Archive for December, 2009

Mixed Martial Arts Toy Drive

December 16th, 2009

If a kickboxer asks you to donate toys, you do it.

The toy drive is for soldiers who are having trouble providing gifts for their families during this time of year.

The drop-off for the toys is:
1861 E. Baseline Rd, Tempe, AZ (480) 274-7637

If you donate at least three toys, you get 30 minutes worth of a training session with UFC Fighter Santino DeFranco.

2011 Grand Canyon Reader Award Nominees

December 8th, 2009

How the Grand Canyon Award books work:

  1. We give you the top ten books from recent years.
  2. You read the books.
  3. When voting time comes around, you vote for the best book out of the ten.
  4. You sit back and relax, having enjoyed some really good books while you wait for our next list.

Check out the main site here.

I’m on the awards committee, so students of mine should recognize quite a number of these books:

The Brooklyn Nine by Alan Gratz (2009)
Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson (2008)
Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban (2007)
Evolution, Me and Other Freaks of Nature by Robin Brande (2007)
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (2008)
H. I. V. E: The Higher Institute of Villainous Education by Mark Walden (2006)
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (2008)
London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd (2007)
My Fair Godmother by Janette Rallison (2009)
Palace of Mirrors by Margaret Peterson Haddix (2008)

Aniboom

December 1st, 2009

I was working on another tech project that I’m sure you will see here later when I stumbled across Aniboom. Am I the only one who didn’t know about this site?

I work with the Future Professionals on how to use Flash. Aniboom is a great (free) resource to think through the animation process. It’s a webapp that has a pretty sophisticated file system. It even exports as an animated GIF, which was the most impressive part for me.

Like anything we do in Future Professionals, I like to have a demo.
Here is my animation that I created in four minutes:
M2.2
Yep. Pong.