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Since going full-time as an iOS developer, I have worked from home exclusively. Sometimes I am asked why I am not open to travel. Beyond personal reasons like wanting to be home to spend time with my family, the most important reason is that my home office is designed for maximum productivity. My primary machine is a 2013 27" iMac with 32 GB of RAM. I use two external 27" LED Cinema Displays - one in portrait orientation - and I have a 15" Retina MacBook Pro open and running all of the time also. With this setup I can get a lot done very quickly. If I was to travel with just the MacBook Pro, it would significantly reduce my productivity. Simply put, my clients get the best return on their investment in my time when I work at this desk.

Am a pretty happy Canon Rebel owner but loved this article about the camera wars between Canon and Nikon over the years. After reading the article, scrappy Canon reminds me a bit of Samsung in copying a great product and then innovating quickly to become a strong competitor. One eye-opening factoid: Nikon made the optics / bomb sights in the Japanese planes that bombed Pearl Harbor.

I am backing a new project at Kickstarter called “THE 10-YEAR HOODIE: Built for Life, Backed for a Decade!” The company making the hoodie is called Flint & Tender, an excellent American company that makes all of its products in the United States.

There was some kerfluffle today about telecommuting. Yahoo’s new CEO, Marissa Mayer, has recently banned employees from working from home. Apparently, she believes that working from home decreases productivity.

Looking back, it's hard to believe I was already a long-time subscriber to Odyssey magazine at 9 1/2 years of age. I knew all of my constellations, stars, galaxies, and various planetary mission. I always enjoyed the artwork submission section - usually filled with amazing drawings by high school age students - and finally came up with a "new" idea for a submission: I would create a picture by coloring and cutting out pieces of a space scene and pasting them on black cardboard paper.

This brings back a few memories. I had forgotten there were so many variants on the "Choose Your Own Adventure" concept. Am thinking a few of these, or at least the "young reader" incarnations, would make for interesting bedtime reading for the boys.

There is a hidden war being waged on dads everywhere this Christmas. Thousands of attractively packaged toys, delivered by that sneakiest of moles - Santa Claus - secretly contain Weapons of Patience Annihilation (WPAs).

I did pretty good on my New Year's resolutions in 2012. I only made two of them:

This is the lightswitch plate I had in my bedroom when I was a boy. It was handpainted by Corinne Ficek, a friend of our family. I no longer live at home but my mom sent this along as a keepsake, or, as I like to think of it, an heirloom for the next deserving nerd in my family.