It was a short trip this time, 11 days including our 2 travel days... We stayed at our usual spot, Playa Hermosa, in Costa Rica... The biggest day we were there was a solid 3-4 ft... overhead to double overhead, with the giant freak sets being a couple feet bigger than double overhead... Next trip: Guanacaste region in CR during the winter, or Pavones(the 2nd longest left point break in the world) trip next summer possibly... … View Post »

So today marks the launch of SocialSpark, the world ' s first Social Marketing Network that connects advertisers and bloggers through an online advertising marketplace... Advertisers are able to target blogs based on conversational topics and make cash sponsorship offers to the bloggers who publish them... Bloggers can make money by either placing display advertisements on their blog or by writing sponsored content... The sponsorships offered through the SocialSpark marketplace allow advertisers to build buzz, generate traffic and maximize social media exposure... I am very proud to have been part of the team working on this ( I was hired in October ), and it feels great to finally have it released for bloggers & advertisers to use... There have been a lot of long nights & weekends put into this project for all of us, but it was so very worth it and if it wasn ' t tough & challenging then it wouldn ' t be worth doing... One of the types of opportunities in the system is Sparks... I love this thing!... I feel SO much more productive on this than my old 21 CRT that I used to program with at home Home ( custom built desktop ): Intel 2.13 Ghz Core 2 Duo ( Possibly a 3.0 Ghz version of this in the future ) 2 GB DDR2 RAM 24 Dell Widescreen Ultrasharp Display ( new toy, awesome! ) Asus 8800 GTS 512 MB Video Card Sound Blaster X - Fi Thermaltake Armor Jr Case Logitech 5.1 speakers ( awesome ) 500 GB USB 2.0 External HD ( for storing music and backup of important files ) Other Gadgets: iPod Nano 8GB - awesome for the gym iPhone - goes without saying that it kicks ass 42 Sharp LCD HDTV - through a SICK deal on Black Friday Sirius Satellite Radio 66 Lost Surfboard - not really a" gadget" but surfing is my other passion... … View Post »

How and why did you transition from being a developer into a venture capitalist?... … View Post »

BarCampOrlando is a community building event which happens twice a year to brings together people from different backgrounds to share and learn from each other... NET, Ruby, PHP, and other technologies coming together for Dev Day, and there will be people who know film, music, photography, graphic design, podcasting, and even other new Media coming together for Media Day... There is only one rule with BarCamp: It is strongly recommended that attendees give a demo, a session, or help with one... Don ' t be intimidated by this, just think about what you ' re passionate about and come give a talk on it... It could be anything an operating system you use, a language you program with, a website you like, how to pick colors for a website, how to use photoshop, or how to wash your cat:... … View Post »

Your" big win" yesterday, which can hardly be called a win, got you a net gain of 4 delegates... The task for the Clinton campaign yesterday was clear... In order to have a plausible path to the nomination, they needed to score huge delegate victories and cut into Obama ' s lead... … View Post »

In a move that makes a lot of sense, Yahoo has integrated del.icio.us ( a social bookmarking tool Yahoo bought out in 2005 ) into their search results... While Google ' s PageRank is becoming increasingly worthless, this is useful because it lets you see how many other times a particular link has been helpful to other people... But do a link ' s delicious results improve its rankings in the yahoo search engine?... In my opinion, they should... … View Post »

One of my favorite javascript frameworks has a new release, version 1.2.2... I ' ve only had the chance to play around with it briefly and only scratched the surface of everything it offers, but I was very impressed... By the time you are done it ' s down to two or three lines and it couldn ' t get any shorter unless it read your mind." - Dave Methvin The major changes are: 300% Speed Improvements to $ ( DOMElement ).ready ( ) Overhaul: Uses Diego Perinis non - document.write ( ) technique, now wait for CSS to be ready, can now watch for the document ready event via the traditional.bind ( ).bind ( mouseenter ) /.bind ( mouseleave ) Complex:not ( ) Accepts Headers Event API: jQuery.event.special setup teardown handler You can download it here... … View Post »

So I just picked up a Sharp 42 720P HDTV ( kick ass black friday deal ), but I don ' t want to buy a HD - DVD or BluRay DVD player because of the price and ongoing format war ( although it looks like BluRay is about to put the nail in the coffin for HDTV )... Apple just announced at MacWorld that you can now rent HD movies through the service at $4.99 a pop, or TV shows at $1.99 a pop... So instead of paying $300 - $500 for a BluRay player and then driving to BlockBuster and picking out a movie, I can basically buy the AppleTV for $229, hook it up to my wireless network, pick out almost any movie I want and start watching it instantly... I ' m becoming more of an Apple fanboy / nerd every day... … View Post »

Mike Huckabee scares the hell out of me... People ACTUALLY like this guy?... For Huckabee to claim that we need to" fix" the Constitution to bring it in line with" God ' s view" shows an incredible ignorance and hubris... Doesn ' t this incompetent fool realize that this country was NOT in any way founded by Christians, and that most of the founding fathers were deists if anything?... The Treaty of Tripoli states:" As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion" Directly quoted from the constitution:" Congress shall make NO law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;... or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;... or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." Now just to get this out there, I have no problem with religion... He ' s covered up his son ' s hanging, torturing, and murdering of a stray dog... Anybody who is capable of torturing a dog is sick in the head... Let ' s also not forget about how he aggressively pushed for the early release of a convicted rapist despite being warned by numerous women that the convict had sexually assaulted them or their family members, and would likely strike again... The convict went on to rape and murder at least one other woman... Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me... Also unconstitutional on free exercise grounds... Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy Again, unconstitutional on free exercise grounds... Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour Some have interpreted this to be analagous to our perjury laws, but nothing in the text indicates that... Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour ' s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour ' s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour ' s Not only unconstitutional, it would require the ability to read minds... More: He used state money to promote a creationist museum... Thinks women ' s role in marriage is to" graciously submit"... Here ' s Huckabee ' s track record on education:" During Huckabees tenure as Governor, evolution education in Arkansas languished in an environment of general hostility and insufficiency... Huckabee did nothing to deter any of this in fact, some of his public statements might indicate his tacit support... … View Post »