Tonight, while sipping wine from a fancy sand-etched glass by Weems, I finally got around to watching a DVD produced by Whirlwind and Company of New York which features some of my photos. The six-minute black and white video, titled "Glimpse of NYC" was produced for the Museum of Design last August. My payment was the DVD and the moments of seeing my work in 100 years of historic photos.

- mike lee - baltimore

Rachel, co-owner of Atomic Books in Baltimore and organizer of Atomic Knit Nights just IM'd me about the Sidekick II Cozy she made. It's way cooler than iPod Socks!

- mike lee - washington, dc

Family dinner at the Macaroni Grill...

- mike lee - silver spring, md

After reading a review, I ordered a Canary Wireless Digital Hotspotter and it arrived in the mail yesterday. This is the newest and most capable of the current crop of low-cost WiFi detectors. The Hotspotter is only $50, and unlike all the competing products, offers an alphanumeric LCD display which displays SSID name, signal strength, encryption status, and channel number at the touch of a button. Other detectable access points are displayed with successive pushes of the button. The device is powered by two AAA batteries (included) and automatically turns off after a few seconds.

The Hotspotter picked up many networks in the area around my office, as well as on our car ride in. It'll be handy to check for the presence of an access point before I pull out my laptop. Many of the reviews were critical of the Hotspotter's chunkiness--it is about the size of a Chunky chocolate bar--but it will rest fine in a side pocket of my laptop bag. The days of me warwalking around with an open laptop like a dork are over.

The other common quibble is the lack of a backlight. This has been a problem in dim light, but I always have an LED flashlight with me. I'm wondering how hard it would be to add a small LED to the circuit board, though I imagine the next version will add a backlight.

Now with Hotspotter in hand, I can scan for funny SSIDs or maybe even plan a hunt.

- mike lee - langley park, md

This headline on the cover of The Weekly World News explains everything!

- mike lee - langley park, md

Well Baltimore City got about 6" of snow--certainly not enough for us to call this the Blizzard of 2005. The fuller force of the storm is to the north, and hammering Boston in particular where I was a couple days ago. Here in town, the sky is quicky clearing to reveal a bright Moon. The snow in front of our house in Charles Village is shallow and loose enough that I could clear off our front steps with a few swipes of my sneakered feet. The roads look pretty passable too. I was mentally prepared for a snowed-in weekend to catch up on reading and photo editing, but today (Sunday) will be a normal day where we'll still be able to have brunch out somewhere and run some more errands. Let's see what the 50mph winds arriving later this morning do to the landscape.

- mike lee

- mike lee - baltimore

Sharing an orange smoothie (well more like giving in to a demand), playing in Tiny Town and now lunching at Rainforest Cafe. The maul is pretty deserted. I imagine they'll close early today. So far, there's one inch of snow outside with steady flakefall.

- mike lee - towson, md