I’m at the Apple store, writing this on a MacBook Air. Wholly carp is this thing small. The pictures don’t do it justice. And the keyboard works awesome!

Really, that’s not very long to update a blog is it?

Figured it’s about time to give everyone (all 2 of you) an update on what’s been going on around these parts. First:

1) Cheryl and I are now certified open water scuba divers. The class and then warm-water certification dive in Utah was a lot of fun, I recommend it - though it is kinda expensive if you do it all at once. A1 Scuba does a good job.

2) Because of the above, we are headed to Roatan in April to get our scuba on.

3) We got a new dog, her name is Kara. She’s very needy.

4) I got my loan to finish up the airplane parts - so I have a panel being built, seats/interior being created, a prop being carved, and other misc parts and pieces on the way.

5) The 66 Comet is doing good, it’s actually really easy to start even when it’s cold out. Now I just need to either sell it or find someone who can fix the few rust spots on it - and maybe get the windows to roll up nice an easy.

6) I’ve read a ton of books so I’m just going to highlight the ones I liked: A Canticle for Leibowitz (post Armageddon sci-fi), Fate is the Hunter (semi-autobiographical early airline pilot days), World War Z (zombies!), Deadhouse Gates (part 2, fantasy)

7) I’m also finishing up my Instrument Rating to add to my Private Pilot’s license - hopefully I’ll be all done by the end of March.

8) Speaking of all done, my reserve enlistment with the Colorado Air National Guard was up in December, so now I’m just an IRR (inactive ready reserve) member. Haven’t had to do anything with that so far, but I’m wondering if they expect us to report in every once in awhile?

9) Some cool stuff going on at work, like: developer.mapquest.com

And I think that’s it! See, easy.

I picked up an AT&T Tilt last week, though I was really hoping to get it before we left for Japan. The phone is capable of a couple of nifty features: GPS, connects to Wifi networks, 3G High Speed Cellular Data, and the 2100Mhz cell band (which is used in Japan for GSM phones). I had hoped to at least get to use the wifi capabilities so we could check email (and maybe even make a phone call or two using Skype), but that didn’t pan out as the phone was released the week before we left - not enough time for the stores to actually get any in stock.

Anyways, so I have this Tilt thingy. I did some serious reading over at XDA Developer’s forum and picked up the ROM used to flash your phone back to the original Windows Mobile setup HTC (the manufacturer) had rather than the messed up garbage AT&T gives you. The HTC ROM has a nice touch-screen graphical homepage that makes it easy to get to the basics that Windows Mobile has to offer.

Since HTC is one of the manufacturers who joined the Google Open Handset Alliance (a joke? We’ll see), I hope to eventually get a ROM that loads and runs Google’s Android phone OS. Windows Mobile works but, eh, it’s Windows and it already erased all of my contacts once.

All in all, a nice set of features in the hardware, but I think I like the Blackberry OS that my wife has on her Blackberry Pearl better. Windows Mobile is very serious/business-like - certainly not aimed at the same market as, say, the iPhone which is very much a “smart consumer” device. But I will say Opera Mobile seems to run pretty darn well on it (though I’m starting to think Opera Mini is going to by-pass Opera Mobile soon).

Now online!

http://picasaweb.google.com/corey.crawford/Japan2007

I don’t know how many folks out there are hackers/mashup folks, but I was at Defrag earlier this week and saw a talk about an ‘open’ hardware platform being developed.

The idea is that there’s a base unit running Linux+Java with built-in Wifi, etc with modules you can plug in. The modules can be a GPS unit, a camera, a touch LCD screen, pretty much anything. This thing is the ultimate Lego Mindstorm.

Check it out here, at Bug Labs.

The idea is that you can take the base unit and plug in whatever combination of modules you need to create your own special device. Using the Linux OS plus the built-in Wifi, you can then create applications and internet services based off of it. They even have an API Framework that already knows how to talk to all of the devices, so you aren’t doing any special programming for them. For example, you could plug in a motion detector and a camera, and set it up so that it’ll take a picture whenever there is motion and then ftp/post/whatever that picture somewhere.

Just thought it was a cool thing to point out.

(Another cool talk at Defrag was about visualizing data (particularly social networking type data) and how the speaker had worked with data from DARPA based on the America’s Army game; trying to find what a signature for a competent/well coordinated fire team looked like).

I know I haven’t posted about our Japan vacation (soon! .. I think) but wanted everyone (all 2 of you) that EVE Online now runs on Mac and Linux. No excuses now!

http://www.eve-online.com/download/

Our Spice Girl passed away today. We’ll miss you!

(Almost exactly 1 month since Apollo passed on - blah)

Aurora, CO