What's it all about, Alfie?

Last night was my 10 yr old daughter's Winter Concert - rescheduled because of the blizzards we had on the originally scheduled week. Act of Nature - what can you do? Well... I knew she had tried out for a solo in one of the musical numbers - I just didn't know much else about it. I was pretty sure that it was singing, but I don't even think that was clearly laid out for me before-hand.

So we go, and listen to the 3^rd and 4^th graders, and then a little into the 5^th graders, Liza leans over and tells me that the solo is in the final part - where they brought out all the kids that performed and they do a final singing number. OK... nice to know. So we listen to the last number for the 5^th graders and then they start to bring out everyone.

Once everyone is ready they give the microphone to Nina, and the music starts. We were pretty far away, so I couldn't really tell when she started to sing - at least I didn't think so... because I was convinced that this was a recording of someone else.

I was blown away.. She'd never done a lot of singing around the house, and that voice... standing all alone in front of 600+ people at the beginning of the song... I was blown away. I had no idea she had that kind of voice. I could see Liza tearing up because of the incredible courage it took to do this. Let's face it - kids in grade school can be downright vicious to one another over the littlest of things.

Yet there she was, singing this song with the most incredible voice I've ever heard from a 10 yr old. OK, so it's not time to ship her to a record studio, but still... there she was, and her courage and talent so exceeded my expectations I was speechless. I have watched her skateboard, play football, play softball, basketball, do schoolwork, draw, play on the computer - I thought I knew her. I didn't.

It's amazing when your kids totally blow your expectations away. I can't say that I had a lot to do with that, but I had a little, and even a little bit of credit for that makes me feel pretty amazing. She is one amazing kid.

There's a story out that Amazon has invited the press to an 'event' at a library on February 9^th and the speculation is they will be announcing the new Kindle. I was ready to buy the new version this past fall, but with all that's happening lately - the new MacBook Pro, iLife '09, and Comcast's Extreme 50, there's almost too much going on to take it all in.

Also, my Kindle is still working great and not a scratch on it. I use it every day, can't imagine a simple, better way to get and read books. So I'll probably watch (or read about) the announcement, but don't plan on getting a new Kindle right away.

Today the Rogue Amoeba team released Fission 1.6.2 with a few important bugs fixed and a few other updates. I have recently started playing with Fission a lot more as I've been going through the sound clips I recorded of Joseph when he was little. I appreciate that Fission is a lossless editor - by design, but I'd really like to have a tool that can reduce/remove hum and popping from sample.

A plugin interface with some decent way to access the data would work - I could write a quick FFT (or use FFTW) and then apply some of the simple filters I learned back in college. It's not rocket science, and it might even be possible with a really selective equalizer that I could base on a spectrum plot of the sample. That would be a neat addition too, come to think of it.

Anyway, it's out, and a free update.

UPDATE: I sent a support request to the Rogue Amoeba team in hopes that they will see the value in a Spectrum Analyzer heads-up view of the data, as well as a plug-in architecture for filtering the data. I'm not hopeful, as Fission is lossless by design, but maybe.

Well... it's not cheap at $142/mo, but that's not on top of the existing $65/mo so it's still a doubling of the price, but it's 50Mbps down and 10Mbps up. That's impressive. It certainly puts the snap in all the stuff I have at home... and even when I'm not at home - being able to get home with a 10Mbps response is pretty nice. I dare say it's better than most of the download speeds I'm getting where I might be plugged in.

The trick will be getting Liza to agree to it. Yeah... she's not a fan of Comcast, and I have to say they haven't proven themselves to be a great company, but they have the best internet service in the region, and I need that connectivity, so I've got to pay the man.

I'm pretty sure I'll be ordering this tonight. I know there's a new cable modem involved to get the DOCSIS 3.0 speeds, but that's OK. I'm guessing they'll have someone come out and install it, but I'd rather they send it to me and I call them on a weekend when I install it myself. But we'll see.

Well... it's finally shipping. I know there is something for everyone in my house in this release. iWeb's new ability to publish to any hosting provider will be a huge boon to the girls. Joseph will love the GarageBand lessons and might actually get going with iWeb. Liza will love the new features in iPhoto. It's going to be a hoot. I can't wait.

Ordered this morning... ships within 24 hrs. and then 5-8 days (free) shipping. I figure it's going to be at the house late this week, early next.

Bean is a nice, lightweight word processor - somewhere between Pages and Word on one end and TextEdit on the other. It's got the ability to read and write Word docs, and it's pretty good about the rendering. It's fast to start and load, and is just the right tool for those in between jobs.

Well... today I noticed that they had finally released Bean 2.1.0 - a major step up from 1.3.3, which was the last stable release. The release notes are significant as they have changed a ton of things in this release, and I'm only just now starting to dig into all the features. What I'm hoping is that they didn't loose the target audience - that middle-ground of word processing. More than TextEdit with Word compatibility, but not as heavy and feature-laden as Pages.

We'll see as time goes on.

Base 1.2 has been released with a few new additions: SQL syntax highlighting, support for views and triggers, and saving columns widths in data browser. Nice additions, but nothing earth shaking. The additions look good, and seem to work as advertised. If things keep moving in the direction I think they are going with the open source graphing toolkit I'm volunteering for, I may have more use of this than previously thought.

Nice to see the update.

Today was the inauguration of President Obama, and Liza was lucky enough to be able to watch it on TV. I missed it being at work. Not horrible, but it would have been nice to see it live. I hear it was very nice. We both watched the televised program on the steps of the Lincoln Monument on Sunday. Tom Hanks, U2, "Kumar", it was amazing to see all the personalities that were there. Fantastic show for the new President.

Amazing that once again he made it not about himself, but about all of the people that put him here he was at that instant. Amazing humility. The more I see and hear this guy the more I'm convinced that we have a chance at turning this country around. We need to restore confidence in each other, in the world, and our image. But I honestly believe this guy can lead us to make those changes.

I'm so very glad to be alive to see this come to pass.

I've been listening to a few different playlists on my iPod in the last few days and I have to say that I really love the work Al Jarreau has done over the years. Incredible songs, great vocals. Just plain good stuff.

Also Lionel Richie - from his days with the Commodores to his solo career. Pretty great stuff. I can remember picking up these guy's CDs when I had less than 20 CDs in my entire collection. I heard them, and thought this was just the find of music I liked. Probably the last time I bought "popular" CDs.

Yup, I'm that old.

I don't get to watch a lot of TV. Prior to a few months ago, the only show I watched regularly was The Deadliest Catch on the Discovery Channel - and that was a limited run series every year. So for me to take time out to watch a show means a lot.

That having been said, House, M.D. is one of the most entertaining shows I've seen in years. My daughter started watching it and then there were a few House marathons over the Holidays, and that was enough to make it a family activity for us. The actors are really quite impressive... the characters they play are exceptionally smart, witty, clever, and it's not always a happy ending.

It's become a must watch for the entire family, and a guaranteed spot on the DVR. Really amazing television. I'm glad to see it's not extinct.