Blogs

It's finally spring. It's finally stopped snowing, and temperatures are inching their way into the 50s. The kids respective softball and baseball practices are underway, and - if we are lucky - we might just see some plants beginning to sprout and trees starting to green.

It's time for spring cleaning.

My 40th birthday came and went in 2011 without much fanfare. So did my 41st in 2012. Part of it was because I didn't really feel like having a few dozen of my closest friends tell me how old I was, part of it was I was working hard on a mobile project for my day job.

I can't say that I didn't mourn the passing of my thirties -- jumping over the temporal barrier separating youth and middle age is something that you can't help but stop and notice -- but ultimately it was a more a bump in the road then a brick wall.

Nuketown's redesign launched in November 2012. It improved a lot, but there have been quite af few bugs that have cropped up since then. The redesign also caused some long-standing standing content (like the "Links" section) to disappear while I fought with how to handle it in the new design. In March I decided to sit down and knock out some of the most annoying issues ... starting with the erratic header bar.

Years ago Nuketown had a weekly newsletter called "RADIATIONS". It was lovingly handcrafted by me and included a list of the previous week's stories. The kids pretty much killed that one -- who has time to update a web site AND maintain a newsletter?

Last week, for the first time in years, I found myself home sick from work. I've had a few minor colds over the last few years, but I mostly dodged them with little more than sniffles. Not this cold. On Monday, it waylaid me a few minutes after I got back from skiing when a terrible shiver ran through my body, and didn't leave until the weekend.

One of my goals with the Nuketown redesign was to aggressively pursue a social media strategy, rather then letting it simply flop around like a dying fish.

It's been a while since Nuketown ran a "Follow Friday" column for Twitter, but it seemed like a tradition worth restarting. This time around we've got geek dads, RPG designers, Mars rover drivers, science fiction publishers, and much more.

My birthday (Dec. 17) and Christmas have come and gone, and now there's a nice pile of geeky presents stacked on the Geek Tree's rocket-themed tree skirt.

I bought a Kindle Touch over the summer for two reasons: 1) I wanted to take a bunch of books with me on vacation, and didn't want to pack four hardcover novels and 2) I was jealous of my daughter's Kindle.

StarGirl, age 9, got the Kindle Touch from her grandparents for Christmas and spent the next six months devouring books on it. Early in the summer the family went to Sandy Hook, N.J. for the day, and I decided to give it a try. I was curious about how well it held up in direct sunglight, which is something my iPad has a notoriously difficult time with.

My family and I recently went to Disney World. This is part 4 of my 4 part series looking at the trip. Read Part 1: Downtown Disney, Epcot, Hollywood Studios, Part 2: Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, and Part 3: Pin Trading, Autographs, Fastpass, Card Games.