I’m a sucker for projects that merge the physical world and the digital ones in interesting and unusual ways, so of course I love the I/O Brush, a paintbrush that can suck up images and textures from real objects and use them in a digital painting. Be sure to check out the Videos! (via Giles)

The kids and I have been enjoying a few new things lately:

• I created a simple shape-based cipher system over this past weekend and taped the key to our kitchen table. I then distributed a note encoded with the cipher to each of the kids without any explanation. It was great fun to watch them discover the key, work out their messages, and then go chasing through the house to find the candy canes I’d hidden as a reward. Liam got especially excited about the process, and we’ve exchanged several more encoded messages since. Abigail wants a copy of the key so that she can write her friends at school secret messages as well. Fun stuff.
• At bedtime, we usually give the kids the option “carry or tuck” — they can be carried to their beds, or be tucked in once they’re there. Last week I changed up the formula: “carry, tuck, or a song.” If they choose the latter, I’ll swing by the kids’ room with my guitar and sing a song for them. (This is, admittedly, partially in response to a “patriarchal tearjerker” that Barry wrote called “My Daddy Sang to Me.” It makes Kathy cry every time it comes around on the MP3 player.) So far, we’ve covered “Down in the Valley”, “Little Bunny Foo-Foo”, “Puff the Magic Dragon”, and “Irish Rover” (which Liam inexplicably refers to as “The Pirate Song”). Further suggestions for good bedtime music are welcome!

When I was young, the companion toy to Sit & Spin and Twister was the Hippity Hop Ball. For us kids, nothing beat sitting on one of these things and bouncing around like cocoa-puff fueled loons, inevitably tipping over repeatedly, upending furniture, knocking out a few teeth, and having a grand time. For our parents, nothing beat the sweet, uninterrupted slumber that we kids enjoyed after spending 30 minutes on the Hippity Hop Ball.

One of the Christmas toys that Maggie received this year was an update to this classic toy. This one is a trifle smaller, and instead of a sphere, is shaped like a friendly animal, its four legs providing more stability than the ball had. The air valve is configured toward the aft of the critter, and the stopper in the valve sits in such a way that one can’t establish a seal with an air pump.

Thus, I found myself the other morning blowing vigorously into the bottom of a blue rubber donkey. Yep, I’m a straight man, but had a blue rubber farm animal sitting on my face while I hyperventilated.

Once again, I’m reminded that if you have any desire to retain any sense of gravitas whatsoever, don’t become a parent — your dignity will be stripped from you with a speed and thoroughness that would impress a school of piranha.

Kudos to my long-time buddy Ross for his latest accolade: his comic book publishing venture, Boom! Studios, has received Wizard Magazine’s Best New Publisher Award for 2005.

And check out his website! Not bad for someone who was learning how to use GoLive from me over the phone 6 months ago!

I’ve just popped the first open-to-the-public version of Bibliofile, my free reading log program, up at http://www.myreadinglog.net

From the welcome page:

Bibliofile is a tool for keeping track of books: those you’ve read, those you’d like to read, and those you’re reading. You can use it to:

• Put a “What I’m Reading” list on your web page or blog. (All the cool kids are doing it!)
• Compile statistics on what and how much you’re reading. (What was the book you rated lowest last year? Something by William Shatner would be our guess.)
• Consult your “books to read” list when you’re at the library or book store. (Assuming they have wireless Internet or you’re willing to drag a really long network cable behind you.)
• Share your reading wishlist with your well-heeled friends and loved ones.

I’m using Bibliofile to power the “What I’m Reading” sidebar on this site. If you like to read, I hope you’ll stop by, take a look, and see if Bibliofile might be a useful tool for you.

My friend Duane, with whom I shared a summer a dozen years ago chasing a passel of wily middle school boys for our church’s youth program, posted an excellent essay over the weekend on American evangelicism and its blind spots. It’s well worth a read for those of us who are prone to lover’s quarrels with the church. (Part one of the series is here.) Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Duane.

• On Liam’s shirt today: “Life Size Action Figure.” Those of you who know Liam will understand why this is both funny and appropriate. (This was apparently one of my lovely bride’s garage sale finds.)
• From Abigail to me this afternoon, spoken in a singularly disapproving tone: “You know, Daddy, sometimes you’re too funny.”

My two weeks of time off comes to an end this morning as I dig back into work. The break was great — we got lots of good family time, saw some good movies, visited with dear friends, played some good games, and had some excellent hikes. The pleasure and flexibility a block of employment-free time brings makes me envy the european vacation schedule; after some time off, four weeks of vacation a year seems downright civilized!

A few items of note:

• The application I’ve been building in Ruby as a learning project is coming along reasonably well. I’ve showed bits to various folks, and will be opening it up a bit wider for more people to fiddle with once I’ve got a few things cleaned up and a particularly vexing bug resolved. (Can any of you brilliant technical minds tell me why http://seanmctex.homeip.net:3000/book/search?searchTerm=dragon will load beautifully in any browser but Firefox, but Firefox takes a look at it and then pretends I didn’t ask for it? Yes, it’s fragmentary HTML — it’s part of an AJAX call. Thanks, geniuses!)
• San Marcos, the lovely city in which we live, recently discovered that the Rio Vista Dam is in danger of collapsing. The dam is one of the major recreational structures along the river, and contributes to the smooth waters that residents enjoy as the river winds its way through town. When the discovery was made that the dam had major structural issues, the immediate reaction was to restore it to its traditional state. Our friend Tom Goynes, however, championed the idea of replacing the single large dam with a series of artificial rapids down the length of the river. The city government has proven enthusiastic and has given the go-ahead for the project, so our beloved river will likely have a markedly different character by May 29, the deadline for the project’s completion. I’m pretty excited about this change, and look forward to seeing how this ambitious project turns out.
• The kids go back to school Wednesday. It’s going to be a challenge getting their circadian cycles adjusted from the “stay up for New Year’s Eve” schedule to the “wake up for school” schedule.

After high school, I made a leap from Texas to attend The King’s College, a small private school in Briarcliff Manor, New York. The experience was an excellent one in many ways, not the least of which was the chance to enjoy the beautiful old building the college occupied and the surrounding splendor of the Hudson River Valley. The building was nearly 100 years old when I was there, and showed its heritage as a luxury hotel; ornate woodwork, byzantine corridors, marble stairways combined to create much more character than nearly any other “Institution of Higher Learning” I’ve seen (to use Dr. Radandt’s oft-quoted phrase).

A bit on the history of the place from Half Moon Press:

Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt were hosted at Briarcliff Lodge, as were Tallulah Bankhead, Johnny Weissmuller, Jimmy Walker, Babe Ruth and other luminaries. Opera diva Madame Lillian Nordica sang in the ballroom in 1911 to an audience including John D. and Laura Spelman Rockefeller, Frank A. and Narcissa Cox Vanderlip and Chauncey M. and May Palmer Depew.

Alas, the building burned to the ground several years back. The College had moved out several years previous when they closed their doors, and the structure had sat abandoned while developers and city officials wrangled over what would become of the wonderful old place.

Though the building is no more, Rob Yasinsac has stepped to the plate and released Briarcliff Lodge (Images of America), a wonderful book chronicling the history of the place from its construction to its immolation. It’s a great piece of work for anybody who spent any degree of time at Briarcliff Lodge, but was especially meaningful for me, as it has a letter some old friends of mine (Heidi Krihak, nee Grovatt, and Sherry Hvizdak, nee Young) left in their dorm room, as well as a picture of the Homecoming Court of 1990 (which happened to include yours truly).

So, thanks to Kathy for the gift. Fellow alumni, get thee to a bookstore — this one’s well worth picking up.

It’s been a busy holiday around chez McMains. Thursday night, Kathy and I headed down to San Antonio to visit with Ross and his newly-minted fiance Johanna who were in town for a visit with his family. We ate enchiladas and talked the night away, excitedly discussing Johanna’s latest writing projects, the success of Boom! Studios, the engagement, and what our old mutual friends are up to. As always, it was great to see them, and especially wonderful to see the decade-old decision to move to Los Angeles paying off handsomely for Ross, both in business and personally.

On Friday the whole family helped (or, in the case of some of the kids, “helped”) Chris and Becky as they moved into their new home, a really neat little Tudor cum Texan house a few blocks away from where they had been living. It went surprisingly quickly and painlessly, due in large part to Chris’ prudent hiring of both a U-Haul and a couple of guys who were flinging furniture around with an aplomb that put the rest of us to shame. We toured the new digs, found and admired giant acorns, enjoyed a first meal in the house, and had a little house blessing and an inaugural game of hide-and-seek. It should be a great place for the two of them; I look forward to seeing it all put into order and being lived in and enjoyed.

On the way home, we stopped in Wimberley for the Trail of Lights and the Emily Ann Theater. We enjoyed the various displays that community organizations had put together up and down the side of the hill that the theater includes, and huddled around a bonfire with some friends we bumped into for roasting of marshmallows and hot dogs and singing of Christmas Carols, manfully led acapella by a singer whose guitarists had abandoned him.

On Christmas Eve, we spent a good portion of the day fiddling about the house, making cornbread, chili, and cookies for the guests we would be hosting for Christmas. My cousin Tanya and her husband Ken, who are great favorites with the children, stopped by for a nice visit in the afternoon. As evening approached, Chris and Becky showed up. We all milled and visited about the house for a while until time came for “midnight” mass (which started at 10:15pm) at St. Mark’s. We enjoyed singing carols and participating in the service (admittedly in a somewhat disjointed fashion, since we’d not gotten a copy of the program with the responsive readings), and were joined there by Mom McMains and her housemate Julia.

Christmas morning dawned bright, clear, and warm. We had worn the kids out enough with the late night that they didn’t spring out of bed until a decent hour — a surprising change of pace from the usual Christmas morning experience. The neatly wrapped pile of presents quickly became a whirlwind of wrapping paper, laughter, packing material, shrieks, and toys. I was pleased this year to receive an absolute minimum of practical gifts. Chris got me a Lazer Tag Master Blaster, which he, Dad McMains and I put to good use later in the day. Kathy conspired with Grant and absolutely floored me with a Babkcz Identity Guitar. Grant has been playing one of these for a couple of months, and I’d been really impressed with his. Kathy was excited about her gift of a new iPod, especially once she realized that it would hold not only our entire music collection, but also all 13,000 photos in our family photo library.

After a good deal of eating, a few walks, some Lazer Tag, a spritied game of RoboRally, our guests began to wander home. Once we’d cleaned up and straightening the house a bit, the whole family gathered around the advent wreath for the last time this year, at long last getting to light all of the candles. We then put the capper on our Christmas with a viewing of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!