I’ve seen two cool new technologies in the last 24 hours…just thought I’d share:

Microsoft Surface: As much as they get ripped on for not being as cool as Apple, I think this is pretty stinkin’ sweet. It’s basically a really huge touch screen that can be used as tabletops at home, restaurants, kiosks, etc. The site has some pretty cool videos. I’ll be interested to see how popular this becomes and how quickly it can be mainstreamed.

Google Maps Street View: If you’ve never used Google Maps or Google Earth, you’re missing out. They’re pretty cool and useful. Yesterday Google Maps got even cooler by adding a “street view” to their maps. With this feature you can actually see what street corners, intersections, etc. look like from the ground (at least in five major cities). Hopefully they can broaden this feature to many more cities in the future. If you want to see it in action go to maps.google.com; then go to New York, NY. Then click “Street View” in the top right corner of the map. You’ll have to zoom in, but there will be a little stick figure that you can drag around. Depending where you drag him and what direction he’s facing you will get actual ground images of the location he’s at….pretty cool!

I’ve really been trying to learn how to use the open source 3d animation program Blender for use at our church (Elston Family Church). Here’s my latest creation. I wanted it to be a short, simple video that starts and stops with all black slides so that it can be a little intro/outro video for anything we need at church. I think it’s pretty cool.

The last few weeks have been pretty uneventful for us, relative to the last few months. Ruby is now almost four months old; it’s amazing how fast time goes by. I included a picture above (you can find many more in our photo galleries). Lindsay had her first mother’s day a few weeks back, and I really dropped the ball on it. I’ve tried to make it up to her, but I guess I’ll have to try harder next year (and on birthdays, anniversaries, etc.). My work is going well. Wen-Ping, the guy I’ve been working with, is actually headed back to Taiwan for a faculty position. He’s been here about a year, and we’ve made really good progress in building our “soft landing” instrument (which I may post more about at a later date). Even thought he’s leaving, I believe that another post-doc is coming to help me out with completing our instrument. I’m also done with classes now, but I have a big obstacle coming in the very late fall…my OP. This is a huge project that takes months of preparation and tons of reading. I think that I’ll do fine, but I’m still a little nervous about it. It will definitely better prepare me for the pressures that will come with a doctoral position later in life.

Now, more day-to-day things. Last weekend we went to Indianapolis to visit my family. It was nice to see them all. I led worship at Sunnyside Road that night; they’re trying to incorporate some more modern songs in, and Dad thought it would be nice for me to come lead….pastor John seemed to really appreciate it. This Friday and Saturday we babysat Emma and Avry Townsend from church. They were excellent, although it stretched our house to its limits ( : This weekend we went to Terre Haute to visit with the Burkes for Memorial Day. We had a cookout or two, and everyone of course fawned over Ruby ( : Ruby’s been sleeping better at night, but had a few setbacks the last few days. Hopefully she’ll get back on the ball soon for mommy!

Next week I will be in Indianapolis almost all week. The American Society of Mass Spectrometry is having its annual meeting at the Convention Center, and I will be attending. It’s my first time to go, and I don’t want to leave my family for that long. However, it’s something that will be a valuable experience for me in the future. There’s a IMSA meeting on Tuesday night where many Indiana business owners will be; this should be a great opportunity to get to know some future employers.

That’s all for now. I just wanted you to all know that we haven’t given up on the blog…we’ve just been extremely busy with the baby and all.

This is really cool. It’s all done in Javascript, and degrades nicely if someone doesn’t have Javascript on. This actually uses jQuery, which is built into Drupal now. For those who don’t know, Drupal is the content management system that I’ve been learning to build websites with.

Most of you don’t care about this I’m sure, but I thought it was sweet!

in biochem…she graded very differently on the final. Praise God!

I am highly doubting that I got enough points on that biochem final to get an A. I didn’t do bad at all, but I just don’t think I’m going to hit the mark. Although, maybe if she’s generous with partial credit (fat chance) or changes the curve (even fatter chance) I could swing an A. I’ll let you all know the verdict some time next week. I’m sure you’re on the edge of your seats.

Nonetheless, I am officially DONE with classes, forever. Praise God! I think that He gave me an especially difficult and humbling one to finish it off just so that I’d be especially grateful. It feels really good to be done with cumes and classes now. Only two more major hurdles to go: the OP and the defense. Doesn’t sound like much, but it’s going to take ~3 more years and a lot of hard work. Such is life ( :

I said from the beginning that I think he’s going to win. Last night’s performance was sweet…

Many of you have requested some updates. Well, an update with no picture would be unacceptable, I’m sure. So…tonight, I organized my 300+ pictures from the last few weeks. Tomorrow, I’ll try to upload some of the pictures and put a few updates. You’ll see a TON of new updates on the Baby Blog, because I’m using that as an electronic Baby Book. I have things all the way back to 03-04-07 that I need to add. YIKES!

Anyway, thank you for your patience. I working as fast as I can with little to no sleep!

Love to all!!