Author Archives: joel

Will the Real Slim Shady…

Posted on November 6, 2005 by joel
Please stand up!

This post marks our 50th, and what better way to celebrate than with some cute photos of Sean doing something new. Check this kid out! He's just getting the hang of crawling, but he is already trying to pull himself up on things. It started with him pulling himself up onto his knees, and playing with his new toy while kneeling. Then he figured - 'what the heck, i'm halfway there' - and got onto his feet instead!


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Kite #9 – Double Delta-Conyne

Posted on November 5, 2005 by joel
Kite #9 has been finished for a while, bit I have had no luck getting it to fly until this morning. This kite is a double delta-conyne, which is basically 2 triangular cells with delta wings on them. This is the first kite I've tried to make with a 'fancier' design. The wings are made of different colored stripes - black, blue, green. yellow, and white. I had to use the Trefoil Dragon's tail to get this one stable in the air, but once it was up there it flew very well. This kite is about 7-8 feet wide and about 3 feet tall.

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Scenes from Space #13

Posted on November 4, 2005 by joel
Believe it or not, this isn't the Death Star! It is actually Mimas, one of the moons of Saturn. The huge crater on Mimas (known as Herschel) is 80 miles across - almost 1/3 of the diameter of the entire moon. Herschel's walls are 3 miles high, parts of its floor measure 6 miles deep, and the central peak rises 4 miles above the crater floor. The impact that made this crater must have nearly destroyed Mimas. Fractures can be seen on the opposite side of Mimas that may be due to the same impact.

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Happy Halloween!

Posted on October 31, 2005 by joel
Sean didn't seem to mind his Halloween costume at all. Probably because the fabric was a little slippery, and it helped him crawl across the carpet. We were worried that all of the dressed-up strangers coming to the door would scare him, but he hardly noticed them - he played in the candy bowl all night! (By the way, one of these images is especially for Mike Page. It's Sean's "Male Model" pose!)



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Scenes from Space #12

Posted on October 28, 2005 by joel
The last of the Titan rockets was launched on October 19th, 2005. This launch ends the Titan program, whose first launch was in 1959. Originally designed for carrying nuclear warheads, the Titan evolved into the workhorse rocket that could lift the heaviest payloads. The Titan was the launch vehicle for many well-known missions - including manned Gemini missions, the Viking missions to Mars, the Voyager missions to the outer solar system, and the Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn.

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Kite #8 – Trefoil Dragon

Posted on October 23, 2005 by joel
Kite #7 is finished, but I can't put pictures up yet. It is a gift, and I don't want the recipient to see it here before they see it in person.

Kite #8 is a Trefoil Dragon kite. The kite itself is pretty nondescript, but the thing that makes it interesting is it's 40-foot tail. Still pictures don't do it justice. This tail looks amazing as it undulates in the wind. Very mesmerizing. The Trefoil Dragon is the blue kite in these pictures. The black kite in the pictures is the Genki from a previous post. Lately, I have been having trouble getting that one to fly, and had wondered if a tail would help. So I tried the Dragon's tail on it as an experiment. It performed MUCH better with a tail, so I will have to make one for it as well.

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Hanging with the Daddy-O

Posted on October 21, 2005 by joel
We realized that I am in very few of our pictures of Sean - I am usually the one behind the camera. So here's a few to even the score!



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We’ve Come So Far…

Posted on October 21, 2005 by joel
Anyone who has visited us since Sean was born should be impressed by these pictures. You all knew our fears that Sadie would never learn to relax around the baby and we would always have to keep them seperated to keep her from licking him into oblivion. Just look how far she has come! This is how she is all the time now. Who could have guessed?


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Scenes from Space #11

Posted on October 21, 2005 by joel
On October 19th, 1899, 17-year old Robert Goddard climbed a tree in Worchester, Massachusetts, and inventented modern space flight. He dreamt of a machine that could carry men to Mars. From that young age onward, he dedicated his life to building such a machine. By 1926, he had designed, built, and flown the world's first liquid-fueled rocket.

In this picture, Mars is visible in the lower-right hand corner (through the trees), and Venus is just above and to the left of the Moon.

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Camera Tossing

Posted on October 14, 2005 by joel
I came across something really cool on the Web during my lunch break today. It's called "camera tossing". Basically, you aim your camera at some source of light, shut off the flash, hit the shutter, and toss your camera in the air. What it captures can be unpredictable, but you will usually get something pretty interesting. Below are a few that I tried when I got home today after I had read about it. If you want to see some pretty cool pics of this kind of stuff, here is the link to the camera toss flickr group.


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