You are all just going to have to live with the onslaught of Disney related posts. Having just gotten back, I still have Mickey on the brain…

We went to Disney World to celebrate Margaret’s 30th birthday. Let me tell you, Disney really knows how to make your birthday feel special. And the best part is the price: free!

As you enter each of the parks, stop by Guest Services and tell them it is your birthday. They should give you a pin to put on letting everyone know that it is your birthday. Keep in mind that each of the parks (except MGM) has their own unique button, so make sure to collect them all. We were even told that Downtown Disney has their own button, but our feet hurt to much to find out where to get it from.

So now that you have this button on, what does it get you? Each Cast Member is supposed to greet you with a Happy Birthday! And sometimes you even get special treatment (we got put in the first car for Test Track at Epcot and we also got to ride with the driver on the monorail…). Our experience was that Epcot Cast Members were the most observant, as that is where Margaret got the most birthday greetings. At the other end, the Magic Kingdom was the worst where it seemed that nobody noticed her pin. Margaret thinks it was because it was hard to see on her shirt, but I think it is because the Magic Kingdom Cast Members were more frazzled than the Epcot ones.

Also, make sure that you talk to Goofy on your birthday! 8-224-2144 from any resort phone or just ask at Guest Services for them to connect you. Or for a surprise, tell the front desk at your resort and Goofy will call your room!

This one isn’t free, but the overall cost is pretty cheap. Get an autograph book and have all the characters sign it. Margaret collected 40 signatures and many birthday wishes. The only cost was to purchase the book and pen and you get a lifelong keepsake to remind you of the trip.

We utilized all the above tips on our recent trip to WDW and it made for a birthday that Margaret will never forget.

Birthday Tips gotten from wdwinfo.com

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So Disney was pushing this really cool toy to all their visitors: Pal Mickey. The basic premise is that he is a stuffed Mickey Doll, with a computer of some sort on the inside. He does the basic speaking doll thing: You squeeze him and he says stuff. But he can also do some more advanced things like play a game with you, give you some trivia, or my favorite, give you up-to-date park information.

While it is really designed for kids, I could see it being useful for adults as well. For example, I would have loved to have Pal Mickey with me on my recent trip. He could have told me when different characters are showing up for signings (so my wife could collect more autographs) and could have also told me when the wait on rides are low. Not to mention playing games with him while I’m waiting in line for 25 minutes for Space Mountain (our longest wait of the trip…).

I stopped at one of the stores on Main Street and picked him and played with him for about 30 seconds. My impressions from that 30 seconds of exposure:

• He is really hard. Not something that you would really want to snuggle up with.
• He can speak Spanish. Surprised me to squeeze him and hear a Hispanic Mickey telling me something.
  

The drawbacks to Pal Mickey: it really is designed for kids, especially in its “doll” packaging. While I think I could have gotten over carrying a Mickey Mouse doll all over Disney World, I’m not sure that all of the adults out there would agree. And he is a bit pricey (about $60). Maybe there is some way they could make the packaging (and some of the content) more suitable for adults, and also cut down the price. At $30, I would have had one, even if the packaging was nothing more than just a pager to wear on my belt.

The attached link is a detailed report from AllEars.Com on Pal Mickey. The best highlight: He surprised us when we got off of the front row of Tower of Terror by saying it was scary and asking if we could sit in the back row the next time.

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We pushed our Disney photos out to the website last night. We were able to get these done so quickly this time because we took Margaret’s iBook with us on the trip. Every night Margaret would pull the day’s photos into iPhoto and go through them, keeping good ones, cropping them to make them look better, etc. Finally, she would have a slide show prepared for me that would show me the day’s photos.

So last night we did scanned in some photos and also imported the last days worth of photos. I then used iPhotoToGallery to export the Disney pictures out to the website. It worked like a charm!

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Margaret and I made it back from Disney without a hitch. Everything was wonderful, and they did an excellent job making Margaret feel special on her 30th birthday.

I’m not going to write much here about the trip, as we hope to have a trip report (much like our France one) up in a few days. I would also expect our photos to go on-line within a day or two (check back here for an announcement!). I also saw some cool applications of technology at Disney, but I should have enough to say about those to give them all their own entry.

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So I picked up a copy of Farscape Peacekeeper Wars this week to complete my collection of Farscape DVD’s. I haven’t watched it yet (I saw it when it was broadcast last year), but I opened the box to take a look at it and was very disappointed to see nothing. Just 2 DVDs. And I took a look at what extras it has to offer and was happy to see a 30 minutes making-of documentary and Dolby 5.1 surround sound, but not much else. No commentary track, etc. I guess they were in a hurry to get it out.

Compare that to the Farscape Series DVD’s which have making-of stuff, deleted scenes, interviews with the actors, commentary tracks and all kinds of other goodies. I know the main reason I buy a DVD is for the movie/show on there, but I’ve become accustomed to having nice extras on the DVD as well . Oh well, at least I will enjoy watching the movie part…

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If there is anything I hate, it is trying to categorize things. I go into Blockbuster, and I can never find what I’m looking for because I don’t know if “Desperate Housewives” is a Comedy or a Drama. With someplace like Blockbuster, it is hard because there is only one physical thing and it can only be in one place, so you can only label it with one genre.

That problem doesn’t exist with their digital things like MP3’s and Digital Photos. Through the wonders of computer Programmers, you can apply many labels to one things and you computer program and can make it appear in all those places.

In typical database design, you would come up with all the possible attributes of an object (or at least the ones you can think of). You would then go through each of the possible attributes and see if you can enumerate all the possible values for it. For example, a DVD may have attributes like Genre, Actors, Studio, Release Year. And attributes may have values like 2001, Drama, and Universal. But you can also see that you can’t enumerate all the possible values for some attributes (there are always new Actors and Studios, and despite what late night television tells you, time keeps on marching). For these attributes, you would either spend a lot of time updating the possible values, or just give up and let it be any possible value. That is pretty much what a Tag is.

A few sites have started using Tags to allow you to categorize digital things. Flickr.com allows you to tag the photos you upload. del.icio.us allows you to tag links in a shared bookmark (Previous Post). And Technorati.com allows you to tag your blog entries. Rather than going to typical organization route (like in the previous paragraph), they don’t even bother to come up with attributes. You just come up with a handful of tags to describe the item (like 2005 DisneyWorld January Florida) and you are set. The only restriction on the words use for Tags are that they should be one word and shouldn’t be something common like “of” or “to”. And really, the only reason for the one word restriction is to make it easier on the user to enter in the tags (you don’t have to remember to put a ; in between each tag, for example).

Trying to find the items you (or someone else) has tagged is really simple. Just come up with a few possible tag names and the search engine just has to go through and find all the items that have those tags.



You can also browse the items by Tags. Flickr.com provides an interface (pictured here) that allows you to browse by Tags that have been applied to the most items. The bigger the text, the larger the number of items contained with in. You could even imagine doing this through multi-levels to find pictures from Japan taken in 2004.

Sometimes there is much power in simplicity.

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I’ve always wanted centralized bookmark. There have been many days when I’m at home at think to myself, “Damn, I wish I had remembered to bring that bookmark home from work.” And there have been a few tries at it. Firefox has a extension that allows you to keep all your bookmark the same on all your computers. Or you could keep them all on a wiki. Or you could now use del.icio.us to track your bookmarks for you.

del.icio.us is a cross-browser solution to centralized bookmarks. They give you a link that you click on when you’ve found a page that you want to bookmark. You give some brief information on the link and submit it. They also give you a page that you can access to browse your links to find that stupid bookmark you made 2 months ago (by default chronological ordering, which is how I always kept mine anyway) and also a search feature. Or for those of you who are RSS inclined, they give you an RSS feed of bookmarks, so you could see what other people are bookmarking.

The basic usage is pretty simple. But they also incorporate another feature that allows you to categorize your bookmarks (and search other peoples bookmarks) by Tags. Tagging things is a new trend in the internet content arena that I’ll spend more time discussing tomorrow.

My bookmarks can be accessed here: http://del.icio.us/billnapier

The RSS Feed of my bookmarks can be found here: http://del.icio.us/rss/billnapier

(Many thanks to Boing Boing for bringing this to my attention.)

Update: Find out more about Tagging

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The Human Clock provides a different photo for each minute of the day, and even allows you to submit your own. (from Boing Boing)

Apple Lovers (from Gizmodo)

Apple Haters (from Gizmodo)

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After hearing all the rave reviews, Margaret and I have started watching lost. She says she pretty hooked on it, but I’m still reserving judgment. It is intriguing to watch and is certainly entertaining. I’m still waiting for that one episode that just hooks me on the show. Even without being hooked, it is still interesting enough to watch every week.

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1. Farscape - The Peacekeeper Wars (DVD) on January 18, 2005
2. Serenity (Movie) in Theaters on September 30, 2005
3. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (Movie) in Theaters on May 6, 2005
4. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book) on July 16, 2005

And I guess I’m also looking forward to Episode 3 (Movie) in Theaters on May 19, 2005.

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