A blog about Guitars, Programing, and Swashbuckling
Behold the awesomeness of my 7th grade claymation!
Took me 3-4 months to make this video during free period in 7th grade in 1992.
This video originally had Kenny Loggins Highway to the Danger Zone, but I swapped it out for DFR to avoid any copyright issues.
My brother-in-law said “hey you want to enter a canoe race?” An excuse to paddle down river in early spring sounded like a great idea. He recruited my father-in-law and I recruited my brother and the four of us entered the All-American Quinebaug River Race. They were #30 in a 14 foot green Old Town canoe, and we were #31 in a battered blue 12 foot Lincoln canoe.
I was unaware that this canoe race had class II rapids.
Continue reading “How I tumbled down a river – The 2014 Quinebaug River Race”
Its been too long since I’ve posted a doodle. Here’s one from last year!
Lillian Annette Gaspar Born: 6/15 3:54am 6 pounds 15 ounces
I was informed on Friday that PongoResume is laying off all its developers. This puts a lot of great developers back on the market.
One such developer is my good friend Glenn Gervais aka “RabidGadfly“. I worked closely with him at both Pongo Resume and before that at Hasbro inc. His primary focus has lately been on Flex 4.5 application development. Before that he built and maintained a very popular games portal for Hasbro written in Flash(AS2). We also worked closely together to build a massive custom content management system written in Coldfusion using the Modelglue (and Coldspring) framework that helped to manage marketing information for Hasbro.com. Beyond that he completed hundreds of smaller projects that each helped save the day in their own way at Hasbro. He was also something of a mentor to me and for that I will always be grateful.
If you could use a Flex/Flash/Coldfusion guru on your team and you are in the Massachusetts or Rhode Island area you should contact him directly at: 
Thank you.
You’ve got snots by the lots
And snoogies and boogies
You’re nose is all rosie
You’re feeling all woozie
You’ve come down with a cold
You’re of age now my child
You’ve been to the breeding grounds
Where great germs roam wild
Day care and the doctor’s
The mall food court’s bathroom
you tasted everything
and licked a baboon
So now you are soggy
crusted cranky and crabby
there’ll be no sleep for you
(‘nor for mommy and daddy)
But fear not my child
for some future day
you’ll return to good humor
and go out to play
Sam is sick so I wrote this poem for him with a suggestion from a friend.
Austin Stevens’ book “Private, Parents Keep Out!” is awesome. Its partly an autobiographical tale about his childhood growing up in the farmlands of New Hampshire and partly an instruction manual on how to build treehouses, secret codes, and other great things for kids. If you didn’t read it when you were growing up you are out of luck. The book is out of print and copies are selling for almost $100 on Amazon. I’m starting a campaign to ask Yankee Magazine to reprint this wonderful children’s book. Below is my letter to the editor:
Dear Yankee Publishing,
I’m writing today to implore you to please please reprint Austin Stevens wonderful book “Private, Parents Keep Out!”.
As a child my brother and I would continually search for “Private, Parents Keep Out!” at my local library. And though the pages were torn and the binding was broken we would pour over the pages attempting to soak in all the instructions that Stevens so kindly wrote down for us. We re-read the adventures of Stevens and his friends to ourselves and shared the book with our childhood friends. We built tree houses, forts, and rope swings. We had crab-apple wars and secret clubs. Our boyhood was echoed in the beautiful illustrations and wonderful narrative.
I’m now married with a boy of my own. And so are my childhood friends. I would love to give “Private, Parents Keep Out!” to my child and friend’s children when they are old enough to read.
Now, during a time when “The Dangerous Book for Boys” and “The American Boy’s Handy book” are in their millionth printing, Steven Austins’ “Private, Parents Keep Out” has a built-in market ready to purchase this great book. Used copies of “Private, Parents Keep Out” are selling for almost $100 on Amazon.com. Its obviously still very popular. Now is a perfect time to bring this modern classic back to market.
Please reprint Austin Stevens wonderful book “Private, Parents Keep Out!”! I’m good for at least four copies.
UPDATE 9/27/2011:
I received a personal response from Yankee Publishing president Jamie Trowbridge!
He wrote that, though it was a personal favorite of his, the book was not very successful and they would not be reprinting the book for distribution. However, he did say that maybe technology such as print-on-demand would allow them to bring the book back in some format in the future.
I’d like to thank Mr. Trowbridge for his personal response to my email and I do hope that everyone will be able to purchase copies of this fine book in some format in the near future!
