I haven’t posted anything in a while, but I was going through my Flickr photos. Thought I’d put together a post of my favorites from last year.

Sarah and her ‘baby’ Clancy.

The hipster generation. From Lolla 2010.

This was taken down in the basement. Light was just right.

My first, and so far only, wedding I shot. Dave & Ericka.

Sarah Borges and Binky.

From the front of the house.

Snapped on the way back home from a bike ride.

The wimpiest dog ever.

From our honey moon in South Padre.

Redid my friend’s laptop. Took a day and a half to get it going. His laptop was full of spyware and crapware.

The only stipulation was that he is not allowed to use Internet Explorer.

I’ve been playing around with a open source .Net Twitter project appropriately named TwitterVB. It’s a .Net library that you import into your .Net application and start sending status updates, pull twitter mentions, trending topics… just about anything you’d want to do with Twitter.

TwitterVB is one of the better libraries compared to others listed on the Twitter API Wiki page: http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Libraries

Note: Because it’s .Net, you can bring this library into any .Net language. I built a quick command line app in C#.

Example code:

static void Main(string[] args)
{

var tw = new TwitterVB2.TwitterAPI();
tw.AuthenticateAs(“twitteraccount”, “twitterpassword”);
string text = “”;

while (!text.Equals(“x”))
{
Console.Clear();
Console.Write(“Send Tweet: “);
text = Console.ReadLine().ToString();
if(!text.Equals(“x”)){
tw.Update(text);
Console.WriteLine(“Tweet Sent – Enter to continue”);
Console.ReadLine();
}
}

}

Found a list of 12 things that have become obsolete in the last decade.

1. Encyclopedias

I’d have to argue that these were even obsolete in the late 90’s with the move of putting encyclopedia information on CD’s. Microsoft’s Encarta is completely free now, but will stop production at the end of 2009.

2. CDs

I still love the sense of tearing through plastic to get to a disc. Then immediately put it in my computer to rip to my iPod. It’s way too easy anymore to buy music. Too many times I’ve been laying in bed thinking… man, I need a new CD. Touch! $9.99 charged.

3. Fax Machine

This has been dead for a while. There have only been a handful of times that I’ve had to actually use one. Mostly for work.

4. Landline Phone

I’ve not had a landline phone where in my residence since I moved out of my parents’ house. Surprised they still have one.

5. Film and Instant Cameras

I got my first digital camera in 2001. 1.2 megapixel Sony Cybershot. The only time I’ve used film since then is when Mrs. Shoo and I got Buddy, our dog, and took some pictures of him at the park. Later that year I bought a digital SLR.

6. Yellow Pages and Address Book

We received three yellow books this year. Hate to say it, but all three were thrown away. As for an address book, we have a ton of them around C/O Mrs. Shoo. But needless to say, when we did Xmas cards this year, I had an old spreadsheet of addresses from our wedding that we pulled from.

7. Catalogs

I miss the good ol’ K’s Merchandise catalog. That’s where my Xmas used to come from as a kid.

8. Wires

Not necessarily. I am in the constant progress of rewiring our house. As for the landline wires that were still around, I’m pulling those out.

9. Hand-written letters

All forms of mail letter writing have been assigned to Mrs. Shoo. I only send payments for bills.

10. Calling

I think Mrs. Shoo and I send and receive 100~200 text messages a month. Note: Google Calendar sends me reminder texts.

11. Classifieds

I still check the classifieds, but I am more than likely to look to the net first.

12. Dial Up Internet

My in-laws are the only people I know that still use dial up. Were making progress to getting them broadband within the next year.

I had some time to work on the house this weekend. I had set out to do two things: 1. Re-caulk the bath tub, 2. Patch a hole in the wall from a previous project.

With any DIY, it really never goes as plan. In the bathroom, I started removing the old caulk. The purpose of redoing this was because water was getting pass the shower door and was starting to drip into the basement. Water damage is not a feature when selling a house.

As I was removing the grime, I realized we really didn’t need a shower door anymore. It was old and had a ton of soap grime.

The shower door is just to the side. Check out the tile. Yes, that’s on the to-do list.

Here’s the new shower rod and curtain. I like this a lot better.

This hole was from a removal of a light switch. We’ve been hiding the hole with a coat rack the whole time. I still need to sand.

Had to make a quick repair this afternoon. I was cleaning up my desk in the basement and realized that it was way too cold by the wall. I started feeling around and realized all the cold air was coming from the window. After further investigation, I found out there were gaps between the sides of the windows. The gaps were hidden by a plastic seal. To fix it, on the right side I cut a board to fit the gap and sealed it. On the left because it was smaller than the board, I filled with expanding foam. Now I am waiting for the foam to dry and will put a plastic seal on top of it.

Kind of embarrassed it took me this long to find the gap. It’s filled now.

I don’t know if work has gotten the best of me or life has just turned on auto-pilot mode but blogging material seems to be barren. Instead, I’ll just make a list.

1. Favorite musician of the moment: Jack Conte

I’ve watched a ton of his videos on YouTube. He does covers and originals. Radiohead and Panic at the Disco are two of my favorite covers. I was watching a video the other day on Humzoo, when I realized that the music in the video sounded very familiar. Ended up buying his album from iTunes 10 minutes after watching the video.

2. The new design of Engadget.com is adding some new design inspiration for a new http://spfldbloggers.com

3. This is what my view looks like every afternoon when it’s not cloudy.

4. I’ve finished two sites for clients last month:

JohnRomang.com

Creativemphasis.com

Both sites were for friends. Both sites feature custom software written by me to manage their portfolio.

5. Mrs. Shoo is pretty talented:

That is all.

A majority of the Shoo milestones have made it to the blog in one way or another. Somehow, I totally ignored publishing anything here on our 2nd anniversary which was 11/10. It’s been a busy weekend and I did send her a message on Twitter and Facebook, so I think I covered the bases for social media.

Happy 2 year anniversary to my beautiful wife!

The flowers I sent Mrs Shoo.

Today it reached up to the mid-70’s. The was also in rare form with clouds.

I found a backup CD from 2001 with old photos on it. This was back in my ‘punk’ stage after high school.

Steve and I outside waiting for a concert. Check out the bleach blond hair! My parents loved that.

Billy Spunke from the Blue Meanies, a Chicago based Ska band. Man, whatever happened to Ska? From Wikipedia, the Blue Meanies disbanded in late 2001.

Steve and I posing with Mike Park of Asian Man Records.

Jeff (vocals) and Bruce (bass) of Nil8. I see Jeff riding bikes all the time. Dreads hanging out of his helmet.

Lead singer for Alkaline Trio.

Hello local 217 Internets, we’re holding another get together or “Tweetup” as the kids are saying these days. 11/11 (Wednesday) 5:30pm at J P Kelley’s in Springfield.

You don’t need a Twitter, Facebook, iPhone, or even a blog. Just show up to share some drinks and meet some local people. We do draw the line at Myspace accounts.

If you’ve got questions:

twitter.com/gotshoo

gotshoo at gmail dot com

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So the blog hasn’t been updated in almost a month. Ehh, shoot me. With a camera of course.

Clancy.

The house. Still a ton of DIY projects to do. But never enough time.

Our new pet. Don’t tell Sarah. She’s deathly afraid of them.

Me being artsy. Wired vs Wireless.

It’s been a while since I got some good shots of the dogs.

Clancy.

Buddy.

Some days I envy my dogs. I came home for lunch today and let them inside. They both plopped down on the couches and started napping.

Skip ahead about 10 minutes on this video. This is a lecture from Stanford University on the different type of design philosophies that exist with software design. It features the CEO of Mozilla and one of the lead designers.

Really gives some insight how Mozilla is built and operated with an open source community.