It looks like the theme is cake.  Along with Kayla and something MS is famous for.  This cake, by the way, was made by Dina.

I was looking at my flickr 20 most interesting photos and I realized that a healthy portion of them were taken this year.  Six of the top 20, in fact, were taken in 2009.  Here they are:

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“375” caption=“La Palma Latin Cafe in Hialeah, Fl”] [/caption]

I took this photo with my cell phone while I was in South Florida for my cousin’s wedding.  It was just on a whim because I wanted to show some of my family what had changed when I wasn’t looking.  Below is what I wrote on the description on flickr along with a little more exposition:

Innovation is one of those things we pretend to want and then complain when it happens.  It’s like women who say they want sensitive men who understand their feelings and then always fall for the bad boy.  In the technology world, everyone always views copying with disdain.  “Where’s the innovation?” they decry.  Case in point, everyone is always yelling at Microsoft for stealing copying Apple’s GUI interface with Windows 95.  (Everyone seems to forget Apple stealing borrowing from Xerox)  When they try to get innovative with Vista or Windows 7 everyone complains they can’t find anything because it was moved around.  Linux is not immune to these complaints.  On the one hand, everyone mocks Linux for co-opting technologies from other operating systems.  “Oh, you have a dock - why do you always have to copy the Mac?” or the ever-present “If Linux really wants to take the lead, they’ll have to stop copying Windows and Mac and start innovating on their own.”  But then, when Linux improves upon something from the leading OS all you hear is, “Why is everything so different?  Until Linux is easy for a Windows user to just jump over to without relearning things, they’ll never succeed.”

This is from last weekend.

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“333” caption=“From my backyard. Captured with my brand new 120-400mm lens.”] [/caption]

This is a game I have been waiting for ever since I played New Super Mario Brothers on my borrowed Nintendo DS.  This is the purity of Mario.  Screw all this 3D stuff.  Yeah, it rocks to have a 3D space to run around in, but that’s not Mario.  Mario is a side scroller and its charm comes out best that way.  Or maybe I’m just an old codger nostalgic for what I grew up with.  It’s probably the latter given that the Mario theme in New Super Mario Brothers Wii (NSMBW henceforth), a modified version of the original with a little “ah” a capella thrown in, excites me in ways I cannot express. Apparently it also excites the goombas and turtles because they do a little dance move during the a capella parts.

The latest version of Fedora is out.  Get it here!  I’ll probably give it about a month to get all the kinks out and then I’ll give it a shot and talk about it here.  I’m excited for some new versions of programs like gPodder.  I also want to check out Gnome Shell, the new interface for Gnome starting with 3.0 next fall.

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“333” caption=“This is a very creepy way to sell cigars.”] [/caption]

When I saw this guy in a Georgetown cigar store I knew I had to photograph it before the day was over.  On the way back to the train, I captured this shot.  It creeps me out, but I had to capture it.

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“333” caption=“A new bird joins the crowd in my backyard”] [/caption]

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Ladybug ready to take flight”] [/caption]