Lunatic Platitudes

If I may, allow me to tout the Apple AirPort Express. This device is probably one of my favorite guilty pleasures. Guilty? Yeah, a little. It’s a $99 extremely frivolous purchase, or at least that’s the way it started out.

It has a headphone jack for connecting speakers or hooking it up to your home theatre system, but it also is lit for optical digital out in the same little hole, just like the MacBook Pro. Why does it have that? Because you can play your iTunes music library over the network.

It has a USB port on it because it can be a printer server which is shared best via Bonjour and it does this very well.

It has an Ethernet port as well as wireless capability. It can stand alone, be a full fledged access point, extend a wireless network or just about anything else you want to do… put it in your DMZ and make an unencrypted guest wireless network at your house.

I can’t think of a single reason not to buy one of these little guys. The question is not whether or not to buy one, but whether or not to start collecting them. A monthly Airport Express budget? Maybe. I jest…

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If you have children or would like to protect your web browsers from questionable material, this might be just the ticket. Dan’s Guardian provides a configurable method to block based on content. It includes the ability to whitelist or blacklist sites. You can also subscribe to a blacklist provider and keep current with known sites you might wish to deny explicitly. While it is difficult to ensure the safety of children researching for school, or who are discovering the on-line universe, this product makes it easier. Nothing will ever beat being directly involved in what your shorties are doing, but having a few automated tools sitting in-line is easy to justify.

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Amrin wrote a really sweet poem for school. The text is: A Winter day The perfect day to play At night, don’t make a peep. And in the morning, The snow will be deep. The image to the left links to a beautiful printing Dad made for us. It’s framed on my desk at home. We’re really proud of his creative ability.

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Amrin, Sam, Matthew, Aunt Susan and Uncle Jeff all enjoyed a day of hiking and geo caching. Me? I had to go get my car aligned and get new tires. Oh well. Amrin came back with a kazoo singing Star Wars music (what else?). Matt and Sam came back with other little toys. If you’re interested in Geo Caching, check out Google. I’ve never been. This particular spot was started by friends of ours at some point in the past. They left behind a cool toy chicken. If you have no clue, just enjoy the pictures or read up on Geo Caching.Other pictures in the linked gallery are of our weenie roast that night. We had a pretty good time. Ellyn had to work late, so we didn’t have her around to brighten the event.

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This year for spring break, we took Amrin, Harry, Sam and Matthew on a fishing trip. Check out the album linked off the picture of Amrin to see all the fish we caught!

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