First 5 Of California - Healthy Eating For Kids

My wife and I were just blessed with the arrival of our son, Nicholas. While I'd like to introduce him to the world of Clever Robots, Gizmos and Super Colliders I figure I'd better wrap my head around the basics first!

I've been scouring the wide expanses of the web for resources and so far the one of the best, and most useful repositories of information has been the First 5 of California Parents Site.

On there I've been able to find out just about anything - from what to feed my newborn son to the best ways to stimulate his brain to ensure that his neurons continue firing and so that he builds those ever important, critical pathways in his brain.

Since I'm a terrible cook and to me WINNING would be not burning the toast the cookbook that I found on the site was especially helpful. It's full of health, easy to prepare recepies that are affordable and won't keep you slaving in the kitchen. you can grab a copy here: First 5 Cookbook


Something also that I found quite "clever" (lol) were the other downloadable "tools" if you want to call them that. When it's time to settle down and read to your child the latest installment of the Harry Potter series and suddenly you get 4 calls from work, the microwave dings, the cat gets into the rolls of toilet paper - no fear you can save your spot with this handy bookmark: First 5 Of California Bookmark


Well that's all for today I hear a baby crying......

Meglobe - Instant Messaging with Language Translation

As I mentioned before I found a very useful Instant Messaging application called Meglobe that I’ve been using to help improve on my poor Spanish skills. It works by translating your IM messages into the language of the person you’re chatting with. It also allows you to make contributions to the translations it performs and according to its creators the contributions, "teach Meglobe to become a better translator."


I recently had an opportunity to test Meglobe with an uncle in Mexico who I've never spoken to because of my poor Spanish and his almost non existent English skills. My initial impression was that we were going to have some trouble communicating because of the poor translation quality you normally get with Machine Translation (MT) products but actually I was impressed. There were only a couple times when some of the translations didn't look quite right but when that happened we used Meglobes contribution feature to make some quick edits to the translations. Since the UI is very crisp and easy to use and there's nothing that needs to be done in order to use the translation features. My uncle didn't have any problems using Meglobe the first time out and he's not very tech savvy.


I've also had a chance to use Meglobe to chat with other users who live in Germany, Spain, Brazil and Japan and there hasn't been a time when we haven't been able to at least have a basic understanding about what we're chatting to each other about. Overall, I think Meglobe is a very useful communication tool and I definitely plan to keep using it. Hopefully it will also continue to help me improve on my language skills as well.


Come take a look at www.meglobe.com

I'm Back!

It's been a while since I've had an opportunity to make any updates to my blog. I've been in the process of moving so I haven't had much time for anything else. I've collected quite a bit of "Junk" as my wife calls it so needless to say I've been very busy.


In my last post I mentioned that I've been working on my Spanish and I'm happy to say that I finally feel like I'm making some progress. I've been using the Livemocha service that I wrote about last and a couple of other tools as well. One of those tools that I've been using is called Meglobe. In short, it allows you to chat with other people around the world without having to learn their language. Not everyone speaks english :) I'll be giving it a in depth review in my next post. In the meantime you can take a look at www.meglobe.com.


I've also seen quite a few other interesting tools and gadgets, hopefully I'll be done with my move in the next few days and have time to write about those as well.

Brushing up on my Espanol

Lately I’ve been looking for time effective ways to improve my Spanish and I’ve found a few different interesting products and services that fit my needs. One of those is LiveMocha, a social network centered on language learning and immersion. Signing up is free and once you’re in they give you an abundance of tools to learn a new language with. They offer self-directed courses you can take, live chat with other members who speak the language you’re learning (I’ll touch more on that in a future post, I found a really cool app), a practice section where other members edit or review your written submissions and a community driven tutoring section.

They’ve also got all the other features you’d expect to find in a social network such as messaging and friends lists. Overall I think they’ve got the right mix of user to user interaction and self directed activities and I plan to continue being a part of their community. You can check them out at www.livemocha.com.

Indiana Jones - Where are you?

So I went out to the Block in Orange County this weekend and had dinner with my wife and a friend at Koji's Shabu Shabu. I won't bother you with details but it was pretty good. After dinner someone (I'm not saying who) thought it would be a good idea to watch the latest Indiana Jones movie,"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull".

About 20 minutes later after watching Indy survive a nuclear blast by locking himself into a fridge, I began to think that maybe this wasn't such a great idea after all and that I'd probably have a better time if I stuck sharp objects under my fingernails......

Yeah I know, when you're at the movies your supposed to suspend disbelief. I just think that it's a little too much to ask me to believe that someone can survive a nuclear explosion by jumping into a fridge ( yeah I KNOW it was lined with lead). Did I mention he was also hurled through the air at thousands of miles per hour? Anyways, it wouldn't have surprised me to watch Harrison Ford rip off his shirt, put on a costume and cape and fly away after the bad guys.

After seeing what Indy had in store for me I thought, "Wow if the movie is already this bad what's gonna happen when they introduce Shia Lebeouf?" I'm no fan of Mr. Labeouf, I think he overacts, has terrible delivery and fails to look genuine everytime he's expressing anything other than "OH MY GOD THIS IS AWESOME DUDE". I won't spoil the rest of the movie for those of you who haven't seen it but by the end I actually began to enjoy watching Shia and Harrison Ford interact with each other. I think they worked well together and wouldn't mind watching the movie a second time when it's available on DVD or Blueray.

I'm still no Shia Lebeouf fan but I thought what he brought to the table worked in this instance. I still think somewhere along way, at some stage in its production, the movie lost it's soul or sold-out. Hopefully they won't try to make another and just let Indy ride off into the sunset like they were supposed to in the Last Crusade.

Welcome to my WORLD

public static void main(String args[])

System.out.println("Hello World!")

Ok, so I'm not a programmer, my sister's kid wrote that for me :P.
Point being is, Hello! Like it says in my description I love Tech.
It fascinates me how you can grow an idea into something tangible that you
can hold in your hand and use, watch, listen to, or work with on that glowing
and humming box you like to call a computer. I've always wondered what the
technology of "tomorrow" has in store for me, maybe If I live long enough
I'll find out what it's like to have my brain transplanted into a
robot body.....wait wasn't that made into a movie back in the 90's?