Now’s tje chance to put your brand new Fireworks skills to work.  Think about building a homepage. For almost anything.  It could be about you, a favorite band, a class, a movie….the list is endless.  Here are the details:

1. Open up Fireworks and create a new image that is 900×600 pixels.

2. Do some deep thinking.  What’s your page going to be about?

3. Gather images for your design.  Look textures by searching Google images for “rock texture” or “beach sand texture”.  Click here for inspiration.

4. Add at least three FAKE buttons (they won’t go anywhere) to your homepage.

5. Use images, fonts and textures to create an engaging design. Break out of the typical boxy web layout.  Be free.

Thought for sure this would turn out to be another “balloon boy” hoax but this family of experimenters looks legit.  Made me wonder if the Drake Maker Club should have pursued our balloon in space dreams after all.  Then I realized that this family had a big chunk of Alberta to use as a launch and recovery site.  Not quite as crowded as our neighborhood.

Stick with the video for the first few minutes  – it picks up the pace.

We celebrated my son’s sixth birthday this past weekend in our backyard.  Each of friends built a rocket (or several) and the launched them via compressed air rocket launcher.

Grab your safety goggles and build your own rocket launcher using these plans: http://tayloranderson.net/rocket_launcher/

I made the rockets out of foam pipe insulation, duct tape an sheet foam for the fins.

All this fun got me to thinking….what should I do for his next birthday?  After all, I only have a year to sort it out.

Thinking about our backyard, bordered by the houses on three sides and a wooded hillside on the fourth, it would be fun to build something that could be controlled.  Like a remote controlled blimp.  It could shoot pics of the kids, drop presents, etc.  Maybe if there were two blimps the kids could fly them in blimp-sumo-combat.

So I searched for DIY RC BLIMP and, through the magic of the Internet, stumbled upon this great video from last year’s Maker Faire.  Chris Anderson, WIRED Mag editor, describes his success at building cheap flying robots (UAVs).  Truly worth your ten minutes of viewing time.  Amazing that this can be built for less than $600.

Searched a bit more about Mr. Anderson and UAV and came across this video clip from WIRED’s TV program.  Anderson got a group of DIY UAV geeks together at Alameda NAS to fly their creations.  Now I’m totally hooked. Keep your eye on the skies.

Today’s mission is to write a script for your proposed game. Remember that your target audience is a five year old and that your goal is to create an educational game that is engaging.  You have the freedom to choose WHAT the focus is – learning colors, spelling, numbers, basic math.

Use one of these resources:

http://searchwarp.com/swa105940.htm

http://www.stormthecastle.com/video-game-design/writing-a-video-game-script.htm

This is all I see.  New site design?  Corporate takeover?  Big ad blitz?  We’ll see soon enough.  I’m not staying up to find out.

Here’s the file and software management quiz!

Click here.  Crazy.

iRobot’s Soft Morphing Blob ‘Bot Takes Its First Steps

FF to 2:00 and brace yourself. You will sleep with the light on after watching this seething orb “walk”.

Today’s blog post will focus on adding a video to your blog and writing a relevant post.

1.  Locate a school appropriate YouTube clip that relates to your blog topic.

2. Add the clip to your post using these handy instructions.

3. Write about the video.

4. Now look at ways to promote your blog online. Promote yourself.