If you like art, and you like people, you’ll love Craftstravaganza - a rogue art and craft fair for handmade art. My wife and I attended last year and were really impressed with the talent and variety of artists – some really great stuff. Great gift buying opportunities at affordable prices.

At that time our baby clothing project was still in the design phase, so one of our goals for this year was to apply to become a vendor - and am pleased to announce we were accepted. Vendors are judged and a limited number are accepted so we were very excited. Come and say hi, and support our local artists. In fact, I will even offer $5 off any onesie or t-shirt if you mention this post! Preview our wares, http://orangerhinokids.etsy.com

Craftstravaganza takes place this weekend, complete information on the website: http://www.craftstravaganza.com/2008/home.html

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Saturday April 26th, 9am - 6pm
Minnesota State Fairgrounds - Fine Arts Building
Complete directions here

Our booth will be directly across from the band (yes there is music too!), our business name is Orange Rhino
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I was rummaging around my files and found this old (but still useful) Flash program from days gone by. It has been noted in the past that ArcStone is a hotbed of tea consumption.

Since we are so busy it’s often hard to time the perfect steep, resulting in a bitter and undrinkable liquid. My solution was to create the Steep Master 1000, an interactive steep timing system.

Keep reading for detailed operating instruction for the Steep Master 1000 and tips on creating the perfect steep.

Read the rest of this entry »

I am a wireless keyboard guy. Actually, wireless everything. I like the freedom to type while spinning in my chair, email with my feet up, or throw the keyboard across the room without endangering my laptop.

So naturally I was puzzled when my co-worked chose to do her daily ration of typing on an older Apple keyboard. That is, until I noticed what she had plugged into it.

Since winter set in our office has been like a meat locker. Many Arcstonians go through the day wearing mittens or clutching hot cups of tea. My cube neighbor found a better way to beat the cold; sport a pair of USB fingerless gloves. With a port on each side, an old school Apple keyboard works great with the gloves, preventing tangles during intense typing sessions.

Alicia 1, Jack Frost 0.

Holiday consumerism is once again in full swing. How’s your gift list looking? Even if you’re not the thoughtful type, you might be able to pull off a decent gift with a little help from the gift generators.

All I Want Christmas Gift Finder. My favorite. You select your favorite visuals in order to refine your gift selection. The gifts seem pretty random to me, but I like the odd collection. You can also use this to send your wish list to someone else.

Gifts.com Gift Finder. Another search that prompts you visually. More of quirky, off-beat gift ideas.

Overstock Gift Finder. Eh, not so impressive. The same items kept coming up when I chose different options. But they’re cheap!

Find Gift. Decent. I liked the “Make Your Own Hot Sauce” kit that came up.

Present Picker. This one has more variables than most of the other generators. Changing the variables changes the gift ideas significantly, which suggests to me that the gift database is pretty big.

I see another use for Wonderfile. Imagine searching the ultimate gift library and watching your customized results filter up as you carefully choose your tags….

Everyone knows Wikipedia is a great place to find information about nearly any subject. Few people, however, realize the same people behind Wikipedia have a great resource for free media, including photo, video and audio content.

Wikimedia is organized in a similar fashion to its text-only brethren. Content from the site can be used in your website, blog, brochure, or other medium free of charge.

Do a little exploring and you’re sure to find some very interesting photos you can file away and find a use for later.

I grew up in a household saturated with the latest in computer technology, coding books and magazines, and general gadgetry. I have reaped the rewards of that upbringing, and I want to raise my children in the same forward-looking environment.

For those of you with a similar mindset, I present to you a handful of resources to get your young ones started off on the right foot.

Lego Mindstorms - programmable Lego system that is loads of fun for kids and adults alike. Create robots, strange creatures, or automate repetitive tasks. Just remember to instill your creations with the three laws.

Young Coders - a kid-friendly forum with lots of coding advice and tips. Many topics and languages are covered, and the site has an active community behind it.

Kid Computers - hook your offspring up with a styling computer they will want to take care of, and make their friends jealous with. You can also find kid-sized mice and keyboards here, which will help their all night coding sessions be more comfortable.

These days everyone’s first stop for information, any kind of information, seems to be Google. For instance, if you want to find out which rehab clinic a specific celebrity is currently occupying, you could easily find out.

Not surprisingly, Google serves millions of queries for famous names, but chances are they also receive a few queries for your name. To know when people use Google to dig up dirt on you, all that’s required is a Google account, credit card, and five minutes of time.

1) Setup a Google Adwords account here
2) Create a fake ad, something ridiculous so no one will click on it (remember clicks cost you money)
3) Choose the keywords you want to target, make sure to put in all permutations of your name

Once everything is setup you can use Google’s excellent reports to track searches for your name. When done right, this handy service will cost nothing. Although, in case you suddenly become really popular, remember to set a small monthly budget.

Here is my ad in action:

There has been a lot of talk about Wonderfile lately. For those of you in the dark, Wonderfile is our answer to the problem of organizing, sharing, searching, filtering, archiving, and distributing digital information.

To accomplish all the amazing things you can do with Wonderfile, we give you three tools: Libraries, Categories, and Tags. This trio of tools allows for unparalleled flexibility, organization, and searching capabilities.

To further illustrate how these tools can be put to use I have prepared a list of my top 10 ways to use Wonderfile:

Keep Track of all the PDFs I Download
Library: PDF Stash - Tags: Documentation, White Paper, How-To

Organize My Source Code
Library: Secret Sauces - Tags: Open Source, PHP, Security

Store Scans of Take Out Menus
Library: Munchies - Tags: Chinese, Free Delivery, Fast

Archive My Digital Artwork
Library: My Artwork - Tags: Anime, Flash, Black and White

Share Photos of the Kids
Library: My Two Sons - Tags: Candid, Halloween, Sports

Backup My Important Software
Library: Tools Of The Trade - Tags: Utilities, Drivers, Shareware

Capture Important Emails
Library: Transmissions - Tags: From Me, Receipts, See Attachment

Store Bookmarks
Library: World Wide Wonders - Tags: Funny, Useful, Blog

Play Photoshop Tennis
Library: 40 Love - Tags: My Serve, Completed, Draw

Sort Candid Celebrity Photos
Library: Celebrity Snaps - Tags: Vacation, Britney, Red Carpet

My wife and I have been using Microsoft Money since 1997 to manage our personal finances. Overall it has been good - but over the last couple years the system has started to break down for us.

We have found that we both need access to the account information so we can discuss it, track it, and maintain the accounts (you know, all those things you’re supposed to do with $$ as a couple, right?). Microsoft Money, Quicken and other software systems are problematic because we have to install them and access them on one machine or else do two installs and swap files, etc. We’ve found using Money that it was hard for us both to engage because one of us invariably had to do most of the entry (Lisa in our case).

So we went looking for a web based personal financial system. Our journey has led us to Mint, Wesabe, and Mvelopes and have now come out with a clear winner - ClearCheckBook.com.

It is simple, easy to use, works with my iPhone and best of all is free. We got all our accounts loaded within 20 minutes on Saturday. If you’re looking for a register to track personal expenses - this is a really good tool that I can recommend.

So you’ve bought the iPhone. Now you have to inform everyone your number has changed.

Or do you?

Not if you have a Grand Central phone number. The new web-based service will allow you to sign up for one number that you keep for life. It’s a pretty sweet service and as of this writing, it’s free, unless you have a gajillion phone numbers to unite. Read the rest of this entry »