Booyor’s BLOGgh!

Big news.

But is it just me, or do these guys look like Statler and Waldorf?


Giuliani and McCain

It’s been a long and lonely road…

Haiku
Life is easier
when seen through blessed felt eyes
and a Frank Oz voice

Yes, blasphemy, I am intrigued by Smash Bros. but much to the chagrin of my students I probably will not buy it.

But Monster Lab, on the other tentacle…

Check this out:

Let me say this again. Millions of different combinations! You can have a monster that is made up of a wrench for an arm, a fish head in a glass bowl, a torso made out of a truck, and legs made out of tree vines. The quality of all of your parts is based on how well you perform the experiments that make them, and what type of part you make is determined on the ingredients you used to make it. The amount of experimentation is nearly endless.

Games have lied to me about this in the past (see also: Fighter Maker and RPG Maker ). But if they can pull this off, woo boy. They promise multiplayer online. With your own mad scientist creations.

Yeah, I know.

About the recent post -

The kangaroo post has received the most in-person comments that I’ve ever received.
Thanks for reading, Pastor John and random 3-D designer who happened to visit my library today!

Have you seen the new Flash widgets maker, Sprout?

You know those galleries, video players, calendars, and news readers that you see in facebook and The Unmentioned Enemy? Now there’s a web-based app to create those widgets on the fly.

Boom, baby!

Here is a list, to date, of the school district policies created by the superintendent and his technology team because of me (no joke - I found out in a district meeting today):

1. The Incident - No one remembers why I was called that, but it involved either printing to printers at other schools or trying to unlock iDVD without permission
2. You must be on contract for the following year to teach summer school. I left the district last year for a little bit having been offered a higher paying job that was closer to home. BUT I was not angry with the district nor did I resort to usual “just quit” attitudes/setting people’s toupees on fire. They had never had anyone be nice when they resigned, especially one who still wanted to work for the district over the summer.
3. Student e-mails need to follow a specific fake e-mail domain if the student has no real e-mail of their own. This one was just created this week. The district is issuing a two page statement because of me. We were doing D-Day soldier blogs. I told the students to put “fakeemail@dday.com”. Yeah, there’s an actual dday.com and he became unwittingly subscribed to receive every single post to a two teacher forum.
   The estimate from the district mail server tech was, by the end of the World War II assignment, 40,000 e-mails from our district. When the district people told me that, the librarians in the meeting with me joined in my raucous, uncontrollable laughter.

Other e-mails were sent to people whose names sounded like Bart Simpson phone taunts.

In other library news, Devin will appreciate that a kid was so excited with the “new” book in the library, the Krytos Trap, that he wondered if there were any other books like it.

The Haiku
There are positives
and negatives - no, wait - nerd
librarians rock.

Hey. Do you remember back in 2005 when I mentioned this thing called Sudoku that was gonna be fun? Whatever happened to Sudoku? Here’s what happened, I tell you.

At least pain caused by cold and chili peppers.

Here’s the story.

It’s funny to combine a conversation with Adam that I had with Jeremy:

The Haiku
Scientific news
may find new drugs but the lack
of pants disturbs me

The Haiku
I will go for the
first time in my life to lose
a day in downtown

I would be a hypocrite to say that jury duty is annoying. Being arrested by an Evil Empire is annoying. Gulags are annoying. Doing my civic duty? A fun experiment.

(Do they know I blog?)

In what I consider to be a genius move, Nintendo has included old NES demos in the Wii version of Super Smash Bros. If you’re like me, you’ve played Super Mario Bros. and Metroid. You know who Kid Icarus is because you’ve seen Captain N.

But the Ice Climbers? Fire Emblem? Some games are too old school for my students (I remember the arcade version of Ice Climbers right next to a Popeye game at Pizza Hut) and some are new for those of us returning to Nintendo after a, what has it been, 13 year hiatus? (I think I got the PlayStation in ‘93 or ‘94.)

You’ll be able to play demos of games featuring Smash Bros. characters to put their personalities and moves into context. Play for a time limit and then get taken back into Smash Bros. It sounds like the VC may be handling the demos.

And, yes, Super Metroid and Starfox 64 are scheduled to be demos in the game.

The Haiku
Kangaroos are good
for entertaining the guests
until teeth are punched

Photo courtesy of my nightmares

He seemed to enjoy his life-size poster.
(Click to go crazy)

The Haiku
It is tough to know
when to be awesome and when
to drive a big bus.