My Blog

Olympic Stadiums

The new Olmypic Stadiums in Beijing, China are finished. Both the atheletics and aquatics stadiums both have an enviromental design.

National Stadium - The Bird’s Nest

National Aquatics Center - The Water Cube

The Planets

Learning about the planets and the Universe was very interesting.  Seeing the pictures of nebulas and stars was very cool.  My favorite part was doing the scale model experiment.  I was very surprised to see how small our planets were even though our sun was pretty big.  I got a real understanding of how large out solar system really is.  Compared to the solar system the galaxy would be the size of Wisconsin and is always getting bigger.   I am very glad we got to learn about the solar system.

Bad Parenting

Sheila and Paul Garcia of Northfleet, England, acknowledged to London’s Daily Mail in February that they invited their 16-year-old daughter’s boyfriend to come live with her in her bedroom, despite the fact that he is 36 and divorced, with one child. The parents said they weren’t thrilled with the situation, but that it was preferable to the daughter’s running away with the man. [Daily Mail (London), 2-27-08]

Cutting-Edge Parenting: Sheriff’s deputies in the Orlando area were on the lookout in March for two women who, according to surveillance video from the Magical Car Wash, had pulled into a stall and deposited coins but then proceeded only to scold and then pressure-wash a small child. [CFNews13.com (Bright House cable), 3-6-08]

Aron Pritchard, 27, was convicted of child endangerment in March in Hutchinson, Kan., after a jury declined to accept his explanation for his girlfriend’s kids, age 2 and 3, being burned in a hot clothes dryer. Pritchard said he was just trying to show them they could have fun without necessarily spending money. [KWCH-TV (Wichita), 3-10-08]

Taken from News of The Weird. 

Magic Pen

Gameplay: There is one goal in this game, get the ball to the flag using as few shapes as possible. Even though the goal is simple it can be achieved and failed in many different ways. You are not set on a specific path to the flag. A player can use their own imagination and use any shape they want to get the ball to the flag. The game makes you really think about what is going to work and what isn’t going to work.

Controls: The controls are very simple. Click and drag the out line of the shape you want to make where you want it to appear. Click and hold to make a circle, the longer you hod the bigger it gets. Three keys let you erase, add pins to hold things together, and hinges to make things move and pivot.

Sound: There is continuous sound track that plays in the backround. After a while it can get annoying.

Replay Value: High

Total Rating: 9.5 out of 10

Magic Pen Link 

Mobile Smells

TOKYO, Japan (AP) — Japanese cell phone users will test a new service that allows them to download fragrances, major telecommunications company NTT Communications Corp. said Monday.

A downloaded fragrance will be sent from a user’s cell phone to a base station that will emit the scent.

Twenty participants using “Mobile Fragrance Communications” can download files of specific scents accompanied by music or video clips, the company said in a statement.

Scent playlists can be downloaded from “i-mode” mobile Web site run by the company’s affiliate, NTT DoCoMo.

The service uses a handset’s infrared port to transfer the “fragrance data” to a dedicated device similar to a plug-in air freshener that is loaded with a cartridge of base fragrances. The device then mixes them to create the chosen smell, which it then wafts out.

The service is a cell phone version of an existing fragrance download service for scent users’ homes and offices. Trials will run for 10 days beginning Thursday.

The company is also testing a device that can be connected to the Internet so that a user can remotely program a scent from a mobile phone.

The company in 2005 launched a similar service for Japanese homes, allowing users to download different programs to emit smells from a 73,500 yen (US$720; euro460) machine.

Informaton and picture taken from http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/ptech/04/07/mobile.scent.ap/index.html 

The War

    I am very happy I got to see the War DVD. Before WWII was something that I found very interesting because videogames and action movies. Now I have a new appreciation for the war and the men who fought in it. Instead of just action I sort of know what the war was like from all the interviews. The men had very interesting points of view and they all had different opinions. This documentary is very well done and it should be shown to classes all over the country.

     The thing about this DVD that really sets it apart from other documentaries is the interviews of people didn’t fight in the war. Other DVDs show the soldiers and the battles but none of them show the perspective of the people back home. The people had some of the best stories and points of view in the entire DVD.