Arno Ghelfi for Bloomburb Business week published a visualization this week breaking down current U.S. social media internet usage by activity and age. From top to bottom are the more active users to the more passive. Age groups run left to right. I particularly like the categories of social media users not only because it seems to be logical breakdown but because it resonates with me relative to my own internet usage. Though I really think that Boomers and Seniors are more active in social media than this report is giving them credit for. I’d actually like to see the data and review the methodology by which it was collected. Nevertheless it is an excellent visualization.
Fedora – A Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software. Fedora is always free for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. It is built by people across the globe who work together as a community: the Fedora Project. The Fedora Project is open and anyone is welcome to join.
MyPHPAdmin – A free software tool written in PHP intended to handle the administration of MySQL over the World Wide Web. phpMyAdmin supports a wide range of operations with MySQL. The most frequently used operations are supported by the user interface (managing databases, tables, fields, relations, indexes, users, permissions, etc), while you still have the ability to directly execute any SQL statement.
WordPress – A semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability.
Joomla! – the dynamic portal engine and content management system.
Magento – The PHP based eCommerce software platform for growth that promises to revolutionize the industry because of its modular architecture and unprecedented flexibility.
GIMP – GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP). Freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.
SugarCRM – Commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM). CRM software for sales force automation and customer support deployed on demand or on site.
Open Office – A multiplatform and multilingual office suite compatible with all other major office suites.
OSTicket – Open source support ticket system simple, lightweight, reliable, open source, and easy to setup and use.
Elgg – A leading open source social networking engine which can be used to power your social network. It includes blogging, networking, community, collecting of news using feeds aggregation and file sharing features. Everything can be shared among users with access controls and everything can be cataloged by tags as well.
Open Atrium – is a platform for building team portals that can be extended to meet highly custom knowledge management needs for large organizations’ intranets and extranets. It starts with “out of the box” features like a blog, a wiki, a calendar, a case tracker, a shoutbox, and a dashboard to manage content. These features can be expanded to meet unique needs for large organizations so that full scale enterprise collaboration sites can be built with Open Atrium as a base. By fully leveraging Drupal, all of the strengths of Drupal can contribute to creating custom features for Open Atrium within a framework that is already tailored for team collaboration.
This ancestory visualization uses a couple additional pieces of software that integrate with www.ancestry.com. You’ll need to buy Family Tree Maker 2010 and Charting Companion for Family Tree Maker in order to pull this one off in addition to some photoshop chops. I had to bring my fan and Caroline’s Fan chart both into Photoshop and combine them there in order to get this chart to look the way it does. This should obviously be an option in the software but for now that doesn’t exist.
I tried my first Brie en Croute this weekend. It was absolutely delicious and clearly not on my diet.
Ingredients
Package Puff Pastry Sheets
1 egg
1 tablespoon water
1/2 cup apricot preserves
1/3 cup dried cranberry, softened
1/4 cup toasted sliced almonds
1 (13.2 ounce) round Brie cheese
Crackers
Directions
Thaw pastry sheet at room temperature 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Mix egg and water.
Unfold pastry sheet on lightly floured surface. Roll into 14 inch square. Cut off corners to make a circle. Spread preserves to within 1 inch of pastry edge. Sprinkle cranberries and almonds over preserves. Top with cheese. Brush edge of circle with egg mixture. Fold two opposite sides over cheese. Trim remaining two sides to 2 inch from edge of cheese. Fold these two sides onto the round. Press edges to seal. Place seam-side down on baking sheet. Decorate top with pastry scraps if desired. Brush with egg mixture.
Bake 20 minutes or until golden. Let stand 1 hour. Serve with crackers.
Check out these cool trading cards Sarah’s coach Ron Demarse made for the girls. This was Leah’s first soccer season. She spent more time trying to fetch the ball from the net and playing in the grass than anything else. Ann sat out the fall season but the picture on her card was from the spring while playing goalie. Sarah played goalie for the first time this season and I found it made me nervous.
Well I made a couple things that were totally yummy this weekend. First there was biscuits and chocolate gravy followed up by bread pudding. I forgot to take a picture of the former but I remembered on the latter. Without further delay I present: Bread Pudding.
10 slices white bread, cut into cubes
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 cup raisins
6 eggs, beaten
3/4 cup white sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups hot milk (160 degrees F/71 degrees C)
1 pinch ground nutmeg
Directions
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Lightly butter one 2 quart baking dish.
Combine bread cubes, butter, cinnamon and raisins; mix well and place in baking dish.
Beat together the eggs, sugar, vanilla and salt. Add milk, mix well and pour over bread cubes.
We had a most exciting 3 day weekend adventure at Lake Cumberland State Park this past weekend. The girls loved the Wildwood cottages. We bucked up and rented a ski boat for 1/2 a day. I had no idea you could spend as much in gas as the rental cost! The best part was the guy telling me what all the nobs and switches were for and the moment when he realized I had never piloted a boat before . . . priceless. He said, “You are telling me you are renting a $30k boat and never taken a boat out before?” Why, yes I am!
It was all fine and dandy until I realized I had to bring it into the dock without sinking it at the end of the day. Thankfully, some stranger on the dock helped me guide it in otherwise I am not sure what we would have done.
We shot a bunch of pictures on the trip. Wildlife seen: Wild Turkeys (besides the children), Chipmunk, Raccoon, and only Deer tracks (but no deer). Lots of Geodes were cracked and many fossils were found while exploring the area. Evening fires were prepared, Marshmallows roasted and hot chocolate consumed.
Google Apps – Get constant enterprise innovation with Google, saving your company the time, money and hassles of managing these IT solutions yourself.
www.centraldesktop.com – Central Desktop’s is a web based SaaS solution for businesses to collaborate, manage projects and connect their people. It has great centralized document management and version control capabilities.
www.tomsplanner.com – Create and share Gantt charts online with Tom’s Planner Gantt chart software. No more messy excel spreadsheets.
Mingle – Mingle, the agile project management tool, was built from the ground up to adapt to constantly changing processes, business priorities and program/project structures within your development environment.
MindMeister – Free web-based realtime collaborative mind mapping tool for brainstorming and project management (with iPhone app).
FreeMind – A Free Open Source Graphical Mind Mapping solution written in Java.
www.basecamphq.com – Trusted by millions, Basecamp is the leading web-based project management and collaboration tool. To-dos, files, messages, schedules, and milestones.
5 PM – Web-based project and task management application for your team. The powerful features are accessed through a smart customizable interface.
Goplan – is an project management and collaboration tool for individuals and teams. Tasks, Tickets, Calendar, Time tracking and Documents.
Bananna Scrum – Banana Scrum is a Web-based Agile tool for teams that use agile development methods, primarily Scrum.
Time Meter – Application designed for time and expense tracking that works under Microsoft Outlook.
@Task – Offers project management software as well as task tracking, project life cycle, workflow, gantt charts and other project tracking software and services.
Jupiter will swing to within a mere 368 million miles of Earth on Monday night, making its closest pass in 47 years. The planet nears the Earth roughly every 12 years. This will be the closest the planet has come to Earth since 1963. It won’t be this close again until 2022. It can easily be seen with the naked eye at sunset in the east near the horizon, but a telescope affords an even better view. I managed to get this shot using my telescope and my iPhone.
You can clearly see the 4 Galilean moons in this shot. They are the largest of the many moons of Jupiter and derive their names from the lovers of Zeus: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. They were discovered sometime between 1609 and 1610 when Galileo made improvements to his telescope, which enabled him to observe celestial bodies more distinctly than had ever been possible before.
This animation by the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center shows a beautiful view of the past 30 years of asteroid discoveries, using data culled by Ted Bowell et al. As time passes, asteroids are highlighted white and then colored by how closely they come to our inner solar system. Earth crossers are red, Earth approachers are yellow, and all others are colored green.
Dunster Castle is the historical home of the Luttrell family located in the small town of Dunster, Somerset, England. Colonel Sir Walter Luttrell gave Dunster Castle and the greater part of its contents to the National Trust in 1976. There has been a castle at the top of the hill at Dunster for more than 1,000 years. The Domesday Book records one on this location before 1066. The castle was granted by William the Conqueror to William de Mohun, whose family lived there until the castle was sold in 1376 by Lady Joan de Mohun to Lady Elizabeth Luttrell. Lady Elizabeth’s descendants owned Dunster Castle until 1976.
The castle dominates a steep hill overlooking the picturesque village of Dunster. The hill has been fortified since Saxon times, although nothing now remains of these early defenses. During the early medieval period the sea reached the base of the hill offering a natural defense, and strong walls, towers, ramparts and outworks protected the other sides. By the 15th century the sea had receded and the Luttrells created the deer park. When Sir George Luttrell inherited in 1571, the castle was dilapidated and the family were living elsewhere. In 1617, Sir George employed the architect, William Arnold, to erect a new house in the lower ward of the castle. During the Civil War, Dunster was a Royalist stronghold under the command of Colonel Wyndham. In November 1645 Parliamentary forces started a siege which lasted until an honorable surrender of the castle in April 1646. Dunster shared the fate of many other Royalist castles and had its defenses demolished to prevent any further use against Parliament. All that now remains of the medieval fortifications are the impressive gatehouse and the stumps of two towers.
The house was modified and developed over the following centuries, and much of the current appearance dates from the 18th century when the park was landscaped and the Green Court, terraced grounds and follies were created. Much of the furniture in the house also dates from this period.
Links Related to Luttrell Family and Dunster Castle
This is a great visualization of the colonization and occupation of North America from 1750-2008 by Non-Native Americans. I found this graphic while doing ancestral research on wikipedia. It does a fantastic job cycling you through 79 frames that show how North America was colonized and by whom and when. It is a shame you can show this in a book, perhaps eBooks will one day support this sort of thing.
I’ve been on a diet for several months now and when I travel it always presents a challenge in terms of having the proper discipline to eat light. Nothing like cold fish soup to help out a diet right? But seriously, this is simply the best Ceviche I have ever had. If you are ever in Ventura California take the Vista Del Mar exit and head towards the beach. In about 3 blocks you will find Dukes on your left. They make the worlds best Ceviche fresh each morning and it is to die for. You MUST try it!
New Goal – 175. Then I will begin moving back to a more normal diet leveling out around 180 over a month or two. I have to say I feel really good though. More like I felt when I was in my 20s.
End Weight: 179.4
Previous Weight: 179.6
Loss: -0.2 lbs
Net Loss: 30.2 lbs
BMI: 23.03
Percent of Old Goal (180 lbs.): 100% Complete
Percent of New Goal (175 lbs.): 12% Complete
