Team A'Hearn

Two years ago, I was approached online by another Scott Ahearn with interest in the “scottahearn.com” domain name. At that point, teamahearn.com had been live for a year, and I had already migrated most of the important stuff over. My plan was to maintain teamahearn as a family site and eventually fine-tune scottahearn with more of a technology slant – articles, information, etc. on whatever I came across. With that in mind, I sent a gracious “no thanks” and saved Scott’s contact info just in case.

Of course, time conspired against me and I never really settled on a vision for scottahearn that was unique or worthwhile, so recently decided to dig up that old email and see if there was still interest. So adios, scottahearn.com. The past 11 years have given me the opportunity to tinker and learn about PHP, Perl, XML, AJAX, CSS, and a host of other related technologies serving me in my career to this day.

I’ll be transferring the domain within the coming days, and if I get really bored, might launch “scott.teamahearn.com” or something someday. But probably not.

And hey, now maybe the domain will log more than 20 hits a day.

I was lucky enough to get an Amazon Kindle e-book reader for Christmas, and have been enjoying it tremendously. Being a geek, though, I’ve been reading up on ways to get the most out of the experience.

First, where can I find stuff to read? Obviously, Amazon’s Kindle Store is the number one stop. There are books, newspapers, magazines, and blogs available, some costing little to nothing. However another great resource is archive.org’s Text Archive, home to countless works available for free.

Second, what if I have an existing PDF or MS Word document that I’d like on the Kindle? One option is to email the document to Amazon – they will then convert it to a Kindle-readable format and send it directly to your device. This service does cost money, though (more info on the support page). Another option (also described on the support page) is to use Amazon’s free conversion service. In this scenario, the document will be sent to you via email, and it’s up to you to get it to your device (via USB connection to your computer).

One drawback to these two options, however, is lack of control over document “meta” information, such as title, author, cover image, table of contents, etc. This isn’t a big deal when you buy directly from Amazon (who typically clean up their publications very well), or only have a few docs on your device. But if you have a lot of third-party, poorly converted documents, it soon becomes a problem when you’d like to sort by author, for example, for better organization. To solve this, Mobipocket has developed Mobipocket Creator. This software lets you convert PDF, Word, and other files, and gives you full control over meta data. Tip, the author field should almost always be [last name, first name] in order for the Kindle to sort it properly. Once converted, you transfer the file(s) to your device via USB as previously mentioned.

Finally, what if I have a Kindle-ready electronic document, but the meta information is incorrect? You’ll often run into this when downloading from third-party sites (like archive.org mentioned above). Mobipocket Creator won’t help here – for this, check out Calibre, e-book management software. This will do much of the same with regards to polishing up meta data, and will leave you a file suitable to transfer back to your device.

If you have any other good Kindle links, resources, or hints, please leave a comment below!

I added a new “About” section to the site the other day, mostly to serve as a home to our Web 2.0-esque links, such as Amazon wishlists and Facebook. This also allowed me to clean up the sidebar content somewhat, and streamline the “Contact” page.

In other site-related news, I’m still trying to decide the fate of scottahearn.com, my long-time personal site. With the launch of teamAHearn.com, my intent was to keep some of the technical writings up there. But like most content of that ilk, it was becoming embarrassingly out-dated after just a year or two. I’ve also received a few offers for the domain over the years, which shows me that other Scott Ahearns out there have a genuine interest in getting some actual use out of it. <shrug> I’ll figure something out. With all my free time.

We added some new photos to Lily’s album today, following a sunny spring weekend at peak cherry blossom time. We shot some video as well, and although I probably won’t be linking to those on teamAHearn.com, friends and family can expect an email with clips soon.

In website news, I recently transferred my domain registrations from Network Solutions to GoDaddy. (It has more to do with ridiculous billing rates than the fact that I’m now actually a daddy.) The transition appeared to go smoothly, but I’ll continue to keep an eye on things – nobody should notice any difference. Also, in the coming days I will be updating some of the photos bordering the website – time to get Lily front and center!

Over the weekend I managed to get some photos of Lily up on the site. I will continue to add to this album through the rest of the calendar year, then will probably create additional albums each year going forward. That seems like a good enough way to keep things organized.

Baptism! Lily was baptized yesterday among family and friends. It was a short and sweet ceremony, and Steph and I were immensely happy to share it with loved ones. Many thanks to all who were able to attend. And apologies for the short notice – the Godparents are about to head out of town for a few weeks, and then we hit the chaos of Easter. If it hadn’t been yesterday, we’d be lingering around for a while.

Lily has turned out to be a moose! She went in for a weight check today and has gained a substantial amount of weight. Doc says there’s probably no need to supplement as long as she continues to eat and sleep well. Coincidentally, though, we had a very tough weekend with what appeared to be a stint of cluster feeding – but today’s reported weight gain has been a big morale boost for Steph.

With Lily now just over two weeks old, we’ve all begun to settle into a good routine. She’s still on a reasonably good three-hour schedule, but now that I’m back at work Stephanie is shouldering the bulk of the late-night feedings and changings. It’s tough, but manageable – I’ve come home to smiles so far this week! Lily also just had her two-week checkup and made it through with flying colors. We wacky first-time parents came to the pediatrician armed with a big list of questions and concerns – all of which were patiently and carefully considered before receiving the old “it’s normal, don’t worry”. She could stand to gain a bit more weight, but both she and mom are working hard together – we’ll see if we need to start supplementing in the coming days.

A little tech news: Lily now has her own email address (her first name in all lowercase @teamahearn.com), and we’ve already put it to use by moving leftover items from our baby registries to her very own Amazon wishlist! Nerds, I know. More on this in a few months when Christmas rolls around. But feel free to send her an email – it goes right to Stephanie for now, who will save everything for posterity [and hilarity]. I don’t know – maybe we’ll wait and break them out when she starts dating.

And finally some website news: first, I’m still working on getting a batch of baby photos up on the site. I haven’t forgotten, but .. you know .. not much free time these days. Second, if you’re a faithful RSS subscriber, I’ve added a new feed for our books, music, and movies (see the sidebar to the right). The updates there used to be exciting and unique, but now are increasingly children-oriented. Anyways, the feed is there if you’re interested.