/tacanderson

I did end up taking pictures of our dinner, even thought I don't usually do that and I don't consider myself a foodie, at all.

The piece of meat on a spoon is a goose appetizer. Then we had this delicious vegetable soup, but I don't remember what the vegetable was called. I was told it was kind of like seaweed(?).

Then we had reindeer. Some people may not like the idea but I've had deer, and moose, and elk and even horse once and this was right up there with the horse I had.

The for desert I had a baked Alaska, while everyone else had cheese. Yes, Europeans eat cheese for desert.

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At St James park the pigeons will land on your arm and eat out of your hand. The squirrels even eat out of your hand. I guess with millions of people walking through the parks feeding the birds for decades, they're practically domesticated.

The family went for a walk today at Hampstead Heath in London. I've never been but it's one of Jen and the kids favorite. Jen an I have always loved "dead tree" pictures. Pictures of leafless trees against the sky or otherwise backlit. I took these on our walk and then ran them through a few photo filter apps. Enjoy.

For any non-geeks, not familiar with British culture, Doctor Whois a huge cultural phenomenon. The shows a little cheesy and the special effects are about on par with the original Star Trek series but that's okay because IT'S AWESOME.

If you've never seen it jump on to Netflix and you can stream it, if you're an Amazon Prime member I'm pretty sure you can watch Dr Who on Amazon Instant.

Or you can do what we did and go rent the series. We rented the first two seasons as I doubt we'll get through more than that (mom and dad need their sleep).

Jen and the kids have only seen a few episodes but they're already hooked. I've seen more than they have and have even seen a fair amount of the original series but I haven't seen all of them.

I feel it's my job as Geek Dad to make sure my family is up to speed on this key piece of British culture. And like I said, it's awesome. Which should be all the reason you need. But if it's not, here's one more reason:

If you go out on New Years Eve and die, it will really ruin my 2012. So be safe, whatever you do.

Here's to a happy and safe New Years.

One of the things Jen's really been wanting to do is to take more day trips around the English countryside. We've already traveled to many countries around Europe but we've seen surprisingly little of England.

So the day after Boxing Day we went to see Stonehenge and the city of Salisbury. Stonehenge is really cool. From every angle you get a different interesting view. There's not a lot to see but it's well worth the trip and an hour spent.

Afterwards the town of Salisbury is a great place to spend an afternoon. The Salisbury cathedral, where one of the copies of the Magna Carta are kept is very cool. They have lots of art, both medieval and modern. At first I couldn't understand why a brotha had a statue on the outside of a cathedral, holding a cup of coffee none-the-less. But it's all part of an art exhibit there.

The town itself was also really nice and they have some great walks along the many rivers that run through town.

The Anderson's give this trip two enthusiastic thumbs up.

The day after Christmas I was sorting through the two huge bins of Lego's my boys have looking for one specific piece that my son thought he lost from a set he was building (turns out he didn't lose it, of course). As I was sifting through thousands of Lego pieces I saw all these old Star Wars, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean and other sets we payed a lot of money for because they were "branded" sets (not sure what Lego calls these). Basically the reason the Star Wars set is more expensive than the Ninjago set is because Lucas gets a cut of the Star Wars set (rightfully so).

I don't mind paying more for these sets at all, and I'll gladly continue to do it. I don't even mind having all these old sets laying around. My boys still play with them - in fact I can hear them digging through the bins right now. I just wish there was a better way to use these old sets.

Here's what I want:

A mobile app (I think a mobile app would work best but it could also be done as a desktop app) that allows me to take pictures of all the Lego's (not individually but in groups) and have that app talk to a database that first identifies all the individual pieces (Lego has to have this database somewhere) and then the app will search through another database to give you all the sets you could build with the Lego pieces you have.

These don't even have to be the "branded" sets these could even be sets from Lego's community submitted plans.

I know all this is possible. The tech to identify Lego pieces exist, if anything the hardest part might be gathering one database of all existing Lego pieces. But with as active as the Lego community is I bet if this doesn't exist it could be crowdsourced.

Bonus features of the app could be my own archive of all the Lego's I own that way I can just add to it with each new purchase, not retake pictures every time. Also alerts for new plans I might be interested in based on previous plans used. And of course the ability to share pictures of the final creation or even suggest mods would be cool.

There's my idea. Feel free to take it and do something with it. If you do, just let me know. I'd love to be your first customer.

A Nerf gun: This is actually for work. It's self defense actually as the rest of the digital team is already loaded with a full arsenal of Nerf guns.

Han Solo in carbonite soap: This actually came from a coworker back in the States who shares my love of Star Wars.

Star Wars Lego Storm Trooper cufflinks: My brother scored these for me. They're awesome. I'm pretty sure he found them on Etsy.

The Fischer Space Pen: My mother-in-law gave me one of these a few years ago but I lost it on one of my many trips through airport security. They didn't take it from me, I just lost it in the pre-scanner shuffle. Let's hope I don't lose this one.

Custom built Lego mini-figs: My oldest son made these for me. He loves the display they have in the Lego store where you can assemble your own mini-figs. The middle one (with the space man t-shirt) is holding a laptop. He was especially excited about that.

My only other geek related gifts were an Amazon and a Visa gift card. Not really just for geeks, but always a safe bet.

The rest of my gifts were things I asked for but not really geeky; shirts, a tie, a new hat - since I left me last one on the tube (are you noticing that I lose things?).

All in all, I think I made out pretty good this Christmas.