Jim Willis

In Newark representing open software and neighborhood technology in NJ DoT’s discussions on car sharing programs.

I read Tom Colicchio’s think like a chef a few years ago. I thought it was a great book and it really helped me understand some fundamental techniques. I don’t recognize too many chefs’ names so when I saw his in this piece: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/even-top-chefs-have-picky-kids/ I was excited to see what he had to say about how he feeds his kids. The other day when we were complaining about how little we actually get accomplished on a day-to-day basis around the house it occurred to me to think about giving some credit to the things we actually do get done. One of those things is sitting down to eat well-prepared meals together. Not only do we eat most meals as a family, our diet has very little processed food in it since we make most stuff from scratch. I go back and forth in my thinking about whether or not our kids eat enough healthy food but when I look at it relative to kids who eat chicken fingers and hot dogs for every meal I think we’re doing OK. I mean, one kid will eat anything you put in front of him as long as it didn’t come from the ground but the other demands curry and pad thai (as well as fruit loops and oreos) but at least he tries good stuff and eats some broccoli every once in a while. Anyway, interesting piece and worth a read: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/even-top-chefs-have-picky-kids/

Hulu’s Superbowl Ad and the Boxee Fight – O’Reilly Radar

Reminder: Wedgie Jackson, tomorrow night at Jamian’s in Red Bank. Looks like a good crowd.

An Open Conversation on Hyperlocal News | keithhopper.com

A Brief History of Hyperlocal News

The results of my request for suggestions on sharing a PDF via the web for my neighborhood newsletter: http://tinyurl.com/aem4qw

Yesterday I posted a request on Twitter:  Looking for suggestions on a (free) web based file sharing site so I can share a link to a pdf file with a few hundred people.

Since Twitter also posts to my Facebook page, I received a bunch of suggestions via twitter, email and FB so I figured I’d share the results here:

• pdfvue.com
• box.net
• mediafire.com
• yousendit.com
• “build a wiki”  (closest to what I actually did)
• sendspace.com

As far as the above options went, box.net looked to be exactly what I was looking for but cost about $8/month and I don’t think I’d use it that frequently to make it worth it. 

I run a email newsletter for my neighborhood in Red Bank, NJ and was looking for a way to share a PDF file with the neighbors without having to attach it to the email message. Because I hope to someday be able to delagate some of the newsletter building to other neighbors I didn’t want a solution that was tied to FTP or SCP’ing the file up to my banyansocialtech.com server. Hence, the looking for something like box.net. Anyway, in the end I setup WebDAV on my apache server so that next time around the newsletter writer can just drop the pdf file into a folder. Browsing and determining the resultant URL will probably be a bit of a pain but not a pain so large as I’d spend $8/mo to alleviate.

Looking for suggestions on a (free) web based file sharing site so I can share a link to a pdf file with a few hundred people.

Tonight’s Menu: Boeuf en Daube, toasted baguette w/ warm brie. Then, molton chocolate cake (just made a trial one for Jay. fricken awesome).