Can we go to Korea yet?

The kids are rarin' to go. Of course, the two older ones have forgotten about the downsides of a long plane trip. Cameron doesn't know any better. Hopefully the individual screens on the Singapore flight will keep them occupied when they're not sleeping.

All dressed up and ready to party

We're flying to Korea to celebrate my brother's wedding next week.

• Not surprising: Katie loves playing dress up in her traditional Korean hanbok.
• Somewhat surprising: Cameron didn't seem to mind playing dress up also. He looks so adorable in that tux of his, and maybe even he realizes it.
  

Some observations about the Mac

Some thoughts on my first weekend with MacOS X (the last time I ran a Mac, I'm not even sure what number the OS was -- I don't remember them keeping score in the late 80s or early 90s!).

• It's fast: very, very fast. Even though I only have 1 gig of RAM in my iMac, things that really matter are blazingly fast: startup, restart, sleep, resume from sleep, application launch, document browsing, Web browsing, searching (Spotlight), and I could go on. It fees like the designers optimized all their work for typical end user actions, as opposed to whatever the developers in Redmond are optimizing for (the machine? billg? security?).
  
  
• It plays well with others. I plugged my old Brother laser printer into a USB port, and Leopard happily found the driver, installed it and made the printer show up in the Printers list. Ditto for everything else I've plugged in so far. (Also nice: since the laser printer has two ports, I can now share the printer across the Mac and PC without a print server or network connection.) The only device which required me actually hunting down a driver? You guessed it: a Microsoft keyboard.
  
  
• It's a better Windows client than Windows. Without me lifting a finger, it found and presented the shared folders on my nearby Dell desktop. I still haven't figured out how to make that happen on my work Windows XP laptop.
  
  
• It's consistent. Installation, keyboard shortcuts, navigation, and just overall behavior seem very consistent across applications.
  

On the flip side:

• Menus and windows. I'm not a big fan of the menu bar being fixed to the top of the screen as opposed to attached to individual windows.
  
  
• Modifier keys are in different places and do different things. The location of the modifier keys will take some getting used to (Ctrl-Windows-Alt versus Control-Option-Command).
  
  
• More later as I play some more. Still looking for the one key equivalent to opening My Computer (Windows-e), which I did all the time on Windows and found very useful.
  

Breakfast at home

Our first photo post from a Mac: not as straightforward to add photos since iPhoto doesn't have out of the box integration with Picasa (rumor has it there's a Mac version of Picasa coming later this year, which might be nice).

Still, since iPhoto browsing is built into the upload menu, finding the photo was much easier than on a Windows machine, a task which I had come to dread (find the photo in Picasa, memorize the filename, navigate to it using the "Open" dialog...).

Also, iPhoto's editing tools allowed me to tame the overexposed portions of the picture above a little better than Picasa. It was a little harder to use, but I like the control.

Anyway, we enjoyed a quiet weekend at home. I love it when we have time to make breakfast and have fun with it -- like arranging your sausages in a smiley-face pattern. :-)

We got a Mac!

Well, I had been planning to wait to the end of the year to get a Mac -- or at least until the new iMacs, which are rumored to be announced next week. But I just couldn't resist a good Craigslist deal, so we've begun our transition to the world of Jobs. Here's our Photo Booth inauguration to go along with our very first blog post written on a Mac. :-)

I'll be posting about our transition experience using the keyword mac so you can follow along.

Three princesses

Katye and Erin had a grand time with the princess, who did magic tricks, told stories, blew bubbles, sang songs as if she was underwater, painted faces, and in general was a great entertainer. Click here for more pics of the party.

Why hello, dancing Hello Kitty

Erin and Katye celebrated their 4th and 5th birthdays yesterday with a big princess-themed bash. A surprisingly large Hello Kitty also made an appearance. Thanks to everyone who was able to join us!

Everyone had a great time with the princess (Aurora, I think), the food, cake, the bounce house, and the company.

But it was so windy that the entire bounce house would move a foot or two during the violent gusts, which caused one party-goer to declare that the "party" (that's what she called the bounce house) was "terrible".

Cheese!

This is how Cam poses for pictures now. So I guess we'll have to attempt to shoot the unguarded moments. :-)

Caught cheating

As a loyal ex-Netscape employee and enthusiast of well-designed products, I've diligently used Netscape-based technologies -- most notably its browser and mail client-- whenever I could. These days, that means using Firefox and Thunderbird.

But I've also been a fan of Apple products: I use iTunes and own an iPod. I'm anticipating that my next PC refresh will be a Mac.

Yesterday, on a whim, I also downloaded Safari, Apple's browser which now runs on Windows. I felt almost like I was cheating on Firefox to do it.

But having done it, I have to say "wow". It won't be my only Web browser, but it just might become my default browser. Why? 

• It's very, very fast -- noticeably so. For some reason, Firefox seems to take a long time to load certain Web pages. Safari is eye-poppingly fast. You wouldn't think a few seconds makes that much of a difference, but a does. In general, Safari opens all pages in 1-3 seconds, compared to 3-10 seconds on Firefox.  
• It looks great. Typical Apple attention to UI details make the visual appeal enormous. Even unadorned Web pages look better due to font smoothing and other tweaks. (Two exceptions: the booksmarks toolbar doesn't show icons and the contrast between the brushed metal background and the text isn't quite high enough.)
• It has powerful RSS tools built right in, great for browsing blogs.

Why can't it be the only browser?

• No Firefox-like extensibility. It has plugins, but those are just to render content types, not extend functionality. 
• Website incompatibilities. I've only run into one so far (with the Peninsula Library System's Website), but I bet there will be more.
• Missing features, like Firefox's awesome keyword shortcut for search.
• Incompatibility with Roboform, my password-remember-er.

Still, it's very impressive and actually a pretty savvy marketing tool for Apple. My Safari experience has made it more likely that I'll actually switch when it's time to upgrade my Windows machine.

Congratulations, Katye!

Sometimes Katye rips off a stellar game of bowling. Good job, Katye!

From left to right, that's Katye (age 5), mommy (age witheld for my own personal safety), Cameron (age 2, with a little assist from everyone), and Colin (age 7).

Bakers hard at work

With their very bright decorating colors...

Gingerbread bears

The results of baking episode 1 over the weekend.

Baking at Home, Part 2

I've experimented with various artisan bread recipes over the years. Last year, we tried a no-knead recipe popularized by Mark Bittman at the New York Times. Still too much work, still too much forward planning -- and requires a cast iron vessel, which we don't really have in that size.

This year, I saw an article in the San Jose Mercury News featuring an even lower-effort recipe based on a book by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois called Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. It involves no kneading and very little hands-on time of any sort.

I put too much water in my first batch, but the resulting dough still came out looking all fancy. The kids loved it, but I'm hoping I can do better.

Baking at home, part 1

We enjoyed a little baking at home this weekend. First, the kids baked and decorated some gingerbread creatures. Well, half-decorated anyway. As you can see, Cameron didn't want to finish decorating his ginger cyclops bear before enjoying a tasty leg. Mmmmmm!

Thanks to our local fire department

So I idiotically locked us out of the house this morning. After failing to (1) connect with any local locksmiths and (2) find the keys with any of our siblings, Chris recommended that we call our local police department.

We did, and they politely (and admirably without laughing) transferred us to the fire department, which promptly dispatched three fire fighters in the big ol' red fire engine. They scouted out a way in and voila: back in the house in time for lunch.

A tip of the hat and grateful thanks to the local station!

Redwood Glen

We enjoyed another rejuvenating Easter at Redwood Glen in Loma Mar. We had a day or two of drizzle, enough to move the Easter egg hunt indoors, but no enough to dampen anyone's spirits.

This year, Colin seemed to enjoy the foosball machine for the first time, while Cameron enjoyed the hotel-camping experience. "When are we going to our other house?" he asked, as he does when we're on the road.

A great big hug

Katye was cold, so Colin gave her a big ol' big brother hug to warm her up. Not sure what Katye thinks of that. :-)

Windy day at the beach

After Easter Retreat, we usually stop by the Pescadero State Beach on the way home. It was a brilliant sunny day, but very very windy as you can tell by the Michelen tire man-inspired outerwear everyone's got on.

Chinese New Year decorations

In the middle of Easter retreat, we drove up to the city (yes, it was quite a haul) to have dinner with one of Fedora's cousins who happened to be in town. The restaurant served fabulous food, but in classic Chinese fashion, they still had their Chinese New Year's decorations up. Happy belated year of the rat, I suppose.

(I didn't play any Photoshop tricks with the photo: the angle just makes it look like the mouse is jumping "off the page", so to speak.)