I haven't been posting new pictures to the site lately, nor postings, as having a baby is slightly incompatible with whittling away the hours in front of a computer. That aside, there are some changes coming to the site.

1. Migration of photo gallery to Flickr
This one will take a while but the goal is to put all the pics up on Flickr - better service, the software I use, Gallery, is mostly unmaintained and doesn't do a lot of the things I want it to.

2. Improve the site.
This theme sucks and is broken in some browsers. I also need to patch up to the latest release of the uber-CMS Drupal.

3. Better integration to the places I am active
Pull from Twitter (primarily) and Flickr (once activated)

All very exciting, most people won't notice a difference other than more frequent pics and a better looking (I hope!) site.

Just received this email from my Dad today:

Sorry to pass along some sad news, but I just buried Basil in the garden this morning. We found him at the bottom of his cage earlier today. We figure he was 17 years old, which is a good life span for any bird.

He was a good bird, as much as a Conure - Green Cheeked variety can be.
He had a thing for blondes, apples and cranberry juice. He didn't really learn to enjoy lying on his back as the bird is purported to do but was entertaining and would occasionally relax, as much as a bird does, when I was holding him -- when others held him it led to bitten fingers and cursing; he just liked me more!

Sadly, I lived in too many drafty/cold/pets-not-allowed locations over the years and my parents mostly cared for him but I believe he had a long and good life.

It's a sad day indeed.

A short note: if you are ever going to buy a bird that is even vaguely parrot-like, remember it is a significant time/effort investment - as Basil's 17 years can attest to. These are complex, highly intelligent, and social animals that you should not give/purchase without significant planning to their care and environment.

Some news from the Cold Front - Declan is getting bigger, eating more, and sleeping more. Happy day! We are adapting to the changes the little guy brings.

We are slowly getting used to the scheduling required to let Rachel get out of the house and Declan ate from a bottle for the first time yesterday. Soon I will get to be the milk machine (surrogate) and Rachel will be able to galavant around and go skiing for longer periods of time.

The lovely Drupal elves ate the (lengthy) post that I just typed up (some kind of autosave would be nice in Drupal, no?) so the synopsis of what I just typed is as follows:

- we now have faster internet so I am catching up on 6months of un-posted pictures
- we now have a BABY BOY, named Declan, who is making us work a lot harder than we thought could work with this little sleep (although that gets better/worse on a day by day basis)
- we have been somewhat trapped in the house by nasty cold weather and are getting cabin feverish. But thankfully we have TeeVee to entertain us while we play with the new BABY BOY!

Pics of recent 2k8 events are now posted - follow me!

Hi blog - time to get reacquainted!

Yesterday I bought the "new" Stars album - In Our Bedroom After The War released in 2007. It's also a 2008 Polaris Prize nominee. It's also been on many Radio 3 podcasts.

Sometimes I take a while to catch a hint.

This album is epic. Pop made orchestral with hooks the size of ham hocks. It's got a touch of easy listening thrown in. Flutes - yay Flutes! Sure, you could just buy the singles - Take Me to the Riot for instance. Then you would be missing out on a true album experience. Buy the album. iTunes Plus for less than 10$ (9.99$ such a penny of savings and so much psychological goodness in that penny).

Just try not listening to this twice in one day.

I also bought the older Black Mountain album (hey, it was music catalog back-fill day) and it is also very good. Not as accessible as the newer album but very good in it's own right. The newer album has a bit more fullness to it with some better vocal interplay by McBean and Webber. Get that one. They are amazing live though; as witnessed at this year's Dawson City Music Festival - the rainy year. I should scribble about that soon as well...

We just got back from the hospital with a reel of baby ultrasound pics in our hot little hands. We are not sure of the gender but the little bugger sure didn't want to have their picture taken and they took a lot of angles to try and get some keepers.

Super cool to see that the little person has the proper number of limbs and such.

Click on this link to see the images!