A pal at work today told me to check out this thing called the AOL Image Organizer. I did, and it’s pretty cool. It’s over on the Greenhouse (which I love… give people a place to put out things that aren’t quite done, get them seen and get feedback), so it’s really not done. But, it does one really cool thing – it recognizes faces! I threw in a bunch of pictures of people from my Flickr stream, and it did a pretty damn good job of picking out people.\
Check it out, and let ’em know how you like it… keeping in mind that it’s not done (I couldn’t figure out how to add new face boxes to photos it didn’t see a face in originally). And yeah, it’s only for Windows. But, you could go download Cheshire (a very cool collection of AOL-related Mac apps) or my AIM Fight Dashboard widget.
Life Update
- Kevin is now a Systems Architect. YAY!
- Max got the second lead in the first grade musical. YAY! He is a great white shark who helps a little fish learn that ‘special’ friends (like a seven-legged octopus) are just as great as non-special friends. The teacher forgot to include a whole page of dialog! Max and I caught the error fairly quickly, so no major harm done.
- Brian is speaking up a storm, learning his letters, and loves to draw the clues along with Steve or Joe while watching Blues Clues. YAY! He knows about a third to a half of the alphabet. It’s only been in the last month that he has really shown any interest. He is even starting to draw some of the letters too. So far his favorite seems to be ‘B’.
- I had brunch with some friends yesterday. YAY!
- We have new neighbors finally. YAY! It’s a cute family of three and the wife is expecting baby #2. She is also a stay-at-home mom and the daughter is Brian’s age. So we now have three two year olds in a row in our town home cluster. It should be extra fun in the Spring. The husband was extra chatty when I introduced myself, so he should get along with Kevin well. Plus, they didn’t shovel right away after the snow storm. I love that in neighbors, honestly. That way I am not peer-pressured into shoveling before a reasonable time has passed.
Seriously, WHERE IS HER MOTHER???
Britney proves that ROCK BOTTOM isn’t the lowest you can get: Britney shaves her head.\
I feel so badly for Britney. Whatever her problem, she is obviously crying out for help. Why isn’t her mother helping her? My mom would never let me get that far gone. Poor girl.
Happy Friday!
FYI, Kevin forgot his sidekick at home. It keeps growling at me every 2 minutes when he gets a new message. I don’t like the buzz feature. Mm, I guess it’s actually called vibrate. But whatever. It sounds more like a buzz.\
Today is the second unnecessary snow day in a row. Booo. But I totally got to sleep in until 10 am, so YAY! My van is stuck behind a huge ice wall still, so while I am out and about tomorrow, I am totally taking the Volvo. Oh, yea. :)\
TV was awesome last night. I laughed so hard during Supernatural I couldn’t breathe.\
Kevin bought me an iHome, which is an iPod speaker and alarm clock thingie for our room. I have been playing on iTunes ever since, making new playlists. I could have one for everyday of the week! Yippee. Monday’s would be Manic Monday on repeat for 10 times. Tuesday has Veronica Mars, so the playlist would feature something from the show. Wednesdays would HAVE to include My Humps, of course. Hmm, what would Thursday’s contain? Friday would be super happy music, starting with Friday I’m in Love. I am actually in love everyday of teh week, but that song is a Friday classic. Saturday would have something jazzy and nice, something pilfered from Kevin. Sunday would be mellow and calm, but not overly emo. Poor Thursday is still empty. I must think on it.\
Happy Weekend everyone!\
ETA- Eh, I am over the weekdays’ playlist idea already. Though I have been enjoying Tegan and Sara’s Monday, Monday, Monday today.
This tickles my funny bone, though it kind of scares Kevin:
The World Weekly News, has an article about the characters from Supernatural as if they were real people. Which is awesome in so many ways. Of course the boys would use a source like that to hunt down man-eating-cows. Heeee. Supernatural’s all new tonight, btw, on The CW at 9 pm EST.\
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AOL and OpenID
John spilled the beans so I will too. AOL is doing OpenID! AOL is currently an identity provider (meaning you can log in on third-party openid-enabled sites using your spanking new OpenID URL, for example: http://openid.aol.com/kplawver), and we’re working on accepting OpenID logins on AOL products, but that’s going to take some time. See John’s post for all the details.\
This is really exciting for me. It’s another sign of us opening up, supporting emerging standards and trying new things. It means I won’t be all alone next month when we launch the super-secret Rails project, which will accept OpenID logins.\
Now, back to work so we can launch this thing on time and I can tell you all about it.
Happy Valentine’s Day
I hope your day is filled with lots of chocolate and kisses!\
We are having a white Valentine’s Day, which is kinda cool. It would be neater if Kevin and I were at a romantic, mountain retreat. But, I’ll take what I can get.\
Poor Kevin couldn’t get his car out of the parking spot, so he is valiantly working at home. Not even simply pretending to work, but actually working. Such a good boy.
Bring Me Your 48×48 Buddy Icons!
For our soon-to-be-a-launchin’ Ruby on Rails app, we’re looking for services that provide 48×48 buddy icons (you know, like AIM does). So far, it’s surprising how many different social networks and web apps have them, and it’s equally surprising how few of them have APIs to get at them. So far, I’ve got AIM Buddy Icons, Flickr buddy icons, and Twitter icons – because they’re really easy to get at (some easier than others). If you know of more services (or happen to run one) that has APIs for getting buddy icons (that are 48×48), please let me know! We’ll give you a link and make your users happy in the process, because they get to use their cool icon.\
One of my early goals with the project was to reinvent as little a wheel as possible:
- I don’t want to store passwords, or make users remember another one, so we’re supporting AIM and OpenID logins
- I don’t want to host, resize, handle uploading, a bunch of images, because that means users have to upload yet another one (hence the question above).
- I don’t want to make people fill out a big long nasty profile, so we don’t have them (they’re short and funny).\
We’ll be launching the new blog in the very near future, and the product hopefully before SxSW. I’m way too excited about it. I even posted a sneak peek of the logo because I couldn’t take it any more (oh, the design on this thing… it’s gorgeous – the best looking web app I’ve ever been associated with, and I’ve been involved in plenty).
Ineloquent
Sometimes I’m really stupid; sometimes I say things I shouldn’t; sometimes my jokes aren’t funny; and sometimes that pisses people off.\
And sometimes I don’t realize any of those things (mostly because of the first). If you are one of the latter that I’ve offended by one of the former, and I haven’t apologized to you, healed the rift or made it right, please let me know. I’m a boy – insensitive and thick-headed. I try not to be, but sometimes the lizard brain takes over.\
You know, having a blog is great… so great that I think everyone should have one. I think everyone, especially when you’re in a profession related to the online world, should have one – should have some place online where you talk about your passion. But, they’re a real pain in the ass sometimes.
Done!
I am done for the day!!! If you need me, call someone else, k? Thanks. Bye.