Cows outside of Moomers, up near Traverse City, MI.
Up North
Blogging (and most everything else, happily) will be very slow or completely on hold this week as I am with my extended family (my parents, sisters, brothers-in-law, kids, etc.) “up north,” in a small town near Traverse City. This is the view from the back porch of this house; very peaceful.
I suppose it’s a good thing too that there isn’t any internet access out at this place—I’m sending this message now from a coffee shop in TC. It’s perhaps a good thing for me to unplug at least a little before I head into full-frontal sabbatical-fueled scholarship/ research work.
Anyway, I might post again, I might not.
The Ypsilanti July 4 Parade: The Movie
Here’s a video version of how the Ypsi July 4 parade went this year. A good time was had by one and all, though this wasn’t actually the best of Ypsi parades, as Annette’s “eh, it was all right” reaction at the end might suggest. Anyway, enjoy the movie, shot entirely with my Flip Video camera, edited with iMovie on the Mac and with a march from an album I copied from the Ypsi public library called “Hail, Sousa!”
If I were a young person who liked to travel…
…I’d probably give CouchSurfing a try. Kinda interesting idea.
Even more reasons to get a Wii
Rejected Wii Games – Watch more free videos
I’ve been fascinated by the Wii for a while now. The original plan was that Will and I were going to go and buy one while Annette was at this conference she was at last week. Well, besides the fact that I was simply too busy to do this sort of thing, you just can’t buy these things right now. Go ahead. Try. I dare you. I stopped by a couple of different game stores around town to ask, and the people who work at them told me that people literally are waiting at the door in the morning to find out if the delivery truck came in. These things stay in stock for hours at best.
Well, maybe Will and I will try again this morning on our way to his day camp today. Regardless, we still won’t be getting these games….
Sophie the stupid dog on my Flip video camera
Annette was out of town most of last week, and because of that (and both of us are just swamped with school and work stuff, really), she overlooked an organized Father’s Day gift for me. So I bought my own: a Flip video camera.
Basically, it’s a small (like the size of a digital camera or a big cell phone) and cheap video camera that can store up to 30 minutes of digital video, which can then be watched on the camera itself, on a TV, or downloaded to a computer. It took some finagling with the format and converters and stuff, but I did ultimately get it to work on my iMac, so I can use it with things like iMovie, too.
Here’s a sample of Sophie the stupid dog chasing a ball. Actually, it’s not so much that Sophie is dumb; she just didn’t say no to me filming her for my blog(s):
No, it’s not professional quality. But basically, these people are looking for the YouTube et al crowd. As far as “family fun” and “movies” goes around here: I can easily see pairing this with my other digital camera for a cool vacation movie in the near future. I can also see this as a pretty handy teaching tool too– but that’s going to be on the official blog later.
Pretty amazing etch-a-sketch drawing
I’d recommend turning the sound down a bit– the Cleveland Cavs rap song isn’t the best I’ve heard. But do check out this dude drawing LeBron James with an etch-a-sketch:
Dang, if I can barely make a smiley face with one of those things.
Barcode Yourself
This might be a cause for a price check, that’s for sure…
Who says that measuring things isn’t fun?
Oh sure, there are web sites and such that that convert cups to tablespoons, inches to meters, etc. But haven’t you been looking for a comparison between a gas tanker semi-truck to an intestinal track, or a spider monkey to Jennifer Aniston? Why, then you need to check out weirdconverter.com It was worth a giggle for sure. Via boing-boing.
As much as anything, this one goes out to Andre
I’ll change my list of links soon, I promise. Do check out Andre’s new blog, Visions of Ypsilanti in the meantime.
As penance for being late in changing that link, I present to you pictures from The Vader Project and this large group of Princess Leia as slavegirls with an Elvis storm trooper. These come via boing-boing and are on the flickr photo collection of bonniegirl. Check that out for even more Star Wars themed picts.