ben robison

Dusting Off the Developer Skills, Stem Cells, & Consulting

So after my recent Christmas break addiction to computer games, I’ve once again sworn them off (for the most part) convinced that there are better things to do with my time. Of course I already know this, but once or twice a year I forget and spend all my spare time after Abby’s asleep playing games. This usually lasts for a week or two.

PSCB - Public Stem Cell Banking

It was actually a favor for my wife that drew me out of it again. She started up two blogs, one for the family and one for her long time goal of public stem cell banking. Not the controversial embryonic stem cells, but the umbilical ones that come from the baby’s umbilical cord after it’s been severed. Normally these cells just go to waste, but there are actually a few places that can collect them. These cells are just as useful as the embryonic cells, but it conveniently avoids all the controversy.

If you want to donate your stem cells for research or for others to use, it’s actually quite a laborious process and she wants to raise public awareness so that more people can do it. This started off with registering a domain for her and then putting up a site. Then we had to find a nice theme, get ready to play the SEO game, and start designing.

TheRobisons.org

Then I figured as long as I was putting my web developer hat on again, I might as well update the family site. My family isn’t the most techno-savvy, but I thought that after an entire year with no one posting new content it was probably time to rethink the site. Most of the family members had started up their own blogs, so now therobisons.org is a feed aggregator of sorts, grabbing content from everybody’s blogs and putting it in a central location. I grabbed the Post Titles only and the links push visitor’s back to the writer’s own blogs.Another look, more tweaking, no SEO for this site, and we’ve got another site up and running.

Benrobb.com

And for those of you actually on the site reading, you’ll notice a new look to my own site as well. This one probably consumed the most effort, but I’m happy with the outcome. I obviously didn’t do the theme myself, but there’s always the tweaking that has to happen to make everything look the way you want. Along the way I discovered that disabling the WP-Cache plugin does not turn off the plug-in and it continues to cache pages, but other than that, things went pretty smoothly.

It’s another right-side nav theme, which I used to really hate, but in my efforts to branch out, the last theme on the site had a right-side nav and it kinda grew on me. This one’s got a nice reddish-brown color and I’m a fan. Hope you like it to.

Freelancing

Then suddenly, my father-in-law contacts me and says he’s actually got two sites that need to be put together for two new businesses that he’s starting with a partner. They’ve already got contracts coming in for whatever it is (I’m not clear on that yet) and they need sites right away. They’re going to be pretty simple, and hopefully it’ll bring in a decent amount of extra funds for the help-ben-and-alison-buy-a-house fund. When it rains it pours I guess.

Tags: dev, robisons, stem cells

American Election Prospects Aren’t Really That Bad

I can’t take credit for the thought, it was my wife that actually voiced it, but I thought it was appropriate. There’s been a lot of violence in Kenya culminating now in a max exodus of over 1 million people that are leaving the country. The refugees are convinced that the most recent elections which resulted in President Mwai Kibaki’s re-election was a sham, and that Raila Odinga really won.

Hundreds have died in the subsequent violent protests and now people are fleeing to get away from the violence and President Kibaki’s unwanted leadership.

As my wife and I saw this on the news again today, she said, “At least our elections aren’t that bad.” Last election when President George W. Bush was re-elected and called it a “mandate from the people” we really didn’t think he was a great candidate for the job. At the same time, we didn’t really think that Jonh Kerry was the best choice in the world, and we are stuck voting for the lesser of to evils. As things have turned out, perhaps we didn’t make the best choice after all, but the point was that either is better than the alternative demonstrated in Kenya. We didn’t have people fleeing the country by the millions.

Now of course more Americans have fallen to the war on terror than Kenyans have fallen to post-election violence; and of course the President of the United States of America has more power and more responsibility that then President of Kenya. I’m not going to even try to address those topics, but the whole things made me realize that this election is shaping up rather nicely.

Yes, the thought of another Clinton in office quite scares me, but the first Clinton didn’t do all that bad. He had some personal issues to be sure, but he actually made a pretty fair president. Obama seems like a pretty good option as well, and those are the democrats (is it bad to say that I’m a little less confident in the republicans?) On the republican side, you’ve got the religionists Mr. Romney and Mr. Huckabee, both lacking experience in some areas but both have a solid moral foundation. I’m not educated enough to have an opinion on Rudy Guliani. And there seems to be a lot of support for the dark horse Ron Paul (surely you’ve seen posters for him hanging from the overpasses) and I’ve been hearing a lot of good things about him.

So while our candidates are not perfect, there are a lot of good things to look forward to. What do you think?

Tags: elections, hillary, mitt, obama

iPhone or iPod Touch?

It’s no secret that I’ve been lusting after the iPhone for awhile now.  I thought that the Touch was cool, but I’ve been really excited about having internet on a phone, being able to look at Google Maps while driving etc.  And I think it’s cool to have a real browser on the phone; one that works with the real internet (as opposed to the fake internet that’s made for those other phones with crappy browsers).

Up until now, my excuse for really going after the phone was that it would mean that I didn’t have to carry my laptop around when I go places anymore.  With my church responsiblities, I need my calendar everywhere I go now, which translates into carrying around my 6 lb laptop all day on the weekends.  I use it for notes, my task list, and my calendar items.

The iPod Touch had a calendar, task list (I think) but no notes.  And the calendar was not editable, meaning, I’d still have to carry around the laptop so I could put new appointments in.  Well the latest firmware update (1.1.2) now adds editable calendar items, which I think includes tasks, and notes will be available without jailbreaking in February when Apple releases the SDK.  As long as you’ve got a place with Wi-Fi though, there are already web apps that provide that functionality.

Are you following my convoluted thought process?  I wanted the phone so badly that I was planning on dropping off my paid company phone plan and paying my own bill just so I could join AT & T.  I think the Touch might be good enough to satisfy my techno-lust and is now really starting to look like the smarter option.  Plus for the same price, you get twice the storage space.  Can reason win out over my desire?  What are your thoughts?

Little Robison #2 is on the Way

Just a quick announcement.  Today we celebrated the 1st birthday of my little girl Abby (Little Robison #1).  Since both families were together (for only the third time since Alison and I got married 3 1/2 years ago) we decided it was the ideal time to announce that we’ve got another little one coming in June 2008.

I hate answering the question, but people ask anyway, so to save you the time, yes, it was planned =)  Now that it’s actually happening there’s been some talk along the lines of “What were we thinking?” but ready or not, it’s coming in June.

Last.fm - The Social Music Revolution

I like to have control of my life, even the little things. That also comes down to the music that I listen to, which explains why I’ve been listening to my mp3 collection instead of the radio for over 10 years now. For that reason, I never got into last.fm because I thought it was just another internet radio station with the social network thrown in. I was wrong.

What I found out today is that there is actually a last.fm client you can download which will scrobble all the music you listen to. Scrobbling is the process of listening to your music and having it automatically report back to last.fm. It works with iTunes and there’s now experimental support for the iPod (which I assume means that what I do on my iPod can also be reported back to last.fm.

That means that the things I listen to anywhere I go are now reportable back to last.fm. Now I can finally find out who my favorite artist is.

I was not surprised to find out that Radiohead, Pearl Jam, Green Day, Live, & Dave Matthews are all in my top 10 I’ve been listening to them for years and have quite the collection (not a big fan of Green Day’s early stuff, but the later is quite good). What I did think was very interesting is that The Shins showed up in my top 25.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the Shins, but my little sister introduced me to them a month or so ago, and I’ve been listening to them so much that they’re already competing with bands I’ve been listening to for years. My wife was less than impressed with me telling here that I could now analyze my listening habits like a true analyst. What can I say, I’m an analyst at heart. Maybe that goes back to the part about loving control =)