North Carolina Transportation Museum

North Carolina Transportation Museum Trip

Aug 31, 2011

Yesterday J and Dad went to the North Carolina Transportation Museum in Spencer, NC. It is not a far drive, and our Science Museum Consortium pass gets us in here for free as well. It is one of the many local museums we visit frequently.

As you can see I was able to get Microsoft Photostory 3 up and running on my Win 7 machine. I found a how to link here. Basically you just down load and install it. Then you select properties/compatibility/win XP sp2. After that it worked fine until I tried to add the audio. MS photostory 3 is supposed to be compatible with .MP3 format audio, but it kept telling me it was not compatible. I  found an online site Online Covert .Com to convert my .mp3 to WMA. It was very easy and MS photostory 3 did recognize the WMA format. So still some troubleshooting to do, and looking about for better software, but for now this is better than the Picassa 3 movie maker.

DaVinci Catapult Model

This is working catapult built from the DaVinci Catapult Model kit. J had a blast with this. We used it to launch marshmallows all over the house. The dogs had fun with this too! The other pics are some of J's little lego creations. The tron light cycle he put together in about 5 min after watching Tron. I don't recall what the purpose of the other one was, but I am sure it was impressive :) Again I just don't like Picassa as much.

Hard Drive

We thought our hard drive on the desktop was fried, to make a long story short it turned out to be a fried motherboard, but in the process of troubleshooting I wound up with a half-reformatted hard drive. So we lost a ton of pictures. I have not had the heart yet to look at our back up. Unfortunately I do not run back up as often as I should. I know we lost pics, but I won't know how much until I check.......

We will be posting pics of space camp soon. As well as slowly adding old neglected posts mixed in with the new.

July 4 2011

The above movie was made using Picassa3. The pics are not that great. It's not surprising that it's hard to photograph fireworks you set off at home, you will have to take my work that they were a lot of fun and impressive. And the fireworks show downtown actually had an accident/explosion where luckily there were only minor injuries. What I like about Picassa is that it IS easy to upload photos and make a little movie. You can add captions to each picture, but not as easily as microsoft photostory3.  You also can add music. I was going to add the 1812 Overture. But there is no way to cut/adjust/slide the music like you could in photostory.    Therefore I did not include the 15 min Overture to get to the last 2 min of finale to go with the pictures. Overall I am dissatisfied with Picassa. I will have to check to see i photostory works with win7 or what the latest replacement is. The video below is just straight footage from the camera.

Zombie Dice

Our new favorite game is Zombie Dice! It is a really fast fun game. Here is a review from GeekDad.

This game can be addicting! There are 13 dice in the tumbler. The dice are: 6 green dice with 3 brains, 2 footprints, and 1 shotgun blast. There are 4 yellow dice with 2 brains, 2 footprints and 2 shotgun blasts. There are 3 red dice with  1 brain, 2 footprints, and 3 shotgun blasts. You roll 3 dice at a time you keep the brains and the blasts, but take any footprints (escaping humans) and add more dice so you roll a total of 3 at a time. Once you get 3 blasts you lose all of your brains. It is a very simplistic easy game. My friend has a four year old daughter who loves it! Some people even play zombie dice as a way to determine who plays first in a different game. Perfect for game night. Fun for all ages!

DaVinci Boat Model and V2 Rocket Model

This weekend J went to Hobby Lobby to the 2 for 1 model sale. We thought it was funny because Hobby Lobby actually called us to let us know because we are 'frequent model shoppers' lol. The v2 still needs to be painted. J plans on doing the black and white research test pattern on the model.

update: I am experimenting with using picassa to upload photos and make slideshow/movies. please bear with me while I figure out the new software.

Star Wars Monopoly

J played Star Wars Monopoly with a friend the other afternoon and he turned into this brutal maniacal monopoly winning tyrant. So this afternoon his father and I decided to teach him a lesson so we decided to challenge him to a game. It was brutal! We got schooled!!! He had never played monopoly at all prior to yesterday! I guess he gets his 'game gene' from his grandfather!! He would be so proud!

Neglected Blog

Since my car accident two years ago I have really neglected this blog. Since I now have some time off I will do a bit of updating. I am sure some of it will seem disorganized and out of order, but I want to catch up and to get back in the habit of sharing J's activities!