Saturday, 6 January 2007

Final Entry

I have upgraded my blog engine and have decided to start a new blog as part of this process. The new url to the new blog is: The Hawker Squawker. The rss feed for the new blog is the following:

Wednesday, 6 September 2006

Beautiful Periodic Poster

On the office wall of one of the execs at my company there's a huge poster of the periodic table from 30 years ago.  It's interesting to go look and see some of the changes (i.e. new elements) that have been discovered.  It also reminds me that he's old, but hey - maybe in 30 years i'll have a big poster of Captain Kirk or something hanging on my office wall and some young geek will think thoughts about me that i'd rather not contemplate /images/emoticons/mozilla_tongueout.gif.

Anyway, I bring this up because I found someone else's posting that had a link to a really beautiful periodic poster that you can buy (or just download and print yourself if you want to use a lot of blank ink and have a smaller version).  Definately worth a look.

Click Here

Posted by scott at 12:09 PM in /info/

Sunday, 27 August 2006

Summer activity gallery update

I've added seveal new picture galleries to the site.  They include such things as our family summer campout, Ellie Lagoon birthday party trip, and the building of our backyard sandbox.

Click Here

Posted by scott at 11:14 AM in /activities/

Tuesday, 22 August 2006

2006 Arizona Camping Trip

Camping was pretty good, but we didn't get home until about 11 last night, so we are all VERY tired.  I stayed sick the whole time, and am still fighting this stupid cold.  Still I felt well enough to do a little fishing in the morning, have a lazy after lunch nap before a little more fishing in the evening, followed by a nice "round-the-campfire" visit with the Hawker clan after dinner. /images/emoticons/mozilla_laughing.gif  

The crawdads were plentiful and most everyone caught at least one.  The little monsters were especially good at stealing the bait off of our hooks before the fish had a chance at it.  By monsters I am of course referring to the crawdads, not the kids.

Alex was very proud of his trout.  He cleaned it himself and insisted that we cook it.  He didn't want to eat it; he just wanted it to come home with him.  Ellie was happy to accept the job of actually eating it.  Unfortunately, Mr. Trout got left in the coals a little too long and wasn't edible by the time we remembered he was in there.  Oh well.  /images/emoticons/mozilla_frown.gif

We decided Ellie was big enough this year to handle a regular size fishing pole, verses the little 2 foot long one she has used up until now.  So in preparation for the trip, we went to Wal-Mart and she picked out a shiny new yellow fishing pole.  She is sure that her new pole gave her just the edge she needed to catch the "second" fish in her lifetime, a 7 inch long pike.  Her "first" fish was when she was two and "coincidentally" it looked exactly like the preserved minnows we were using as bait.  Alex has pointed out to her several times that she caught the same kind of fish that we were using for bait, but I don't think either of them have put two-and-two together yet to figure out how that tiny fish managed to hook itself through the head onto two year old Ellie's line.  Neither Alex nor Ellie can figure out why Scott and I still bust up laughing every time Ellie starts going on again about her "first" fish.

Gwyneth enjoyed throwing rocks into the lake and watching the crawdads scoot their way over the rocks and back into the water after we would manage to extricate them from our fish hooks.  

Andrea was content to sleep peacefully in the fresh air while we all continued our battle with the crawdads.  

Scott and I have decided that these once a year fishing trips are just not enough.  So we have decided to start taking advantage of the many beautiful mountain lakes that are all within a short drive from here and have set a goal to take the kids fishing at least one Saturday a month when the snow is melted.  

Posted by luann at 4:39 PM in /activities/

Saturday, 19 August 2006

Summer camping trip 2006

Just a quick blog from our campsite near Flagstaff, Arizona.  I'll include a bunch of photos when we get home, but here's a little something to wet your appetites.  We went fishing today and everyone got a little something.

Luann caught a big crawdad (there were lots of those):


Both Alex and Scott caught some nice trout:



And Ellie caught her "2nd" fish, a little pike:

Posted by scott at 9:20 PM in /activities/

Tuesday, 15 August 2006

Star Trek Inspirational Posters

The title says it all...

Click Here

Posted by scott at 10:59 AM in /humor/

Saturday, 5 August 2006

The changing substrate of life

  1. inanimate matter
  2. cingle-cell organism in a pool of goo
  3. multi-cellular organisms in a water environment
  4. complex animal life in a terrestrial environment
  5. ? ... possibly: self-aware, artificially intelligent software components in a virtual environment

Posted by scott at 10:55 AM in /tech/

Tuesday, 1 August 2006

Senate hearing on video game violence

I just ran across this quote and it was too good to pass us...
During the recent Senate hearings on video game violence, one expert claimed that the ESRB underrated violent games. They went on to say that Pacman was 64% violent. To some, this means you shouldn't play Pacman; to others, it highlights what's wrong with Senate hearings.
Quote here

Posted by scott at 9:58 PM in /humor/

Monday, 24 July 2006

Andrea is growing fast

Luann had this idea to take a picture of Andrea next to a softball every so often.  Here's a composite image showing her at 2 weeks, 1 month, and 2 months.  Wow - look at her grow!  (oh, and isn't Luann a genius?) /images/emoticons/mozilla_kiss.gif





Posted by scott at 1:48 PM in /activities/

Sunday, 23 July 2006

Dell Specs

If you've ever wanted to know exactly what's under the covers of your Dell desktop so that you can upgrade something (memory, video card, hard drive, etc..), Dell has a great site that has the detailed specs on every single machine they've ever sold.

What type of memory do I have (ddr2, sdram, etc..) ?
What type of card slots do i have (pci, pcie, etc..) ?
What type of drives? (ata, sata, etc..) ?

...

Link Here

Posted by scott at 10:21 AM in /tech/

Friday, 14 July 2006

Best (worst?) movie tagline

I was at the videostore and saw a new movie i'd never heard of.  I was tempted to buy it.  It had vampires in a futuristic sci-fi setting, and a beautiful leading lady.  What could be better?  Someone on IMDB didn't agree.  They had this to say:

This movie is absolutely horrible. The magnitude of its suck is unbelievable.

I'll let you know what I thought of the movie after i watch it /images/emoticons/mozilla_laughing.gif

Posted by scott at 2:35 PM in /humor/

Tuesday, 11 July 2006

Intelligent Design Theories

I recently read an article titled "Intelligent Design Theories", with the interesting subtitle "Intelligent Design is only one of many 'alternatives' to Darwinian evolution".  Well, this caught my eye.  The basic premise is that if teachers are told to teach different theories of creation, they should explore them all so that students can get a more informed opinion of what's out there.

Although he takes a somewhat sarcastic tone with the article, he does point out a number of design theories that i found quite interesting, and thought i'd point them out here.  You may have heard some of them before, and some may be new.

  • Guided Evolution
Yes, the Earth is 4.6 billion years old and our earliest ancestors emerged from a stew of amino acids that also led to crabs, monkeys and slime molds who are all distant relatives. Still, a creative force may have been behind the Big Bang, and especially the selection of some finely tuned physical constants, whose narrow balance appears to make the evolution of life possible, maybe even inevitable. Likewise, such a force may have given frequent or occasional nudges of subtle guidance to evolution, all along, as part of a Divine Plan.
  • Intelligent Design of Intelligent Designers (IDOID)
Most Judeo-Christian sects dislike speculating about possible origins of the Creator. But not all avoid the topic. Mormons, for example, hold that the God of this universe -- who created humanity (or at least guided our evolution) -- was once Himself a mortal being who was created by a previous God in a prior universe or context.
  • Evolution of Intelligent Designers
Each time a large black hole forms (and our universe contains many) it serves as an egg for the creation of an entirely new baby universe that detaches from ours completely, beginning an independent existence in some non-causally connected region of false vacuum. Out of this collapsing black hole arises a new cosmos, perhaps with its own subsequent Big Bang and expansion, including the formation of stars, planets, etc. Smolin further posits that our own universe may have come about that way, and so did its parent cosmos, and so on, backward through countless cycles of hyper-time.

Moreover, in a leap of highly original logic, Smolin went on to persuasively argue that each new universe might be slightly better adapted than its ancestor. Adapted for what? Why, to create more black holes the eggs needed for reproducing more universes.
  • Cycles of Creation
Perhaps the whole thing does not have a clear-cut beginning or end, but rolls along like a wheel.
  • Panspermia
Life on Earth may have been seeded from elsewhere in the cosmos.

Our galaxy probably contains a whole lot more than a few hundred Earth oceans. Multiplying the age of the Milky Way times many billions of possible planets -- and comets too -- they readily conceded that random chance could make successful cells, eventually, on one world or another. (Or, possibly, in the liquid interiors of trillions of newborn comets.) All it would take then are asteroid impacts ejecting hardy cells into the void for life to then spread gradually throughout the cosmos. Perhaps it might even be done deliberately, once a single lucky source world achieved intelligence through ... well ... evolution.

Full Article Here

Posted by scott at 8:11 PM in /info/

Friday, 7 July 2006

Animator vs. Animation

Hillarious and creative short animation.

Click Here

Posted by scott at 5:21 PM in /humor/

Friday, 30 June 2006

The limiting factor of scientific advancement

I just added a new article titled "The limiting factor of scientific advancement".  It talks about how our scientific advancement is ultimately hampered by how long we live.  Check it out.  I'd love to hear what you think.

Posted by scott at 9:56 PM in /tech/

Wednesday, 28 June 2006

The Fish Story

Our family was sitting around the lake.  I was probably 13 or 14 at the time.  Brad was just 5 or 6.  I think it was Strawberry Reservoir.  In any event, Brad made a cast with his pole and set it down to wait for a fish to bite.  Well, bite it did!  Suddenly his pole gets yanked and falls to the ground, and quickly dissapears into the lake!  He was quite distraught over the whole affair.  What fun is fishing when a fish has stolen your fishing pole!?

Anyway, a little while later, after he's calmed down and the rest of us are fishing again, my mom suddenly gets a huge tug on her fishing pole.  She begins reeling in her catch, and after a few moments, what does she have on the end of her pole?  Not a fish ... she's caught Brad's pole!  He's excited.  We're thinking this is pretty cool.  The guy sitting next to us is talking about how unlikely the whole situation is.  

But it gets better.  Someone (I don't think it was Brad) reels in Brads pole.  And ... yes you guessed it ... the fish was still on the hook!  It was huge.  A nice big fat rainbow trout.  The guy next to us was just absolutely stunned and kept saying "If I hadn't seen it myself I'd never believe it!"

Posted by scott at 9:57 AM in /activities/