Every now and then my mom sends me a pile of old photos of me and my brother Daniel. Here’s one. Notice all of the cameras. I’ve got two (I’m the shaggy haired guy on the right) and Daniel has one (he’s the short shaggy haired guy on the left.) I have no idea how old I was but I’m going to guess around 11 based on my white knee socks and light blue short shorts. I’m 99% sure the cameras are a Contax (the smaller brown one) and a Pentax. Oh – and check out that cool camera strap.

Many of the tech blogs / news blogs that I’m reading are suddenly about deals. financings, IPOs, valuations, and bubbles (or not bubbles). Several years ago, there was a lot more about “how to startup a company”, especially around product, vision, and team. Now a lot of that focus has shifted to deal making and exits. It was with this backdrop that I read The Lean Startup by Eric Ries over the weekend. If you don’t know Eric, he’s the pioneer of the Lean Startup Movement, building on the great work of one of his mentors, Steve Blank who wrote the seminal book The Four Steps to the Epiphany. Both Eric and Steve have must read blogs and Eric’s new book will join Steve’s as a critical book for any entrepreneur working on a tech startup.

Amy and I have been married for 18 years. On the summer solstice in 1993 we went to the top of Ester Dome in Fairbanks, Alaska and exchanged vows. Earlier that day we went to Pay ‘n Save and bought our wedding rings (I think we got six for $1.99). I wrote the word “vows” on a piece of paper twice, tore it in half, and gave one of the vows to Amy to give to me when we got to the top. We never had a formal wedding because we never wanted one, although we did visit the Boulder County Courthouse on June 21, 1996, paid our $20, assured them that we weren’t brother and sister, and made it official. But we count years from that date on top of Ester Dome in 1993.

I considered titling this post “why RSS isn’t dead” but decided that was too easy. I don’t pay much attention to public markets. However, now that the IPO window for tech companies has opened back up there are some companies that I want to track. However, I don’t really care about the daily stock prices – instead, I’m focused on the actual SEC filings. I used to subscribe to several services for SEC filings (remember EDGAR Online and 10KWizard) but let them lapse a while ago. My partner Jason suggested I just use the SEC website. So I went there and discovered that it’s really good.

Thanks for all the cell phone suggestions for my europe trip this summer. Of course, shortly after I wrote the post, Apple came out with an unlocked version of the iPhone 4 (which just showed up in my office) rendering many of the options (and presumably some of the companies) either obsolete or unnecessary. However, I decided to take a different approach. I’m going to give the Nexus S another try. I’ve been using it since Friday and the most recent version is awesome. Almost all of the iPhone apps I rely on are available on Android and since I’m a Google Apps + Google Voice user, the integration is much nicer. So we’ll see how that goes.

I thought I’d start off father’s day with a tribute to my dad. I’ve learned an amazing amount from him and to this day he’s one of my best friends. When I was a teenager, I remember a number of Stanley-isms that stuck in my mind. One of my favorites was “if you aren’t standing on the edge you are taking up too much space.” As I type this, I can remember being in my bathroom at home taking a shower thinking about this, which is part of how I remember I first heard it as a teenager.

I love nerd jokes. I was having a serious moment in front of my computer when a Google chat window popped up from a friend (who asked to remain anonymous – presumably because of his nerd shyness) with the following joke: Werner Heisenberg is speeding down the road and a cop pulls him over. The cop says “Sir, do you have any idea how fast your were going?” Heisenberg says “No, but i know exactly where i am.”

I’m in my car on the way to Aspen for the weekend (Amy is driving – I’m in the passenger seat.). The top is down. It’s absolutely beautiful on I-70 as we travel at a high rate of speed. And I’m sitting here blogging on my iPad. There is no way to describe this as anything other than magic. I’m in an extremely creative zone of my life and trying to spend as much time as I can working on stuff I really care about. I love the entrepreneurs I work with, my partners are extraordinary, the team that supports us is dynamite, and because of magic technology I have an enormous amount of time and space freedom.

Today on Brad Feld’s Amazing Deals I’m bringing you another offer from the online academy Udemy.com. A few months ago, Udemy was responsible for one of my most popular deals to date, a suite of deals relating to startups. Today they are offering your choice of two courses for $75 (normally $250). Pick either Learn to Develop an iPhone or iPad application in 4 weeks or Learn Python the Hard Way. Both courses include multiple videos, lectures, and code examples.