NASA Unveils Photos From the Hubble's Newest Camera. NASA unveiled images of a galactic tadpole, a nursery for newborn stars and a giant pillar of dust today in the first batch of pictures snapped by Hubble Space Telescope's newest camera. [New York Times: Science]

Like many parents, Ann and Jack and I watched tonight's Blue's Clues event on Nick Jr. In case you missed it, tonight they showed three new episodes in a row. In the first one, Steve's brother Joe comes to visit Steve. In the second, Joe learns how to play Blue's Clues and in the third, we learn that Steve is going off to college and Joe is going to live with Blue and all of Steve's friends and take over playing Blue's Clues with us. All in all, the episodes were very well done and even brought a tear to our eyes when Steve said goodbye. But I also had some issues with the three shows:

• Joe is much taller than Steve. So much so that Steve looked like a little old man next to him.
• Steve clearly looked like a man ready to move on with his career. So much so that he seemed very flat. And short. But I mentioned that.
• During the college episode, I kept getting images of Steve in a frat house screaming "Kegger!" on the top of his lungs.
• I also had images of Steve trying to pick up girls by trying to put paw prints on parts of their bodies ("So, our clues are... a cat... a banana... and a tube of..." Ok. Maybe not.)
• I really thought the very end was completely unnecessary, the way that Slippery came in after Steve left on his bus and told Joe and everyone else that Steve was shot down over the sea of Japan.

(Extra points if you get that last reference...)

Macromedia - Designer & Developer : How to Use Dreamweaver MX to Code for Web Standards. More promising still...

Macromedia - Designer & Developer : Best Practices with CSS in Dreamweaver MX. I'm starting to get interested in the new Dreamweaver. Older versions have been shackling, at best, in terms of CSS and standards-compliant HTML (especially xhtml which I am now migrating my work into). This is promising. MacOS X version due in May.

National Weather Service Sterling. Pictures of the tornadoes in our area yesterday.

Beyond 508. Interesting alternative uses for assistive technology...

Beyond 508. Interesting alternative uses for assistive technology...

Boston Globe Online / Sports / Lowe's theater. Derek Lowe pitches a no-hitter, the first at Fenway Park since 1965. How ironic is it that the Red Sox are having an incredible season and we are living in Virginia, away from all the excitement. Thank gods for the MLB.com audio so we can listen to every game...

Scientific American: News In Brief: Chinese Fossil May Be Mother of All Placental Mammals: April 25, 2002: "Researchers have unearthed the fossilized remains of what may be the mother of all placental mammals, so-named for the placenta that nourishes the young during gestation."

New Scientist: Hubble Helps Determine Universe's Age. Between 13 and 14 billion years old. What do you get something that old on its birthday?

Eclecticity: Dan Shafer's Web Log: "As far as I know, this will be the first development tool other than professional-grade CodeWarrior from Metrowerks that will allow Macintosh programmers to create software in their favorite world and then deploy it across all other popular platforms without a coding change! As this comes to fruition, it will indeed be the Macintosh developer's Holy Grail." Huh. I'll have to take a look at this...

After I got home from work, I hung out with Jack when he went to play with the neighborhood kids. He's one of two toddlers in the group, the other being a 2 year old girl from India (or Pakistan). At one point he walked up to her and took her hand and the two of them walked around holding hands. It just about killed me it was so cute. Wish I had had a camera at that exact moment. That's why we have kids. For moments like that. And for the moments when they get really rich and buy you things. We live for those too. :)

Rotten Links Hamper Learning

Googlewog. I just love stories like this. [From Doc Searls' Weblog]

O'Reilly Network: XP on the PowerPC [Apr. 24, 2002] An interesting idea but I'm running Win2K under VirtualPC on a 500mhZ TiBook and it's DAMN slow. I get done what I need to get done (mostly, trying to run vmware causes a processor exception) but it's slow slow slow.

I've been going deep on accessibility, xhtml, and css in an attempt to pull together a set of comprehensive guidelines for our projects at work. If anyone is interested in seeing what I've compiled and, better still, commenting on them, here they are.

Runaway Trains - from the Tropics to the Arctic. This has to be the travelogue to end all travelogues...

Looking Back at the Days of the Locust

Looking at the little calendar on the right (on the radio version of this site) I notice that I seem to have an issue with blogging on Tuesdays. Huh.

Why Yahoo Is No Longer Good - Traffick.com [Via The Shifted Librarian]

Studio Log: Articles: Turn BBEdit into an AppleScript Editor. Fun project you can do at home.

Mourning My Miscarriage. This is beautiful. And it expresses so much of what I haven't been able to articulate over the two miscarriages we had last year.

The Selling of an Energy Policy. Al Gore writes passionately (really!) about the Bush Administration's abysmal record on the environment. It's clearly a trial balloon for a 2004 run for the Presidency but it's also a direct, scathing critique of Bush and his cronies. Gore is, to me, an unfortunate figure. He's incredibly smart and I believe he would make a good President. However, I do not think he would make a great President. In fact, I worry that the left has no real good people who can make a strong bid in 2004. I worry that we're going to get another Mondale or Dukakis rather than someone who was able to do what Clinton did in '92. But we desperately need this as Bush is already showing his true colors with the War to Drag On and On, the trashing of the environment, and his unfortunate stance towards Israel (see Carter's op-ed for a much more sane approach). But 9/11 has thrust perceived greatness on this man who simply doesn't deserve it.

America Can Persuade Israel to Make a Just Peace. An op-ed piece in the New York Times by Jimmy Carter.

The Leonardo Cover-Up. A fascinating tale of a Leonardo which isn't a Leonardo. Not entirely, anyway.

Farscape, X-Men, Startide Rising. It's been a sci-fi kinda day. Except for the part when I went to work and did stuff. Yes, that's all the blogging you get from me today.

Sky and Telescope - A Rare Dance of Planets. Go out and look!

Here's a Number That Will Reduce You to Tears (washingtonpost.com). A pollen count of 90 is considered "high." Yesterday, in DC, it was 2,587. Even I am feeling it. This morning I said to Ann that I should see a doctor as I think I am developing allergies. I'm glad to see that it's just an over-the-top pollen count and now some new failure of my immune system.

Cuomo's Criticism of Pataki's Role After 9/11 Sets Off Furor. Finally, someone speaking bluntly. Everyone's been using 9/11 as a way to gain some ground politically and, perhaps, Cuomo is doing that here. But he's also dead on right about this, imho.

Primate ancestor lived with dinos. The common ancestor of humans, monkeys, apes and other primates may have arisen much earlier than thought. [BBC News: sci/tech]

Leper Messiah asks, "When was it ok for news anchors to moralize about the news they are reporting? The worst offenders of this are the anchors on MSNBC. Watching a segment on the suicide bombers & how they portray themselves as martyrs, the anchor was visibly disturbed, almost in a B-movie way. Look, if I wanted bad acting, I'd rent a Mickey Rourke movie. Stick to the news, leave the moralizing to the viewers." Damn straight!

Read the two headlines in the middle. I feel the same way. We don't need any more insects. Get out. You're fired. Get some new scientists who will find useful things like cures for diseases or cold fusion or something. [Picture from my.yahoo.com]

Of Early Writing and a King of Legend

How to Fix the Dot-Government

kuro5hin.org || Uberman's sleep schedule "Over the past month, I've managed to convert my sleep cycles to something called the Uberman's sleep schedule. The end result is that I am sleeping roughly three hours a day. How did I do it? Is it safe?" Wild... just wild... I wish I could try this out. But work and child pretty much prevent me from even thinking about trying...

Kids' Corner: Website Usability for Children (Alertbox April 2002) "Our usability study of kids found that they are as easily stumped by confusing websites as adults. Unlike adults, however, kids tend to view ads as content, and click accordingly. They also like colorful designs, but demand simple text and navigation. " [Another great link from The Shifted Librarian (link below)]

" Read on, it gets much, much better.

A Top-Secret, One-of-a-Kind Mac "In a drafty shed in rural northern California is perhaps the rarest Macintosh ever made: an electronically shielded Mac used by a spy or military agency. The machine appears to be unique, and is so secret, no one knows anything about it."

Jolly new threat to our freedoms: Excellent article! [Via The Shifted Librarian]

A Mirror to Reflect a Grotesque Society: A review of The Elephant Man on Broadway: "This startling act of magic is of a kind that only theater affords, and it summons deeper responses than the carefully arranged, often eloquent words of Mr. Pomerance's drama. Mr. Crudup's moment of transformation, which signals the death of Merrick, evokes both relief and dismay. The lines that divide beauty and ugliness have been confoundingly blurred, and you are left uneasily sorting out your reactions." What a beautifully written review. I very much want to see the play as I've always had an odd interest in John Merrick.

I'm sunburnt and I ache in places I forgot could ache at all. See, I spent most of the day outside working on the lawn. Now that I'm a homeowner, I have a lawn and I get to join that club of people who worry over their lawn. Let's forget, for the moment, that my lawn is actually only slightly larger than a postage stamp (it's about 10' by 10') and just bask in the glory of rakes, hoes, sharp-claw-rake-thingy's, seed, hose, sprinklers, and fertilizers and heave a collective sigh, shall we? Every townhouse on my street has nice green lawns. We have a Malcom in the Middle brown patch of dirt. We waited to see what would grow and, except for a single large tuft in the middle (which I grew long and attempted a lawn-comb-over on) nothing really came of it. So, I clawed up the rest of the dead grass, laid down some new topsoil, sprinkled (by hand, something I'm sure I'll pay for later when I get weird clumpy grass) the seed and watered the mess. In a few days I'll add fertilizer. After I came in, I noticed that I felt much worse than I figured I should. Sure, I should be tired but I felt actually sick. That should have tipped me off since I always run a fever when I get a sunburn, just part of the magic of being me. It wasn't until dinner that Ann took one look at me and said "You got a sunburn." And now I'm feeling it. That and aches all over my body. Guess I need to get into shape, too. Ah well, it was a good day's work.

If I did this right, there should be a new googlebox on the right side of this page on the radio version of this site... just playing around...

I love it. NASA or the SAO (I forget which, maybe both) is not allowed to actually say who their contractors were. But we do, at least, get a nod on the contributors page (Ragged Castle Design). Sad thing is, that was our last major job. We've done some small stuff for in-house use by various clients but nothing major to show since this. Anyone want to hire us for a job? We're good. And not too expensive either... anyone? anyone? Ah well, it was worth a shot. And now I really do have to go to sleep.

Aside from stars made of quarks (as found by my old friend the Chandra X-Ray Observatory -- see the site my wife and I designed for them at http://chandra.harvard.edu/ - specifically the public outreach site) it's been a busy week. I'm still out here and I owe a lot of people email. I'll respond this weekend, I promise. After I finish the taxes. Hey, at least we're getting a refund this time around. With all the insanity of last year, it's nice to know we're getting a little something back from it! The new home is shaping up nicely (pictures coming soon) and Jack has more words (something that sounds like "eyesh" which is either cheese or Thomas the Tank Engine, "Story" when he wants a story (he pounds his chest to request Goodnight Gorilla), "Key", "Blue", and I *think* he tried to say Lion tonight... Pictures of him coming soon as well. He's 25 months old and 6'3" and 200 pounds. Or something like that. Well, sleep beckons.

Stars Suggest a Quark Twist and a New Kind of Matter

Incredible! Lost city found off Indian coast. A city which has been the subject of legend for thousands of years is discovered off the south-east coast of India. [BBC News: sci/tech]

Astronomers discover a star made entirely of quarks! Weird!

More goodies from the Shifted Librarian:

Wow - check out the Lego Church. [via Ian's Messy Desk] Other great Lego sites:

• The Brick Testament
• The Lego Desk and other sculptures
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail
• Stegosaurus
• Legoland Watercolors
• All things Lego at LUGNUT

[The Shifted Librarian]

Ann's friend Jarat has made it out of Ramallah and is fine. "They walked 50 feet into Jerusalem with a "great, heaving sigh," and were shocked at the normalcy of life only a few feet away, Chopra said."

In a Slashdot thread titled "Unix Isn't Dead," one reply reads: "To paraphrase "Dark Paladin" in a recent article about his Mac OS X conversion: Microsoft Windows is like your class president that didn't do shit. Linux is like a super-smart, sexy redhead girlfriend that's also a bit insane. Mac OS X is like the geeky girl at school who shed her braces and became a total hottie--and still wants to spend all her time hanging around with you. " Brilliant!

The following tidbit is from the Shifted Librarian, a weblog I just discovered today:

Two interesting font resources to file away from WebDesign-L.

• WhatTheFont - "Ever wanted to have a font just like the one used by certain publications, corporations, or ad campaigns? Well now you can, using the WhatTheFont font recognition system. Upload a scanned image of the font and we'll show you the closest matches in our database!"
• Identifont - "Welcome to Identifont®, the unique font identifier that enables you to identify a font from a sample by answering a series of simple questions. It is ideal if you want to match an existing typeface, or identify a typeface you have seen in a publication."

[The Shifted Librarian]

Physicist Thinks He'll Have a Time Machine by Next Fall. We all have dreamed about traveling through time. Seeing the wonders of the future, or visiting Caesar in ancient Rome. Now one physicist, according to this Boston Globe article, and this Eureka Alert article, thinks he'll be able to transport neutrons through time by next fall. [kuro5hin.org] Huh. If this is actually true, it raises huge issues for morality... huge ones. Makes all the debate over cloning look like trite.

Brown Professor Trapped in Palestine This is a friend of Ann's from when she worked at Brown. I met him once at Waterfire (very briefly). We're hoping he stays safe and is able to get out soon.

GAO says XML not ready for extensive government use "XML, the data exchange standard that is being deployed by federal agencies to improve interoperability, is not a mature standard. And without centralized leadership, XML implementations by various agencies could actually hurt the interoperability of government systems, the U.S. General Accounting Office said in a report released Friday."

So, lately I've been having these "Welcome to the South" moments. I call them that because every time I comment on them, my friend Chris simply shrugs and says "Welcome to the South!" Take this afternoon. After work, Chris and I headed out to get some dinner at the Ballston mall. On the way there, we saw a pickup truck driven by a man who's name had to end with "the hutt." I mean, this guy was enormous. And he was sitting in his truck in a way that can only be described as announcing "Hey! I'm incredibly fat! And I'm proud!" I'd never seen anything like it. "Welcome to the south!" I guess so. Of course, there are other benefits to living here. Liz and I had lunch at the Tidal Basin and sat across from the Jefferson Monument and all the cherry blossom trees in full bloom. Absolutely gorgeous.

So, I came back from hiatus to not blog for a few days. Guess I got busy. What's weird is that whenever my wife and son are away, I have less free time than when they are here. What's up with that? Granted, I built Ikea furniture last night (an entertainment unit) and tonight Chris came over to help me get all the electronics into it and get it moved into the corner where it lives. He hit on a brilliant idea: we figured out where all the wires needed to be and put them through the various holes in back of the unit and then moved the unit against the wall and then put the components in and just hooked them up. Did that make sense? The alternative is to push the unit into place and try to reach behind to run the wires. Got it? Hello? Is this thing on? Hello? Ahem. Never mind. It worked. In other news, my case of Dr. Pepper arrived today. I ordered a case from the Dublin, Texas bottling plant which is the only Dr. Pepper plant in the country that still makes it with cane sugar instead of corn syrup. It's tasty! While I'm babbling, here's a dinner suggestion: a spinach tortilla, rice, peanut sauce, and chicken that's been sauteed with peppers and mushrooms. Roll, eat. Yum. Good West Wing tonight. Ok, I'm pretty much done here. Night!

Nice long weekend in Rhode Island. Saw the opening day game for the Red Sox (ouch) and saw Lord of the Rings again (didn't actually care about seeing it again but rather enjoyed it all the same) and generally relaxed and got some sleep. Ann and Jack are still there for the week and I am back home to work and put together Ikea furniture. Fun fun fun!