Sidewalk Chalk Guy

These photos have been circulating in an email, so I thought I'd post them in one place. Amazing!

http://bit.ly/cWS1HU

Wind Talkers

I direct plays at the school where I work, and the students are always asking for clues as to what the next play will be. I put up some clues on this webpage, and thought some of you might like to try your hand at them. Two of my students cracked the clues last night. Let me know if you want any help?

SpaceX

My little brother (who is at least a foot taller than I am) is an engineer on the team that designed this rocket that launched successfully this week. You can watch the launch on the website. Poke around on there if you want for more info on the company. Their goal is to increase reliability and reduce cost on space travel by a factor of 10. It's owned by the same people who created the ultimate dream car, the Tesla.

Here's the SpaceX website, and here's the launch video.

Google Bookshelf

Ok - so this is amazing. With Google Books, you can now upload the books that you have by their ISBN, which you can either enter by hand on a keyboard, or with a barcode scanner. I have a T-Mobile G1, which I was able to use to scan, and I'll be the iPhone would be able to do this too. Without a scanner, you can just type the numbers directly into the import feature. All the details are at this link, including this video which will walk you through everything you need.



The real kicker, though, which they mention at the end of the video, is that not only can you use your computer to search the titles of all your books, but because it's Google Books, you can type in any word that would be IN any of your books! If you are wondering where that quotation came from, and are just not sure which of your books has it, search your books online, and it will lead you right to the book, and in many cases, will actually show you the page number of what you're looking for. Pretty amazing!

Fluteboxing!

These guys are unbelievable.

I just discovered this guy from a recommendation from a former student. He is pretty great. This video sort of captures what I find good about him. You can check out his site at illdoctrine.com.

Wordle

This is cool. You just paste a bunch of words or a website in, and it creates a Wordle. I made these from Mumon's Comments. Mumon was a Zen Master who commented on each of the koans in The Gateless Gate, one of my favorite books of all time. They are easy and fun to do.