Good news everyone! For all those who have commented on the poor quality of photos on my website, you now have one less thing to worry about: we have finally gotten a decent camera. Behold, the Nikon D40:


It is not the fanciest camera in all the land, but it is worlds away from our old Kodak point-and-shoot. So while I cannot promise that the subjects of the photos will be any better, at least the quality will be.

The best part of it all is that thanks to our credit card reward points, we were able to get this camera for almost nothing.

With my newly acquired circular saw, Jill and I were finally able to cut down the shelves we bought for the laundry room down to size.


When we originally measured the space, we thought we had 39" of clearence (the shelves were 39" wide) but once we tried putting them in, it turned out we were cutting it too closely.

So we ended up trimming 3" off one of the shelves and everything fit perfectly. Now we have a place to put all of our linens and household chemicals.

During our trip to San Antonio, we stopped by the Japanese Tea Gardens to find a spot to have lunch. Unfortunately, there wasn't any place to eat, so we ended up going across the road to the zoo where we found some picnic tables.

[click thumbnails to enlarge]

When Jill's family came into town we decided to visit an old Texas favorite - The Alamo in San Antonio. We enjoyed a picnic lunch near the San Antonio Zoo, which we also visited, and then journeyed downtown to visit the Alamo, just moments before it closed.

[click thumbnails to enlarge]


It turns out that the photo of the reenactment of the Alamo was a big no-no. Apparently you are not supposed to take photos while inside any of the buildings.

I want to apologize to everyone for neglecting my blog for the better part of a month. So to all 3 of your who read this, I promise I have some good stuff coming.

The holidays were great, which explains my absence on this site, but for the sake of putting something new up, I thought I would share a glimpse of what I am working on.



For those who have no idea what this is, it is a wiring diagram for the interactive coffee table, aka KaveBox, that I am building. This is just a preliminary sketch, but you can get the gist of what is going on. The software I am writing is stored on an Arduino (the misshapen mass on the right) which sends electrical signals through the microcontrollers (in the middle) which then gets distributed to 64 individual LED clusters (two of which are depicted on the left).

The end result is an interactive coffee table that lights up and can do a myriad of things including the ability to play games, show the time, news, weather, etc.