Hope everyone out there has a safe and wonderful Independence Day here in 2009. For the many of you riding, may all your routes have tailwinds and be dominated by downhills. For all you non-cyclists, why are you non-cyclists? But really, hope everyone has a safe and restful day and ends the day with the same number of digits as your started out with.

In the spirit of the holiday tomorrow here in the United States, here are two links thanks to the wonderful and useful blog, Lifehacker regarding the 4th of July. One has a slew of beautiful wallpaper images capturing fireworks displays. The other link gives you tips on how to capture some of your own images suitable for desktop wallpaper:

Celebrate the Fourth of July with a New Desktop Wallpaper
Take Better Photos: Fourth of July Edition

I don’t know what it is about bike commuting, but I love doing it. Today marked the second Thursday in a row that I did the full bike commute from home to work and back again. In the past, I’d been mainly doing a hybrid commute — driving part way and then biking the rest. But doing the commute door to door is so much better. It’s obviously more saddle time, burns more calories, etc., but it’s just a really cool to pull in and out of the garage on my Tarmac Expert, instead of in the 4Runner or Accord.

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So I know this is a bit of a rehash from Amanda’s post earlier this evening over at LittleBabyK, but oh well. It was a pretty historic and memorable day! The day started out pretty busy and hectic, but mid-afternoon, we had our 3D/4D Ultrasound to check out our little one. We also invited my mom along.

Now the 3D/4D ultrasound was an extra fee, but man, was it ever worth it. Unlike the traditional black and white ultrasound, this one showed a more sophisticated image of our little guy and it’s totally impressive.

Tyler is definitely taking shape in there. Despite having all of July and August, along with part of September, the little dude’s features are unique and mommy and daddy are both represented in Tyler’s facial features, along with other areas such as the little guy’s toes.

This just keeps getting more and more real! I’m totally floored and excited!

I was just in my local (andby far favorite) bike shop, The Bicycle Chain the other day picking up those new wheels. It seems with bike sales beating out car sales, the 2009 Specialized line is pretty much sold out across the board. Catalogs for the various bike companies start appearing in early July for the next year’s lineup.

It’s no secret of just how much of a fanboy I am when it comes to American bike manufacturer, Specialized. I was asking about 2010’s lineup — especially their TT bikes, as that line’s been pretty stagnant the past few years. I was told that anyone thinking of getting a Specialized TT bike should wait for 2010.

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The article linked below is actually titled, “How Bandwidth Caps Hurt Your Mac & What Apple Can Do About It,” but I don’t see how this isn’t as much of a threat to any computer user, regardless of computer brand or operating system. Bandwidth caps, especially really really low caps that some of these Internet Service Providers are forcing and enforcing (3GB/month?!?!? I’ve got thumb drives that filling them up would hit that cap!)

I am not in that industry whatsover, so I don’t know what real costs are involved in delivering bandwidth to the end user once the network is up and running, but from the outside, it really seems to be price gouging and cable companies protecting their own content, rather than trying to recoup costs of maintenance and delivery of bandwidth to users. In this day and age of 720p and 1080p streaming, video podcasts, high resolution photo sharing, video conferencing, VOIP and hundreds of other applications and data streams, such low (or really any) caps on your broadband connections seem ludicrous and bordering on price gouging.

I do understand the author saying Apple should be at the forefront of battling these caps, but in no way, shape or form, think cause you’re on a Dell, that this isn’t just as much of an issue.

How Bandwidth Caps Hurt Your Mac & What Apple Can Do About It

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of the rhythm game genre on my Xbox 360. I personally own Guitar Hero II, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, Guitar Hero: Metallica and Rock Band, and this list will only continue to grow (Can we say, Guitar Hero: Van Halen?).

Ars Technica has a great list of five rules all these games and future ones should follow. They’re all pretty simple and make total sense. Activision, Red Octane, Harmonix and everyone else involved in the video game genre need to take these rules as gospel as well.

Rhythm Games: The Five Commandments All Titles Must Follow

This weekend, Amanda and I got a email forward about the myriad uses for WD-40. It is a very useful compound, though WD-40’s manufacturers whittled down the email forward’s list of recommended uses a bit:

Uses for WD-40