First, a little background:
Ernie Bushmiller's comic strip "Nancy" is a landmark achievement: A Comic so simply drawn it can be reduced to the size of a postage stamp and still be legible; an approach so formulaic as to become the very definition of the "gag-strip"; a sense of humor so obscure, so mute, so without malice as to allow faithful readers to march through whole decades of art and story without ever once cracking a smile.
Five-Card Nancy is a game where player(s) randomly select single panels from the strip (like playing cards) and then arrange them one by one in a sequence to tell a story. The inventor of the game has created an "official set of rules," but you can avoid all that nonsense by simply playing solitaire.
Here's my creation—a little crude I know, but that's the way the cards fell...
Besides making the best personal computers, Apple Computer makes the coolest software. Take for instance SoundTrack, their music composition software.
Soundtrack's easy-to-use interface makes it simple for you to create your own original music, even if you don't have a background in music or composition—like me. And the music you make with Soundtrack and its 4,000 pre-recorded loops can be distributed, broadcast, or sold...royalty-free. You just drop the loops into the timeline to start building a song. Soundtrack automatically syncs them up to your project tempo and key, making a perfect sounding accompaniment for your project. (GarageBand is a similar, lower cost product also made by Apple.)
I've created a couple of clips that I'd like to share with you to show you the kind of music you can make. The first sounds like the music you would hear during the opening credits for a suspense film. The second is more like the music that would be played during a car chase or getaway scene in a 1970s film. Both clips took me about 10 minutes to put together. The "album art" is just to get you in the mood. = )
Ogden Nash (1902-1971) is one of my favorite poets. His poems are clever, and they rhyme. Speaking of rhyming—one of my other favorite poets, Robert Frost, once said, "Writing free-verse is like playing tennis with the net down."
Anyway...here are some fun little poems by Ogden Nash that parents of young children will particularly appreciate:
A bit of talcum
Is always walcum.Oh what a tangled web do parents weave
When they think that their children are naive.Children aren't happy with nothing to ignore,
And that's what parents were created for.The camel has a single hump;
The dromedary, two;
Or else the other way around.
I'm never sure. Are you?The cow is of the bovine ilk
One end is moo, the other, milk.The Lord in His wisdom made the fly
And then forgot to tell us why.Many an infant that screams like a calliope
Could be soothed by a little attention to its diope.
Finally, click on the Continue reading "Ogden Nash" link below to see my favorite poem by Ogden Nash. If you have the time and desire, you should memorize it like I did. It gives you yet another way to entertain the kiddies.
Go to zipdecode, click the map image to begin (just like it tells you to), and type the digits of a zip code (just like it tells you to).
Cool, huh?
Don't forget to try out the zoom feature (found in the bottom right hand corner of the window).
Ok. The future is now. It's just that it's here in bits and pieces and we don't recognize it for what it is.
There.com represents, what I believe, is the future of online communities. Think of online multiplayer gaming without the game. Except, maybe, the game now is meeting up with other people from around the world in order to interact and participate in activities together.
The simplest way to get an idea of what this online community is like is to check out a couple of the movies posted on their website. Click on Aral's Day Out and Explore There on this page.
Now, if hoverboarding or dune buggy racing or hanging out in a lounge talking with strangers isn't your cup of tea, think about using There.com as a meeting place for you and your friends. Maybe you have a old friend from school or work that you used to jog, mountain bike ride, or shop with—and now they live in a different city. There.com would be a great environment for you to get back together with them. Hang out, talk, check things out...and all the time you can talk with them—just like you used to.
...And with respect to talking, you can either use the built-in text chat (which frankly would drive me crazy after a while) OR you could use some other 3rd party voice over IP technology to talk. (I suggest Apple's iChat software, of course.)
Bottom line: The technology is here in a useable form so that you can interact in "virtual environments." It's only going to get better. The question I'm interested in, is this: What else can we use this online community technology for? Virtual classrooms?
There are some things you are explicitly taught in life, and there are other things that you just have to learn through experience.
For a man, learning the unwritten rules of using a public restroom is one of the most challenging tasks. Why? Because there is no talking in the bathroom (unless it's to a good friend, but even then, you keep it terse and unemotional). And, there's no eye contact in the bathroom either (except, perhaps for purposes of acknowledgment, and then only to say "Yeah, I see you there. I will not look again.").
So how are you supposed to learn anything if you can't talk and you can't watch? Intuition my friend. (And women thought they had a corner on the market.) Let's see how good you intuitive women do with the Men's Room Urinal Etiquette Test.
I got them all right when I took the test—and it's not easy. I'd like to know how some of you women do. You might think this whole thing is a game, but this is deadly serious business. Think about it...you're in some truck-stop bathroom and your standing there with...and...well you can figure it out.
This Bio Motion Lab demo is hard to explain in words. You are presented with a stick figure of a person walking and you can manipulate a few variables to change the motion. You can make the figure male or female, heavy or light, nervous or relaxed, happy or sad—or anywhere in-between.
Like I said, it's hard to explain in words. Check it out.
What I find fascinating is that it only takes 15 dots to convey the motion of a walking human, and with a few adjustments to the motions of those dots, you can convincingly convey characteristics such as gender, weight, and emotional state.
Seems there was a treasure ship on its way back to port. About halfway there, it was approached by a pirate—skull and crossbones waving in the breeze!
"Captain, captain, what do we do?" asked the first mate.
"First mate," said the captain, "go to my cabin, open my sea chest, and bring me my red shirt." The first mate did so.
Wearing his bright red shirt, the captain exhorted his crew to fight. So inspiring was he, in fact, that the pirate ship was repelled without casualties.
A few days later, the ship was again approached, this time by two pirate sloops!
"Captain, captain, what should we do?"
"First mate, bring me my red shirt!"
The crew, emboldened by their fearless captain, fought heroically, and managed to defeat both boarding parties, though they took many casualties. That night, the survivors had a great celebration. The first mate asked the captain the secret of his bright red shirt.
"It's simple, first mate. If I am wounded, the blood does not show, and the crew continues to fight without fear."
A week passed, and they were nearing their home port, when suddenly the lookout cried that ten ships of the enemy's armada were approaching!
"Captain, captain, we're in terrible trouble! What do we do?" The first mate looked expectantly at the miracle worker.
Pale with fear, the captain commanded, "First mate... bring me my brown pants!"
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