Your first visit has to be to http://purplemartin.org/ as this web site is dedicated to the conservation of the Purple Martin. The site maintains printable documentation on to attract Martins as well as a catalog of useful purchases.

A book list is below…

Reference List
1. Allen, R. W. 1952. A study of the breeding biology of the Purple Martin (Progne subis). American Midland Naturalist
47(3):606-665.
2. Baicich, P. J. and C. J. Harrison. 1997. A guide to the nests, eggs, and nestling of North American birds. Second edition.
Academic Press, San Diego, California, USA.
3. Bent, A. C. 1942. Life histories of North American flycatchers, larks, swallows, and their allies. United States National
Museum Bulletin. 179:83-91.
4. Brown, C. R. 1997. Purple Martin. A. Poole and F. Gill, editors. The Birds of North America. No. 287. The American
Ornithologists' Union and The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
5. Dinsmore, J. J., K. H. Thomas, D. Koenig, C. P. Petersen, and M. D. Roosa. 1984. Iowa Birds. Iowa State University Press,
Ames, Iowa, USA.
6. Finlay, J. C. 1975. Nesting of Purple Martins in natural cavities and in man-made structures in Alberta. Canadian Field-
Naturalist 89(3):454-455.
7. Kendeigh, S. C. 1941. Birds of a prairie community. Condor 43(4):165-174.
8. Lund, T. 1977-1978. The Purple Martin in the western United Stares, with special reference to Oregon. Oregon Birds (3):5-10.
9. Macnamara, C. 1917. The Purple Martin. Ottawa Naturalist 31(5-6):49-55.
10. Rising, J. D. 1974. The status and faunal affinities of the summer birds of western Kansas. University of Kansas Science
Bulletin 50(8):347-388.
11. Stewart, R. E. 1975. Breeding birds of North Dakota. Harrison Smith, Lund Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
12. Wolinski, R. A. 1995. Attracting martins: everything you need to know to attract purple martins to a new colony site. Bird
Watcher's Digest 17(4):80-84.
13. Ziegler, G. F., Jr. 1923. Notes on a Purple Martin colony. Auk 40:431-436.

At the urging of a friend I’m trying out a new online game called Khan Wars.  I’m not really into it, but I’ll let it be for now.

Over the past few years I've been asked a great many things about my ability to keep up with the latest happenings in the software development world.  For example I started learning programming with Pascal in the early 90s, then I moved to Visual Basic.  There wasn't a big fuss over me not really knowing Visual Basic when I took this assignment, it was just understood that I would buy a book and the next week I'd be programming.  No, it's not like Neo in the Matrix when he first learns Kung Fu...people just don't learn that way.  But what people are good at is taking something similar and then synthesizing those concepts to another situation.  I've often heard that an "if" statement is an "if" statement no matter what the language.  Sure it may have brackets or parenthesis around the phrase, but the concept is still the same.  Therefore, if you understand the basics of a programming language, many other languages are easily within your grasp.

Fast forward to an even more ironic day, when I was working for a training company teaching web development (originally I'd been hired to teach Visual Basic) and we just went through a round of lay offs.  Management was showing a slide deck of the "new" organization when my name appeared not only by the web development instruction team but also under a team which I had real world exposure but had not dreamt of teaching.  True to the cause, I taught the course in less than two weeks.

So how'd I learn all the information?  I have to admit every day I read at least one article related to technology.  After the course of a decade these small commitments add up to thousands of articles read and a huge breadth of knowledge acquired.  But I've been able to go even farther this year.  I started listening to Podcasts of software development gurus as well as management gurus on my drive into work.  This allows me about an extra hour of learning that was normally spent on the senseless rants of Kansas City disc jockeys.

In summary, I’m offering a few methods to maximize your learning potential.  First, you just have to display the guts to learn (pick up the book).  Second, put yourself into situations where you have no choice but to learn.  And lastly, find ways to build knowledge both cumulatively, and in your down time.

Good Luck and Happy Learning!

I'm attempting something new tonight.  I've been wanting to add code samples to my web site but haven't had much success with most methods.  Screen shots look the prettiest, but don't try it unless you want a whole lot of readers ticked off about not being able to copy and paste your code.  My dream is to be able to easily post code samples and accept comments and suggestions. 

The magic post that pushes my blog into the stratosphere is posted at the following link.

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/BestCodeSyntaxHighlighterForSnippetsInYourBlog.aspx

My wife is an amazing woman, who's quickly becoming a Geekette.  You know the type...always helping family members with computer problems, converting Word 2007 docs to Word '95 and still cooking dinner by 6:00.  I'm afraid it's going to take some serious convincing to get my wife to wear it out in public!

The shirt was a handout from Microsoft's Professional Developer's Conference, among other cool SWAG.

My Dad informed me of the emblem for Parkinson's Disease over the Thanksgiving Holiday.  This grass roots campaign has my full support and my desire to elevate this emblem to national recognition is high.  I'm taking my first step by posting this picture and adding a link to my personal blog, with the hopes that my readers will do the same.  Details about the creation of this symbol can be found here:  http://pdtulip.com/

Lily Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park is a small lake with some nice trout fishing available.  The trail around the lake branches off in a couple places, including a 500 foot jaunt up a small mountain.  My kids particularly like that mountain as it’s an easy climb that will make any five year old feel like an accomplished mountain man. 

My first visit in 2007 didn’t yield any indication as to why the lake would be called Lily Lake…last year that all changed.  I found a small patch of purple, blooming lilies near the water’s edge.

 

 

 

On a lonely morning at Lily Lake, outside of Estes Park, Colorado this little guy was the only one shreiking about.  Even the usual variety of ducks were calm, but this guy had something to say to everyone.  I really didn't want to get too close as this tough bird, was willing to take on anybody.  I stayed safely away with my 85-300 telescoping lense maxed out on distance. 

Funny thing about this photo is that the subject isn't really cute, dramatic or inspiring, just ticked off that someone's even around.  Reminds me of another web site that I visit from time to time... www.despair.com  Along those lines, what would be a good title for this picture? 

Sometimes pictures just line themselves up right. This is one of those photos where kids just jump into an activity and there's no wrong way to shoot it. This photo was again taken at the Deana Rose Homestead in the Milking Barn. No way would this kids' Grandpa let him milk a cow like that, but what really makes this pic special is the little girl just staring on. This is one of those pictures that just makes people smile.

Taken with a Canon EOS 10D.

• Shutter Speed: 1/30 sec.
• Lens Aperture: F/4
• Focal Length: 17mm
• ISO Speed: ISO-100
• No Flash
• Exposure Compensation -1 step

UPDATE:  In hindsight, I wish I would have had a faster ISO and that would have given me more light and definitely no exposure compensation!

Taking decents photos of large mountainscapes is difficult for a couple of reasons.  First, is the tendency is to have a poor sky, all bleached out or even bright white.  This can be an easy $30 fix with a neutral density filter.  With my 17-40mm lense (the glass portion is actually 77mm) I was able to obtain a nice blue sky and still maintain nice color on the trees.  Another trick is to meter off of the foreground then set the stage for the picture.  This photo could use some work with contrast on the rocks in the foreground, but I find the pool reflection gives this shot some extra feel.

Photo Specifications:

Shutter Speed:  1/125 sec
Lens Aperture: F/8
Focal Length: 17mm
ISO-100
Exposure Compensation 0 step