It’s free, it’s supported, and it’s from the people that brought you the OS that you’re already using.  If you’re not using any anti-malware application, please stop that immediately – go get this, install it, and be that much safer online.  And even if you have some other (hopefully free or cheap) option that you like (I use AVG Free, plus some others), you may find that adding this to your mix doesn’t hurt.  If you think otherwise, let me know in the comments.

I might have to do that. These would make a *great* coffee table book.

Oh, here’s that link:  What Stormtroopers do on Their Day Off

• After watching this video, how can you NOT want to possess your very own copy of this book?
• Now that it’s actually in my hot little hands, I can attest that it’s truly lovely to behold. The paper is beautiful. The text is excellent. And the silkscreened images are stunning. The book even *smells* good.
• The fact that I was able to buy this book for less than USD$40 is a testament to the fact that highly skilled, manual labor is astonishingly cheap in some (many?) parts of the world. Just watch the video to see how much skill and sweat goes into making each and every copy.
• The book and video make me want to learn how to silkscreen…

For those not making the jump over to Drawn.ca, here’s the YouTube video that they embedded – by the end of this clip, I knew I had to have this book…

Basically, Multicolr takes the Big Huge Lab’s Palette Generator concept and turns it upside down. Speaking of which, BHL is always fun to play with. Aside from the aforementioned Palette Generator, they offer a ton of ways to have more fun with your (or my) photos.

Speaking of fun twists on flickr, you haven’t seen my photostream until you’ve seen it hanging on the walls in Castle Wolfenstein. No – really. Wolfenflickr is yet another amazing internet plaything. Go check it out. Enter (e.g.) “dan rochman” (make sure there’s a space between “dan” and “rochman”) in the “Flickr username:” box, then click the Go button. Then use the arrow keys on your keyboard to wander around the castle, looking at my recent photos. If you want to see a higher-resolution version of a photo, walk up to it and press the CTRL key. Pressing CTRL again zooms back out. Yes, this is an extremely silly way to look at photos. But something that combines my love of all things flickr with my nostalgia for fragging virtual Nazis in the original Castle Wolfenstein, way back when I was just a wee nerd? Priceless.

If there isn’t enough here for you to waste a few minutes with, you can always go peruse what may be the most comprehensive list of flickr tools out there.

I think I’m flickr-preoccupied today because my new point-and-shoot digital camera is on its way here as I write this. UPS should be delivering it any. minute. now. Emphasis on NOW. It’s a Canon PowerShot SD 880 IS, to replace my somewhat outdated Canon PowerShot A520. Note that I’m still obviously a huge Canon/PowerShot fan.

In other news, Microsoft rolled out a major update to the Xbox LIVE network/dashboard back on November 19th. For me, there were two particularly interesting changes. The first is that my Xbox 360 now has native support for streaming Netflix video-on-demand titles. I’m the kind of nerd for whom simply connecting my laptop to my TV was already pretty simple, but it’s still really nice to have my Netflix Watch Now queue integrated right into my Xbox dashboard. The second change is that I can now have a custom avatar associated with my Xbox LIVE user profile. The last time I created an avatar for myself, it was on my nephew’s Wii (where the avatar is, of course, called a “Mii”), and it was actually pretty strange just how closely the stupid thing resembled my own stupid self. To the point where people who came by later and saw it on the screen were given to spontaneously exclaim how much it looked like me. Or me like it. Whatever. So, now that I had a second shot, I felt compelled to give it another go. Here’s the result – if you know what I look like in person, I’ll let you be the judge. [Note that Em has promised to make me a t-shirt that looks just like the one in this photo - once it's done, I'll post a picture of myself wearing it, and you can really do a side-by-side comparison!]

Primarily, I got it to replace my latest broken clock radio. After almost a decade of dealing with one crappy alarm clock after another – some cheap, some expensive, and none capable of decent FM radio reception in our apartment – I broke down and decided that I was going to just buy The Mother of All Alarm Clocks, capable of streaming internet radio, and infinitely extensible/configurable in software, just so that I might never have to buy another clock radio again as long as I live. Everything else was going to be a bonus. As it turns out, I got quite a bonus. After a couple of weeks, I can honestly say that I just love the chubby little thing to bits…

If you want to play with my Chumby – well, no. So far I haven’t allowed anyone to touch it. It is… my precious. HOWEVER, there is a way… The fine folks who make the Chumby will let anyone create (and share) a VIRTUAL Chumby. So, just by copying some code into this blog post, I’m able to share my Chumby with the world. The widgets that display my personal info (or yours, if you’re one of my social network pals) won’t do so in the virtual version, for obvious privacy reasons, and you can’t really interact with it (touchscreen, squeeze button, tilt sensors) the way you could with a real one. But otherwise, this virtual Chumby is a pretty good copy of the one sitting in front of me (except that mine’s Pearl, and this one is Mocha), and shows you some of the same widgets that I actually see here! If you wait a bit, you’ll see it cycle through different widgets. And if you see that cowbell widget, be sure to click it for MORE COWBELL!

In other news, back in October, Em and I passed our US Sailing Basic Cruising certifications! That means we can now charter sailboats (under 30′ in length) from our sailing club, OCSC. We took our friends Matt & Jocelyn sailing on Saturday – my very first charter! We sailed on Sunday, too, with our friends Benjamin and Sabrina – they’re the ones who got us started on all of this (thanks, guys!), and they’re also Basic Cruising certified, so Benj was our skipper on Sunday. There wasn’t much wind this weekend, but it’s still amazing to just be out on San Francisco Bay in a sailboat… If you’re in/near San Francisco, hit me up – maybe I’ll take you sailing! Failing that, try listening to this YouTube clip – it might put you in the same state of mind.

Here’s something I’ve been meaning to post since our trip to Laos – it’s from an early episode of King of the Hill, where Hank and his friends meet their new neighbor. [King of the Hill may have a monopoly on pop culture references to Laos.] Em and I have been quoting this bit of dialogue forever (okay, me far more than Em), since it’s so very funny, because it’s so very sad-but-true. It took me ages to find the clip on YouTube, and then I used the very cool splicd to present you with just the relevant portion of that clip: http://splicd.com/MPrQpZnJgVA/44/70

It gets even better. I was never able to reliably tell (e.g.) Chinese people from Japanese people, from Korean people, from Vietnamese people, from Laotian people, et cetera. I was somewhat amused to discover that, at least anecdotally, residents of those places aren’t necessarily any better at that game than I am. Everywhere we went in Vietnam and Laos, people correctly guessed that I wasn’t from around there, and then incorrectly guessed where Em’s ancestors lived. So there. If you want to have a go at this silly game yourself, visit the very funny http://www.alllooksame.com/ – it’s a fun way to waste a few minutes. Personally, I think the world would be a better place if we didn’t make quite as many assumptions about nationality based on appearance, and if we discarded the notion of “race” altogether. [Of course race still exists (for better and worse) as a social/political construct, but the idea of an objective, scientific basis for race has been pretty well discredited for quite some time now. I do wish that more people understood that...]

I also bought myself a present. It’s not here yet, though (should arrive Monday), so I’ll keep it a secret until then. It’s not a puppy. Nor is it a baby pygmy hippopotamus. But you *can* squeeze it.

The boat trip on Halong Bay was wonderful, as expected. We saw a floating fishing village, did some kayaking, and had a fun dip in the unbelievably warm water. Even though we knew that there were jellyfish lurking about – we’d seen a few from the deck of the boat. And sure enough, Em and I got stung, Em on both legs and me just across my right shin. Our guide prescribed some fresh lime juice and ice for the wound, and I followed that up with more fresh lime taken orally (in a couple of Gin & Tonics). Em didn’t have any G&Ts, but the stinging still faded pretty quickly. By the next morning, we were both pretty well mended…

Tomorrow, we’re off to Hanoi again, where we stay overnight, and then the next day we head to Nha Trang for a few days of scuba diving, and relaxing on the beach. Ahhhh.

This morning, after breakfast, we hiked to a neighboring village to see another family’s home, and then back to the swimming hole until lunch. Then we hiked back out a little ways (just to the nearest paved road), where a car was waiting to take us back into town. We took showers at the local Handspan tour office (we booked the hike and homestay through them), and now we’re getting caught up on some e-mails before dinner, and the ride back to the Lào Cai station. Then it’s another overnight train, this time back to Hanoi, and then tomorrow morning it’s off to Halong Bay, where we’ll spend the day (and night) on a boat. After which we head (via Hanoi, again) to Luang Prabang in Laos. I’ll probably post again from Luang Prabang, since we’ll be there more than one day, and there ought to be plenty of internet access there…

Me so JetSet. Photoblogging from gate 61 at HKG. Waiting to board, and remembered that I haven’t blogged in months – as usual.

Quick Updates:
– Burning Man was awesome
– We’re on our way to Vietnam!

So tired. Will post more from Vietnam. But props to HKG for having free Wi-Fi.

Zoe has a little sister! We’re at the Randall Museum with Karie & Donovan, their BIG girl Zoe, and their BRAND NEW (12 days old?) baby girl, Juliet!! Hi, Juliet!!!