For those out there who don’t know what to get their friends or relatives for the upcoming holiday season, MAKE Magazine provides a list of popular open source projects that is filled with interesting gift ideas for the techies on your list.

The list includes everything from an open source Atmel AVR programmer, to an installer of portable open source applications for USB thumb drives, and even a home automation web interface that talks to most commercially available home automation products.

One idea that I had seen elsewhere on the internet is to burn Ubuntu or Knoppix LiveCDs for people as an added stocking stuffer. It’s relatively cheap to do that and would provide added exposure to LINUX without permanently getting rid of their current OS and data.

Today, I took the plunge just to try what the dark side had to offer… I downloaded the latest incarnation of the browser from hell, Internet Explorer 7.

I know; I betray the browser gods by tasting the forbidden fruits. In repentance, I will perform 5 Hail Linus’s and confess my sins at the Church of the Fiery Vulpes (their website).

My argument to support my actions is, how do I truly know I don’t like something until I try it for myself?

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To all my friends and family; have a happy, healthy, and safe Thanksgiving!

Lauren and I spent the day with our close friends Aaron and Jenny at their uncle’s house here in Tucson. It was a wonderful meal with Steve’s “adopted” extended family and friends; they had everything from green-bean casserole, to sweet potatoes with marshmallows, to mashed potatoes, to the required turkey. In my opinion, it was everything that Thanksgiving should be; a great time spent with those close to you.

As pointed out in one of Aaron’s blog posts, this is the season for spending lots of time in the presence of friends and family enjoying their company. So, on that note, again, have a happy and healthy start to the Holiday Season!

Well, I whiffed this years tour and didn’t train enough to feel confident to ride in it. My goal for next year, however, is to train to do either the 80 or 110 mile rides for fun. You can call that my “Pre-New Year’s Resolution.”

I’ve been strangely absent from blogging recently, with only one highly cynical post in the last few months.

Well, it’s all for a good reason.

I’ve been putting in some “free” hours at work (and at home) on a new project. For once in the last year and a half, fun and work are not mutually exclusive. I’ve been working on a DARPA “Challenge” with a few other companies. The goal is to build an autonomous robot that can navigate though a city, avoid hitting cars, light poles, pedestrians, pot holes, etc… and do it as quickly as possible.

I can’t talk much about it, or anything else I do at work, but it’s teaching me a heck of a lot more about engineering that my current position. I get to play with LADAR units, play with MATLAB, design programs to interface with hardware, and watch a robot be built. All in all, things like this keep a engineer happy.