Merry Christmas!

Family, food and gifts...and tons of them!
We had a great Christmas. I hope yours was just as good!
I didn't take a lot of pictures but I did add some to my photo album.

Yes, that is a plate Ridley is holding. The plate was put out on christmas eve and Ridley mistook it as a gift from Santa. She figures Santas elves painted it just for her.
I love it when things work out that way.

Winter Solstice Sunrise

A sun pillar showed up just before the sun made its appearance. A sun pillar is caused by light reflecting off ice crystals.

Happy Birthday Ridley!

Shes 7! Its hard to believe she was ever a 4lb itty bitty.
Her kid only birthday party was yesterday. Did you know it takes only a few minutes for 13 kids to completely demolish a gingerbread house?
The family came over to celebrate her birthday tonight. Lots of fun! She loved all of her gifts but her favourite was the puppy surprise she got from Momma and Poppa. (pictured below) The birthday girl is now completely exhausted and I'm sure will sleep well tonight.

Snow day!

Some schools are closed today. I haven't heard anything about Ridley's school but I think we'll stay home anyway because the weather channel says we could get another 25-30cm.

Yup, we're looking at a white christmas this year!

O yah, it was that cold this morning...

You know its cold when the crossing guard is wearing a Fargo hat.
(and Ridley begs to wear her ski mask!)

We've got a snow storm coming and I'm hoping for a snow day tommorow.

Old Grandma Hardcore

Yeah! Go Grandma!!

Grandma Gets her Game On

Old Grandma Hardcore

Animal Crossing DS - Wild World

Oh help me. Animal Crossing DS comes out today.
And its wifi enabled! If anyone needs me, I'll be off collecting fossils and picking pears.

Gamespot's Animal Crossing DS Review

Pandora - The Music Genome Project

Online radio is not something I've ever dabbled in but I like the way this works. It limits the amount of skips per hour but still, for someone like me who frequently asks people "What are you listening to?", this is great!

Pandora

From the site...

The Music Genome Project

On January 6, 2000 a group of musicians and music-loving technologists came together with the idea of creating the most comprehensive analysis of music ever.

Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal hamony. It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like.

Over the past 5 years, we've carefully listened to the songs of over 10,000 different artists - ranging from popular to obscure - and analyzed the musical qualities of each song one attribute at a time. This work continues each and every day as we endeavor to include all the great new stuff coming out of studios, clubs and garages around the world.

It has been quite an adventure, you could say a little crazy - but now that we've created this extraordinary collection of music analysis, we think we can help be your guide as you explore your favorite parts of the music universe.

We hope you enjoy the journey.

Tim Westergren
Founder
The Music Genome Project