Vedders Chronicles » Greg’s Ramblings

A Visit To the Former Grand Rapids Public Museum

Gregory Vedders — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 01:20:39 +0000

Today we visited Michigan – Land of Riches which is an art exhibit inspired by the spaces and exhibits left behind inside the former Grand Rapids Public Museum. I think it is safe to say that everyone should check this one out. (I apologize for the picture quality in some of these shots, the lighting within the museum was very poor).

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via web from gregvedders’s posterous

Detour Around the Fix On I-196

Gregory Vedders — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 00:26:47 +0000

With the closure of I-196, Nathaniel and I needed to find a new route to his school in the morning. While our usual route isn’t actually closed, it is an unofficial detour for the construction project. With a little creativity, Nathaniel and I have crafted a path that avoids most of the delays and actually comes in very close to the travel time of our usual route. Without further ado, here is our detour around the fix in I-196.

Name:		Track 002
Date:		Apr 12, 2010 7:21 am
Map: (valid until May 12, 2010)		Google Maps
Distance:		7.71 miles
Elapsed Time:		20:32.8
Avg Speed:		22.5 mph
Max Speed:		41.8 mph
Avg Pace:		02′ 40″ per mile
Min Altitude:		505 ft
Max Altitude:		705 ft
Start Time:		2010-04-12T11:21:54Z
Start Location:
	Latitude:	42.966471° N
	Longitude:	85.694251° W
End Location:
	Latitude:	42.994102° N
	Longitude:	85.602305° W

Download GPX

A Spring Walk downtown

Gregory Vedders — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 01:37:07 +0000

A warm March evening inspired the Vedders Family to take a walk down town. The boys started out on their scooters and Mackenzie slept in her stroller while Monica and I walked behind. Other than some tired feet (and some blistered feet ) everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. For our first real walk outdoors we did pretty well, 2.27 miles in 59 minutes. Thanks to Motion-X GPS, some stats from our walk are listed below.

Name:		Track 001
Date:		Mar 31, 2010 6:20 pm
Map: (valid until Apr 30, 2010)		Google Maps
Distance:		2.27 miles
Elapsed Time:		59:00.6
Avg Speed:		2.3 mph
Max Speed:		6.4 mph
Avg Pace:		26′ 03″ per mile
Min Altitude:		404 ft
Max Altitude:		666 ft
Start Time:		2010-03-31T22:20:47Z
Start Location:
	Latitude:	42.966509° N
	Longitude:	85.694228° W
End Location:
	Latitude:	42.966548° N
	Longitude:	85.694108° W

Download GPX

Halloween – 2009

Gregory Vedders — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:45:10 +0000

The Vedders Family had a very busy Halloween Day. The day started with a Boy Scout Popcorn sale at Lowe’s on Plainfield Ave. The weather was cold and windy, so not much popcorn was sold, except for a nice couple from Walker who drove all the way to buy some popcorn (thanks Papa and Nani).

After the popcorn sale, we returned home so the boys could play (and to top off Miss Mackenzie). Mommy and Mackenzie then went off to the hospital to visit Noah Andrew, born the day before.

Next, it was time for lunch (actually breakfast for lunch) at Nani and Papa’s house. After lunch, the boys carved their pumpkins. Mackenzie then showed off the first of her many Halloween costumes (she had so many, we ran out of Halloween to wear them).

From Nani and Papa’s house we stopped by Grandma Vedders’ house where the Great Pumpkin had left treat bags for Nathaniel, Zachary, and Mackenzie. The boys then played with their new Imaginext toys from Fisher-Price for a little while.

Because of the cold weather, we decided to try our luck Trick-or-Treating at Woodland Mall. By the time we got there, roughly 1/2 hour after their Halloween Hoopla began, they had all but run out of treats. Though disappointed, we roamed the mall gathering the few remaining treats to be had amongst the hundreds of other people attempting to do the same.

After we had enough of the chaos at Woodland, we decided to eat dinner at Taco Bell. Have to love the prices at Taco Bell, the four of us ate for well under $10.

The final activity of the evening was a visit to the City of Walker’s Fire Station Number 2 in Standale. They had their annual Halloween Open House with free treats and tours of the fire trucks. Nathaniel and Zachary had a lot of fun climbing in and out of the fire engines.

When all was said and done, I think Mackenzie enjoyed her first Halloween and so did everyone else.

Zachary & Nathaniel At the Fire Station

Mackenzie Smiles In Her Winne the Pooh Costume

Announcing A Change In the Lineup

Gregory Vedders — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 17:30:47 +0000

The Vedders Family is proud to announce a change in our lineup. Be sure to checkout http://www.b2b09.com for more information.

SayTweet

Gregory Vedders — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 02:14:12 +0000

A while back I stumbled across a site called SayTweet which allows you the ability to embed your current Twitter status (and others) over the top of user pictures. For the last several weeks every time I visited this site diffrent pieces were broken (image wouldn’t upload, pictures wouldn’t show, etc…), but to my surprise today it just worked. From the site:

Create a Twitter badge that shows your updates on a picture! Upload a picture and then tag some Twitter users in that picture. Voila − that’s all it takes to make a dynamic mashup. Give it a try, and then share the badge!”

I highly recommend this novel site, it really is worth checking out.

From the Adventures of Nate and Zach

Gregory Vedders — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 23:08:25 +0000

If you’ve ever wanted to tweak your photos to add interesting effects, but don’t have the time (or desire for that mater) to master Photoshop, now there is a site for you. BeFunky is an online photo editing tool that promises to offer online photo editing in a simple, easy to use format. From the BeFunky site: “BeFunky Photo Effects allow everyday people to easily create photographically rich and artistic results from their digital images without the need for any technical knowledge. These “one-click” photo effect options produce desired results effortlessly and each effect comes with the option to make simple adjustments.” Be sure to check out BeFunky to add artisitc effects to your own photos.

Migrating Sites and Photo Galleries

Gregory Vedders — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 21:43:35 +0000

Over the next few days to weeks, you may notice some changes to the Vedders Chronicles. I am in the process of transitioning the site from a WordPress hosted site to Blogger. You may be asking yourself why I would do such a thing, but really the answer is quite simple. For the first part, I am trying to simplify how posts are added and maintained on the blog. In the past, the site hasn’t always been updated as often as it probably should be. One of the major reasons being that I always had to make sure that my software, plug-ins and themes were up-to-date. Without the need to maintain the software myself, it should become easier for me to stay on top of updates for the site. Gone are the days of worrying about software exploits in my installation of WordPress or any of the third party plug-ins that I may have installed. I have also noticed some sluggishness in accessing the Vedders Chronicles in my WordPress install. In a time test comparison the load time of my DreamHost hosted WordPress install takes a full 10 seconds to load the main page. Similar load time comparisons with Blogger have showed that the load time is somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 seconds.

Due to Blogger limitations to prevent spamming, I am slowly migrating my old posts from my WordPress install to Blogger. If all goes well, I should have everything up and running by the middle of next week.

In addition to the Blogger move, I am also in the process of transitioning to Google’s Picasa Web Albums for my photo hosting. I’ve always liked hosting on Yahoo’s Flickr, but now that AT&T no longer pays for a pro account for me and Picasa now supports face recognition, I’m feeling more comfortable hosting my photo galleries at Picasa Web Albums. For the last few weeks, I’ve put the same photos on Flickr and Picasa Web Albums as a comparison to see which site I like better. I’ve found that the Picasa Web Album is much easier to organize and viewers of my site find it easier to navigate as well. The full migration of photos to Picasa Web Albums will probably take longer than the migration of the Vedders Chronicles.

At any rate, I appreciate your patronage and hope to see you back soon at the new and improved Vedders Chronicles.

Letter From Santa

Gregory Vedders — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 13:00:26 +0000

Merry Christmas everyone!

The Vedders Family had a quite a surprise when we awoke today. Down stairs waiting by an empty plate of Christmas Cookies we found a note from Santa himself. It read:

Merry Christmas Nathaniel and Zachary! The cookies you left for me were very yummy in my tummy…I can tell that you made them fresh for me just before I arrived. I know you two have had trouble listening to Mom and Dad a time or two this past year, but for the most part you were very good. I know you guys will work on it for next year. Thank you for taking the time to visit me at River Town Crossings Mall. I really enjoyed talking to you. For being so good this past year, I’ve brought you just what you wanted…Zachary, a guitar and crash car and for Nathaniel some animal daycare things. Just so you know, the blue paper and the green and white Santa paper are Nathaniel’s presents and the green paper and the red Santa paper are Zachary’s presents. Well boys I have to run, I’ll be sure to say hi to Rudolf and all my reindeer for you. Keep up the good work and I’ll see you next year.

Love,

Mr. C

That Mr. C, you really can’t get anything past him. It’s almost as though he sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, and he knows if you’ve been bad or good. All I can say is, be good for goodness sake!

Knapp Charter Academy’s 2008 Holiday Program

Gregory Vedders — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:03:05 +0000

Nathaniel preformed with his classmates from Knapp Charter Academy on Monday December 15. This part of the program featured the first, second, and third graders at the school. Nathaniel and his fellow classmates did a superb job. I must apologize in advance for the poor video quality, the lighting was not overly conducive for recording. At any rate, enjoy!