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This is cool for two reasons: I love the TED talks, and I can now watch them on the iPhone.

For those unaware of TED, it is basically an online archive of lectures/talks by thought leaders and other fascinating people.

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

One of my favorites was Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic and educator at the New England Conservatory. I met him a couple times while a student there, but this venue really brings out his passion and joyous personality.

Pixelpipe runs on an iPhone and provides an interface for uploading images and video to dozens of social media and other channel sites simultaneously. For instance, I can fire up Pixelpipe on my phone, scroll through and flag/tag my images, then hit one button that uploads all the images to Picasa, Facebook, and Twitter,  all remarkably fast.

Pixelpipe is a content distribution gateway that allows users to publish text and upload photos, video and audio files once through Pixelpipe and have the content distributed across over 75 social networks, photo/video sites and blogs, and other online destinations. We provide a number of mobile & desktop applications for users, liberating their media and sharing their life.

Okay, I don’t have a Kindle. But I noticed just today that I can download Kindle books from Amazon and read them on my iPhone.

First, I download the iPhone app that Kindle provides. Then I go to Amazon and find a bunch of free books, just to try it out. I download “The Cook’s Illustrated How-to-Cook Library: An Illustrated Step-by-step guide to Foolproof Cooking.” I didn’t find a lot of free stuff worth downloading, but again, I’m just trying it out.

Sure enough, the download works and the title appears in the iPhone app. I am very pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to read. The screen is clear and sharp, very crisp text and illustrations (thankfully, I do know the proper way to carve out an avocado). A simple flick of the screen turns the page, a tap retreives the menu items.

For what it is, I can easily see reading a book on this thing. I’m sure there’s all sorts of reasons why the Kindle is better, but I already have the iPhone and the app is free. Bravo!

I just found an app that allows me to write posts and upload images to my blog from my iPhone. Let’s see if it works.

I forget how cold it was this day. I just remember it was bitter and the wind chill up on the dam made it almost unbearable.

We visit Hopkinton State Park pretty much every weekend for a walk, or during the winter, some sledding. This day was unusual for the ice sculptures formed in the lake. It looks like the water had frozen, high wind gusts pushed waves that broke the ice, and then those fragments froze again. Beautiful site.

This past weekend Winter came in like a lion (although the first day of Winter officially is tomorrow). I write this (and include photos) mostly for my friends who have moved away from the area and sometimes lament the lost New England Falls and Winters. I believe between Friday and Sunday we got 20+ inches.

This blog has been offline for a year now, archived on a USB backup drive. I didn’t take up writing on my business blog as I had hoped I would. But there were some articles on this blog that I was looking for recently, specifically a couple of PHP code schemes. Also, it turns out this domain name was set to expire in a couple weeks and it still was being held at an old registrar. So, I decided to set it online again.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do here. Perhaps I’ll write something pithy once in a while, comment on some found photos, rant about some bad customer experience. I don’t know. We’ll just have to see.

We’re back in Jackson, NH this week. This is my favorite place to vacation. We do go, of course, to StoryLand and Santa’s Village and Clark’s Trading Post to see the trained bears, but it’s the mountains and the rivers and the big sky that I come for. One day this week we’ll abandon the crowds and the noise and spend our day driving the Kancamagus Highway, winding our way up through the mountains and stopping to picnic and frolic in the cold river water.

Tonight is fireworks in the small touristy town on Conway (we missed the local show Sunday night, hearing the booms and crackles only as we’re putting the kids to bed). Hopefully the weather cooperates and the show tonight will go on regardless of the forecasted rain.

This has been a great week so far; weather has been good and the parks not too crowded. Even the condo we’ve rented is better than before, a two-story unit with lots of windows and skylights and a spiral staircase up to the overlooking master bedroom. The photo above is from that window.

This last weekend was a very big one for me and my family. After three long years working nights and weekends to complete papers, presentations, and projects, I finally walked the stage and received my B.S. in Information Technology.

On Saturday, we had the whole family to our house for a huge feast and pool party. It was great to host them all at our house for a change (we routinely drive to Connecticut for family gatherings). Then, on Sunday morning, we woke, had a fine breakfast, and drove to the Hynes Center in Boston for the ceremony.

I missed my father and my brother Craig being there; getting my degree would have meant so much to them both. But I did wear my father’s watch to keep him close (even though it keeps horrible time now). I was very happy to have my oldest daughter Mia there with us; she felt like such a big girl and was also very proud of her Papi. (We left Sophia home with a sitter.)

I’d be remiss not to publicly thank my wife Liliana for her patience and sacrifice over these years. (In fact, it was at her urging that I undertook this challenge at all.) There were many nights holed up in my home office and many, many Saturdays spent at school giving my final presentations. I could not have done this without her and my daughters’ love, support, patience, and understanding. This degree belongs as much to them as it does to me. I truly am grateful to them for this achievement.

Can you solve this equation? No, neither can I. Well, actually, I can if I have my notes. And I will have my notes for my second-level Math final this weekend. I will be able to solve this and many other brain-numbing problems.

Once this class is complete, I have only one more that I plan to test out of next month (a generalist human health course). And then in June, a long three years comes to an end when I walk at the Hynes Center commencement, my BS degree finally in hand.

After that, a pleasant summer reading real books again.