March 30, 2006
March 10, 2006
A right of passage
Usually when I'm chaffuering the little ones, we'll listen to one of maybe a dozen mix CD's that I've made for the kids over the last couple years. And when I say mix, I mean MIX.
What I try to do is think of songs or pieces of music that have something, anything that a kid can hear and be interested in, whether it's somebody singing really high notes, a funny sounding arrangement, silly lyrics, anything that they can really get a hold of.
A typical track list for one of these mixes might look like this:
- An Aria from Mozart's "The Magic Flute"
- Brazilian lullaby
- Theme from The Beverly Hillbillies
- "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da" by the Beatles
- "Llano del Rio" by Frank Black
- "Fell in Love With a Girl" by the White Stripes
- "Bye bye love" by the Everly Brothers
- Tuvan throatsinging
- "Santa Monica" by Everclear
- "You've Got a Friend In Me" from Toy Story
- "Come Fly With Me" by Frank Sinatra
- Mexican Polka
- "Move it on Over" by Hank Williams
And so on....
So way eclectic. Anyway, driving Lily and Jake to school today and Led Zepplin IV is in the CD player and I think to myself...."These guys have never heard "Stairway to Heaven"
As we listened (and they LISTENED - they were into it) there was a non-stop barrage of comments/questions.
- "Do you like his singing as much as Madeleine (Peyroux) ? He sings soft like she does"
- "Getting louder and louder !
- "I hear a flute and piano...no....guitar
- "Is this the same singer? He sounds different."
- "DRUMS !
- "Dude, that totally rocked ! What was that song?"
OK, neither one said that last comment.
Actually they asked to hear "A Whole New World" but by then we were at school.
Interestingly, the song lasted EXACTLY the length of our trip to school. So while there might have been two paths I could go by...
Wait for it....
....There wasn't time to change the road I was on.
Definitely a life-moment, at least for me
March 08, 2006
March 07, 2006
GoogleEarth roxxorz (rules)
Over the last couple of days I've been putting some data from the Natural Sciences division at the museum onto the shared community datasets for GoogleEarth. If you guys don't have it yet, GET IT!
- Why?
- Works cross-platforms
- Free
- Cool intuitive interface
- Interesting datasets from all over the world
- Doesn't cost anything
- 3D Flyovers of your house, or George Bush's, or whoevers
- GRATIS
Seriously. I am over the moon psyched on what is possible with this program. GET IT!
OK. There. I'm better.
So now that you've downloaded it, here is my first crack at sharing data and doing cool interesting things for the user:
bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/Number/340850/page/0
Just visit this site and choose "Open this Placemark". Google Earth should input it right away and navigate you to my favorite archipelago.
Then just open the folders, like "Collections Localities" and double click on any of the locations. That'll take you right to where museum scientists collected some invasive species(s). WHich ones? Click on the link in the info bubble and find out.
March 05, 2006
February 21, 2006
The finished rug!
Remember way back when when we posted this....?. Well, Kim just got the word that our rug has been finished and so I guess it's gonna get put on a boat and brought over from Bali (I think). Don't know the ETA but pretty cool to see that it's really real.
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