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After five years running my site on Network Solutions I finally grew tired of their performance issues. It was taking 60-120 seconds to load the home page on some occasions, and inquiries to tech support just got me form replies reminding me I was on a shared platform, and advising me about optimizing my javascript [...]

Trying to get a few things cleared away before I start a new position on Monday morning. Shortly after the January release of my GSearch libraries for .NET 3.5 and Silverlight 2, Codeplex user FBrink discovered that my conversions for lattitude/longitude in the local search class were naive, in that they failed when the current [...]

I’ve released version 1.0 of the Silverlight Gradient Editor. This version fixes a few small bugs and usability issues, and adds support for transparent gradient stops using the system color picker. This will probably be the last release of the editor unless I discover some problems. There’s not really much more to do with it. [...]

In the process of working on GMemory, a Silverlight 2 game I wrote as an exercise a couple of weeks back, I became familiar with Google’s RESTful webservice API. Using this API applications can execute searches and receive results back. The API is not a complete drop-in replacement for the full-blown Google search engine – [...]

Over the last week my family and I had the pleasure of joining the rest of our far-flung and extended clan in Nag’s Head for the wedding of my brother and his delightful fiancee. Which is to say that by the end of the week the clan was even more extended and far-flung than it [...]

I figured out that the little balloon with the number “2″ in it that appeared next to the “Plugins” menu choice in the admin screen meant that WordPress thought there were two plugins that required upgrading. I’m not sure why it thought that, as there was really just one. But that one didn’t show up [...]

Well I got around to upgrading this evening. I’m not sure whether I would ever go through this if it weren’t for the pale yellow nag bar that appears in the admin screen whenever there’s a new version. That’s a pretty effective device. Everything went smoothly, though it took a few minutes longer because I [...]

I left a message this morning at The Raptor Trust inquiring as to the progress of the young Broadwing Hawk we brought them last week, something they encourage people to do through an option on their voicemail system. Not all animal welfare organizations will provide progress updates to the people who rescue wildlife, so my [...]

The princess was feeling quite a bit better when I went out to check the cage this morning. We tried to give her a restful night, but of course the girls and I couldn’t help peeking in from time to time. When I went up about 2 AM she was standing in the corner with [...]

This evening I spent an hour driving around with a cup of coffee, looking for some photographic opportunities. On my way home, coming across the bridge on Flocktown Road where it crosses Stony Brook Creek, I noticed a small hawk standing by the shoulder. It was about 8:30 PM, rapidly growing dark, but the little [...]