For my golden birthday (last March) present my wife got me a gift certificate to go skydiving. It was something I’d always wanted to do but had never done. Then, on June 20th, we went over to Skydive Twin Cities and I made my jump!

The whole experience was great. I think I was more nervous thinking about it than I was actually in the air and falling to the ground. It was a lot of fun and I’d definitely do it again.

My father in-law, Mike Soldan, also wanted to go skydiving so we invited him along. He was a bit more scared with the experience but had fun too.

This tutorial covers the very basics of creating an Adobe AIR application that will work on Mac, Windows and Linux. It will show you what software to install and how to turn some web code into an Adobe AIR application. You will get enough information to get you started and from there you can create the next great Adobe AIR application.

Step 1. Get Aptana Studio – It’s free. http://www.aptana.com

Get Aptana Studio

Step 2. Get the Adobe AIR plug-in for Aptana Studio. http://www.aptana.com/air

Step 3. Create a new project in Aptana by going to File -> New and choosing Adobe AIR Project.

It’s amazing how far we’ve come in the past decade or so when it comes to the environment. We are all taking steps every day to make the world a better place, whether we make an attempt to, or just do it out of habit. And things are only getting better.

Check out this Sun Chips bag that will decompose on its own!

After about 14 weeks, Sun Chips bags will disappear. Can you imagine?! I look at the ditches along the road and there is so much trash. Wouldn’t it be great if it would all just disappear on its own? Maybe someday it will. This is a big step in the right direction and I hope all food makers hop on board.

With Twitter exploding in popularity in every direction, there are a lot of newbies that will not quite know what’s going on or who to follow. So I decided to write down the 9 things I look at when I determine who to follow on Twitter and who not to follow.

First of all, do not follow everyone who follows you. Some are legit, some are automated, some are spam, and not all of them are worth connecting up with. You get the most out of Twitter if you choose to follow only those who you are really interested in.

There are no shortage of Twitter applications out there. Each client seems to have a slightly different feature set too. I’ve tried a lot of them and below is a list of good Twitter applications that have been built for the Mac.  No Adobe Air suggestions here, and most are available only on the Mac.

Bluebird
Simple and pretty, this app has the ability to be one of the nicest looking Twitter apps.  It also comes with three built in themes which are very nice and supports multiple accounts.  This one is one I haven’t played with much, but am loving it the more I use it.  Only downside so far is no way to distinguish between read and un-read tweets.

I’m not big on new years resolutions. In fact I like to say that years ago my resolution was to give up resolutions.  So to keep that one, I can’t make new ones.

However, there are a few things that I have on my to-do list for 2009.  No biggies, but that’s ok.

1. Change my social media icon to include my mug shot. 
   On Twitter, Plurk, Gravatar and whatever other networks I have I’m actually going to put up a picture of me. As soon as I find one I like that is.  

Every artist seems to make a Christmas album, however most seem to record the same old songs the same old way.  Lets face it, there’s only so many times you can hear White Christmas sang the same way.  

Sometimes you want something new, something festive and something to put you in a party mood.  Something to dance to!

I’ve put together a list of some of my fun and/or unique holiday songs that are worth checking out. Maybe you’ll find one or two to add to your collection.

• Call Me Claus – Garth Brooks

As the web continues to evolve, and more and more people are empowered to create their own sites, there is little to no concern for those on slower connections.

It’s been said that 10% of U.S. households still use dial-up internet to access the web.  This could be due to the lack of high speed options in their area, unwillingness to pay the $50+ a month for high speed, or no real need to go faster.

I’m happy to release the next update to Tinseltown today.  This version cleans up a lot of the areas that I didn’t spend to much time on with the early release.

Tinseltown Updates Include:

• Right click menus have new snow graphics.
• URL bar auto complete menu has been re-designed with a snowman.
• Back/Forward drop down arrow has a flake behind it.
• Star graphic in URL bar is now prettier.
• Tab hover text color is now easier to see.
• Addon window has snow.
• Download window has snow.
• Preferences window has a selected text color.

If you’ve never seen I Can Haz Cheezburger, then you’re missing out.  The site sticks captions on pictures of cats and it’s extremely entertaining.

Since we have two cats, I decided to make my own Halloween LOL cat for all to enjoy!

Evil - No Costume Required v1

Evil - No Costume Required v2

There are two versions because I didn’t know which picture was better.  I think our cat, Sassy, looks more evil in v1, but v2 is a nicer picture.  Which one do you think?

Either way, Happy Halloween from Thomas & Christi!!