Cold, wet, snow ...

If you have nothing to do and its cold and snowing outside take a look at this site.

I know it has adverts etc and to use the full range of the games you pay. But ... you can play for free online and the 'Typer Shark' game will do wonders for your little wonders as they get fractious over Easter.

And there are more games to try all of which have that edge that makes them exciting and, dare I say it, educational.

Go on try ... you know you want to ...

And while you are doing these things take a look at the new games on the BBC Bitesize website. The Questionaut game is very reminiscent of Samorost. With regard to the Questionaut game ... in the past children did an activity and then were 'rewarded'... in this game the reward seems to come first. I found myself wanting to have some control over the questions ... but I am not sure why I did !


PS ... (Remember that you do try these things at your own risk !)

PPS ... Have 'played' Questionaut all the way through once now and am impressed with the quality of the decision making and the logicality of it all ... it is too good to be wasted on KS2 revision questions ... they almost(!!)spoil the whole thing.

Viral Marketing

There is nothing new about viral marketing and the concepts that underpin it are exceptionally well documented in Malcolm Gladwell's book 'The Tipping Point' but a seasonal promo that has entered my mailbox from numerous sources as various of my friends 'discovered' it comes courtesy of a company called OfficeMax.

On their homepage right down at the bottom of the 'Top Links' section is 'Elf Yourself' and this just appears to have caught on ... gone viral !

It is a simple app that allows you to create 'elves' who dance and who have the face of whoever you have photos of.

It is fun to do and just goes to show the power of the simple over the expensive.

If you are desperate to see our family version click here. Enjoy !

Retro - technology backwards ( if you see what I mean!)

Perhaps you are one of those people who has moved on into the high level use of technology in your daily life but really long for the 'old' days of scribbling on the back of envelopes or menus. If this is you then Wordperhect ( no ... this is not a spelling mistake!)is designed to fulfil a personal need.

My thanks to Steve Taylor for the link.

Pecha Kucha

Again, I find how far I am behind the times by discovering things that I have been saying about presentations (and in particular, presentations using MS Powerpoint) have been being said all around the world for donkey's years.

I just didn't know ... but now I do !! Wired Mag reported on it in September.

Pecha Kucha even has Wikipedia page which explains everything, I think.

Conceptually clear and should be adopted ( Perhaps it has been) world wide !!

The idea behind Pecha Kucha is to keep presentations concise, the interest level up and to have many presenters sharing their ideas within the course of one night. Therefore the 20x20 Pecha Kucha format was created: each presenter is allowed a slideshow of 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds each. This results in a total presentation time of 6 minutes 40 seconds on a stage before the next presenter is up. Each event usually has 14 presenters. Presenters (and much of the audience) are usually from the design, architecture, photography, art and creative fields, but recently it has also streched over to the business world. ref: Wikipedia

Worth a thought

669 Saturdays

"... that's when he began to explain his theory of a "thousand marbles."


Patched to me in an email today (and then just editored a little) was this snippet. It might be familiar to some:



"You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years.

"Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900, which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime. Now, stick with me, Tom, I'm getting to the important part.

It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail", he went on, "and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred Saturdays." "I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy. So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round up 1000 marbles I took them home and put them inside a large, clear plastic container right here in the shack next to my gear."

"Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away. I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life.

There's nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight."

"Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign-off with you and take my lovely wife out for breakfast. This morning, I took the very last marble out of the container. I figure that if I make it until next Saturday then I have been given a little extra time. And the one thing we can all use is a little more time."

"It was nice to meet you Tom, I hope you spend more time with your family, and I hope to meet you again here on the band. This is a 75 Year old Man, K9NZQ, clear and going QRT, good morning!"

You could have heard a pin drop on the band when this fellow signed off. I guess he gave us all a lot to think about. I had planned to work on the antenna that morning, and then I was going to meet up with a few hams to work on the next club newsletter.

Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife up with a kiss. "C'mon honey, I'm taking you and the kids to breakfast." "What brought this on?" she asked with a smile. "Oh, nothing special, it's just been a long time since we spent a Saturday together with the kids. And hey, can we stop at a toy store while we're out? I need to buy some marbles.

And so, as one smart bear once said..."If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you." - Winnie the Pooh.

So ... just 669 marbles left in the jar ... think I might switch to jelly beans.

Humility ?

I know this is late and I know you will know the outcome but I don't watch what most people would call 'normal television' and so I missed this until a friend pointed it out to me ... and now I can't stop watching it.

I am not sure what it says but every time I listen to Paul sing I hear his voice but I watch the reaction he generates.

We must be missing so much. I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.

We Feel Fine Part 2

I failed. Obviously the way I put the information into my blog didn't allow the database to find my 'feelings'.

In the manner of Scottish spiders ... I will try again.

In Loughborough it is raining and today I am feeling jaded and wondering if I should have gone to the sun.

Interesting that yesterday Ewan, in Boston, picked up on the site and emphasised its power to extend the vocabulary of emotions ( at the bottom of the post about Angela's session)