Must remember to keep smiling while the world continues to explode around me.

Books the kids and I have been reading…

GUYKU: A Year of Haiku for Boys – this was great, both kids really liked this book. Their eyes glazed over when I explained the syllable scheme(s) of Haiku, but they really enjoyed this book. And my son actually showed this book to our neighbor’s child and explained the 5, 7, 5 pattern.
How to Clean a Hippopotamus: A Look at Unusual Animal Partnerships – this book was cool. Illustrations are neatly laid out in a comic strip block format and chocked full of weird information. Ever have anyone ask you to describe another symbiotic relationship besides that of the clown fish and anemone? Well this book will give you plenty of responses.
Jimi: Sounds Like a Rainbow: A Story of the Young Jimi Hendrix – LOVED this book. The artwork is super cool and although a rock star that killed himself with drugs and alcohol (but, this is about his childhood and learning guitar) may seem like an odd choice for the subject of a children’s book – the music he made is the real story.
Subway – great idea for a book. Now my kids want to go ride all the subways in NYC.
Yucky Worms – Viv really like this story of a grandmother sharing all the secrets about the wonderful things worms do for us. And finally this book dispels the myth that if you cut a worm in half, you get two worms.
Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night – I loved this book. One half of the page is a poem about the nocturnal animal or plant, the other side explains the science behind the poem you just read. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the kids thought this was as cool as I did.

Small Business/Tech Links…

• WordPress Gets iPad Friendly Look
• The Truth About Search Engines and Flash
• Social Networking Strategies for Finding More Work
• Why Making Web Apps with Rails Is Awesome
• 11 Pro Tips for Better Business Blogging

Funny/Interesting Links…

• Top 10 Craziest Victoria Jackson Quotes About Glenn Beck
• My Bad Parent
• The Aurora
• Near Perfect Reflection
• THE MANIFESTO MANIFESTO
• Sokoblovsky Farms

Dodged a big financial bullet yesterday, my cracked molar only required a filing and no root canal was needed. Whew. Being able to eat on one side of my mouth again is heaven.

And yes, I just realized I did it again…

Happy Annual-Bought-a-Bag-of-Water-Softener-Salt-Instead-of-Sidewalk-Salt Day everybody!

Good news is my water softener needed it.

The even better news is that I am doing very well to get the backend piece of a rather large web project finished this week. I also got a call from another client that wants me to be more involved with their SEO strategizing and we discussed expanding my role with their company. On top of that, in a few months I will be the proud owner of an iPad! I am working on an HTML5/transition Flash-heavy sites to non-Flash heavy sites and my client will be purchasing one for me. After consulting with my family iPad expert (my very talented cousin, Justin), I think I’m going to try to hold out for the iPad 2. The timing should be just right with my development ramping up around that same time and I’ll need the device for unit testing.

By the way, my house smells awesome today. Abbe got a crock pot from her boss and is trying out some sort of really awesome smelling recipe all day.

• Year in Reviews 2010
• Greatest Sports Pep Talk Ever
• The Difference between the United Kingdom, Great Britain, and England Explained
• xkcd : Learning to Cook
• Shinmoedake erupts: lava, ash and lightning over Japan

Small Business/Tech Links…

• Google’s New Anti-Spam Algorithm – Google’s new algorithm isn’t perfect yet, but if you are generating lesser-quality blog content as a feeder site for your business site – you might want to talk to a legit copywriter, stat.
• HTML5 Boilerplate
• AutoPagerize – I love Chrome

I am in the home stretch on a couple of projects. I’m knocking out laundry lists of last items to finish before go-live. Both sites are really slick and will be awesome additions to my portfolio. Next week, I am planning on giving Flash Game Fever a major overhaul to see if that site is really worth keeping.

I’ve got coding to get back to. This afternoon, I need to prepare my presentation for BNI and also Viv will be visiting the dentist (and that’s always fun).

• Pale Kid raps fast
• imfdb
• Giant Puppet
• Meat Salad
• xkcd : Complex Conjugate

Small Business/Tech Links…

• Rev Up Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

Pictures from yesterday…

• 3-D Glasses Dress – posted this for Abs
• Superhero Social Networking
• The Element of Suprise
• Tampon Pan Flute – Ode to Cramps

Links for my geeky homies…

• Adobe brings Flash apps to the iPhone
• VMWare Fusion 3 Makes Running Windows on a Mac Fun – I’ve been using Fusion for a couple years now and love it.
• 9 Ways to Take Your Site from One to One Million Users

Here’s Bubs and Abbe filming an on-location newscast from in the field reporter, Vivienne… (I think Abbe was interviewed)…

And here’s Bowie trying to get Abbe’s attention while Abbe was folding laundry…

And here is my latest battle… Abbe’s addiction to Bubble Boom.

While it’s great she’s earning me a couple of pennies here and there (actually probably more like fractions of a penny) by playing so much, she gets a little… umm… intense… yes, she’s pretending to shoot the bubbles here…might need an intervention…

Books the kids and I have been reading… Dolphins In Danger (Adventures Of Riley) – it’s another Adventures of Riley book – the kids love ‘em, Hush, Baby Ghostling – Vivienne LOVES this story, Adventures of Riley–Mission to Madagascar – again, Riley = teh awesomes, Skelly & Femur – kids like this one, great illustrations but not much reading involved, South Pole Penguins (Adventures Of Riley) – Riley + tales of penguin poop? as we say here in Jersey… fuhgetaboutit, There Was An Old Monster! – kids like this, there is also a song you can download.

• And now, a word from Glenn Beck’s sponsors…
• MS Marketing Decapitation in Poland
• 2009 World Sauna Championships
• Help Waldroid Destroy Waldo Once and For All
• 50 Extraordinary and Attractive Billboards

Links for my geeky homies…

• Top 10 UX Myths
• Clean Javascript inheritance