Sam I am

For my birthday in January, my father took my brother and I to Blue Smoke. Blue Smoke is a good BBQ join in the flatiron neighborhood. My favorite part of the meal was the custom peanuts. They open the jar at the table.

Thanks for dinner dad!

Over the winter, I visited my friend Sharon in Pittsburgh. Sharon moved to Melbourne with her husband Mark after they got married. (Mark is from Australia.) Sharon was visiting her family in Pittsburgh, and I figured that if Sharon could travel halfway around the world, the least I could do is travel across Pennsylvania.

The sunsets are pretty in Pittsburgh.

Sharon and me.

Yesterday I purchased a Samsung SPH-A900 mobile phone. My old phone was several years old, and the battery was starting to pop out. Also, all of the numbers, except for “8” were wearing off. It is a pretty nifty phone. It browses the web at usable speeds, has a pretty cool camera, and allows me to send photos to people. It can also display full-motion video.

As you can see from the previous post, I can now post photos directly to the web from my phone. (And other posts.) I would say that this means that I will post more, but that probably won’t be the case.

I like the ability to post photos directly to the web, but there are a couple of minor snags. I like to make sure that all of my web pages validate; one of the requirements is that all photos have “alt” tags. (These are the phrases that get displayed when you cannot view the image.) When you post a photo using the Blogger mobile software, images get included without an alt tag–even a blank alt tag. This means I have to go in later to add alt tags. However, I am not convinced that this is totally Blogger’s fault. It appears that there is no way to include a caption with the photo once it is sent from the phone. I can attach a caption to the photo after I take it with the camera, but that caption is not included with the image after it is sent through the Sprint servers.

The workaround is to go back and include “alt” tags after I send images and posts to the web. The quick-and-dirty fix would be for Blogger to include blank “alt” tags when they post images without a caption. The correct fix is for Sprint and Samsung to include captions with the images that Blogger extracts from the image and includes in the “alt” tag.

Also, I’m not thrilled that my images get stored on Blogger’s servers rather than being published to my web site.

But for now, I just love that I can post images on the web.

[Update: it turns out that blogger does upload the images to my server. That’s a good thing]

There was recently an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times by Eyal Press regarding the availability of abortion providers in the United States. I think it makes some very important points regarding abortion. In essense, even though abortion is not illegal in most of our states, practially speaking it is very difficult to get an abortion if you are poor or have limited access to transportation. (For those of you not paying attention, South Dakota now has a legal ban on abortion.) It’s a real problem and a big issue.

I urge people to give money to hospitals and clinics that perform abortions as part of their services, like Planned Parenthood. Most anti-abortion activists aren’t just anti-abortion; they are also against gay people, sexual freedom, and the right to use contraception. I disagree with their morals, and I think their stances are bad for public health.

On a related note, I started reading The Blog That Ate Manhattan. The writer is a doctor in New York City who is also a big foodie. I would check out her two posts regarding family planning that ran recently: Doing the work that has to be done and Another so called teen pregnancy.

My friend Jeremy will be showing his movie High Score at SXSW in Austin, Texas. I got to see it the other day at Barcade. It is a fascinating documentary on a man who is attempting to beat the high score in Missile Command. I believe the film will also be shown at the Brooklyn Underground film festival next month; I’ll post the dates when I get them.

If you are going to SXSW, I recommend checking out the movie. It is well made and a fascinating and weird story.