I just uploaded a gazillion new photos. Here’s a peek:

Halloween 2007
Eli told me one day that he was going to be Spiderman for Halloween. It was news to me so I had to hustle to Wal-Mart and get a costume. While we were shopping, I asked Eli if he wanted to wear the regular red and blue Spiderman or special black Spiderman costume. Guess which one he picked?

Giant Popsicle
The ice cream truck strikes again. He only ate the top stripe off of that popsicle but the photos are totally worth it.

Bead Girl
The draping of things on Liza commences!

Fall Grass Sledding
We don’t need no stinking snow to sled. Our hillside is steep enough we can take kitchen trays and get the job done. Eli, Will and Luke demonstrate about 900 times.

Liza Sits for the First Time
I love these colors in these photos. Liza’s room makes for some good light. Also, she’s sitting. Wheeeee!

This was the first photo I took of Liza sitting up for the first time. There are several others but this one was the best. Some days it’s good to be at home. Notice too she has hair now. She’s grown that hair in the last two weeks.

These are my flowers that are two weeks old. They still look beautiful and this afternoon the sun coming in the window made my table look really lovely.

Behold, the Rubik’s Companion Cube!

I know the cube loves me because, no matter how I turn it, it’s always solved.

(If you’re completely confused now, you should read my dissection of the game Portal or listen to me rave about it on a podcast.)

(Also, if you don’t care about how to make a custom Rubik’s cube, you should skip to more pics of the Rubik’s Companion Cube.)

Anyway, here’s how you can make your own custom Rubik’s cube. What you’ll need:

1. A Rubik’s cube. Our local department store stocks them in the electronic toys section. Sadly, it didn’t include a robot to solve it for me.
2. Self-adhesive lamination sheets. Look for ones that are about 3 mils thick or so. Staples and Office Depot has them, as does Hobby Lobby and other scrapbooking-centric stores.
3. A sharp X-Acto knife. And it’d better be sharp. Don’t use something you’d be ashamed to bring to a knife fight in the arts & crafts room.
4. A metal ruler. You’re going to need to cut very straight lines, and it’s best if you cut the paper and not the ruler.
5. Double-sided tape. Get the kind that has one side covered with a peel-off back. If you’re lazy, like me, you can pick up the small double-sided tape squares they sell scrapbookers for sticking photos into scrapbooks.
6. A craft cutting mat or a big stack of paper so you don’t score up your table, desk, or lap.

In theory, you could use sticker paper made for inkjets instead of laminate and double-sided tape, but the resulting cube won’t stand up to handling as well as the laminate-protected one will.

Right. Let’s get down to cube-making. Continue reading Rubik’s Companion Cube, or How to Make a Custom Rubik’s Cube →

Sometime in the past few years of getting a house and having two babies, I got old. This is something that Stephen and I joke about from time to time when we realize the multitude of 20-somethings on TV. Then sometime in the past few months, I realized that I was older than the people in the books I read.

Today I realized that technology has also passed me by.

About seven or eight years ago I bought a 125,000 image clip art library. I use the images in many different projects. I’ve used the seasonal and holiday portions twice a month for more than three years now in our church’s newsletter. So recently I decided it was really time to get something new. I bought something at Staples since I had a spend-$50-get-$25-off coupon burning a hole in my pocket. I knew it was for PC but I thought, “surely I’ll be able to pull the image files off the disks and open them in Photoshop to do what I need.”

I couldn’t do it.

I let Teresa, the woman I do the newsletter for at church, borrow the disks to look through. I chatted with her this morning about it. While we were looking at it on her computer, I realized the reason I couldn’t see the image files on the disk. They aren’t image files, just links to files on the internet. What I bought wasn’t images, just the software to download the images from the internet. Ugh. I asked her if she wanted to buy it from me since I couldn’t use it on my computer and couldn’t take it back.

So I thought, maybe I should just get the Mac equivalent. No, sorry. No such thing exists any more. Everything is on the internet now–for a low, low monthly fee. But see, I don’t want to pay a monthly fee. I want to spend $50 and have access to 1.2 million images whenever I need them for the next seven or eight years.

And this is where I know that I am old. I am longing for the days when I could squish my pennies without repercussions, babies didn’t fall out of Bumbos, and clip art still came on CD.

Let’s talk about Portal, the game from Valve. It’s a first-person puzzle game in which you place portals that allow you to teleport from one portal to another. You use these portals to reach places you normally couldn’t, move objects around, and solve puzzles.

You know, putting this in words is difficult. Let me show you the trailer.

The game is absolutely brilliant, and has a streak of dark humor that’s unusual both for its tone and for being actually funny. Its pacing is spot-on, keeping you moving forward without frustrating you too much. It’s currently sitting at 89 on Metacritic, and a lot of gamers have been raving about it online.

Add me to that mob. Portal is exquisitely made, polished until the cannonball has no corners whatsoever, and manages to combine puzzles and atmosphere and characterization into a beautiful package. It’s better than a chocolate-covered magic pony.

And I’m about to spoil it for all it’s worth. I’m going to break down its structure and pacing, dissect its backstory, and try to explain why the game works as well as it does. If you have any interest whatsoever in playing Portal–and you should–then go get it and play it before reading on. It’s available for Windows as a standalone game, or for Windows and XBox 360 as part of the Orange Box bundle with Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and a bunch of other stuff.

Continue reading Portal Was a Triumph →

Even my mom had to get in on the act this morning. She saw the recall on TV. So she called me to say not to set Liza on a table in the Bumbo. She was the fifth person I’ve heard it from.

So please don’t tell me any more horror stories about babies and fractured skulls and Bumbos.