'd taken. She was mesmerized. Her eyes got so big when she first started looking at it, and it surprised her every time I pulled up a new picture. By the end, she started cooing at a couple pictures of herself smiling. It was adorable!
I would really love to know what goes on inside her little mind. Can you imagine what it must be like to see and hear and experience everything like for the first time? A couple weeks ago I showed her my color-screen cell phone and she was pretty fascinated by it. She also gets big-eyed when I hold the phone up to her ear so Genia can talk to her when she calls from work. Was she thinking "Why does this little silver thing sound like my mommy?" If I could read her mind, would her thoughts be in English or some sort of unintelligible baby language? I'm as fascinated by her as she must be by all the new things she experiences.
Krispy Kreme, home of the most delicious doughnuts on the planet, has given in to the low-carb craze. They're creating a low-sugar doughnut, set to debut later this year. Truly sad news. If you can't go to Krispy Kreme for a guilt-free sugar indulgence, where can you go? I'm sure that, like low-carb offerings by fast food restaurants like Subway, these low-sugar doughnuts will sell and be successful. Honestly, though, I am just sick to death of hearing about the Atkins diet, and I'm sick of seeing commercials for low-carb foods. Stop the insanity! Oh, that reminds me, a few weeks ago I saw Susan Powter on The O'Reilly Factor railing against the Atkins craze. I think she was on crack that day because she was acting completely insane.
March 11, 2004
The concept of "internet radio" was really big a few years ago during the Napster-era, with independent and corporate players streaming music via the web. For all the hype, they were basically just like regular radio stations, except that the music selection was often broader and more eclectic. Canadian blogger Steven Garrity has a different concept for doing radio on the web. Acts of Volition Radio is more like a radio show, featuring 5-10 songs along with personal commentary on the selections. Steven recently released Session 7 and I couldn't resist downloading it -- it features Jeff Buckley's amazing take on Cohen's "Hallelujah." In looking over the past sessions, I'm impressed with the song selection on each one, and I plan on following this series from now on.
If there are any loyal FNR readers left, you have surely noticed the decline in blogging since my lovely daughter Bailey was born in November of last year. There simply isn't enough time to devote to this hobby as there once was. That, however, isn't my biggest problem. I'm getting this dad thing down, and there are plenty of times when I have a few minutes to post. The problems I'm facing now are a lack of inspiration and some nagging questions about the form I want this blog to take, mainly regarding post length.
In general, my posts have always been on the long side. I'm a huge fan of Movable Type's "Extended Entry" feature, and use it frequently. Over the last month, I've had multiple post ideas that I never followed through on because I wasn't able to expand them to what I thought was a worthwhile length. Recently I made a post called "Minis" which included a few shorter items. It was modeled after Ben Domenech's "The Rundown" which he posts at least once a week, containing upwards of 10 short items, each ranging from just a sentence to a full paragraph. I was contemplating another "Minis" post earlier this week, but let it go because I didn't have enough short items! I don't know where I got these ideas about lengthy posts, but I'm finally ready to let them go -- they're killing my weblog. I think my new inspiration is a blog I've always enjoyed called Chronic Murmuring. Scott easily posts 4 or 5 times a day, and the posts range anywhere from one or two sentences about an interesting link to several paragraphs of highly intelligent (though sometimes over my head) commentary.
Hopefully this new perspective will breathe some new life into Friday Night Running. But don't worry, the one thing this blog will never lack for is cute baby pictures...