I’ve been thinking some lately about all the great software and services that I use during the course of an average day. While I’m excellent about whining when a business or product doesn’t meet my expectations, I’m not as consistent about shout-outs to the good ones. In order to help remedy that, here’s a list of the stuff I like and why I like it.

For normal people:

• Google Calendar: (web) Managing a calendar for a family of 6 is a challenge. I used to use iCal, but was frustrated with keeping it synced across several different machines. Having the data on a central server eliminates the syncing hassles, the sharing options make it easy for multiple people to help keep things up to date, and the iCal support means that Kathy can subscribe to the calendars and still make pretty printouts with our calendar data from iCal.
• Remember the Milk: (web) Absolutely rockin’ to-do list manager. Lets you keep multiple to-do lists, has hooks into SMS and IM services to remind you when things come due, integrates with Google Calendar, lets you share individual items or whole lists with other people, and has a very rich and flexible recurrence model so that I can set “Pay Bills” for the first of every month, but can set “Change Air Filters” for 60 days after whenever I happened to get around to doing it last. For web app nerds, it also has the best implementation of “Undo” that I’ve seen in a web application.
• Bloglines: (web) A fine online RSS aggregator which integrates nicely with websites, mobile phones, etc. The “Weblogs” sidebar on my weblog is driven by Bloglines.
• Flickr: (web) If you are into photography, you probably already know about Flickr. Photo hosting site that has great community features and data interchange support. It powers the “Recent Photos” sidebar on my weblog.
• Netflix: (web) Great selection, good prices, and eliminates all of that tedious “interacting with real people” that you have to do at the video store. Add ratings, an excellent recommendations service, data export and some community features, and you have a winner. Powers the “What I’m Watching” sidebar on my weblog.
• Grand Central: (web) Provides you with one phone number you can give out to people, which will then ring all of your phones, or only certain ones (or none!) depending on who’s calling. Has actually diminished my hatred for talking on the phone. See David Pogue’s fake ad for more details on this groovy service. (Now if they’d only get some numbers in San Marcos…) Powers this very tasteful button you can use to call me:

• Gizmo: (Mac/PC) A VOIP program for your computer. I never got much into Skype, which does much the same thing as Gizmo, but when GrandCentral added Gizmo integration, I was suddenly able to make calls, local or long distance, to normal phones from my computer for free. (This may change once GC emerges from beta.) If I didn’t have a family, I’d have cancelled my regular phone line by now. As it is, having what effectively amounts to another phone line in a house with a teenager has proven useful.
• Adium: (Mac) Very nice multiprotocol messaging client. Has a ton of power-user features, and integrates nicely with…
• Growl: (Mac) A unified notification manager for Mac OS X. Lets applications that support it give you notification via a variety of popup window types. My main Mac pops up a little bar across the bottom of the screen with pertinent details whenever someone IMs me, when iTunes cues up a new song, when I get a new email, when Democracy Player finishes downloading a video, when iStumbler detects a new wireless network nearby, and more…
• Comic Life: (Mac) Lets you make comics from photos or using your newer Mac’s built-in iSight camera. Immensely fun.
• Democracy Player: (Mac/PC/Linux) Wraps up an RSS client, BitTorrent, and VLC into one nifty bundle. Part of the Participatory Culture Foundation’s suite of software that creates a complete end-to-end alternative video distribution channel through the Internet.
• Firefox: (Mac/PC/Linux) The best, most flexible web browser available. And it’s free. Put IE behind you, slaves of Bill Gates!
• Plaxo: (web/Mac/PC) After .Mac tried to eat my Address Book data for the 6th time, I went looking for alternative ways to keep that data in sync across various machines. Plaxo provided what I needed for free and added in some nice additional data management options. (You could, for example, use it to sync address book data across Macs and PCs.)
• Google Earth: (Mac/PC) It’s like a virtual globe in your computer, but with all of the data-mining power of the internet behind it. Educational and fun.
• Google Sketchup: (Mac/PC) 3D modeling for the rest of us. Easiest modeling program I’ve every used — handy for designing houses, furniture, modeling where the sun will fall on your property, creating building models to share in Google Earth, etc.
• OmniGraffle: (Mac) What Microsoft Visio wants to be when it grows up and gets good taste. Superb package for visual communication.
• Quicksilver: (Mac) The first thing I install on any new Mac. App launcher, data manager, and much more. I keep discovering new things it does. I’m pretty sure it makes french fries and gives backrubs.
• Wesabe: (web) Online financial management program. Kicks Quicken to the curb with Web 2.0 flair, and has shaved about 30% off of my bill-paying time.
• Bibliofile: (web) Well, yes, I wrote it, but I still find it useful. Keep track of your reading.
• Pandora: (web) Lets you create your own radio stations with just the music you’d like. If only they’d get it working on the Wii’s web browser…

For programmers:

• Trac: Combines a Wiki, a ticketing system, and a front-end to a SCM system (subversion, to wit). Each of the tools is nice individually, and together they make a bang-up addition for small to medium teams.
• Subversion: Great source code management system. Has several important advantages over CVS, and is well-supported across a variety of platforms.
• Eclipse: Really nice IDE, originally for Java development but now with plugins for all kinds of languages.
• Magnolia: A CMS that emphasizes functionality and ease-of-use. We switched to this from Vignette, and my quality of life improved markedly. Great bunch of people, too.
• Ruby on Rails: Outstanding framework for building database-backed web apps.

To celebrate Spring Break last week, we decided a family camping trip to Inks Lake State Park was in order. We all piled into the car Tuesday morning as soon as Maggie was back from a tearful visit to the doctor (where she got a couple vaccinations and the assurance that she wouldn’t have to be punctured again until she is 11 years old) and headed north.

We arrived in time to set up tents and unload the canoe from the top of the car, where I had lashed it with several miles of overcautious not-boy-scout-approved knots, before the sky opened and the rain started in earnest. We rode the worst of it out by loudly reading The Chronicles of Narnia in the tent before taking off for a sodden hike to the Devil’s Waterhole. (I looked, but saw nobody of particularly diabolical mien swimming there.)

I had no memory of having been to Inks Lake before, and wasn’t terrifically impressed with the photos I saw of the place on the Internet, so was delighted to find the lake and its environs absolutely beautiful. Our campsite was mere feet from the edge of the water, and an easy walk from some of the rocky falls and grottos that marked a nearby river’s ingress to the lake. The park was well-appointed, with lots of playgrounds, a general store, and even boat rentals. (My only disappointment in that regard was that the website promised Surfbike rentals, which looked like an excellent reason to sign a liability waiver, but they were nowhere to be found.)

We spent a couple of days paddling around the lake, doing a bit of geocaching, taking hikes, wandering around the campground, roasting anything that came to hand over the campfire, reading, exploring nearby Marble Falls, etc. Sadly, a mere 6 photos into the trip, our camera decided that the world should be considerably more purple and smeary than it actually is, so we weren’t able to take much in the way of useful pictures. In spite of that setback, it was a nice vacation, loudly and repeatedly proclaimed by several of the kids as “the best camping trip ever!”

For the first time, I want a PS3.

UPDATE: Here’s the editor in action as well. Very nice indeed.

Last weekend, thanks to Kathy’s willingness to hold the fort, I was able to make my way up to Waco for Baylor’s All-University Sing, a huge show that fraternities, sororities, and other student organizations put on every year and for which my good friends Jason and Barry arrange nearly all the music, in addition to playing in the pit band and building some of the props. Kathy and I went for the first time last year and had a superb time of it, so I was understandably keen to get back. (As I told my boss, “You haven’t lived until you’ve been in a room with thousands of baptists hopped up on sugar and adrenaline seeing their friends go crazy Broadway style!”)

I took off work a bit early to get up there in time, and had to sweet-talk my way past one of the door-guards to get in and find Jason. (“See that guy in the orchestra with a cell phone in his ear? He has my ticket!”) We connected up about 15 minutes before the show began, and he introduced me to Matt, with whom I’d be sitting and who had kindly offered to give me a place to sleep that night. Before long, the lights dimmed, Jason sprinted for the pit, and Matt and I settled in to enjoy the spectacular show.

Matt, as it turns out, is working on his PhD in physics, with a focus on String Theory and Quantum Physics. Our conversation quickly took a technical turn as we talk about his research and programming and simulation concepts. During one of the 6 minute lulls between acts, we had this conversation:

Sean

I wonder how many calories were just expended on that stage.

Matt

I’ll bet we could figure it out.

Sean

Oh, totally. There were, what, about 80 people on stage?

Matt

That sounds about right. And at a good exercise heart rate — say 150 beats per minute or so — people expend about 900 calories an hour.

Sean

Good, so since the acts are about 9 minutes long, we’ll call it 100 calories/person over the course of the act for easy math, so about 8,000 calories per act.

Matt

And for 19 acts, the total would be…ummm…152,000 calories per night, not counting the orchestra or the stage crew.

Sean

That sounds just about right. Excellent!

Sean & Matt

[Satisfied pause]

Matt

We are really big nerds.

Sean

Oh yeah. Totally. [beat] And the next stage, of course, is to figure out how much arable land would be required to meet the caloric needs of the show…

After the performance wrapped up, we went to Cricket’s for some chow and a debrief of the show. We told Jason and Barry which acts we liked the best, laughed together about some of the little musical tricks and jokes they’d worked into the arrangements, and recounted highs and horrors of years past. Between the brilliant company and the good food and brew, this was the best part of the evening for me. We then retired to Matt’s house where we talked and banged through a bit of Shadow of the Colossus, a beautiful Playstation game, before falling exhaustedly to sleep. It was a superb time, and left me grateful for such engaged and hospitable friends.

Jason’s blurb on this year’s sing is here.

I’m booked to go to Portland for RailsConf in May. Though I wasn’t able to arrange to travel by train, which would have made it that much better (both because I enjoy traveling behind a locomotive and for the silly pun), I am looking forward immensely to the opportunity to meet a couple of people who I have known only through the Internet: Mark, with whom I’ve sparred, corresponded, and cultivated a friendship over the past half decade, and Seth, for whom I used to work at Macrobyte Resources and with whom I’ve also enjoyed a long, varied and fruitful correspondence over a similar span.

If any of the rest of you are going to be in Portland or know of anything I should make a point of not missing while I’m there, please drop a note!

I’ve been beta testing Open Congress off and on for a couple of months, and now that they’re open, want to point all of you Americans over that direction. The folks there have created a dynamite source of information on the goings-on in Washington, including pages for every bill in the Senate and the House, each Senator and Representative, and pages for Committees, Issues, and more. Even better, there are RSS feeds for each, making it really easy to track a bit of interesting legislation or to see what your Senator has been up to lately. It’s a fantastic window into what’s going on in our Federal Government, and which I hope is mimicked for each of the states now that there’s such a fine model upon which to build.

Sorry for the spare updates of late, gentle readers. When life gets full, the weblog gets empty. Here’s what’s been going on:

• The most significant event of late has been Mom McMains going in for neurosurgery to deal with an aneurism. Her operation was a week ago — on Valentine’s Day, ironically. She’s recovering nicely and is feeling good; the doctors are very pleased with how everything went. Thanks to all the support from those of you who have been in the know about this.
• Daniel and his dear wife Fanny completed their emigration from Canada and have taken up residence with us. As they are two of my favorite people, I couldn’t be more pleased to have them around, though we haven’t gotten to spend as much time with them as I’d like yet.
• We welcomed Seth, Adam and Celeste’s first child, into the world. He’s a beautiful and sanguine baby who his folks are enjoying and doting on a great deal. His room, which features a wraparound tropical undersea mural with special rippling water lighting effects, is the most beautiful nursery I’ve ever laid eyes on. Congratulations, proud parents!
• We’ve been beset by illnesses of various description. The low point in all of that was Wednesday two weeks ago. I had already been home two days with Maggie who was on a vomiting jag. Then Emily started feeling bad, so I had to go get her from school. (Aside: it’s interesting to watch the progression of illness in children. When Maggie first started throwing up, she wasn’t quite sure what was going on and was somewhat frightened by the process: “Daddy, I don’t feel good. Daddy! DADDY! BLEEEAAARGHH!” By the end of the two days, she had become so used to it that she barely interrupted what she was doing: “Daddy, can I watch BLEEEAAARAGHHH! Cinderella, please? And have a cookie?”)

  A few days earlier, Kathy had made arrangements to watch the older of a friend’s two boys. Realizing that they might not want him exposed to the Black Death that was marching steadily through our house, she gave them a call to give them the opportunity to make other arrangements if they wished. “Well, we don’t have any other options at this point, so we’ll have to take that risk. And, by the way, our plans for our younger son fell through — could we send him over as well?” Their two boys arrived right after school, bringing our count of children up to six, a third of whom were incapacitated with illness. What could make it better? Why, Kathy getting sick too, of course! Her illness progressed rapidly from feeling a little funny to leaking every bodily fluid imaginable (and a few that weren’t) in the shower while shouting with all the strength her disease-wracked body could muster “I’m going to die!”

  And as the final bit of icing on the cake, I got one of my vision-imparing migraines. Thus, if you had been so unfortunate as to walk past our house and glance in the window, you would have heard Kathy’s anguished wails from the bathroom accompanied by the sight of me stumbling over and through the furniture as I raced half-blind around the house with assorted buckets and pitchers trying to catch the vomit and worse pouring out of various people while simultaneously trying to persuade a half-dozen wound-up kids that yes, it really is time to sleep.

  Man, that was a good day.

Random Items of Interest:

• Maggie lost her first tooth! And by that evening, she’d lost it again. Fortunately, Liam found it for her, though not without three days of it being MIA. Thanks to her brother’s efforts, the Tooth Fairy was at last able to make a visit. (Fortunately, it wasn’t this version that dropped by.)
• Kathy has torn back into school with a rabid vengeance. She’s really enjoying the opportunity to be challenging herself and learning at such a rate, and has taken advantage of the opportunity to sign up for some very interesting courses, including one in which she works with players of wheelchair rugby (or “Murderball”, as it is sometimes reassuringly known).

  As part of one of her assignments, the whole family went to a tournament last Sunday afternoon. It was pretty amazing to see these guys charging around, slamming into each other, talking smack, and making quite a show of it. I was particularly impressed by one fellow whose arms and legs were amputated just above the elbows and knees. I didn’t see how he would pull off playing, given that the game requires a bit of dribbling and a good deal of passing, but he had worked out a fascinating system of tossing the ball in front of him while moving quickly so that it would bounce back up to his lap or lobbing it a few inches into the air and giving it a mighty whack with one of his stumpy appendages. It was really a sight to behold.

  It was also fun to see Mark Zupan, one of the players who is featured in the excellent documentary on the sport.

• Thanks to the awesome power of the Internet, I was finally able to successfully place on order for a Wii. If anybody out there is still trying to lay hands on one, I highly recommend the OuttaStock Wii Finder, which even includes a widget that you can float over the other windows on your computer to let you know if there are any in stock around the net.

  I expect I’ll post a mini-review on the Wii once it arrives and the various family members have put it through its paces. Until then, bated breath!

It is happening at last. Through millenia of human history, we have tackled progressively greater challenges, overcome increasingly difficult obstacles. From fire, to the wheel, to water power, to decent hygiene, to the iron horse, to nuclear energy, to electric toothbrushes, nothing has been able to stop our advance as a race.

And now, the pinnacle of our collective existence is finally coming to light: behold, the Geostationary Banana Over Texas, an art project in which a 300 meter lighter than air banana will be floated over the Lone Star state for a period of 2 months. You can bet that I’ll be out in the yard with binoculars in one hand and a banana split in the other, thanking God that I live in such a time as this.

via Fusion Reaction

Timeline of my dealings with Ultra Products:

• February: Built a PC with an Ultra Power Supply.
• Mid-December: Power Supply Failed. Called Ultra. They shipped a replacement, indicating that I would both have a $60 charge on my credit card until I returned it and that I would be responsible for return shipping.
• Christmas: Got the replacement power supply. Installed it. It failed 5 minutes later. Figuring it couldn’t be a 2nd faulty power supply, brought PC to repair center. Faulty power supply was confirmed. I bought a replacement (non-Ultra) power supply at the repair center which has been humming along just fine ever since.
• Late December: Contacted Ultra. They wouldn’t pay for return shipping of the second power supply, nor would they send out another replacement until they’d received the first back. I mailed it to them with the understanding that they would send another replacement as soon as they got it.
• January 9: Post office showed that Ultra received the unit.
• January 10: Sent an email requesting the tracking number for the replacement supply. Got no response.
• January 17: Sent another email requesting a status update and wondering why I still had an outstanding charge on my credit card. Got no response for this one either.
• January 18: Credit was issued to my credit card. The promised second replacement was apparently never sent.

So, now I’m out $40 for the diagnostic visit to the shop, $10 for shipping, and $40 for a new power supply, and still don’t have a functioning replacement under their “lifetime warranty”. They’re definitely a company I’ll be avoiding in the future.