This guy on Science and Design…

… from TED:

I dig these two

I really dig my kids. I’m sure they were in the midst of a pitched Bionicle vs. Hot Wheels battle… or rocking out the the Ramones, Flogging Molly, or The Figureheads… or reading to each other… or arguing with each other.

Mom to kids: Hey, let’s go see a movie today!
Kids: No, thanks.
Mom: But “Cloudy with a chance of meatballs” is out in 3-D! It’s one of your favorite books. Please, please, please… Let’s watch the trailer on my computer.
[play trailer, kids laugh, begin quoting the trailer to each other.]
Mom: So, are we going to go?
Kids: No, thanks.
Dillon: Maybe when we’re a bit older.
Mom: Aaaawwww…

It’s okay, Mol. I’ll take you to a movie.

Molly: No thanks…

Speaking of The Figureheads, you should check them out:

Also, listen:

Skywriter by the Figureheads

Kiddo Anthem by the Figureheads

Mechamo Crab

Last year I got this neat little robot kit for my birthday. The Boy and I had already built a number of small simple kits; Ones that The Boy received as gifts. This was a grown up project, no doubt about it.

It took us the better part of  a Saturday to get the whole thing put together, and we only had to back out of it once. We spent hours putting it together, and then played with it for maybe 40 minutes. Since then, we’ve had it down off of the shelf a handful of times. I think it’s lovely in its mechanical complexity, and it has a reasonably prominent place on Molly’s “Precious Things” shelves (another post), but having the thing wasn’t the point. Building that kit-bot may have been the first time The Boy and I talked about the idea that the process is where we find the best part… That the making is what matters most.

Since finishing it, I’ve been meaning to post about it, but Mike insisted that I include a video. Well, I finally got around to it:

Pretty sweet, right?

Playing for Change: One Love

This is a really amazing project… Just amazing. Check it out:

From the site:

“Let’s get together and feel alright”. While recording and filming in Dharmsala India, where we planned to add some Tibetan singers to this track we passed by a small record shop on the side of the road. The display featured about 50 Tibetan CD covers and one Bob Marley album in the middle. This song around the world is in dedication to the love inside each of us. We can achieve far more together as a human race than we ever can apart. One Love.

Bonus:

Wordpress upgrade

So, it looks like the fine people who make WordPress have released a new version… and man is it sweet. At least it seems sweet so far (3 minutes).

It has a completely new interface design and has finally shaken off the vestiges of the older, clunkier management interface. It definitely seems snappier, even on my bargain basement hosting provider. Lots of very smart use of AJAX (not used for every damned thing, but applied in nice little dollops throughout). Example: They’ve added a Quick Post function that exposes only a small set of editing tools, but lets you post a quick short note. I started to put this post together in the Quick Post element and then realized that i wanted to add a link to the WordPress site… no linking in the Quick Post? No problem. I click the “Save Draft” button, expecting to the go the “Manage->Posts->Edit” in order to pick up where I left of, but as I wait for the AJAX spinner to finish spinning, I see that as soon as the draft is saved, the list of drafts, placed handily right below the Quick Post element, has been updated. Click. Edit.

It may seem like something very obvious, but I can tell you that getting this kind of interaction right can be tricky… especially when you have a lot of people involved. More people means more opinions, and while the likelihood that you will hear the Right(tm) answer increases when you add more smart people, the likelihood that you will either recognized it for what it is, or actually be allowed to implement it decreases. Getting more smart people is awesome, but it makes it that much more challenging to get the subtle things, like the interaction described above, right.

Nice work.

Oh, and the tag selection is actually usable!