I know I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it again, but I love the internet.

Yesterday someone posted on my Legos post saying he was from Wild Planet Toys based in San Francisco and that he’d love for Eli to try out a few of their toys.

My first thought was, “This is spam, I should delete it.” But then I thought about it some more and decided to give Devin a call. He was very excited to send Eli their game called Hyper Dash. So we’ll be getting a copy in the mail sometime in the near future. Eli and I are going to give it a workout and possibly let the other playgroup kids see what it can do and then we will be reviewing it here.

This all entertains me for a variety of reasons. I like that when I posted about a specific toy I had people coming out and saying, “Hey, we do this too. Have you tried this? How about this with that same toy?” I like that we are getting some free toys. I mean really, what’s not to like about that? I also like that Eli is following in Stephen’s footsteps already to be a game reviewer. What is it with Granades making swag out of thin air?

My next thought is I should say that Liza really wants to review something too. Maybe cool baby stuff like Baby Legs, which she has been eyeing from her perch on my lap but I am too cheap to purchase. She’s also really been wanting to try out the Robeez shoes, preferably the black Mary Janes.

I was waiting for the audio files from my talks to be available before I made this post, but they’re going to be a while coming, and I am impatient. So let’s pimp the things I did at Dragon*Con!

I gave two talks, one on Bose Einstein Condensates and fermi superfluids, the other on the history of Hubble and what the current plans for servicing it are. I’ve got PDFs of my slides for the BEC talk and the Hubble plus lolcats talk, though be warned: for talks like this, I use slides more for blackboard-like illustrations than to spell out every point I’m making. When the audio files from my talks are available, I’ll add them here.

We did the usual set of videos for Dragon*Con TV. Our James Bond/Professor X spoof The Mutant Who Loved Me did fairly well, as did our Wii safety video, REMOTE OF DEATH.

The most popular by far was our video for Jonathan Coulton’s song Re Your Brains.

In fact, it was so popular that this year I was stopped by random people who recognized me from the video. This culminated in it being shown during the Masquerade costume contest while the judges were tallying their scores. People began singing along and waving their open cell phones in the dark ballroom. The end result was me up on stage, leading everyone in the final chorus.

The Masquerade hosts, Kari Byron and Grant Imahara from Mythbusters, watched in disbelief while the paparazzi recorded my every move.

(Thanks to Tom Kerns for those photos.)

And that is what can happen to you when a friend one day innocently says, “You should volunteer at this science fiction convention with us.”

[tags]dragoncon, zombies, bec, hubble, mythbusters, unexpectedly being on stage[/tags]

I woke up this morning with the world gently tilting out from under me. I think it’s some cold or similar thing diddling with my inner ear. When I first got up, standing upright and stationary was nearly impossible. When I closed my eyes I saw a swinging clock pendulum or a sledgehammer pounding back and forth, back and forth. I’m better now, enough that I’d trust myself to drive–I didn’t before–but I have to chart my peregrination like a drunken helmsman interpreting the navigator’s called directions.

The word “woozy” and variants have been running through my head all day. There’s Fritz Leiber’s invention of wordwooze, completely disposable literary product turned out by machine for the masses who demand a new book every day. Then there’s “wooze” as a variant of blues, and of course, it’s supposedly a drug reference. It’s enough to make me want to lie down.

In fact, that’s a great idea.

I’ve had a copy of Neuromancer for a very long time. I’ve enjoyed the idea of having the book for so long that I think I thought I just might get to know the book by osmosis. I figured having the book made me seem cool. (LanaBob! how many cool points do you get for owning books you don’t read?)

Finally, finally I have read it. It was hard going at the beginning. I didn’t get all the slang and the faux-Japanese industrial business made me tired. Since I don’t read that much sci-fi (I’m starting to wonder how much longer this particular excuse is going to last me but I figure I can claim this much ignorance for at least another half a dozen books), I kept thinking that I was missing large swaths of the plot. Then last night as I was recounting to Stephen what I understood of the plot, he assured me that I was getting the story and so that renewed my energy for reading it.

I got into the actual heist this morning and I just about couldn’t put the book down. I just finished reading it and going over the info in wikipedia and I can’t figure out why I waited so long to read the book. Especially given my love of all things Max Headroom-ish. I completely enjoyed it and feel like I somehow now need to jack in to upload this article. My fingers on the keyboard just don’t seem to be enough of a connection. I will definitely be thinking about that cyberspace for a very long time. And isn’t that just the very definition of a good read?

Stephen pointed out that I hadn’t posted any photos on Flickr in a while. Enjoy!

A family comes together with ice cream

Photos taken on my birthday with my birthday camera

Liza explores

Eli’s first ice cream truck ice cream

Misty makes things

Sometime in the past week, my son has fallen in love with Legos. On Friday he played in his room with his legos while listening to books on CD for close to three hours.

My son, the extrovert, who thinks that he isn’t living a life worth having if someone isn’t watching and responding to his every eye twitch and vocalization played in his room by himself for around three hours.

I thought maybe it was a fluke due to it being my birthday and all. (Happy Birthday to me!) A pleasant respite from the nearly constant attention that Eli wants. But no, it happened again yesterday. I didn’t even suggest it. He went into his room and started up his own music and started building a “tower of power” out of Legos.

This morning? He came to me while I was still in bed to show me the thing he had build with the Legos for the little green men to play on.

I love Legos. They are my new favoritest thing in the whole world.

It would be unsurprising if the Petrelli boys’ father turned out to be alive and was played by veteran actor Leonard Nimoy. This might have to wait, though, if Heroes is governed by a conservation of Star Trek actors law.

Thanks.

In other news, I continue to prove to myself why the county next to ours is called Limestone County. Every third strike of my mattock, rather than sinking into the clay we laughingly call “soil” around here, strikes a chunk of limestone. I have a pile of rocks on one side of my incipient flower bed, some of which are the size of my head.

That’s what I’m doing with my free time; how about you?

I’ve talked about Rick and Jessica’s struggles to have a child. I’m happy to report that Phoebe came this weekend and we couldn’t possibly be any more joyful to see her.

Congratulations Rick and Jess! We love you guys and Phoebe is fabulous.