A Google OS? I was excited about the mere rumor of this waaaaay back in 2005 (my short blog post). But undoubtedly this begs the obvious question: how will stack up against Windows? Or any “traditional” browser like OSX or Linux, for that matter. From reading the announcement, it doesn’t sound like Chrome OS will really be a direct competitor. The initial focus will be on “cloud computing,” which means doing all of the work that you need to do online. Rather than being a massive OS that will will have everything that you need locally on your hard drive, Chrome OS will be a lightweight gateway into accessing everything over the web.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds.

The Google Universe

This strategy is perfect for Google since they happen to be the leader in computing on the web. They offer Google Docs, Google Apps, Gmail, Google Calendar – most everything the average user will need. The only thing holding users back from going completely online is their comfort zone with native applications. It’s a big change to think about using an online text-editor, rather than loading up Microsoft Word.

See Ya Online

Web 2.0 Logos,
by Stabilo Boss on Flickr

See this image on Flickr

But the future of computer use, in my opinion is just that. Everything is moving in the direction of everything being online, available to you anywhere you are. Bandwidth is getting faster and becoming more widespread. Online access everywhere is coming. Companies see this trend and are adapting – the most attractive software almost always has an online component to it, and many new companies are developing web applications for use exclusively online. The rise of the new class of laptops, netbooks is evidence of this trend of cheap, fast, and light, made for the user who spends most of their time on the computer doing things online–there’s no need for lots of storage and a huge processor when you are doing most of your tasks online, in a web browser.

Not convinced? Chances are, you are already halfway there yourself. Think about how much of what you do online right now. Have a Facebook account? Do you use Gmail? Plan your week in Google Calendar? Photo-ordering? Banking or bill pay? For the average user, there really isn’t much that can’t be done online. Besides the every day tasks that were just mentioned, there are even web applications for project-planning, photo-editing, and even intensive graphics work.

It’s coming, and while local computing will never completely go away, especially with professionals in many fields, I believe the masses will be doing most of their computer-time online. And with that in mind, Google Chrome OS has the potential to be the leader/trailblazer in this kind of computing.

To top it all off, Google Chrome OS is free and open-source. “Don’t be evil” indeed.

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Anyway, Happy birthday, little guy! It was a year ago today that you joined our family and changed our lives forever.

His party is this weekend, right after we get back from an out-of-town wedding. Hopefully we will make it through this busy, busy weekend in one piece!

I don’t have a picture of Tyler from today, but I have this one from a couple days ago, when he was enjoying our new lawn:

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I made it. I survived “Chesney Appreciation Month” this year! The month of May is especially stressful for me since, for some reason, we planned things so that our wedding anniversary, Mother’s Day, and Chesney’s birthday, are all within 3 weeks of each other. That’s a lot of pressure for a husband!

I told Chesney that I wouldn’t do too much heartfelt mush, so in short, Chesney, you’re a wonderful wife and mom, and have been really supportive of my extra-heavy work-load in these past few months. It has been an amazing 7 years–let’s shoot for 60 more. Or until I die, whichever comes first.

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Honda Insight (top) and the Toyota Prius (bottom)

Honda Insight (top) and the Toyota Prius (bottom)

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I’m not going to lie: I was really wary of another Star Trek movie. The last couple had let me down, and despite all this new one had going for it, I still was afraid another Star Trek Nemesis bomb (I took Chesney to Nemesis opening night, and she still married me). The reality is Star Trek movies are hard to do right, and really, really easy to do wrong.

But this latest incarnation of Star Trek was, in a word, amazing. But not because I love Star Trek, but because it was just a really good movie! And that’s the way it should always be. The success of this latest movie is due in large part to the director…some guy named J.J. Abrams–maybe you’ve heard of him? Some of his earlier work includes little-known shows like Fringe, Alias…oh, and LOST.

It look Abrams, admittedly not a big Star Trek fan, to give the Star Trek movies a good reboot. Comic books have been doing this for a while with old superheroes who have so much back-story to them that it was impossible for newcomers (or even old fans) to keep the stories straight. Marvel did the same thing with X-Men, “re-imagining” the comic book series into a new series “Ultimate X-Men“, and shedding away the baggage of decades of back-story.

The result? X-Men has never been so popular. A cartoon series and 3 huge blockbuster hits on the big screen, both based off the new, Ultimate X-Men.

In this latest Star Trek movie, the plot re-imagines the Star Trek series in a way that doesn’t upset die-hard Trekkies/Trekkers, while paving the way for new fans. The movie is so well-done that it wows these new Trek fans and satisfies the old Trekkies.

The top-notch acting, great special effects, and wouldn’t you know it–a great story–has won over the public: as of today, Star Trek is enjoying a well-deserved 95% Rotten Tomatoes rating aggregated from a whopping 244 reviews! I would say that even if you aren’t a Star Trek fan, go see it. It’s a great sci-fi movie in its own right.

Man, I wish CSUN really was right across from
the Golden Gate

As a side-note, the movie had quite a few establishing shots of Chesney and I’s old alma-mater, CSUN’s Oviatt Library (picture). We spent a lot of time in that computer lab using telnet for our email. I’ll have to dig up some old photos of Chesney and I hanging out in front of the library.

Photo of actual Oviatt Library by acejr371 via Flickr

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Well that series was craptastic.

And a lot of good being number one in the regular season did you, Sharks. Put the shiny President’s Trophy on your shelf because you were destroyed by worst possible team to be eliminated by…in the first round!

I used to be a somewhat of a starry-eyed optimist, but I’m now joining the ranks of longtime, jaded fans. The stats from the last decade really illustrates the frustrated Sharks fan’s plight:

• 1997-98: Lost to Dallas in the Quarterfinals
• 1998-99: Lost to Colorado in the Quarterfinals
• 1999-00: Lost to Dallas in the Semifinals
• 2001-02: Lost to Colorado in the Semifinals
• 2002-03: didn’t make the playoffs
• 2003-04: Lost to Calgary in the Conference Finals
• 2004-05: Stupid lockout
• 2005-06: Lost to Edmonton in Semifinals
• 2006-07: Lost to Detroit in Semifinals
• 2007-08: Lost to Dallas in the Semifinals
• 2008-09: Lost to Anaheim in the Quarterfinals

I guess no further commentary is needed–there’s plenty of that around the ‘net (a good rant by Mac, if you’re looking to read one).

Go Red Wings!

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Last night Caleb whispered to Chesney and I:

“You know what? When I saw the Easter bunny, I went behind the bench, and I saw a PEOPLE NECK! It’s a person dressed up like the Easter bunny!”

We quickly diffused the situation by informing Caleb that the Easter bunny is really busy that day and has people dress up like him so kids can get their pictures with them.

Caleb is getting older…we’ll have to prepare for the Santa questions later this year.

Also, Easter bunnies, remember to cover up your necks.

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Yesterday, something like 50,000 people in the south bay lost their cell service AND land line phone service. If they were DSL subscribers, there goes the internet too. Unfortunately, we fell in this category. Our house was without phones and internet until 5pm. I was at work all day in San Jose, and if Chesney or I had some kind of emergency, there was really no way to get a hold of each other (or the police!) unless we got in the car and drove.

And this wasn’t just residential – businesses, too were without phones and internet. I know that OfficeMax in Santa Cruz was effectively unable to open their store until later that evening because all communication with the store databases was down. OfficeMax in the whole region estimate they lost $14k in sales that day. Some other stores did not even open at all. Banks and ATMs were also offline.

Early that morning, we were half-joking that it was probably a new terrorist cyber-attack. Later when the news came out that it was, in fact, sabotage, we find out that we weren’t that far off!

Yeah, Jack saves the President again.

Feeling a little vulnerable? To me, it all seems a little too easy. Sure, it was 10 feet underground, under a man-hole cover, and you had to have some expertise to cut those lines, but it still seems like for not too much effort, you can knock out communications to a huge area. It’s kind of like how all too easy it was for those terrorists to take over the White House in this season’s 24. Well maybe not that easy.

This begs the question: are we as a society today a little too wired? I love the computer/internet age and all improvements in the quality of life that we live – I owe my whole livelihood as a web developer to it – but times like these make me want to go out and buy a battery-powered radio, walkie-talkies, and stash money under my mattress.

Read about the whole incident on SFGate and Mercury.

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I have always admired web comic artists like Scott Kurtz of PVP online, Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade, and Scott Johnson of Extralife. Lately I have been reading up on the techniques that comic artists use nowadays for producing their strips, and have been itching to give it a try. I am pretty pleased with what I came up with:

Now for some of the process. It all starts with a sketch, of course, and sketching the drawing is probably the easiest part for me.

Tracing the image in Illustrator takes a bit of finesse, especially without the luxury of a tablet. This tutorial on Vectortuts.com introduced me to the notion of creating my own custom brushes, to get the “hand-drawn” feel, rather than the computer-perfect line-weights you’ll see in the timches.com caricatures.

Coloring really brings the art to life.

Drop in a nice background–my favorite color blue–and done!

What a cool-looking guy…

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Thankfully, I only did taxes the old-fashioned way a couple of times back in college, before there was e-file. That was back when it only took me a half hour, filling out the 1040EZ! Now with a business, spouse and kids, mortgage, and more, TurboTax is a necessity. There is no way I would even attempt to do all the worksheets and piles of paperwork–I would just pay someone else to do it!

After a few hours of work–most of which was digging through files for the paperwork I lost–I submitted my returns, with the assurance that my Audit Risk was low:

Woo hoo!

The next day I got word from TT that both my Federal and State returns had been accepted and that I would be receiving my refund in my bank account within 2 weeks.

So thanks again, TT, for making an otherwise daunting, time-consuming task, a piece of cake.

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