Willowbrook Mall Apple Store Opening

Last weekend I took the train out to north NJ to visit my brother. We went to the opening of the new Apple Store in the Willowbrook Mall in Wayne, NJ (not to be confused with the Apple Store in the Willowbrook Mall in Texas). We got there about an hour before opening. The line wasn't too bad, but I couldn't see how far it went.

I took video of the actual opening complete with loud, cheering Apple employees. Maybe I'll get around to cleaning up the video and posting it online soon.

I didn't actually buy anything at the store, but I got my free T-shirt, which brings the size of my Apple Store T-Shirt collection up to, well, two. More photos from the opening are up on my photo gallery. My previous Apple Store opening was Ardmore, PA.

Thrift Store Roomba

I found an original model Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner at a local thrift store for $6. It was full of dust and hair and missing the AC adapter, but I figured for $6, it was worth a shot. I noticed that the Roomba has a weird power connector consisting of two inputs. iRobot has their Roomba manuals available as free PDF downloads and the manual shows the special adapter that originally came with the Roomba. They sell replacement AC adapters but they don't come with the double-barrel adapter. I posted to the official Roomba forum, and the best suggestion I got is to look for someone selling one with a broken Roomba on eBay. Given that I don't know if this Roomba even works, I'm not sure if I want to spend much money for a replacement AC adapter. Since I do have some basic electronics and soldering skills, perhaps I can build an adapter myself? Even if I do get the Roomba working, the programming options unfortunately aren't available for original Roomba models. That's no big deal. With the way that cat hair and dust form little tumbleweeds on my (fake) hard woods floors, an automated vacuum would be great. At worst, I can always sell the Roomba on eBay for spare parts.

Art of the Brick

Last Sunday I went with my friend Nicole to see Nathan Sawayan's "Art of the Brick" exhibit at the American Swedish Historical Museum (not to be confused with the Ikea) here in Philadelphia. Although I'm more interested in building cityscapes with Lego, Nathan's work is really amazing. I took along my compact camera t take photos, but now I wish I had taken my DSLR instead. I put the photos up on Flickr. After checking out the exhibit and the rest of the museum, Nicole and I headed over to the kids section where they had buckets and buckets of bricks to play with. At first, I wanted to just try building a sphere, but I couldn't get the geometry right and it started to look more like a pyramid. After finding some interesting brown and green pieces, I started building a pair of trees while Nicole made a (peeing) dog, a stream and bridge. I added a waterfall and lamppost to finish off the park and put it on a shelf with other visitors' creations.

I might go back in a few weeks with a camera and tripod to take better photos of the exhibit. I'm curious to see if my park will still be there. (Note: This post is my first test at using MarsEdit.)

Hello World

Hi, I'm Rob, a web developer and software architect living in Philadelphia, PA.

Back in early 2000 I had started a weblog that I authored for a few years. Like many weblogs, it was a mix of personal experiences, links, commentary, political rants, photography, etc. I eventually neglected it and the site disappeared when the free hosting service went away. I started a dedicated photolog a couple years back and have been doing a decent job keeping it updated.

Lately I've found myself wanting to write about technology, programming and projects I've been working on (or planning to work on) so I'm giving regular blogging (God, I hate that word!) another shot. I'm going to avoid writing about personal stuff, which gets weird when you find out family and coworkers are reading it. I'm also going to try to avoid politics, since there's a million political blogs out there already, and, frankly, current American politics just makes me want to emit a steady stream of expletives anyways. I was originally planning to make this only about projects I'm working on, but I could use an outlet for my thoughts on computers and technology as well.