Chris

Like Father Like Son, originally uploaded by Photo-Mojo.

Mom just sent me a 34 year old photograph she took while pregnant with me. Here is my father staining my dresser while below I prepare to paint my baby’s dresser.
Freaky cool.

Yes, I know that the highly-popular “Wassup?” Budweiser commercials are about 7 years old, but they are classics. A few people have decided to mashup Bud with Star Wars and Superfriends characters with hilarity. Just press play!

I’ll spare you the just-as funny “white-boy, granny & petshop” wassup commercials…for now.

I had a great time connecting with a more than a few folks in the local media last night at Workplay. The Media Of Birmingham (MOB) hosted their July event, Monday Bloody Monday, a reference to the U2 concert playing in the Workplay theater at the same time. Here are a few shots from last night’s event:

even U2 lead singer Bono showed up!

Something I have been interested in for awhile but never really could pursue until now (maybe) is geocaching. Geocaching.com describes it this way:

“Geocaching is an entertaining adventure game for gps users. Participating in a
cache hunt is a good way to take advantage of the wonderful features and
capability of a gps unit. The basic idea is to have individuals and
organizations set up caches all over the world and share the locations of these
caches on the internet. GPS users can then use the location coordinates to find
the caches. Once found, a cache may provide the visitor with a wide variety of
rewards. All the visitor is asked to do is if they get something they should
try to leave something for the cache.”

I was prevented from enjoying this activity because there was a lack of a GPS receiver, until now. My mother had been reading this blog & listening to me ramble on about it for a year and finally decided enough was enough and surprised me with a Magellan eXplorist 500 recently.

Thanks, mom!

So the nearest geocache near me is exactly 1.3 miles from my home coordinates, according to geocache.com

Details also provided show a map of the area, description of the area’s surroundings as clues, and a legend of what to expect in the area so you can prepare yourself for the environment. For example, this geocache says there are cliffs/falling rocks, snakes, poison plants, kid/pet-friendly and available parking.

Once the cache is discovered, usually in plastic containers, metal ammo boxes, toolboxes, metal tins, etc there are trinkets, that you can take and a log to notify the person who hid the cache that you were there. Everything is then uploaded to the cache’s website as feedback.

Neat, huh? So who is with me?

As mentioned before, Geocaching.com is a great resource for finds.

In a previous post here on Go Mojo there was mention about a book by a local author, Russell Helms called GPS Outdoors. See also GPS Made Easy by Lawrence Letham.

Also locally and state-wide here in Alabama is the Dixie Cachers. Check us out!

Empathetic Pregnancy, originally uploaded by Photo-Mojo.

Planning for Parenthood class at St. Vincent’s hospital. Almost 9 weeks to go!

As mentioned previously, I love change. Change is good. Things get changed around here often because there is always something bigger/better/prettier. Go Mojo has a new interface as does Techno Mojo. Photo Mojo is untouched…for now.

After a brief hiatus (yes, it was neglected, thanks for noticing!), Techno Mojo is back with more news about social software, web 2.0 and must have gadgets. Today’s 2 posts include web applications that are by invitation only that I want you to have. Spock is a web search app for people. Pownce is an instant messenger/Twitter-like piece that allows you instant communication between friends.

Go check it out and add some comments to Techno Mojo. Feedback is appreciated!

Techno Mojo screen shot

 I get bored easily with designs and so I have upgraded to WordPress 2.2 and gave this site as well as Techno Mojo an interfacelift. Check them out!

Because there is little discussion over the Apple iPhone this week *snort*, I thought I would help contribute to the conversation. A week after the iPhone’s release, on the weekend of July 6 there will be an unconference in San Francisco called iPhoneDevCamp. Campers/attendees will be able to create new web apps for the iPhone, optimize existing applications, migrate dashboard widgets to web-based widgets for the iPhone and more.

Technorati tags: iPhone, Apple, AT&Traffic, mobile, phone Barcamp, iPhoneDevCamp

 I’ve been watching the blogosphere’s love/hate relationship with Yahoo! these past few months with interest and wonder why is Yahoo losing the battle to Google?

I like Yahoo. Yahoo has been the dominant social web portal for a decade. Not Google, not MySpace or Microsoft, but Yahoo. Y! helped people come together with an easy-to-use instant messenger, games, chat rooms and more. Who else can match this? This is social web dominance. Even today, no other social website can compare.

Yahoo has made some smart purchases recently to help solidify their social dominance with some of the web’s most useful applications.

1. Flickr-Social photos
2. Del.icio.us-Social bookmarking
3. Upcoming- Social event notifications
4. Mybloglog- Social blogging
5. Jumpcut- Social video sharing/mixing

Yahoo has made huge strides to compete with the fantastic Gmail service by enhancing their own Yahoo Mail service. Unlimited inbox storage trumps Gmail’s 2+ gigabytes. It even has a nice desktop application feel to it. Although admittingly, I am addicted to Gmail. It is my primary web account. All mail from Gmail is forwarded onto Yahoo mail as a backup.

So, moving on to my recent Yahoo encounter…

On Monday, I discovered that I could swap Yahoo ID’s (2) while I was looking in my Flickr account. My desired ID was not registered in Flickr but an old one that I never used. Except for Flickr. So anyway, once I switched it to my desired ID, I decided to delete the old, unused account.

POOF!

I no longer had access to Flickr because Yahoo deleted my desired account instead. I have no idea why, because  I had specifically requested and verified deletion of the “old” ID.

I received an automated email from Yahoo confirming deletion.

** This is only a notification.  You do NOT need to respond. **
This email is to confirm that your Yahoo! account, “mojodenbow,”
has been recently terminated per your request.  Your account
has been deactivated and will be deleted from our user registration
database in approximately 90 days. This delay is necessary to
discourage users from engaging in fraudulent activity. To satisfy
terms agreed to in the Yahoo! Finance Terms of Service, personal
information for users subscribed to Yahoo! Finance Premium
Services will be kept by Yahoo! for at least 3 years after the
subscription date.
If you did not request this action please reply to this message.
Thank you for using Yahoo!. You can always sign up for a new
account by clicking on any “Sign In” or “Sign Me Up” link
appearing on the front page of most Yahoo! Services.

Yahoo! Member Services

Um, WHAT? I did not request THAT account. Anyway, the account was restored after a 5 question inquiry.

WHEW!

Needless to say, I am still very pleased with Yahoo for restoration of my desired account and Flickr access.

What Yahoo! services do you enjoy the best? Is there anything you’d like to see from Yahoo in comparison to other webware applications? Shout it out in the comments.

We here in Birmingham, Alabama have been experiencing a severe drought for 2007. At last check, we are 21″ below our average rain level. Keep in mind, when I first moved here 5 years ago, a statistic claimed we had more rain than Seattle on average. We are dry, people.

Eight days ago, our 15 year old A/C unit’s fan motor decided to call it quits. Outside temp was 90. Inside was 92. After a new fan motor ($350), it was purring like new. Two days later, it crapped out again. I called the service tech back out and thankfully it was just the wiring (no charge).

Today, the temperature reached 90 by 11:30. My building and most other businesses off of Hwy 280 in Inverness lost it’s power. I decided to take an early lunch and cruise around. I got back an hour later to a blacked-out building. My supervisor suggested we leave for the day. I grabbed my laptop to work from home and never looked back.

About an hour after I got home in Trussville (20 miles away), we lost power in our neighborhood as well! I called Wonderwife who still thinks I am radiating something. She called Alabama Power and to their credit, rolled in about 20 minutes later. Impressive. Power was restored in about 30-40 minutes.

You’d think that was the end of it, wouldn’t you? Not so fast my friend. Keep reading.

Shortly after the power was restored, there is an acrid smell in the air and coming from the air vents. There was no blowing air, mind you.

#$@%*!

Another call to the company that installed the fan motor and rewired to make it work a second time. To their credit, they were here in about 20 minutes as well. The same tech that was here the 2 previous times returns, looks at the unit. Checks the blower. Everything looks fine. We check out the thermostat and ZAP! He gets hit with a nice little 24 watt jolt. Some more tinkering and ZAP! Another jolt. This time his voltage meter runs up to 92. No way a thermostat should get that high. The 15 year old thermostat is replaced with a digital one, something on my list of things to do anyway.

No air is blowing after this so we check the motor again. Two wires had wrapped around each other causing overheating and meltdown, which explains the aforementioned acrid smell. It also fried 2 couplings.

The friendly service tech didn’t even write up a bill because he felt like it was their responsibility (um, yeah). I admit and he suggested that this was a “unique incident” but I would still recommend calling Tri-County to keep your cool.

Wonderwife predicted all of this heat as “the worst summer” when she found out she was pregnant in January. I’m told summer pregnancies are tough. This prediction is right on track. It is hot & dry, people.

In closing, summer officially begins tomorrow (June 21) but it has already been here for the past 3 months!

Yesterday marked the beginning of the end for Wonderwife’s first pregnancy. She is now in the third trimester. Baby Denbow, is an 85% chance of being a girl. While brushing up on month six in my book, The Expectant Father, I came across a few facts of what the baby looks like.

The baby is now covered with vernix, a thick, waxy, protective coating. The movements of the now foot-long, two-pounder are getting stronger, and he or she can hear, and respond to sounds from outside the uterus. – Armin A. Brott

Brott then goes on to say what the mother is going through physically & emotionally as well as what I might be experiencing. I have to say, that most of this is dead on. The period of greatest weight gain, continued forgetfulness, feeling that the pregnancy will never end…not to mention she may feel the same way!

 Baby girl @ 24 weeks

These days on the internets, you just never know what you will discover. I’ve been using a great photo hosting site & social community called Zooomr for quite awhile now and they never cease to amaze me. Today, San Francisco photographer and CEO of Zooomr showcases yet another feature that founder Kristopher Tate has managed to whip up for us…video embeds from Vimeo & Youtube  right next to your photographs!

As Thomas likes to exclaim, “Hot donkey!”

The timing couldn’t be better for me because I am way pissed off that today, Yahoo/Flickr has deleted my pro account (8,000+ photos) at “my request”. This is false and I am awaiting Yahoo’s response and will reserve further comment. Another point of good timing? I have owned my first video camera for less than a week and cannot wait to finally utilize all of the video 2.0 webware.

Admittingly, I am in a bit of photo limbo right now. I cannot access my Flickr account (still viewable) and I am still waiting for all of the promised features that Zooomr is cooking up for me (batch uploader, marketplace, photos in groups, Flickr converter).

Photo on the left, video of the bouncy baby on the right as an embedded tag. Neat!

Be sure to check out my Zooomr account, Mojo Denbow’s Photo Studio

Don’t forget the hot new Vimeo account, Mojo Denbow’s Video Studio as well! More to come as I figure out how to shoot video instead of photo.