Larry.org

David got the Ninjago Epic Dragon Battle Set 9450 for Christmas this year so we built it today. As usual we did a time lapse video of the build process.

More info on this particular set is available here (Lego.com product page). David picked out the music this time. It’s Tick Tick Tick Boom by The Hives.

I’ve been playing with time lapse lego builds and this spring I created a new one.

More info on this particular set is available here (Lego.com product page). Songs: Meet me in the Basement by Broken Social Scene (used during the time lapse build) and Entrance Song by The Black Angels (used when showing the features of the model).

My Mother-in-law, Mary Ann Utriainen, passed away last Friday night.

My wife and I collected images and created this video, which we played at the memorial service.

I think it turned out pretty well, but we’re still quite sad.

Here’s a quick video of it to show the motion of the new Garbage Truck Getaway 7599 lego model, since you can’t really get that from the box.

Today is David’s last day of Kindergarten. We walked to school together as we often do, and I grabbed the camera so I could shoot a companion video for the one I shot for David’s first day.

This is that video:

This week David performed in his first school Musical. Here’s the video!

This Week David’s reading group performed a play. This is that play.

I have to tell you I was a bit stunned when I heard about Alex Chilton’s passing yesterday.

He’s probably the most important American musician you’ve never heard of.

I can’t do a better job describing him than the words spoken on the floor of the House of Representatives in his honor.

The first time I ever really figured out who he was, was because I’m such a huge replacements fan. When they sang:

Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton when he comes ‘round

They sing “I’m in love. What’s that song?

I’m in love with that song.”

It was probably no more than a week later that I was listening to his solo albums, and his Big Star records. No more than a month later I was a huge fan.

I’m certainly going to miss him, and my heart goes out to his family.

Today I walked David to his first day of kindergarten. We had a nice conversation during the walk and he was very excited for school to begin.

The video is great, but the way they made the video is also very interesting. Definitely one of the most interesting fund raising ideas I’ve ever seen.

Check out the rest of the videos for Playing For Change: Song Around the World from Concord Music Group on Vimeo. I may even buy the DVD.

Today Valley Metro Opened the Light Rail to the public. For the first five days it’s free!

We went by the northern terminus of the line, to check out the turnout.

Line was a bit too long to wait to ride. It’s free for the first 5 days and this station is about 1 1/2 miles from our house. We drove about 3 miles of the line just to see what the turnout was like at the other stations. None of the other stations were this crowded but there were events all along the route.

It’s sure nice to see the city turn out to support this new mass transit option! I hope people take advantage of it when they are commuting.

Over my lunch break today I was reading through some twitter posts and found one my “friends” @kentnichols posted a page that reminded me of the kind of stuff we’d come up with when I was working as an intern at a physics/chemistry lab.

Now that my friends is one expensive cup of coffee.

I think this is my favorite.

It’s from our trip to the new Phoenix Children’s Museum.

There’s many others from our first visit there.