BushChang Family Web Site

Home of Steve, Christine, Katherine, Ally, Rosebud, and Rex

You are here: Home / Archives for Hobbies

Hobbies

Katherine’s First Jogger Ride

We borrowed a Kelty jogger from the Sarins because we wanted to try one out before purchasing. The Kelty Joyride seems like the top choice for us. Katherine on the other hand would probably trade the jogger in for a nice heated car. I have to say our daughter is a real trooper. I not only took her out for a jog in 40 degree weather but I squeezed her into a 6-12 month snow suit that was too tight. It was kind of like a mix between a down jacket and Lycra pants for Katherine. Patty, our wonderful nanny, mentioned that Katherine must have looked like a burrito.

We went around the block a couple of times, never more than 5 minutes from home in case Katherine imploded from stress, the cold or the tight fitting outfit. Katherine only whimpered a couple times. I wouldn’t say she enjoyed jogging around in the bitter cold but she didn’t scream bloody murder, a sign of hope for more adventures.

Thankfully Patty arrived this morning with two fleece full body outfits for Katherine. Patty regularly takes Katherine for strolls around the neighborhood and recognized the need for some more comfortable warm clothing.

Which Cell Phone Should I Buy?

Which cell phone should I buy?

Christine and I are in the market for new cell phones. Our Nokia phones are just too bulky for slipping in a pocket. Here is a bulleted list of requirements:

  • Good coverage in Seattle and Union Hill. Not being able to get calls at home would be a non-starter.
  • Quality sound. It shouldn’t sound like I’m talking in a wind tunnel or through a paper bag.
  • Excellent battery life.
  • Pocketsize with good ergonomics. We’re not looking for the smallest phone but just want that’s easy to use and fits in a pocket or purse.
  • Hands free system for car. Ideally we could reuse the existing hands free system we have from Nokia and just get a new cradle.
  • Reasonably priced monthly plans. We’re with AT&T OneRate now and it’s definitely not the cheapest rate out there.
  • Address book. I use the address book feature on the Nokia to store common phone numbers.
  • Bonus: plays games
  • Bonus: productivity apps

For the Seattle area, what is the best protocol: TDMA, Sprint PCS, CDMA,….? Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated. If you “love” you phone send me email: stevebu@bushchang.com.

Port Magic Alpha Released

Last week, Pure Networks released an alpha version of Port Magic on the web. We got a lot of positive feedback for the problem we’re trying to solve: automatically open ports on an Internet gateway when a user plays or hosts an online game. Modern Internet gateways (LinkSys, Dlink, Netgear, etc.) all interact with the user using a web interface. To configure your Internet Gateway, you type in http://192.168.168.1/ into your web browser. Since the UI is based on HTML, the Internet Gateway vendor has very few tools to work with to design good UI (wizards, state storage, controls). Most of the configuration UI is simple HTML controls they have a 1:1 correspondence with a setting in the gateway.

Port Magic automates the population of the port range forwarding dialog of a LinkSys Internet Gateway. We chose to use the http protocols over UPnP because using http works across all versions of the LinkSys Internet Gateway. We caught some heat from a couple of UPnP zealots on the forums for picking http over UPnP. We’re not anti-UPnP or trying to develop a competing protocol. We set out to solve this customer problem of automatically opening and closing ports when I launch and close an online application.

Katherine and Her Mobile

Katherine is totally fascinated now with her mobile. We turn it on and she just stares at it. Recently, she’s started talking to it. Totally unintelligible baby babble but Christine and I are amazed at the new sounds she’s making. She’s also getting tall. Katherine is a little over 2.5 months old and she’s already growing out of her 3-6 month clothes. She’s just too tall (Steve’s genes).

Katherine is having trouble sleeping. We think (baby debugging) this is due to her having a growth spurt, wanting to play with us, and/or gas bubbles from feeding. Katherine is running Christine and I ragged. Like most parents, we go through our laundry list of things to try:

  • Hold and walk around with her until she falls asleep. Katherine’s getting heavy now so this is no longer an easy task. Christine and I are glad we got in shape before having Katherine ๐Ÿ™‚
  • Burp her. Sometimes I wish Katherine could just talk. I never know if she needs to be burped or it’s something else that’s bothering her. In the end, she always gets burped until she starts to get drowsy. Burping is the catch all when a diaper change isn’t the cause of her discomfort.
  • Diaper change. Check and change it. Most of the time this is a simple task but it inevitably results in Katherine being wide awake.
  • Baby sit ups. I place Katherine on my knees and do sit ups with her. Her legs compress slightly and it seems to help relieve gas problems. I dunno if this really works but when you’re tired you’ll believe anything.
  • Baby distraction devices: rocker, shaky chair, foot rest. The rocker and shaky chair are well known. Not so well know is using the foot rest to the rocker (it moves too). I place Katherine on it and start rocking (you have to hold her). Once she falls asleep, it’s easy for me to scoop her up into the crib.

These photos were taken with my new digital camera.

Nikon D100

On a recent trip to Portland, I purchased a Nikon D100 digital SLR camera from CameraWorld. Over the holidays, Christine had dropped and broken my Nikon 990 so I got permission to purchase a replacement high end digital camera. I bought Christine a Canon Elph 230 for Christine so she could carry around a digital camera in her purse. The Elph takes great pictures given it’s form factor, about wallet size. I was looking for something that had better optics and results at the expense of portability.

I researched the high end offerings from both Canon and Nikon. Our digital video camera is Canon but all of my film SLR gear is Nikon. For Nikon it came down to form factor versus the ability to reuse my Nikon lens and accessories. The form factor choice (small without sacrificing optics or results) was the Nikon CoolPix 5700. It was small enough to fit in my North Face jacket pocket (barely) and offered excellent optics and result. The flexibility choice was the Nikon D100. The D100 is a digital SLR camera that takes all of my Nikon lens and accessories (I did have to upgrade my flash to a SB-80DX). After much angst and a call to my camera buddy Raman, I decided to go with the Nikon D100. I’m very pleased with the decision and it produces excellent digital photos.

Now that I’m producing high quality digital images, I need a high quality photo printer. My next purchase is the Epson 2200 Photo Printer. This is latest and best consumer photo printer from Epson.

Rushing to Publish

Before midnight weblog rush.  It seems like I’m also writing my weblogs at a couple of minutes before midnight.  My latest trick is to post an bogus weblog before midnight so I can “set the clock” on the weblog even though I usually finish it after midnight.

Publishing Photos.  I’m trying to take more digital photos of Katherine and incorporate them into her weblog.  In addition to being a home networking and computer geek, I’m also a photo geek.  I currently shoot with a Nikon F5 for film and Nikon 990 for digital.  During my sabbatical, I wrote a photo manager program that associates the “shooting data” of the camera with the actual photos.  I did this because there is really no good solution for a photo processing workflow that works with both digital and regular photos.  All of the existing solutions are either really high end (too expensive) or focused on just digital. 

What I want is a way to take digital or regular photos and easily massage them into my existing web content.  I created a template for Katherine’s web log that I reuse over and over again to generate a thumbnail view that when clicked upon goes to a higher res version.  This should all be automatic.