NOTE: It’s critical to have no space between “site:” and the website address, otherwise it won’t work right!

Thomas Junior Prom May 2010 071, originally uploaded by mheveronsmith.

Thanks to Mrs. Heveron-Smith for taking this wonderful picture of Marissa and I on prom night… It turned out really nicely! As Marissa said, “how Gatsby of us!” and I agree wholeheartedly.

0314001918.jpg, originally uploaded by maxkelley.

My TI calculator has been branded by my new Dymo labeler, thanks to AF2K!

SO, here’s the scenario: you’re getting ready for school, listening to the radio, and a song comes on, and you think, “Hey, this is pretty darn decent!” By the time you get to school, it’s stuck in your head, and it stays there for the REST OF THE DAY, but what is it? This is where Midomi comes in… it allows you to hum or whistle a bit of a song into the microphone of your computer, iPod touch, or iPhone, and it will tell you the name of it! It’s basically voodoo magic. Again, Midomi.com is where you can find it, and you can help out to improve it by submitting your own recordings. Give it a shot!

Anyhow, everything on here has been backed up, and so there may be a little bit of downtime following the first of the year until I move it someplace else. So… heads-up, guys, and I apologize in advance if it does happen.

I know many people, including myself, sometimes find new Math concepts hard to understand, or you just don’t get it fully when the teacher explains it in class. Too busy to visit the math lab, or don’t understand the homework? It’s ok, try using Wolfram Alpha, a “computational knowledge engine”. What does that mean? Basically, you type in your math problem, and it will walk you through, step-by-step, how to get the answer. The address for Wolfram Alpha is simply www.WolframAlpha.com. And it’s not limited to just Math, in fact, it does almost EVERYTHING, from Chemistry, to Physics, to Statistics, to Biology, Earth Science… give it a try. If you’re not sure how, click on “Examples” on the homepage, and it will tell you exactly how.

This week’s tech tip was about a free alternative image editor. This tip is also directed more towards those of you who have taken, or are currently taking Photo classes here at Thomas, or those of you who are interested in using Adobe Photoshop. Instead of having to pay hundreds of dollars for the latest version of Photoshop, try the GIMP, which is a free alternative. You can download it at www.gimp.org/windows/. It acts a lot like Photoshop, and will even open Photoshop files, which means you can work on your Photo projects at home without having to buy the program. If you’ve used Adobe Illustrator, a vector image creation program, here at school and you want a copy for home, try Inkscape, a free alternative to it (the Titan Tech Tip logo was made in Inkscape…) You can download it at http://www.inkscape.org/download/, and make sure to click on “Windows – .exe installer”. Picnik is another free, online image editor, which is very user-friendly and makes it easy to add effects quickly and effectively to your photos… you can access it at www.picnik.com. Enjoy!

isnt life surprising i was laying awake thinking last night about how different my life has gone then what i thought (in a good way)

cate (incredulously) what were you a child of adam and eve

but the main thing i love about this picture is tree cover you can see in the upper right corner thats how it was all around the block even on really hot days you could find a great place to play in some serious shade everyone had a huge tree or trees somewhere on their property and bushes and ivy and a great variety of things the only reason we had those young trees on the corner was because my mom sold our big palm tree to some palm springs landscapers ha

remember when the weather was warm and we would go to the park when daddy got home from work and we would bring homemade bread and fruit to eat for dinner and we would be drenched in golden light and the cousins would come meet us for some wild rides down the slide

how have you been surprised what can i say

from anthro

grant and i talked last fall about wanting to take control and own a home and make some of our dreams a reality so we planned to move back to california for some opportunities there

goal peaceful nights productive days

did anyone else sustain life with saltines from the ages of 13-17

i got a lot emails about what i eat and how it effects pcos- so i hope you dont mind if i just answer all the questions here instead of going through each email

snacks NUTS i would die without nuts i love roasted almonds cashews peanuts i also love those roasted edamame they taste like nuts even though theyre not and nuts taste really good with a few slices of swiss cheese also deli meat slices celery with peanut butter on it a few whole grain crackers with cheese beef jerky sugar free snack packs stuffed mushrooms hard boiled eggs string cheese protein bars crudites and more NUTS

and that made me think of all the insomniatic nights that she stayed up with me and mirrored my every move and snuggled me right out of my anxiety into dreamland long after grant and cate had drifted off

hard to find only a little ive met some truly kindred spirits in my life so far especially my two nicoles (well coco i not so much met as i was born to the same parents) i love them girls and their cute purses

he is the perfect mix to me of blues and folk and funk and feeling

seriously though my closest friends are fun real and honest good entertaining in love with life a little crazy down to earth deep and incapable of bs

where are neighborhoods like that anymore with bushes big enough to hide in and kids that go around the block together all afternoon and normal sized houses and the old winkfields next door ok i dont need the winkfields but id sure love to give my kids the rest

i love all the sweet artistically talented bloggers that offer free downloads around holidays for us readers

And you kind of wonder, after reading… “What the hell just happened?”

Righto, well, off to do some reading for school, Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. And hopefully, within the next few days, I’ll have a posting up here of a couple projects that I will be undertaking, one involving a Motorola UHF Maratrac I received, and the other involving the replacement of a surface-mount microphone on an LG VX8700 cellphone.

Cheers, until then!