Message to my kids.

My beautiful son and daughter,

I found this graphic on the web and thought of you. The graphics might be a bit cheesey, but the sentiment is appropriate. I just wanted to post this so you always know how I feel.

All my love,

Dad

Paintball: Urban Warfare

I started off the Spring break vacation by taking the family for some fun at New York City Paintball (http://www.newyorkcitypaintball.com). The break was just an excuse needed to arrange an early birthday outing for my wife who, believe it or not, had been asking me for months to take her to the paintball facility since it is located right next to LaGuardia. I thought this was pretty funny since my wife is one of the least violent people I have ever known. The kids are a bit more like me. My daughter is into the martial arts and my son is a Call of Duty/first person shooter veteran. To top it off, our good friend Tone Loc was visiting from Norway, so it Continue reading “Paintball: Urban Warfare”

Thoughts on Black History Month

Black History Month is here again and I find myself reflecting on how things have changed in just a few short years. For example, the story behind the above picture is that a little Black child visited the White House wanted to know if Obama’s hair “felt like his”, so the president obliged and let him see for himself. This brought to mind an exchange that my son and I had during the last primary season in 2008, before Obama was elected.

I took my son with me to vote, and as we were in the booth, he asked if he could grow up to become President one day. Now as a Black father this was one of those pivotal moments where you have to make a decision whether to tell him the truth about the world as you believe it, or allow them to remain innocent for awhile longer by painting them a picture of how the world should be. I try to always be truthful with my children, but in this moment I paused and decided to tell him how I hoped the future would look. “Yes, you can become the President one day”.

I just never thought it would happen in my lifetime.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Launch

So last night I get in late from teaching an evening class and my son meets me at the door in damn near a panic. He tells me they are finalizing the pre-order sales for “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3” right now and we have to get to Gamestop so that we can get in line number for the 12am launch. Now keep in mind that I was hungry and tired before I started earlier teaching that evening, so at this point this is the last thing I wanted to hear. Son or not I almost told Continue reading “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Launch”

HTML 5 and CSS 3 Training Class

In order to enhance the knowledge that I acquired in January when I took the WordPress theme design class at Noble Desktop,  I decided to sign up for an HTML5 and CSS3 course. The industry is rapidly moving towards these new standards due to the advanced feature sets in HTML5 and CSS3 which allows for advanced animation, as well as for audio and video files to natively be supported in the browser without the need for third party plug-ins like Adobe’s Flash. While I didn’t feel like spending the money for the class, I needed to get up to speed on the new standards in order update the LaGuardia New Media curriculum, and to complete a much needed design update to my own web site. The class was once again held at Noble Desktop, and was once again, led by an amazing teacher named Victoria Torres. The two day course took us through the process of building an site from scratch using these new standards.

One of the unforeseen benefits of the class was that HTML 5 and CSS 3, when used in conjunction with a new mobile framework called PhoneGap, is becoming an excellent way of building mobile applications for both Android and iOS devises. PhoneGap was recently purchased by Adobe and was integrated into the latest version of Dreamweaver, release 5.5. This is a huge development for me since I can leverage our existing curriculum and begin to instruct students in the basics of mobile application develop by using PhoneGap.

The 2011 NYC Comic Con

The NYC Comic-Con was in town so the kids and I engaged in our yearly ritual. They had been looking forward to it since we went last year. The wife tagged along again for her second year. She will never admit it but I think she is starting to enjoy the madness as well. The kids had a blast as usual.

I was shocked how many people that ran into at the event that I knew from academia and business. I guess being a nerd is no longer a bad thing. The photos from the weekend can be found below….. Continue reading “The 2011 NYC Comic Con”