California Mission Mosaic School Project

End of year school project and final report was about California Missions. Each student selected a mission to do a report on.  Anna selected Santa Ines. Instead of doing a typical model out of cardboard panels or creating a story board to go with her report we decided it would be nice to make something we could keep and display for years to come.  So, Anna made a 3'x5' tile mosaic.  We will mount this on the wall out by the pool and deck. It weighs 80+ lbs so, getting it to her school took a bit of effort.

Watch at YouTube

NASA Space Shuttle Launch on Roku

Today at 4:50pm eastern time NASA is launching the final mission for the space shuttle Discovery. Watch it live on Roku in HD or on the web at www.nasa.gov under Multimedia is their NASA TV link.

3 Great Ways to Watch the Last Space Shuttle Missions

Body Browser by Google Labs

Check out this great demo of WebGL & HTML5. The technology is less interesting than the usefulness for study of the human body and it's various systems! Zoom in and turn on the labels. Click on muscles and organs to isolate them...

Body Browser - Google Labs

Upgrade Your Life

 Check out this great productivity book.  You can read the first chapter for free at Amazon via their web based version of the Kindle reader or go to the books website to see the updated "Life Hacks".  Updated because computers and the internet are in a constant rapid state of change.

Catch 22 in awareness of our own competence.

Catch 22 in awareness of our own competence.

Time Management

The most difficult thing about time management is prioritizing tasks. Thanks to a lecture on this subject I watched by Professor Randy Pausch. I've found a logical, simple, and easy method for prioritizing tasks that both helps me get important items done while reducing or eliminating the unimportant busy work that often comes my way, thus saving me that potentialy wasted time.

Items should be organized on a 4 square table with Important / Due Soon in the upper left, Important / Not Due Soon in the upper right, Not Important / Due Soon in the lower left, & Not Important / Not Due Soon in the lower right. Here is an Example Time Management Chart. This chart / method of task prioritization came from a time management lecture by Professor Randy Pausch from Carnegie Mellon. He is also the author of The Last Lecture (book link at Amazon), here is the video of this lecture. This method struck a chord with me. Until seeing this method, I found most other systems for prioritizing tasks to be too combersome.

Why Don't Students Like School

Maybe with this book I can be better at helping my daughter with her homework.  The first chapter was compelling so I bought a copy from Amazon.

Why Don't Students Like School: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom