Well, another week is gone and I still do have any new pictures to post. I guess I should at least start going through my old pictures and post some of them. Maybe one of these days…

I worked on the Review Summaries site a couple times last week. Ron and I are working on integrating some grammar parsing software with our Ruby code. Once we do that, we hope to set up some tools to let us quickly enable other product categories. It will still be a while before we have anything up on the main site.

We went to see “Children of Men” on Thursday. It was decent, but quite dark. There’s a fair bit of action and some of it is pretty graphic. And don’t expect a Hollywood ending…

We had nice weather over the weekend. I played basketball on Saturday, but we only had 5 people show up. I still got some good exercise. On Sunday we went to a “New Year’s” party at Catherine’s. She’s the one we hiked Mt. Whitney with. I’m not sure if it was a late New Year or early Chinese New Year party. Apparently, January 14 is the start of the new year on the Julian calendar (which lists that day as January 1). Countries with a lot of Eastern Orthodox people celebrate it, so I guess we could have been celebrating that.

It’s Martin Luther King Day today, but unfortunately, Mary did not have off. Mary’s mom and brother stayed over last night so I chatted with them a bit this morning before I headed to the gym. Now I’m at Tapioca Express enjoying a chocolate pearl tea and blogging. I suppose I should do so work on either the RS site, or the North Star Project for the Imaginarium…

First of all, let me say Mary and I were very happy to get our luggage from Hawaiian Airlines. It arrived in San Jose last Thursday, nearly 4 days after our trip. It had been inadvertently tagged with someone else’s tags, and so went from Honolulu to Sacramento. I had figured this out the first night upon closer inspection of my baggage claim receipt, but it still took them many days to track them down. Anyway, the bags traveled from Sacramento to Salt Lake City to San Jose but everything seemed to be in order.

Now, while I’m trying to figure out what to do with my career, I’ve decided to help my friend Greg set up a website for a project at the science museum he works for. It a paying gig, so it will be my first paycheck in nearly two years. Pretty exciting stuff. For more details on what I’m doing for that project, check out my latest Geek Valhalla blog.

I’m still working on Review Summaries, but it has not progressed much recently. Hopefully Ron and I will get that back in gear soon.

I’ve been having trouble getting back in to my gym routine in 2007. I only went twice last week (and didn’t do cardio either time), then I skipped Monday this week. I did manage to make it to the gym today and even did cardio. I did my Monday routine today in hopes that I will catch up by going again tomorrow. I usually go Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. I did at least play basketball on Saturday.

As much as I don’t like making posts without pictures, I guess I’ll have to get used to it. I don’t seem to get out to take them much any more…

Well, I haven’t started working on any of the Linux projects I blogged about last time. Right now I’m trying to help my friend Greg set up a web site for the science museum he works for. I haven’t really designed a full web site before, so it’s a bit of a learning experience. The main requirements are:

• Easy to maintain
• Provide a discussion forum
• Allow registered users to blog

I’ve looked into a few different Content Management Systems. I found a few really helpful sites for this process:

• CMS Matrix - which provides comparisons of various CMS solution in (you guessed it) a matrix
• Blog Software Breakdown - another comparison matrix, but more blog software oriented
• Wikipedia - what can’t you find here?
• Open Source CMS - these guys let you demo all sorts of CMS software

At the moment I’m leaning towards Joomla. It’s PHP based and runs on top of MySQL and Apache. I have installed it under Kubuntu on my laptop. It has a lot of plugin modules for blogs, forums and such. Maybe I’ll install it to manage my main bluevalhalla.com webpage. I know it has a bridge to Gallery2, my photo gallery (which is also PHP based), but I’m not sure what I’ll do about blogging since I use Blogger at the moment.

I tried to install Drupal, but for some reason the automated installation through Kubuntu failed. I didn’t bother tracking down the problem, I like the Joomla administration interface better. I guess we’ll see how it goes…

I’m back from my holiday vacation. I used my laptop a bit while I was traveling, but I’m sorry to say I was using Windows. Today was the first time I used my Kubuntu installation in a while. I installed Skype under Kubuntu, so that’s one more step towards a complete solution. I think the Treo sync is my biggest issue now. What I really need is a comparable Linux based cell phone. Maybe I’ll get a Trolltech Greenphone or the new FIC Neo1973. They both have opne Linux environments, though the Greenphone is quite pricey since it’s more of a development platform.

I signed up for a Jabber account today. I guess if I want to move towards open source, that means moving away from all the proprietary IM systems as well. I’m already using an open client (Kopete) under Kubuntu, but I still connect to Yahoo, MSN, and AIM servers. I don’t know too many people with Jabber accounts, but maybe I can convert a few, starting with gtalk users since it uses the Jabber protocol.

Once I get a little more comfortable with my Linux based laptop (and a desktop running Ubuntu), I would like to work towards the following (in no particular order):

• Home Media Server and PVR (MythTV perhaps)
• Carputer (good GPS navigation is my biggest concern)
• Smart Phone (would like GSM and Wifi plus other goodies like AGPS)

Who knows, maybe I’ll turn one of these into my next business venture…

Well, it’s 2007 and the start of a brand new year. Mary and I returned from Hawaii yesterday. Our flight arrived around 9 PM, but our luggage still isn’t here. I just finished posting pictures from the trip in my gallery on the Oahu, Hawaii page. Here’s a recap of the trip:

Monday, December 25
Got up early and went on a boat trip with Wild Side Specialty Tours out of Waianae Boat Harbor. We saw a honu (green sea turtle) before we even left the dock. A little ways outside the harbor we saw a humpback whale. We also saw a white-tip reef shark while we were snorkeling. But the highlight of the trip was swimming with spinner dolphin! After the boat trip, we drove to the north end of the road and back south to Ko Olina. Most of the sight were either closed for Christmas or too crowded. We ended up eating Christmas dinner at a buffet called Perry’s Smorgies near our hotel.

Tuesday, December 26
On Tuesday we hiked up the Diamond Head crater. The trail to the top climbs about 750 feet. There are really great views of Waikiki (left) and Koko Head from here. After the hike, we discovered malasadas for the first time. They are Portuguese donuts with or without filling. We got them at a bakery called Leonard’s just outside of Waikiki. We tried to go snorkeling at Hanauma Bay, but it is closed on Tuesday. We found another spot near the base of Diamond Head to snorkel for a bit. We finished the day with a drive on Tantalus Road on the north side of Honolulu which offers some great scenery and views. We ended up making dinner back at our hotel.

Wednesday, December 27
We got up at a respectable hour to go snorkeling at Hanauma Bay. We were there by 9:30 AM and the lot was already full. After a bit of a hike in to the preserve, we had a 45 minute wait to get in. We finally managed to snorkel there for an hour or two. There were a lot of fish (right), but seemingly even more people. After snorkeling we headed to Pearl Harbor. By the time we got there all the tickets for the USS Arizona Memorial were gone, so we went to see the USS Missouri (left) instead. The “Mighty Mo” was the sight of the signing of the Instrument of Surrender by the Japanese to end WWII on the Pacific front. We ended the day with a nice dinner at Chibo Restaurant. We had a dish called okonomiyaki, which is sort of a Japanese pizza.

Thursday, December 28
We checked out of the Aqua Bamboo and started our trip to the North Shore. It was a bit overcast and rainy as we drove along the windward side of the island. We tried to go see the spitting cave in the town of Portlock, but the rocks we wet and slippery, so we skipped it. We did stop to see the Halona blowhole, but it wasn’t so spectacular at the time. We stopped at the Valley of the Temples, which is basically a cemetery. We went to the Byodo-In Temple (right), which is a beautiful Japanese temple set at the foot of the Ko’olau Mountains. We also stopped to see Molikii Island (Chinaman’s Hat) before arriving at the Turtle Bay Resort to check in. We had a nice dinner at Ola, a Hawaiian fusion restaurant on the resort grounds.

Friday, December 29
Most of the day was overcast and rainy, but there were big swells on the North Shore so we went to check them out. We stopped at Sunset Beach to watch a few surfers brave the 20-25 foot waves (left). We continued our drive to the west end of the road, but decided not to hike the additional 2.5 miles to Kaena Point due to the weather. On our way back to Turtle Bay we stopped at Turtle Beach and could see a few honu swimming in the surf. None of them came on shore most likely because of the waves. We did see a beautiful rainbow over the beach. We made it back to Turtle Bay in time to see a wonderful sunset (right). We had dinner in the resort at the Palm Terrace, which had an awesome local buffet, including my favorite Hawaiian dish: kalua pork. After dinner we watched the blowhole at the back of the resort which was really ripping.

Saturday, December 30
Today we went snorkeling at Kuilima Cove at the Turtle Bay Resort. The swells were much smaller than Friday and the cove is reasonably well protected. There were only a few people in the water, and I would say it was a much better experience than Hanauma Bay. After snorkeling we made our way to Laie, where the Polynesian Cultural Center is located. Before going into the cultural center, we picked up some sandwiches and ate lunch at Laie Point (left). We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the Cultural Center which was established by the Mormons to provide financial aid for Polynesian students at Bringham Young University Hawaii (also in Laie). The Cultural Center showcases the culture and art of many of the Polynesian Islands, including: Tonga, Samoa, Fiji (right), Tahiti, the Marquesas, Aotearoa (New Zealand), and Hawaii. During the day they have a lot of demonstrations and exhibits, then in the evening they have a luau and a big show. It was pretty interesting even though it’s quite touristy. I have to say, those Samoans are a real riot!

Sunday, December 31
Sadly, we had to check out of the Turtle Bay Resort today. Once again we drove across the North Shore to Waialua Bay, then south to Honolulu. We stopped at Turtle Beach to catch one last glimpse of honus, but to no avail. We did see a lot more surfers out since the swells were more sane. In the central part of the island we stopped at the Dole Plantation. We checked out the pineapple gardens and had a quick snack (pineapple upside-down cake and pineapple ice cream). We returned our snorkeling gear in Waikiki and headed for the airport. We ended up grabbing a quick bite at a Pizza Hut cart in the airport before boarding our flight. The flight was full and we did not get to sit together. To make things worse, when we got back to San Jose, we realized our bags had been tagged incorrectly and were routed to Sacramento (after waiting 1 hour and 15 minutes for all the other bags to arrive). As of this post, we still have not received our luggage.

Well, I hope this post wasn’t too long and boring. The trip was anything but. We both had a great time and wish we could have stayed longer. Mary heads back to work in the morning, and I need to start figuring out what I’m going to do with myself this year. We wish everyone a happy and prosperous New Year!