Yesterday was a big day for me. After almost six years at my current job, I am changing jobs and I have accepted a job offer from a local non-profit and I start on July 9. Words can’t express how happy and excited I am to start this new job.
Star Wars Light Saber Lamp

I did this DIY project a few weeks ago and just wrote this up and posted it on my site, geekcrafts.com. It turned out better than I thought it would. I still have to do the logo in the shade though – that’s part 2. Also, it was posted on Ikea Hackers today too!
Real World 3D
Here’s a sign your kid has been playing too many video games/watching 3D movies:
Daughter (while riding in car with me): Daddy, look at those clouds – they look 3D!
Me: They are 3D. The real world is 3D.
Both of us: LOL
New office – theme?
With our new home, I’m getting my own office. I really want to theme it, and I’m trying to decide what to go with. Note that there will be 3 arcade games in the office: Star Wars, Tron, and Discs of Tron. Some options:
- Space: I have some beautiful space-themed canvas prints for the walls (Thanks, sister!) which would make a good start to the theme, and the Star Wars arcade game fits in.
- Robots: I want to have a place to display my robot collection and this could be cool, especially with some robot-themed art work
- Portal: I saw a cool Portal-themed office recently that really made me want to try. Do the wall, have some Portal knick-knacks around, and some Portal art on the walls. Could be cool.
- Star Wars: I have a few Star Wars collectibles to display plus the Star Wars arcade game. Could be good if not overdone. I saw an office once (and have a picture somewhere) that looked like the cockpit of the Millenium Falcon – that would be cool.
- Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: I have a framed and signed poster from Douglas Adams, a 42 towel, a C64 HHGTTG game, etc. This would be subtle but classy and my robots could fit in as long as I have a Marvin in there.
- Tron: I’m leaning towards NOT doing Tron. The only way to do it right is glowing blue on black and that’s not the look I want.
Ideas? Leave a comment!
Spelling help for elementary students
Found a great use for the iphone app Orchestra. Its main purpose is to help you make todo lists by speaking them and it converts it to text. But… I found a cool trick… my daughter frequently needs help spelling longer words she hasn’t learned yet for papers and reports, etc. It would take her a while to look up the word online or in a dictionary and it really added up when she had a long paper to write and had to look up the spelling of lots of words. Now, I let her use Orchestra – she just says the word and it shows her how to spell it almost instantly. For every individual word she has tried it (so far) has been 100% correct.