Holiday Joy from the new house, click on the happy faces for the very large versions

Having a house makes many things possible. Aside from more room to play with the kids, setting up community networks, hanging with friends, sitting by the fireplace with the love of my life and cooking there is this ....Brewing. First step...Cider My eventual goal...Fred

To counteract the lack of activity here on this webpage our family life has been bustling with action. Since our last entry we have taken a trip to South Dakota, purchased a new house, moved into said house and are now in the process of unpacking the plethora of objects into our new surroundings.

Benjamin and Heather are both growing by leaps and bounds. Pictures and video will be made available to those who care to see them via our new DSL net connection, which once again has given me the ability to set up web servers, zope servers and a host of other networking goodness.

The new home and the new DSL have also allowed me to enter the wonderful world of wireless networking not just in the house but as part of a community networking system. The Portland Personal Telco Project is the one I am hooking into locally as well as using SeattleWireless , Freenetworks.org and NoCat as jumping off points for learning all the new voodoo not just for the tech aspects but for community building aspects. Once again an opportunity has arisen to make open communication between people possible. Lets hope it gets wide spread use before the corporations and the govs find ways to regulate down to sterility.

At one month of age young Benjamin Wallace makes his first run in at Yankee.Stadium.

At 12:45 pm Benjamin Wallace Higgins made a crash entry into the world. After a night of on again off again activity a C section was called for near noon. Seems the little hacker was messing with the internal cables and got three turns of the umbilical cord around his neck for the effort. Ill have to teach him about the art of cable bundling. Benjamin Wallace came out at 6 lbs 13 oz 20 somthing inches tall and doing what all Higgins boys do best... feed and sleep. Mother and Child are doing great.

Off we go to the Hospital..Looks like its go time
Benajmin Wallace Higgins is on his way.

Go Time Is Close

Its getting close folks.....This mornings doctors visit found the mama dialated to 3 cm. Doc Lloyd says within the week, I bet Benjamin is here this weekend.

Countermoves is proud to announce that it is now part of the Sourceforge Open Source Community. A new site is being hosted on the Sourceforge servers to facilitate distribution of the Countermoves publications, several mailing lists and discussion forums, game development collaboration tools and a host of other services which will make interaction between the game developers, players and readers more efficient.

You can find the new Workspace, News, Message Forums, Files section on the navigation bar near the top of the new Countermoves page.

The net never ceases to amaze me. I heard about this some time ago and it finaly found its way on to a browser near me. I have one publication out in the wilds already...Dang life is good.
The Karma of Literature... BookCrossing.com

Have I mentioned lately how much I love Heather? Well I do, shes such an amzing kid. Dont belive me? Just ask her . Shes the cute one at the bottom of the pics.

The Gallery Of BennyHannah Higgins

Friday was the day mother and child went in for the latest round of family photographs. The process was mindblowing. Seeing our kid unfold on the ultrasound screen was like watching some bizzare mix of shows from The Learning Channel, Science Fiction Channel and a Fellini Film.

A little explanation about the name BennyHannah. If the critter is a boy his name will be Benjamin Wallace, if it is a girl then her name will be Hannah Kathleen. Up until Friday we have been calling the kid BennyHannah. After the pictures...well you tell us what you think.

Here are a few of the highlights...

The Face Off

The Face Off (with subtitles)

The 2001 Shot

Kicked Back

The Backflip

Boy or Girl? You Be The Judge

Hack your Garmin eTrex
There are a number of ways to modify the handy little GPS unit that the TeamWSMF has equiped themselves with.
First off you will need a cable to hook your PC to your eTrex. The Dingos from downunder have a great page showing the possibilities for getting the cable. This .cz based eTrex Fan page will show you how to make your own cable.
The next stop should be an upgrade of your firmware from Garmin's site, if you need to rev up to the lattest version.
Then there are the hacked firmwares. These add features like new map symbols. You can also find kits to make your own modifications to the firmware. Careful with that axe Eugene, the unit you turn into a worthless pile of plastic just might be your own. Messing with firmware hacks always has its dangers, so measure twice cut one.
The Palm ---- eTrex Connection
Take a handy eTrex GPS unit, most any old Palm Pilot and link them togther with a cable and what do you get?
With these apps for the Palm you can grab the data from your eTrex and have your Palm show you movable maps, routes, traces, and all sorts of views of where you are and just where you are going.
There are apps made just for the eTrex to allow the Palm to store tons of data that you can move into the eTrex' limited memory when you need it.
Most of the apps do not require the lattest or greatest Palm units, most will run on the older ones that you can pick up on the cheap.

We did our first weeknight Geocache, this time with Heather as our GPS toting navigator. She did real well and even found the cache. I included a picture of her showing off her find.

02/25/02 - Beginners "No Brainer"

Geocrazy Weekend

Dawn, the baby to be and I took off this weekend to finaly try out our new eTrex GPS unit. It was the first time we have gone Geocaching and man did we ever have a blast.

From late Friday afternoon till early evening on Sunday we were out in the Big Red Beast finding various geocaches from as far northwest as Astoria, down past Canon Beach, deep into the trials on hiway 26 and in various spots in between. Here is a list of the spots with descriptions and even some pictures.

02/22/02 - I Hate I-5 XII (Gee Creek) (Washington)

02/22/02 - Brady Hill

02/23/02 - Astoria Colum

02/23/02 - Gerassimos

02/23/02 - Arch Cape

02/24/02 - Youngs River Falls

02/24/02 - Sunset Hiway Marker

02/24/02 - Wolrds Largets Sitka Tree

02/24/02 - The Left Handed Band Saw

02/24/02 - Where Four Counties Meet