Cameron Bulock

I noticed that there wasn't much out there when it came to just simply displaying a calendar on a website. Most the examples I found were overly complicated. So, I came up with a little snippet of code that outputs a calendar for any given month and displays it as an HTML table.

I haven't heard much talk about this angle of it, but what would passage of SOPA mean for the US web hosting industry? Is it possible that many companies will move their hosting out of the country?

I'm on the lookout for a web designer for a small project that I'm working on. This would not be a paid gig or anything, but something that could be added to a portfolio. I don't imagine it would be much work, just need a general design layout of a site. I can take care of all the coding backend of things. If anyone is willing to help out with this, it'd be much appreciated. Let me know, and I'll message you the details.

My kids have become Minecraft addicts. It's been a struggle this summer getting them to balance computer time with summer activities.
Minecraft does have it's benefits though. The kids have been chatting in the game a lot and their typing skills have had massive improvements due to this. Playing this game has caused them for the first time to have a need to type fast on the computer.
Another skill they have developed is the ability to research online. Finding knowledge on the Internet is an invaluable skill to pick up and by having to learn how to do crafting, the kids are now experts at navigating the Minecraft wiki and finding what they need to know.
Yet another thing they are learning is something that I didn't even realize until just recently, division. Having to split up inventory on the crafting table has turned division into common sense.

I will sometimes go into my kid's room when they are not there, and I will look around and try to absorb everything I look at. I will think about all the things that are present in that room and try to imagine what it would be like to be a little kid and that room is all that I know. In a way, it is somewhat disturbing to me. I try and wonder what it is like to be one of my children. I worry about what their life is like. I fear that their life may not be as good as the childhood that I experienced.
As a father, I feel this is my greatest fear. That I am not providing the same life to my children that I was given. There are some reasons to fear this. I don't feel like I am financially as successful as my parents were when they were my age. Also, every time I think about the experiences of my children, I look back and think about what my life was like when I was their age. I think about the fact that I always grew up in a house. I never lived in an apartment as a child. I wonder if this is a disadvantage to my kids. At the same time, I do consider the fact that they have a whole community of other kids to play with that also live in the apartment complex. And they have things like a community pool to play in with the neighbor kids. But, they don't have their own house, or their own yard with me. However, their mom does have a house with these things. So, in some sense, maybe having one parent with a house, and one parent with an apartment is somehow beneficial. I do feel that when I became an adult, I never really considered apartments at first due the fact that I never lived in one. I only considered living in a house. My kids may never have that issue. So, it's possible that I am giving them more life experiences.

I've been slowly adding in new stuff to my site and making everything cleaner since it's launch on Jan 13th. Probably the biggest updates so far went up last night and tonight. I have restored the ability to create user accounts. This went missing since the new site launched. It was done sloppily with the old site, but I did it right this time. If you aren't signed in, you should see a Sign Up link in the top left corner. I don't currently use any type of CAPTCHA, but I do filter sign ups using the Project Honeypot HTTP blacklist. I may restore the simple question and answer based CAPTCHA that I had implemented on the old site for the anonymous comment form. The blacklist seems to be pretty effective though.

Hailey has a classmate at school that is being treated for cancer. She wasn't close friends with her, but they did projects in class together and the whole incident has really affected Hailey. There has been some fundraisers where shirts and bracelets were being sold. Hailey had decided she wanted to purchase those, but she also wanted to raise some money herself. At first, she initially wanted to start a lemonade stand, but I explained to her how that might not work so well in the middle of winter. She then thought about making some crafts and attempting to sell those. While she has very good intentions, her ideas aren't 100% practical. I really liked the crafts she was making, but I didn't really have any ideas on how she would sell them. Rachael made the suggestion that she could go door to door and collect pop bottles. We came up with the idea that instead of selling her crafts, she could give them to people in return for pop bottles she was collecting.
Hailey started visiting all the neighbors in our apartment complex. Pretty quickly, she was coming back with garbage bags full of cans and also a fair amount of cash. The neighbors were very willing to help out. I posted a picture up on Facebook of the cans Hailey had collected. After that picture was up, she then got more donation offers from family and friends. Brett also decided that he wanted to help and gave $5 of his own money to the cause. Over the course of one weekend, she ended up raising $70. It was pretty exciting and Hailey felt really good about what she was doing. She was feeling like she could actually make a difference. She is such a giving person that she couldn't stop there. She also bought two shirts they were selling with her own money, one shirt for herself, one for Brett. Overall, between her own money, and the money she raised, she had $100 for her classmate's family. This weekend, another fundraiser was taking place, a movie at a local theater in which proceeds were going toward her classmate's family. I mentioned to Hailey that I we were planning to go there. She asks right away how much tickets were, and then she replied "OK, that will be $20 total, I'll pay for it". It's very exciting to see how giving she is. I let her know that this time the treat was on me though, as she has done so much to help out.
I'm at that weird point now where I don't even know what to expect from my kids anymore. The simple milestones such as crawling and walking and talking are far past. The milestones I now see are the times like this where they are willing to think beyond their own wants and needs and put other people first. It's nice to know they are able to act this way, as it's very easy to only be concerned with one's self. Additionally important, I think, is that Hailey is able to achieve this sense of charity without any type of feeling that it's somehow required of her, or that she will be rewarded somehow for this selfish act. I feel that religion often causes charity to happen for the wrong reasons and I hope that Hailey and Brett won't feel that they are expected by some power to be generous and that they will do it with their own will.

I receive a phone call at 5:30am this morning. Of course, I am immediately concerned as to what it could be, and I am dead tired. The great news is that it is a call from the kids' school district. They reported there would be a two hour delay today. It was really great news. It's like someone calling and saying, "Hello, I'd like to inform you that you can get an extra two hours of sleep this morning". I was pretty happy to hear that news, I went and turned off the kids alarm clock, re-adjusted mine, and fell happily back to sleep.
It is also really nice that the school started to do that to begin with. They now call everyone when there is a delay or a closure. It's much easier than waking up and checking for closures and I wouldn't have even thought to check today as the weather didn't seem to be out of the ordinary. The odd thing was that Hailey actually woke up earlier than usual today. The kids will typically never wake up before their alarm on school days. Yet, this morning Hailey was waking me up ten minutes before her alarm would have went off asking me some question. I then let her know she could go back to bed as there was a delay. She was really excited, but then asked if she could play on the computer.

I got the Sam Adams Winter Classics Variety Pack for Christmas. Since I've been moving, I haven't had a lot of chance to dive into those beers. I did finally start trying out some of the beers in there, and here is my short review of Sam Adam's Chocolate Bock.
I was really excited about this beer before I tried it. Bock's are probably my favorite type of beer, and I drink a fair amount of Shiner Bock and Amber Bock. Being somewhat of a heavy fellow, I can also say that I enjoy my share of chocolate, so this beer seemed like an interesting combination.
I can't say I really enjoyed the beer however. What I was expecting was a bock with a slight hint of chocolate taste. Instead, this beer had a very strong cocoa taste to it. It didn't really taste like beer at all. It was more like drinking liquid semi-sweet chocolate. It was a very bitter and strong taste. If semi-sweet chocolate is your thing, this beer is for you. Otherwise, I'd probably stick with a normal bock.