My son, the Kevster, won first prize for physics in the Junior Division of the Morgan State Science Fair on Saturday, for his presentation on potato gun ballistics.
We’re already trying to figure out how to top this for next year, when he’ll be competing against HS seniors.
That papercasting thing I started has turned into a freakin’ monster. Stephen Shankland of News.com (a competitor of my employer, I should note) linked to it two days ago, probably because of this little item:
By now, you’ve probably heard of podcasting. Heck, you may be experimenting with doing your own podcasts. They’re great for certain types of content–and they’re especially good if:
But for those of us who only fall into the first categories, podcasting may carry a little too much of a footprint. If you haven’t mastered GarageBand or some other multitrack editing tool (or don’t own one), creating polished podcasts may be difficult.
For those who want all of the advantages of podcasting without the audio, I’m taking blogging to the next level in inaccessibility and security: Papercasting. Using a paper-based logging device (a notebook) with a Fischer Space Pen, I record up-to-the minute notes on the day’s events. Then I scan the page for the day and upload it–if you don’t have a scanner, a digital camera may do the trick if set for the appropriate image quality and focal point.
Here’s my papercasting plog (paper weblog).
Next, I have to figure out how to do a fax gateway so I can moblog from Kinko’s.
If you want to see a sample plog entry, click below.
OK, so I took Zoë to see “Because of Winn Dixie” today. It was well-acted, and Zoë enjoyed it, but I found myself debating about whether it was really a good movie or if it was overly-engineered to be emotionally manipulative. I mean, I found myself being plucked by the heartstrings with a little too much regularity for it to feel spontaneos and genuine.
Of course, it’s a freakin’ kid’s movie.
Yesterday, my 4-year old daughter shuffles into the living room wearing a fairy dress-up gown, with her underwear around her ankles, and shouts, “I’m going to be on Court TV!”
OK, it’s time to turn off the damn TV every time Michael Jackson’s name gets mentioned.
My new favorite band of the moment :The Decemberists. Any band that names itself after an ill-conceived 1825 democratic uprising by young members of the aristocracy in Czarist Russia inspired by the American Revoluion (gee, I knew that bit of knowledge from studying Russian history and literature in translation in college would come in handy for something some day), is guaranteed to at least get a listen from me, and these guys fall somewhere on the spectrum between the Polyphonic Spree and The Shins (or maybe the Weakerthans).
My instant favorite song is a track off their 2001 5 Songs EP, “Apology Song”–a song lamenting the theft of a bicycle named Madeline.