Paul Mayne blogs here since 2003.

Last week Jana and I took the boys on a fun family vacation in Southern California. We drove our van and hit up Sea World for a day and Disneyland / Disneyland California Adventure for 3 days. We planned on doing a day in Lego Land, but our first day in San Diego was rainy and so we bagged that. After that, the weather turned beautiful, upper 60s and perfect for all the walking we were doing. Highlights were the dolphin and whale shows at Sea World, Jackson being trained by a real Jedi and fighting Darth Maul and all the rides at Disneyland that had virtually no lines. It was a perfect time of year to go.

On our way to California and back we spent a night in Las Vegas to break up the driving. I decided that Vegas isn’t that fun if you’re married with kids, not gambling or partying and not seeing any shows or concerts. The rooms at The Excalibur were way nice, but the pool / hot tub were not open past 5:00 pm! What’s the deal? Plus the casinos the smoke and the traffic…

Jana blogged a bit more detailed about our trip of you’re interested: Family Vacation!, The Beach and SeaWorld!, Disneyland, Disneyland, Disneyland. In fact, since I’m such a slacker at blogging about stuff, I’ll probably leave most of the family stuff up to her blog and I might try to focus this blog on more design, web development and Flash focused stuff.

Photos on my Flicker Set: Disneyland / Seaworld Trip…

— February 17th, 2009

We recently finished our basement and since we have more space, I set up one of my older computers for my two boys to play on. Up until now they would use Jana’s Macbook. They absolutely love it. Jackson has always been enamored by computers and the Internet but now Eli is really getting the hang of things. I’m amazed by how quickly they pick up things and instinctively learn how to use different navigation systems without even being able to read.

Currently they play on three websites: Playhouse Disney, PBS Kids, and Starfall.com.

We’ve purchased a few CD-rom based educational games which had decent reviews on Amazon, but I found them to be worthless compared to the current free stuff you can find online, like Starfall. It seems like there could be a nice market for more kid based educational and entertainment web sites, specifically for kids 2-5 years old.

I see that Playhouse Disney has a subscription based site for even more educational games called “Preschool Time Online“. It’s $49.95 annually, but has a free 7-day trial, I need to check out.

Does anyone have any other sites they recommend for kids, specifically under the age of 6?

— January 25th, 2009

The Good:

• Finished the basement. FTW!
• Made new friends and became reaquanted with old friends (thanks Facebook).
• Attended some Killer shows (Wilco, Fleet Foxes, Bishop Allen, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Vampire Weekend, Ray Lamontagne, Great Lake Swimmers, Andrew Bird… to name a few)
• Continued to be amazed and entertained by my two, sweet little boys.
• Voted for and watched Barack Obama become President.
• Managed to love my wifey even more.

The Bad:

• Lost my Grandpa, whom I adored.
• Missing my Dad, obviously.

Overall a very great year for me and my family. I’m excited for 2009 and very thankful for the many blessings and friendships I enjoy.

Paul

— December 31st, 2008

*geek alert*

I spent a long time trying to figure out this solution, so I wanted to share it here to possibly help someone else. If you are looking to redirect an existing path on your site, like:

www.mysite.com/old/folders/content
to something like:
www.mysite.com/new/directory/content

Add this (and tweek to your needs) to your .htaccess file on the root of your website.

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^old/folders(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com/new/directory$1 [L,R=301]

— December 30th, 2008

I used to create Christmas mixes and burn CD’s for my family and friends. Consider yourself lucky if you are the proud owner of the famous “Pete’s Christmas Mix 2002″. It’s been a while since I put one together, I mean who listens to CD’s anyway?

This year I’m posting my mix on my site for your streaming enjoyment. Bonus: I threw in my favorite line from my favorite Christmas movie, Christmas Vacation.

http://www.paulmayne.org/music/christmas2008/

— December 18th, 2008