Archive | October, 2009

So Your Kid Wants To Be An Animator?

By on October 29, 2009 in General Interest, Programming/Coding

So your kid claims to want to be the world’s next great digital animator? Here are a few good packages they can practice with. These will give them a breadth of exposure to basic programming, game design and web applications.

Alice is a cinematic package custom designed for youngsters to get their feet wet with animation. It’s also used as a beginning programming course in computer science departments on college campuses around the country. Alice has pre-made characters, structures and backgrounds and allows you to make short films. You can practice with perspective, camera positions and lighting. The program allows you to move action segments around to get the desired sequence of motion. You can lift the hood and see the Java language styled programming methods that make it all happen and customize the commands in greater detail.

RoboCode is a fun gaming design package also designed on a Java platform. It gives you good practice with gaming logic presenting different scenarios that you can customize with your own programmed battle tank. Actually a kid can design a bunch of tanks and orchestrate his own battle game.

Adobe’s famed Flash is used by graphic designers and animators alike. You may see a Flash app as part of web site or a one fully designed in Flash. There’s a good chance you’ll see animated graphics used in commercial advertising. It’s more pricey as a professional package but as your child develops their skills it’s really easy to pick up on.

Another respected Adobe product is DreamWeaver, a dedicated web design package. If your youngster already has a penchant for web design and have a basic knowledge of HTML and Cascading Style Sheets they should be to adapt to DreamWeaver relatively easily. Try the free trail version and see how they like it before buying.

And speaking of web sites, now is a good time for your kids to begin working a web site to show their talents. Not only will this develop into a portfolio for entrance into a college program it will serve as great advertising for consulting. And who’s to say he or she won’t pay their way through college and graduate into their own business?

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Love & Respect: Know Your Role

By on October 20, 2009 in Faith, General Interest

I just started reading a really great book and I think I’m going to share some nuggets with you guys from time to time. The book is “Love & Respect”, by Christian pastor Dr. Emerson Eggerichs. He’s been a pastor and marriage counselor for a number of years and he’s part of the Focus on the Family family so you already know it has to be good stuff.

The gist of the book is that wives have a strong need for love from their husbands and husbands have just as strong a need for respect from their wives. We’re reading a chapter a week in our married couples Sunday school class and having some really lively discussion by a group of dynamic teachers.

So take this verse in and digest it. Pray over it and see what you think when it comes to beginning to know your roles in a solid marriage.

Ephesians 5:33, “Each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband” (NIV).

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Social Media Predator Prevention

By on October 8, 2009 in facebook

A note of safety for everyone but especially you ladies. Be careful of the personal information you share online. For your safety’s sake you don’t need to share all of your basic information in your social media profiles. Stalkers will use anything to get to you and physically harm you so please, do not, do not, do not put your personal address or home phone number on your social networking profiles.

Of course if you’re a business owner or professional and that number is on your business cards that’s different. In that case you naturally want people you don’t already know to contact you for potential business. Social networking helps facilitate that perfectly normal business process. But if you don’t have to put your home number online I wouldn’t.

The point is that your home can be easily found and your home phone number likely can be traced to it with all the databases that exist these days so just be smart and safe. Artificial intelligence programming is improving at an exponential pace and information search is one of its primary applications so don’t take any unnecessary risks.

At a minimum put an e-mail address in your profile. And if you want to contact an online friend send a direct message to see if they don’t mind connecting. They’ll do the same with you to via e-mail to see if you’re open to connecting in the real world.

Take advantage of all the opportunity the virtual world has to offer, just be safe while doing so.

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