A Cool Little Application

We’re just hangin’ round home today relaxing (me) and playing in the snow (kids & Stephanie). Fiona had her last dance class till next year yesterday, and then we went to my family Christmas party, hosted this year by my nephew Brian and his wife Cary, where everyone had a totally lovely time! And what good food! Gosh, how I love the holidays!!

I don’t have much to say today, but on Friday Arthur and I did some playing around with a wonderful computer program called ‘Scratch‘. It’s an application that makes programing fairly easy and can be used to make games, animations and probably other uses as well. You can drag and drop different bits of code like puzzle pieces to create all kinds of cool things, like adding animations, sounds, music and movements. You need to see it to get a better understanding. It was created at MIT and can be used by kids and adults to learn the basics of programming. And it’s cross-platform (Linux, Windows, Mac) and works beautifully on Arthur’s old Mac and our Pinguy OS Linux machine. Here’s another link with much information: Scratch Reference Guide. There’s lots of info on different ways for students and teachers to make use of Scratch. We’re going to need to take some time to learn all the things we can do. Arthur thinks it’s really cool, especially the game-making possibilities. I want to make animations with it. I think we’ll both learn a lot!

And changing the subject; here are a couple more links below pertaining to the strange state of our economy, and to the equally bizarre attitudes of our elected government officials in Washington. The latter subject makes me especially pissed as hell, but I really don’t want to use language as foul as this makes me feel. So I leave it to you to, gentle readers, to watch for yourselves:

The rich benefit from society and should give back

Daily Show: 9/11 First Responders React to the Senate Filibuster

I’m off to have my dinner and perhaps watch a movie with the family, and bask in the cheery glow of our beautiful Solstice/Christmas tree. And contemplate how fortunate my family really is compared to many of our fellow human beings. Cheers!