26 Miles

Pardini 32 For Bullseye

// January 13th, 2007 // No Comments » // Shooting Sports

I’m writing this down mostly so I won’t forget the reference.

I shoot a Pardini SP New 22 for the 22 portion of bullseye shooting and have often wished I could shoot (or at least try) the Pardini HP New in 32 for the centerfire portion of the match but have always been discouraged by the reports of others who say it just doesn’t have the juice at the 50 yard line.

Apparently Dave Wilson in Seattle makes a great barrel for them that can get the job done at the long line.

There’s hope after all!

Easy Family Portal

// January 12th, 2007 // No Comments » // Technology

Some years back, say 2000, I wrote my PHP/MySQL-based family portal (which we still use today). I wanted a site that supported user-authentication and allowed users to self-manage their own login credentials.

At the time, the market had a small handful of photo-sharing services or open-source apps but nothing that could do everything I wanted like I wanted it done, so I was left with either having a wide-open, public site or writing my own software. I chose to roll-my-own.

As of today, features I’ve built into my site include:

• A family address book
• A shared calendar
• Blog pages for each family member
• Blog archives
• Photo-pages for each family member
• Member comments
• Some basic reports showing traffic patterns
• A simple admin interface that allows me to grant/deny access to the portal
• A family blog with a pretty sophisticated photo-navigation system

Someday, I’d still like to build in:

• Photo and video tagging
• An advanced search engine
• User-configurable CSS-based themes
• A centrally-accessible video library
• A CMS to speed updating the site

I’m also tightly wedded to the application architecture and file structure for many of the features so it’s not very portable.

Today, a friend sent me a link to the Easy Family Portal.

It’s a Ruby on Rails application and has some promising features for others seeking similar features, specifically authentication. But it also builds in some other niceties like email lists, gift lists, and some basic WYSIWYG CMS-like features.

Honestly my portal does a whole lot more than this one at this stage, but presuming it’s under active development (which mine isn’t), it may surpass my site in terms of features before long.

For anyone starting out with putting a family website together, it looks like it could be the start to a pretty solid platform.

TXU’s Environmentally-Friendly Rate Plans

// January 11th, 2007 // No Comments » // Life

For you Texas residents reading this blog who are concerned about the quality of your environment (Hi Mom!), TXU has many rate plans, a couple of which are geared towards folks interested in improving Texas air quality and supporting renewable energy production in Texas.

The most Earth-friendly of which is their “100% EarthWise” rate plan.

This plan boasts that “The environmental impact of your enrollment in TXU Energy 100% EarthWise for 1 year is the same as planting over 1,100 trees. (* based on average monthly usage of 1,500 kWh, average annual mileage of 12,000 miles and annual CO2 emissions of 11,500 lbs.)”.

It costs a little more than the regular plan but by my calculations it wouldn’t amount to more than $20-$30 a month extra for most people. There’s not many other ways you could plant 1,100 trees a year for $30 a month, support the growth of Texas wind farms, and do your part to improve the Texas environment at the same.

It certainly seems to be a worthy trade-off. Spread the word to other Texas residents. Most people probably don’t even know TXU has more than 1 rate plan.

Pinger – Voice Text Messaging

// January 11th, 2007 // No Comments » // Technology

This is an interesting new service.

Pinger offers an (apparently) free voice text messaging service (now in beta) for your mobile phone.

Let’s say you want to leave a voicemail for someone but you don’t want to chance them actually answering your call and the whole mess of a two-way conversation that inevitably ensues. Or you want to text someone but hey, you’re driving and you remember the carnage from those old high school films from M.A.T.W.D (Mothers Against Texting While Driving).

The answer…Pinger!

Just tell the Pinger app who you want to message, record the message and hang up. The recipient receives it as a multimedia text message and can listen on their phone.

Maybe this will be the medium by which Radio Shack lays off their next batch of drones.