Cafe Bucky

So here I am in New York City for the next 3 months, and my family is on the Left Coast.

So I bought two iSight cameras.

We just had our first videoconference last night, and it was a wonderful eye-opener! I loved the feeling of presence; seeing my wife and daughter. It’s truly the next best thing to being there. Forget the phone. This is so much better.

Well …

There’s a couple of glitches, of course. The upstream speed on both ends (DSL) limits our quality, and there’s a bit of lag in the audio. So what though. It works fine, and it’s free!

A natural progession to all of this is some merger of iPod, Treo 600, and wireless video. How long until we have handheld high quality video chat? I think it’ll be less than 5 years, at the rate things are going.

I’m glad to be with Snapper and Fia for Christmas. I’m happy that I’ll see my Dad. It’s great to have a laid back, informal day …

Christmas should be more like Thanksgiving. Give me food and friends. Music, Movies, and Books. The lady that looks after my head of hair is going to spend the day in JamJams with her family - she’s got the right idea.

Christmas is a great beer. It’s the Joe Satriani riff from “Flying In A Blue Dream”. It’s a dusting of snow on the ground, a walk in the woods. It’s those shortbread cookies with frosting that remind me of my childhood. Christmas is hanging out by a roaring fire. Christmas is turning off everyday TV. Christmas might be watching a movie instead, or soccer … Christmas is kicking back with a new book.

Christmas stuffs stockings and stomachs. It inspires, and perhaps gives a little time to reflect. Hope it’s a peaceful one this year.

Merry Christmas

er, I mean shopping …

Today’s a San Francisco urban trek occasion, where we do the west coast version of a) finding parking in a big city, b) going through stores until they start blurring together, and c) drinking way too much coffee as we cross off our lists and plan our next foray …

Wow, that’s one sentence. Shows a level of hecticness :-)

We’re actually toning it way down this year. We don’t *need* anything for Christmas, and every grownup (at least, grown up in attitude, there are grabby-grab mammals out there that still think Christmas is some sort of acquisition festival) we know is the same. We’d rather just get together with friends and swap fun stories, travel tales, and so on. A party at our house last night hit the right notes - informal, funny, diverse. I do have an Amazon wishlist, but it’s more of a “well, this is some of the stuff that reflects some interests of mine” list than anything else.

Speaking of shopping and things Christmasish, it can be dangerous to try to guess what music to get for a kid (don’t even try with Sophia). A very funny take on the RIAA is at www.whatacrappypresent.com. Enjoy!

I started work @ AOL yesterday. No time for an entry to adequately describe the last week or so. Sense of deja vu, mixed with a new cast of colleagues and a different project. Lots to remember, and lots to learn.

I will say this though: I’m going to get very good at train schedules! (I go from Grand Central to White Plains - reverse commute) The Metro North Harlem Line local stops at seemingly every other underpass - I could swear I felt my beard growing while commuting yesterday. Today I’m smarter :-)

As mentioned in an earlier post, my wife Susan Price won an International Photography Award. It turns out that she also placed 2nd or 3rd in a few other categories as well!

She is currently in L.A., all set to go to the “Lucie Awards” Sunday night (the name of the award statue). The awards are being held at a fancy-schmancy gala at the Beverly Hilton. Ya think anyone will bring a camera? (hah) We haven’t forgotten about getting a copy of the photos up to see on the web (they were viewable via voting for a People’s Choice award) - we’ll sort that out when she gets back.

Way to go Susan!

I will be going back to New York in the near future!

I have landed a 2-3 month contracting gig, and will comment a little more about it when it makes sense (when I know more…) There will be lots of programming involved.

So it looks like:

* I’ll be seeing a lot of snow
* I’ll be passing through Grand Central Station - a lot
* I won’t have much time to spend on FlexiPhoto
* New Years in NYC!

I’m deleting a lot of old deadwood email aliases. If you haven’t emailed me before, or recently, try “Dec2003″ in the daniel.org domain. That’ll work for this month, and then next month, you would … you know … increment, right? :-) I’ll reply with the address that I’ll use for emailing with you.

(this is basically a spam-limiting exercise, and I’ll have more to say once I get through a small project)

I often prefer Instant Messaging to email. My screenname is “SonomaDaniel”. I may have an iSight soon for videoconferencing.

I can do ICQ and IRC if needed.

Happy Birthday to Woody Allen, Bette Midler, Carol Alt, and Richard Pryor!

And in the tech community, Happy Birthday to Jef Poskanzer, who has written a lot of software over the years (perhaps NetPBM is the best known).