Aaron Roe(bot) Fulkerson Open source entrepreneur and digital viking.
About Me
I am a founder and the Chief Executive Officer of MindTouch, a popular open source business application and collaboration platform used by millions. Read more.
Ashby’s Birthweek
January 16, 2010 — Aaron FulkersonAshby had more of a 4th birthweek than a 4th birthday. We took her to Disneyland, but she also emphatically asked for a birthday party with her girlfriends from pre-school. We had a small gathering in Pioneer park for her on Thursday.
Independence Hall
November 22, 2009 — Aaron Fulkerson
Tara performing a cartwheel in front of Independence Hall on the lawn of the Liberty Bell.
Ashby’s Multi-sport Class
October 18, 2009 — Aaron FulkersonAshby has been participating in the Little Rascalz multi-sport class on Tuesdays at Pioneer Park in Mission Hills. This has been wonderful for her. Thus far she has played La Crosse, Baseball, Soccer, Tennis and Field Hockey.
The above photo is from her last class. Prior to this class starting her and I were participating in our own Greco-Roman wrestling session on the grass. After we had paused, Ashby stumbled into the top of my head when I was looking down. She busted her lip wide open. Blood was everywhere. The other parents didn’t know we had stopped wrestling and it was caused by her stumbling. They only saw her bloody face and tears and had been witness to our shenanigans for the previous 15 minutes. Needless to say, their looks were telling. I felt like a total ass.
Anyway, I got the blooding down to a trickle and offered her to go home. She wasn’t having it. She immediately got out on the field as soon as the coaches started and got down to some field hockey.
Today, when she saw the above photo she said: “I’m holding my lip like that because it still hurt.” She’s such a bad ass.
And yes, I do recommend Little Rascalz.They have eleven locations in San Diego county. 
Mission Bay Park
October 11, 2009 — Aaron FulkersonBubbles are fun to photograph. Children with bubbles is even better.
We attended a birthday party at Mission Bay Park. I haven’t been to that playground in over a year. I remember taking Ashby here as a very small child. Time flies by so fast.
Surfrider Organized Beach Cleanup
August 22, 2009 — Aaron Fulkerson
Ashby (my 3.5 year old daughter) is amazing. Of course, if you read my blog, you already know this. One aspiration I have for my daughter is that she grow up with compassion for her fellow *man. After some thought, I’ve determined one way to achieve this is by spending time with her engaged in community work. To this end, Ashby and I will be attending the September 5th La Jolla Shores beach cleanup that is organized by the Surfrider Foundation.
Participants should meet by the main lifeguard tower. The cleanup takes place from 9am until 11am.
All volunteers are welcome to participate and must sign a liability waiver, but volunteers under 18 MUST have a parent or guardian sign the waiver before the minor can participate. (Please note the NEW waiver as of August 2009)
Click Here for the beach cleanup Waiver Form.
Parenting is awesome. Here is Ashby ne…
April 18, 2009 — Aaron FulkersonParenting is awesome.
Here is Ashby near my office with a penguin she adopted that was meant for Roe and was given by Steve and Brigette. We were having a wonderful father – daughter Saturday a couple weeks ago.
Brother and big sis.
Laaaaaadieeesss….
Awesomeness
Enjoy. Aqua Pros Swimming School
December 15, 2008 — Aaron Fulkerson
Ashby has been attending swimming classes for a few months. She goes once a week with her mother. Ashby loves it even though her instructor pushes her to do things she would rather not. I had the unique pleasure of attending one of these swimming classes today. It was great! Ashby was almost as excited to have me there as I was to be there.
As for the quality of the swim school. I can testify that the staff were friendly and professional, the facilities well equipped and clean. Moreover, the cost is significantly lower than other schools Tara assessed.
The King's Highway: El Camino Real
December 13, 2008 — Aaron Fulkerson
Ricky Montalvo tweeted last Thursday that he had an idea for an El Camino Real photo project. Recently I too had been thinking about the King’s Highway after visiting a local San Diego Venture Capitalist; specifically, about the significance of the highway to the colonizing Spanish, the rich history associated with it and how it has changed so dramatically over the last 239 years. I thought it would be nice to travel the highway over a series a trips and shoot photos. So, when I saw Ricky’s tweet I direct messaged him a note and asked what he was up to.
Ricky Montalvo wrote:
Between So. SF & San Carlos, on El Camino Real are some of the best retail exteriors and motels I’ve seen. The idea I has was to simply go down that particular section of ECR and photograph the modern w/ the not so modern. Maybe even a “day in the life of” type journal.
Example: http://flickr.com/photos/rickymontalvo/2917159913/in/set-72157607781991439/
Although this is a processed image of mine, I’d like to approach it with more of a neutral look and color. Almost like this: http://www.lizkuball.com/southofcota/work/southofcota_13.jpg
I think you could do the same with your particular section down in SD and then we can publish it and ask the Flickr Community to fill in their parts, since ECR duns over 100miles of urban sprawl.
Thoughts?
-RickyNow, Ricky is an amazing multimedia artist and photographer. I, on the other hand, am not. I’m not afraid of embarrassing myself. So, I responded to Ricky with:
That’s awesome! I’ve thought for some time I would like to shoot up and down El Camino b/c it’s quintessentially CA. I had some ideas about the bells, but I like your idea better. Let’s do that. So the point to focus on the particularly urban sections, correct?
Ricky’s final response:
Correct. Nothing OFF El Camino, try to do a contrast of new and old. Get traffic, shops, motels etc. Give it that sense of urban sprawl and 70′s vintage with modern strip malls.
I’m going to take a stab at it this weekend. Let’s compare/colaborate via Flickr. I’ll create a private Flickr Group for us.
-Ricky
I asked Roy Kim, MindTouch VP of Engineering, to join me and Ashby (in case you’re new, that’s my [almost] 3 year old daughter) and we set out this morning. The El Camino Real begins in San Diego at Mission San Diego de Alcalá. This was the first Spanish Mission in California and was founded in 1769. While El Camino Real starts at the mission, in what is now called Old Town, San Diego, the highway breaks up quite a lot in San Diego County and doesn’t actually take shape until past La Jolla near Caramel Valley.
What we photographed will surely be very different from what Ricky shoots this weekend, but we had to capture the start of El Camino Real. We started at the Father Junipero Serra museum in Presidio park. The highway is supposed to begin at Taylor St. and Presidio St., but we found a bell, which are used to mark El Camino Real, above this spot closer to the museum. This must be the southern most bell on the Kings Highway.
After shooting around the Father Serra museum we shot in Old Town itself. Now, the fact of the matter is, today this isn’t El Camino Real, but the shots in Old Town were taken pretty much where the original El Camino Real would have been. The next outing I plan to shoot on El Camino Real near Caramel Valley, which is a suburban landscape with rolling hills and canyons.
I shoot with a Nikon d40x that has a stock 18-55mm lens. The Nikon d40x is a decent camera, but the lens I use is not that nice. Ashby shoots with a Fisher Price Kids’ Digital camera. I do not recommend this kids’ camera. Other than it being nearly indestructible the thing takes terrible photos and is actually difficult to use. For kids, I think a key chain digital camera is a better choice.
The conditions were pretty bad for photography. It was 68 degrees F and overcast with occasional drizzle. Alas, I wasn’t going to change plans on Ashby and we had a lot of fun. Ashby took it all very seriously. She framed her photos and was very excited to show me the shots. “Look at the steps I took a photo of.” “I took a picture of some leaves. Look. Look.” It was frickin’ awesome.
My Photos:
Ashby’s Photos:
For the record, Roy is a much more experienced photographer than myself; so, I’m interested in seeing his shots. And most of all, I can’t wait to see what Ricky comes up with.
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Valentine's Day
February 15, 2008 — Aaron FulkersonTara and I celebrated a late V-day tonight. I know I’m supposed to say “Tara and me”, but I prefer to say “Tara and I” so piss off. We did a late V-day because getting a babysitter on V-day is challenging. I had a great time tonight, but the best part of V-day was taking Ashby out yesterday. Look at this:
And this:
Need I say more? Other than rainbow legs rule.
Ashby was so happy to go out for V-day with her daddy. She felt so special and pretty in her V-day outfit. I wish I could help her feel this way everyday until her last.
Tara and I took Ashby for some bangers and chips at Shakespeare’s pub. She was most pleased to be with her daddy in her heart outfit and sandals that Mi-Mi (grandma) supplied her. Tonight T and I went to a pleasant Lebanese restaurant and then went out for drinks. Ashby was with Michelle, our babysitter, whom she really loves. I just checked on her sleeping in her heart pajamas. So sweet…
Tweets for 2007-12-31
December 31, 2007 — Aaron Fulkerson- There is this strange smell of ozone today in downtown san diego. It smells like ozone..or maybe brake pads. Very odd. #
- This must be the cause of the funky smell in downton: http://tinyurl.com/ynu2s9 #
- Man, it really stinks like chemicals or brake pads downtown. This can’t be healthy. Tara and Ashby aren’t going for their run outside. #
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Map my vacation, please?
October 28, 2007 — Aaron FulkersonIf someone wants to make a useful “Web 2.0″ application I’ve got a cool idea for you. Make it really easy for me to map my trip route, then with drag-and-drop ease place my Flickr photos on the map, add notes, and save the map in a re-usable format (KML, I guess). As a ‘++’ make it easy for me to review stuff along the way. Oh, and make each component in decomposable, clean re-usable formats (atom, kml, hReview, etc).
I just got home from a week long vacation with Ashby and Tara. Of course, we took photos the whole time. Every day I shot a dozen or so photos to Flickr and Facebook from my iPhone. I was moblogging so much in fact that Brett sent me this hilarious plea for assistance in makinig my moblogging less noisy in Facebook. He said he loved me, but I had turned his Facebook into the Fulkersonbook. Check out Brett’s Facebook news view:
OMFG, ridiculous. I thought Facebook provided a digest of these things! Apparently adjusting the Notes feed slider in facebook doesn’t effect the mobile notes. Facebook needs to fix this. Anyway, I felt like a spammer. I’m shocked no one else has complained. I suspect you’ve all just blacklisted me.
Well, I couldn’t figure out a way to prevent my moblogging from being so noisy so I cut back on moblogging to facebook and now I shoot most of my photos to Flickr only. Back to my cool idea.Prior to leaving for my vacation I mapped the route. Along the route I shot photos using my digital camera and my iPhone. The latter, as mentioned, I sent directly to Flickr and Facebook with the occasional note. The bulk of the photos didn’t get uploaded until I got home. Upon my return I wanted to blog about the trip and I thought a cool thing would be to provide a map with:
- trip route
- replete with geotagged photos
- , notes
- and maybe even some reviews.
We packed groceries and didn’t eat out much, but it would be cool if I had provided the occasional hReview of the few restaurants we did stop in as well as of the campground we split from in favor of a crappy motel room that had a great view in Morro Bay. If it were easy to generate hReviews I would do it more often. Especially if I could do it on the spot.
One could fulfill my dream by mashing a few services from different providers. Google Mapes, Flickr, Big Tribe… By providing some connective tissue it shouldn’t be too hard to come up with something really useful. All weekend I’ve scoured the Internet for an easy way to do this and every service I’ve found either doesn’t meet the aforementioned requirements or is too time consuming. What I found was that Greasemonkey scripts can make geotagging photos easier, but I can not find a way to easily map photos, with notes, and route. I think I found a way to do this by paying, but this service was borderline unusable, and I’m still not clear how easy it was to map routes, or if I could. I also had to re-upload my photos instead of using those on Flickr. Lame. Also, there was a fee and I’m not going to pay until I know it works. Then I might pay Flickr prices. Other alternatives didn’t allow me to display only my stuff and again routes were an issue. The only option that did allow me to do everything I wanted, I think, was such a pain the ass I’m not going to do it. It involved Greasemonkey scripts, Google Earth, and some serious hackery. I don’t have time for that!
Optimally I would have a service that I could use to map my trip. While traveling I could map photos based on my location. Use a mobile app for creating reviews along the way; otherwise I probably won’t review. And then I could polish it all off with additional photos when I get home. This would be killer, right?
Dopplr or some of these other travel services should implement this. I would then actually want to use the service. Currently I can’t possibly muster the time or energy to waste. Mind you, I’m the target audience for services like this being I typically travel a couple times a month for work.
Oh, here’s my vacation photos. I suspect this blog post is the closest I’m going to come to realizing my dream of a digital vacation scrap book with a map interface.
Hot Dog
March 23, 2007 — Aaron FulkersonThe greatest thing in the world is snuggling up with my 15 month old daughter, Ashby, in the morning and watching TV. Unfortunately the only time she doesn’t mind snuggling is when we watch the ‘stupid box’. There is a new Mickey Mouse Clubhouse television show on the Disney channel. It’s awful. Neither Tara nor I can stand it, but Ashby loves it. It’s all computer graphics. At the end of every episode there is this insipid song they sing, which sticks to your brain like starch on rice. You can’t shake it! Allow me to share:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wePMYM4av6Q]
“We’re splitting the scene, we’re full of beans.” Huh?
