This is the last one of these sorts of things at Estabrook since Will is one of the big kids now. I think my favorite is still when Will was one of the narrators– either the second or third grade– but this is best movie of one of these I’ve made.
Shaving cream in a vacuum
If science had been this cool when I was in high school, I wouldn’t have gotten that D in chemistry.
Snow day memory
For what seems like the thousandth time this winter, we have snow. Lots of snow– well, lots of snow for this part of Michigan, but probably not much by UP or Buffalo, NY standards. So I am home with Will, also home from school. We are about to go shoveling, but for some reason, I am thinking back many years ago to a less significant snow day.
In 1988, after I had graduated from the University of Iowa, I moved to Richmond, Virginia to start the MFA program in creative writing at Virginia Commonwealth University. For the first time, I was living far from the midwest and alone in a pretty sketchy part of town near campus. My apartment was on Franklin on the first floor and in the back, right on the alley. I don’t know what it’s like there now, but at the time, that was a really good spot to find drunks and bums if you were looking. I used to hear them back there all the time. My apartment consisted of one main room, a kitchen, and a bathroom, all laid out in a row. My typical way of getting the day started was I would stumble out of bed, go through the kitchen, and into the bathroom to look out the window at something that wasn’t the alley before doing my business and getting in the shower.
One day in late November or early December, I got up, did my usual walk, and when I opened the window, I saw snow flakes. Just flurries, but big and giant white flakes. And, I don’t know, I had a moment of real home sickness and missing the chill of Iowa and the real snowfall we would have had there by now. Anyway, I closed the window and went through my usual routine, and by the time I looked out the window again, the snow had stopped. I started the coffee and while it was making, I turned on the radio to hear some semi-hysterical disk jokey going off about the snow, about being “real careful” out there, etc. What weather babies, and most of my time in Richmond just confirmed that impression.
Anyway, I don’t know what this has to do with much more than a few flakes of snow right now or not, but it’s what came to mind. And now to the shovels….
RIP, Gary Gygax
Gary “AD&D” Gygax passed away. As geeky IT web site “The Register” put it:
Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax rolled a natural one on his fortitude save today, dying at level 69 at his home in Lake Geneva.
Best known for developing D&D with Dave Arneson in 1974, Gygax helped formulate a pen-and-pencil role playing ruleset that would become a touchstone for modern gaming across its genres.
My own AD&D phase was in junior high/early high school, with a few gaming sessions all the way into early college years. Truth be told though the people I hung out with were more likely to play Traveller or Runequest. Will is getting the itch to play these games already, playing a kind of watered-down version and also making up a version with some friends at his school. I suspect Gary would be proud.
The Impotence of Proofreading
Some of the other English teachers in the crowd out there may have seen this one before; I had not, and it game me a chuckle in a good kinda way:
The “Monty Hall Problem” explained on video
From my long-time/college friend Chris comes this video that explains the “Monty Hall Problem:”
Now, just to give you an idea about what kind of geek, arguer, and non-science/non-math kind of guy I was: I recall having long and even heated arguments about this topic among the seven other similarly inspired geeky folks I lived with on Davenport in Iowa City as an undergrad. And I even remember this carrying on into my MFA program. One night, a friend of mine and I tried to test this theory in the only way a couple English/creative writing types could have managed: we acted it in little table-top game of “Let’s Make a Deal,” playing it out 100 times. And damned if switching didn’t win 66 times.
Ah, memories.
“The Last Calligraphers”
While surfing about this morning, I came across a promo for a film called “The Last Calligraphers,” which is coming out this summer and which is a documentary about the only newspaper in Asia (maybe the world, I don’t know) written by hand. It’s been running since 1927. They do ultimately convert what they write into plates and print it, but the way that they “get it down” is kind of cool.
Food Fight
From bbTV, which I found from John Battelle’s Searchblog:
Happy Leap Day (?) post
From boing-boing comes this cool picture for all your leap day (or whatever it is they call today) needs:
