For her friend Michael’s birthday, Emily made these casts of her hand spelling out “LOVE”, mounted them on a board, and gave them individual paint jobs. It has now assumed a place of honor in his room next to the audio-animatronic Gene Simmons action figure.
Spectacular work, Em!
This is super-cool. The lads at GameTank recently unveiled Guitar Rising, an upcoming game for Mac and PC that’s modeled on Guitar Hero’s gameplay, but which requires you to play actually guitar parts on a real guitar. You’ll be able to use the guitar of your choice, as long as it has a pickup or a microphone that can be plugged in to the audio inputs on your computer.
I’m frankly surprised that someone hasn’t done this for keyboards first, since the MIDI interface most modern keyboards use makes it easy to detect what notes people are actually playing. With guitars, one has to have the computer process the incoming audio signal and figure out what note is being played, a prospect made even dicier when one introduces polyphony and/or the sorts of effects that make a rock guitar sound like a rock guitar.
However, judging by the warm reception Guitar Rising has received, they’ve got a decent handle on the technical challenges, and are working on licensing a bunch of music to have available in the first release of the game later this year. Should be fun, and a great way to improve your guitar chops.
Well, a couple of my fun and camera-loving friends have decided to play along, so have created a dedicated page for the A Photo A Day adventure.
If anybody else is interested in joining in the frivolity, all you have to do is post a photo to Flickr for each day in February, tagging each with aphotoaday08. I’ll add you to the list of participants once I see you on the RSS feed.
I’ve uploaded my first shot to kick things off — more will be coming soon! (I won’t post any more about this here until it’s over, though, so subscribe to the RSS feed if you want to watch them coming in.)
Our department has an annual white elephant gift exchange. If you’ve never participated in one, they go something like this:
This year, there were two gifts that came up that I was interested in: a couple of bottles of beer and a beanie. I managed to have both pass through my hands about a half dozen times before I decided to end the madness: I took a horrible silver plastic battery powered cuckoo clock from another player and finished the rest of the game unmolested.
After the exchange concluded, I left the clock in its packaging for a couple of weeks on my desk, while I pondered what I could possibly do with this travesty of a timepiece. After much thought and consideration, I decided that the appropriate answer was this: cause some mischief.
So, on the night of December 27, when my compatriot Jeff Snider and I were already in the office late at night for a system update, we decided to strip all the faux-bavarian plastic off of the clock, remove the hands, and hide it in our boss’ suspended ceiling, where it would peal forth hourly with its sickly electronic mewling. We taped up the speaker to make it a bit quieter (and therefore more difficult to find), lifted a ceiling tile, tossed it on top of one of the light fixtures, and beat a hasty retreat.
When everyone came back from the holiday, we were surprised to hear nothing about it for a couple of weeks. It occurred to us that we hadn’t actually stuck around long enough after putting the batteries in for the first time to verify that it was working correctly, and wondered if our prank had been stillborn. Word came to us through the grapevine a few days later, however, that it was indeed causing some havoc. Reports escalated for a few days after that until the situation finally came to a head in a fairly entertaining fashion. The story, as I’ve reconstructed it from various people’s accounts, is this:
After a couple weeks, Mike had had enough of the dreadful electronic caterwauling, and came storming out of the office, asking “what is that horrible noise? Has one of you got that as your wretched cell phone ringer?” Kay, the administrative assistant, explained that she (rightly) thought it was coming from his office, and assumed it was some kind of gadget or alarm that he had set up.
They then noticed that it was going off regularly at 13 minutes after the hour, and knowing now to expect it, grew increasingly agitated with the situation over the next few days. Finally, one afternoon, Ron (of Ron-A-Thon 2007 fame) had enough of their frustration, and pulled a ladder into the work area and started rooting through the ceiling at the appropriate time. He quickly located the loose bundle of batteries, a timepiece, and wires, and reached the conclusion that any right-thinking person would:
He thought it was a bomb.
They called Joan, the head of the library in which we all work, and Todd, one of her staff, to have a look at it. Todd fortunately quickly reassured everyone that it looked harmless, and was most likely just a prank, thereby narrowly averting an evacuation of the building and a visit from the local constabulary. (And, incidentally, allowing this story to actually be told.)
Kay kept the gadget on her desk for a few days while Mike began asking pointed questions in staff meetings: “Do any of you know anything about a little electronic chime that was in my ceiling? We think it may have been pulled out of one of those musical greeting cards as a prank.” We all had a good laugh about it in the meeting, feigning ignorance until Mike had the perspicacity to start asking people individually “Did you have anything to do with this?” Jeff, unable to tell a lie, hedged until Mike was sure he was involved. From there the whole sordid tale came out.
Fortunately, all the involved parties had a good sense of humor about it, though Mike has promised revenge most foul will come our way when we least expect it. I say: Let the games begin!
We got in our XO Laptop, the little unit that the One Laptop Per Child organization has begun producing and making available to poorer countries for less than $200 per laptop. (Read David Pogue’s article for a quick introduction to the concept.) Here are my first impressions after fiddling about with it for an hour or two:
For its intended purpose, it’s a brilliant piece of work. With a connection to the Internet available, it has the potential to be a magnificent educational tool for students who otherwise might not have access to much of what the modern world has to offer.
So, congratulations, OLPC folks. You’ve done a great job, and I wish you the best of success getting your vision out to the rest of the world.
I’ve been feeling a bit frustrated lately that my creative output has been so meager. As a counter to that, I have decided to embark upon a project for February: A Photo A Day. Inspired in part by amboo_who‘s faithful and excellent photographic chronicling of her daughter’s growth, I thought this would be a fun way to get the juices going again.
Why February? Because February’s the shortest month and I am lazy.
While I think this would be fun as a solitary exercise, I think it’ll be more fun with friends. So if any of you photographers out there want to play along, here are the guidelines:
I think this will be fun!
Feeling feisty, and not a little obnoxious, this morning, I responded thusly when asked what I thought should be on the menu for an upcoming retreat at work:
I would like the finest lobster, hand harvested by Poseidon and his entourage of mermaids and cooked to perfection by Maine’s top chefs (flown here for the occasion) with a side of mixed field greens grown in the dirt scraped off of Jerry Garcia by groupies during the time he toured with the Grateful Dead. Belgian chocolates for dessert, delivered on horseback by a Lady Godiva impersonator.
Or a sandwich. Either way.
Sorry for the dearth of recent posts. Life has been awfully demanding of late, leaving little room for writing. To make up for it in some small way, here are two items for your consideration:
Happy New Year All!
Socrates tells us that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” In this era of YouTube exhibitionism, one could extend his maxim to be “the life unexamined by other people is not worth banner ads.” So, in the spirit of the age, welcome to our annual unsolicited “What the Clan McMains is up to letter”!
First up is Margaret. The smallest of the clan is now 7 years old, as inconceivable as that seems. She’s enjoying her first grade year in school, is doing well academically, and is looking forward to her rebuilt school reopening down the street from us in a week or so. She lost her first tooth this year, and continues to joyfully bounce around wherever she goes, evincing a joie de vivre that is a delight to be around.
Liam, now in 3rd grade, continues to do very well academically without too much apparent effort. He’s got more energy than he sometimes knows what to do with, and is endlessly fascinated by the world around him and trying to figure out how it all works. He’s enjoying both computer and tabletop games quite a lot, and created his first computer game earlier this year. By dint of endless experimentation and repetition, he has also learned some songs on piano and guitar this year.
11 year old Abigail is alternately quietly contemplative and outrageously silly. She’s plugging away at school, and has developed a fondness for oriental gardens and bonsai. She has also decided to eat vegetarian, and has done remarkably well sticking to that plan. School has allowed her to develop a larger social circle than she has had before, which has been a treat for her. She has begun working in earnest on French Horn and Violin this year.
Emily is now in her Freshman year at San Marcos High School, and has found a group of friends there who she enjoys immensely. She continues to attend Youth Service Bureau regularly, and to create some really terrific drawing and other artwork. This year she became the chief toad herder in our family, gathering up to a dozen at a time in the kitchen sink when their cries came ringing in from our neglected pool. She seems to have worked her way through the most difficult part of adolescence at this point, and is generally at a happy place in her life.
Kathy returned to University this year to finish out an undergraduate degree. She’s settled into the field of Therapeutic Recreation, and has been putting a lot into and getting a lot out of the program at Texas State University. She has pinned down a couple of scholarships, and maintained a 4.0 GPA through both the spring and fall semesters. (She took a break during the summer to be with the kids.) It has been grueling at times, but she’s done an admirable job with it and earned considerable praise from professors and serious-minded classmates. She’s currently in Australia for a conference one of her professors asked her to help with.
Sean continued work at Texas State University where he’s splitting his time between programming and management responsibilities and enjoying a tightly-knit team of sharp and fun people. He also attended his first Sacred Harp sing, visited Portland for the first time, caught up with some long lost friends from high school, went to Boston with old friends, visited Los Angeles for a dear friend’s wedding, built a hovercraft, went to Waco for the All University Sing, hiked the recently formed Canyon Lake Gorge, and continues to play bass with The Patio Boys (formerly the Grant Mazak Band). (Shenanigans are chronicled at https://www.mcmains.net/.)
A few of our family travel highlights this year included Ink’s Lake State park for Spring Break and a visit to Mo Ranch for a Father’s Day weekend church retreat. Kathy and Sean also enjoyed a weekend in Fredericksburg for their 12th anniversary and Crawfish Festival.
As a group, we continue to find our physical needs met and count ourselves extraordinarily rich in the other things that are important in our lives: vital friendships, loving and supportive family, and ample opportunities to love God and other people. Thanks to all of you who are a part of that! For those who haven’t been recently, we hope you’ll come and see us if you happen to be in the area!
Grace, peace, and hope for a rich and wonderful 2008 to you all!
I just got in two new pairs of glasses from Zenni Optical. Here’s the regular pair, with nifty European-style frames and anti-reflective coating for night driving and computer work:
And the prescription sunglasses, with 80% gray tint and some regular frames:
Total cost for both pairs: about $50. The quality of the glasses seems good, which, combined with the price, makes me a very happy customer.