Last weekend we went to Squire's Castle. I remember going there when I was a kid, so I wanted to take my kids there at least once.

My bet is we'll go again since we live in Mayfield Village which is just a hop, skip, and jump from the Cleveland Metropark's North Chagrin Reservation. Check out the map here: PDF Map

I also posted a Photo Album. Check it out if you want.

I first saw it over at TheRegister, but is is also on Slashdot and CNN, but it appears that Japan is looking for NASA's help on developing a supersonic passgenger airplane using scramjet technology(Wikipedia).

Now, I didn't really follow it but I seem to recall some concern over continued funding for NASA's Glenn Research Center. Considering that one of the areas of technologies that GRC is expert in is aeronautics, I wonder if anybody from there is actively courting JAXA. Or perhaps that type of international cooperative project is beyond the scope of what Glenn can pursue, but it strikes me as a great opportunity.

Particularly since the BBC is reporting that the Bank of Japan is reportedly expected to revise its estimate of the Japanese economy to "expanding". That will be the first time in 15 years that the Japanese economy will have that positive of an assessment. Knowing that and the fact that Japan has money, and lots of it, I would be trying to snag that deal. Then again, I am interested in anything Japan so take that with a grain of salt.

Just a thought....

A few days ago, I posted that Japan is wooing NASA to help them build a scramjet and suggested they pursue that as a business/funding opportunity. In today's Plain Dealer, accessible at Cleveland.com in this multi-page article, the Glenn Research Center apparently has closed a deal to help develop a new space vehicle.

This is obviously great news for Cleveland and according to the paper there are more announcements on the way. I still think they should be going after the Japan deal too.

As I wait for the Cavs game to start, my daughter showed me an article in the PD entitled "Endangered dance: Companies struggle for patrons, solvency". It is a three page(on the website) article about the difficulty NEO is having maintaining some kind of presence of Ballet companies and/or performances.

This, of course, hits close to home for us. Elly is a ballerina in training and had the opportunity to perform in ABT's performance of Le Corsair in March. With the cancellation of the ballet series put on by the Playhouse, the halt in performances by the Ohio Ballet, makes us concerned about the advantage of being in Cleveland. Reality is we were ecstatic when we arrived in NEO to discover that Elly would have a chance to audition for these professional performances. It was something that was not even conceivable in Okinawa.

Now it appears there is not much advantage of being in Cleveland, at least in this respect.

Chris has a great post at Tech Futures. I'll need to take the time to re-read it and think about it.

• The So-Called Knowledge Economy

Yesterday, Arisa posted about finding a Robin's blue eggshell (in Japanese of course), which of course she didn't believe was a shell from a bird's egg at first. A couple of days ago, via BFD, Ron Copfer posts a picture of a deer, and to my amazement a picture of a bald eagle in downtown Cleveland. One of the things that has really struck me about living in Cleveland, well okay, the 'burbs, is the amount of wildlife that you see on a daily basis.

While not nearly as dramatic as Ron's post, I have decided to do a series of posts on the wildlife that we encounter here in Northeast Ohio. The first picture is of a robin, spurred by my wife's post about the robin's blue eggshell that she found. I remember my mom telling me that when robins show up, spring is around the corner. While I was off in Japan, I had completely forgotten about robins.

One of the things I have always liked about living in Northeast Ohio is the easy access to nature. I grew up in Shaker Heights so had easy access to Shaker Lakes. Now I live in Mayfield Village with real easy access to the Cleveland Metropark in this area. When we first got here, I stayed at my Mom's place and we would see 5 or 6 deer every morning in the back. Which of course the kids thought was fascinating.

In fact, one of the reasons the ended up with us moving to Okinawa was the lack of any serious nature in Tokyo. Having grown up with easy access to very nice natural settings, the lack of green in Tokyo got to me. And by luck, there was enough business reasons for me to move to Okinawa where we lived a 10 minute walk from the beach. But Okinawa is also sub-tropical so we had geckos, snakes, mongoose and fruit bats. One of the things that I noticed this spring is the difference in birds.

Over time I hope to post about the other wildlife we find here.

The other day, George Nemeth posted over at BFD about an email he received about an individual that setup a NEO blog aggregator site. It is not a bad site, and although the individual in question says that he is doing it pro-bono, he does work for a web design company which suggests ulterior motives to me, regardless of whether the that site per se is pro-bono. Not that that is a bad thing.

I actually remember IM'ing with George while I was still in Okinawa about a similar idea. I even set up site that basically did the same thing. This was almost a year ago. I took a little time the other day to reset it up, under the new neohawk domain: http://planet-neo.neohawk.org. It was, and is, really just a test and does not have the full NEO blogroll. Just a few of the one's I have in my rss reader.

I never really spent much time customizing it or building it up more, largely because I have a RSS reader and BFD does a great job of directing me to interesting posts and allowing commenting. And BFD is already established as sort of, if not the, at least one of the premier blog sites for NEO. What I like about BFD is the introductions that George and others give, and the commenting. What I had set up was really just a aggregator, on the web instead of on my PC.

I used a python based software called PlanetPlanet (Open Source of course). It takes about 15 minutes to set up, apart from listing all of the sites to be parsed. Even now, the planet-neo site is really just out of the box, default layout etc. And it'll probably stay that way. Interestingly enough, I re-set this up the day that George posted, but I noticed that Jeremy Smith over at Case has set up a PlanetPlanet test for Case's blog: http://planet.case.edu/beta/. The real "planet" for Case is at: http://planet.case.edu/. I am curious as to what the "real planet" for Case is using....

FWIW, I have no problems with what the guy in Pittsburgh is doing. More power to him. Reality is though, I won't be registering, nor using it. Just a personal preference, but I would rather see George or MeetTheBloggers do it. Regardless, I have my own planet...

I have a vague recollection of either reading or talking to somebody about seeing a wild turkey in the 'burbs around Cleveland. At the time, I really didn't believe it and promptly forgot about it. Yesterday, after Arisa and I visited Elly's participation in the Senior Project Performance at the Cleveland School of Dance, we were headed home, when I was forced to recall that conversation/reading of wild turkeys in the area:

We were driving back on Monticello near Lee Road when we saw this turkey. I am assuming it is wild, although it could simply be an escapee. Unfortunately, by the time we realized what it was we were already passed it. Luckily, we hit a red light probably about 50 yards down, and were able to grab a couple of pictures. Unfortunately, in the rush to get a picture, we didn't get the best shots, and the one above is the best of the batch.