Jesse says...

I don’t want to think about the break-in right now, so how about we talk about a few good things that are going on in my life.

One, important to maybe half the people who read my blog, is that we released 0.2 of Étoilé yesterday!

The Étoilé project is pleased to announce the release of version 0.2 of the Étoilé User Environment for UNIX-like systems. The Étoilé project aims to produce a user environment for desktop and small form-factor devices, with tight integration between components. The 0.2 release is primarily targeted at developers interested in a GNUstep-based environment.

Complete release announcement can be read here.

And for the visually-inclined, here are the obligatory screenshots (thanks to Yen-Ju for making those — I’m far too lazy):

I have to say, I’m quite happy with how it’s shaping up so far. Visually, not perfect yet, and yes, of course there are still bugs and crashiness, but we’ve made awesome progress this last year and a half, and now we have some great stuff planned for 0.3. And, assuming everything goes as planned (which it never does, but dammit a boy can hope!), 0.3 is going to be very, very sexy, both on the surface and under the covers.

In other news, and, far more importantly (sorry Étoilé fans!), my little one is turning 4 YEARS OLD tomorrow! The lucky girl even got a new hairdo for the occasion:

The irony of the haircut situation is that in a country where we (well, I — Tanya does just fine) barely speak the language, and most definitely do not know how to say “reverse bob” or any other hairstyle-related terms in Portuguese, the stylist manages to cut her hair exactly how we want it, something that’s been failed twice in the United States by English-speaking beauticians.

But anyways, Ali’s soooo excited, and even more excited by the fact that she gets to have two parties: one here while we’re still in Brazil, and one once we get back to Minnesota. I have a feeling I’ll be seeing a lot of princess-themed items around my world for the next few weeks :)

Follow my adventures in Brazil. Use RSS.

Sorry for the lack of posts. We’ve been having our share of craziness lately. As most everyone knows, we had moved in with a host family, a lady and her 5-year-old son. We moved in with them for a few reasons, but one of the predominant reasons was so Ali would have someone to play with.

That ended up being a HUGE mistake.

This kid was mean. On the first day he choked Ali, and the violence just continued until, this weekend, he shot Ali in the eye with one of his toys. Without remorse. And this wasn’t just a “oh, kids are kids” kind of a situation — she still has red spots on the white of her eye.

Needless to say, we decided it was time to get our own place, both for Ali’s safety and to give Tanya and I a bit of quiet and calm (she’s got to be able to study, and I’ve got to be able to get work done).

We ended up getting an apartment — a nice little place in a different neighborhood of Salvador. Ondina (that’s the neighborhood) is not far from Barra, and is equally as nice. Ali and I got some practice in riding the buses and taxis by ourselves today, and I think things will go good here.

For the curious, here’s a sequence of maps showing our old place and new place, and where we actually are in relation to Brazil as a whole (if you’re curious about that sort of thing):

The pin on the left is where we were, the pin on the right is where we are now (we have another wicked view here — the ocean is a rock’s throw away). Click the first map for a detailed view of our neighborhood.

Follow my adventures in Brazil. Use RSS.

Pretty soon now the big trip begins. My bags our packed, I slept horrible last night, and I’ve been up for an hour already working on client work. Typical pre-trip routine.

My big hope for this first adventure of just getting down there is keeping Ali entertained during the plane ride. We basically have a day’s worth of travel, since we head out this morning and arrive tomorrow around noon. The bulk of that is layovers (something like 5 hours in Dallas and 4 hours in São Paulo), but we do have about 9 hours of flying just to get into Brazil. It’s an overnight flight, so hopefully she’ll sleep and not be too crabby. Hopefully we can all get some sleep, or we’re going to be completely dead come arrival time.

I’m sure Ali will be good though. She’s been looking forward to this trip since… well, since she made her map of South America in school and realized what Brazil was (to her, a big pink blob of construction paper). I’m hoping the excitement of finally getting there keeps her in a good mood, because no one likes to spend a day in a plane with an irritated 3 year old.

Follow my adventures in Brazil. Use RSS.

Being both a comic book geek and a father, it is my duty to teach my daughter about all the nuanced characters of the Marvel, DC, and independent multi-verses. She’s already pretty well informed concerning the classics: Superman, Batman, Spiderman. All of them having had major movies since her birth helps my job, that’s for sure.

The Fantastic Four is all new to her, though. Granted, there was the first movie, but she doesn’t remember that (probably for the better). And now that the marketing for the 2nd movie is in full swing, she squeals with joy whenever the trailers come on. I haven’t yet had the opportunity to give her the low down on all the characters and their names yet, so being the observant and creative child she is, upon seeing this Human Torch toy at Burger King:

she named him the only obvious thing an almost-4-year-old child would: Fire Pants.

So, I discovered as of late that I’ve been added to a bunch of MN tech blog feeds. That means that people are probably subscribed to them (otherwise why would they have made them), and they’re looking for all the latest and greatest in tech news in the frozen midwest.

Well, sorry to disappoint, but you’re going to get me in the mix too.

Yes, I may write about some tech stuff. But I also rant about sappy shit like love. Which is the topic of tonight’s post.

Valentine’s Day is tomorrow. I’m feeling pretty meh about the whole thing. The only redeeming feature about tomorrow is the fact that Ali gets to have a big party at school… and that I am guaranteed to get at least one Valentine card (from her, of course). I guess it’s expected for single bloggers to bitch about tomorrow (hence groups like this), but I’m not really that bitter. Sure, I would love to have someone to share dinner with tomorrow, but I haven’t decided if replacing all my free time with wooing attempts on the phone late into the night is really worth the trade.

go sledding!

Two fun learnings:

One, almost all Flash designers think their coding skills are “at an intermediate level” — that includes people way better than me, and people way worse than me… and I’m at an intermediate level.

Two, Ali thinks that everything happened yesterday. Or, as she says it “etserdee”.

Jeff Bezos.

Sergey Brin.

Larry Page.

Jimmy Wales.

If you don’t know these names, you should. They’ve probably changed your life. Jeff Bezos is the founder of Amazon. Sergey Brin and Larry Page are the founders of Google. Jimmy Wales is the founder of Wikipedia. So, other than all being founders of highly successful and life-altering internet presences, what else do they have in common? Yesterday I learned they were all Montessori students.

I think Tanya and I made the right choice of where to enroll Ali for her first school experience. Hopefully that will be the right cornerstone to help instill in her a love of learning and a desire to look outside of the normal to find solutions which can help everyone.

Tanya is trying to get me to stick to my commitment of posting once a week. Damn, I’m so far behind already. Lots of fun new stuff… here we go:

Classes started up again. I teach, for those just tuning in. I am teaching Intro to Interactive Media at the College of Visual Arts. You can unwatch the course unfold on the class blog. So far, the class is looking good. We’ll see if I can whip them into shape ;)

In more school related news, Ali started her first year of Montessori this year. She’s doing great so far, and I’m constantly impressed at the level of trust the teachers put in the students, and how much responsibility the kids learn because of that. This can only be a great experience for her.

In other news, I’m trying to get back into the Etoile and GNUstep communities after a summer haitus. Have been making both new friends and new icons. I’m thinking we might have some really cool stuff to show at FOSDEM next year.

Also, I’m working on my Internet fame. You should hopefully be seeing me pop up in a little video blog series I’m now a part of called Chasing Windmills. The folks who started it, Cristina Cordova and Juan Antonio del Rosario, are simply amazing. If you’ve got an evening or two on your hands, check out their first season… certainly some of the best video stuff being done on the web right now.

I think that’s about it… let’s see if I can’t be a bit more consistent about these updates, huh?