Best New Technology of the Decade

When is a mouse not a mouse?

When it is a guitar! The idea of creating a drum or guitar out of a mouse controller is one the best ideas of the new century.

Entertainment games, like Guitar Hero http://hub.guitarhero.com/ and Rock Band http://www.rockband.com/ , always lead the way by thinking "outside of the box."

The software that generates the video players in Rock Band is called Reallusions.  http://www.reallusion.com/

It is available to animators and video producers. It works like Adobe Photoshop: you capture pictures or video with your camera, outline the images, and use various filters to edit the images.

Tell me you didn't see that coming: a mouse that looks like a guitar. Who'da thunk it?

The Handmade Christmas

Dame Dragon is a cartoon I wrote when I was young. Eric and Clair were just knee-highs. The hand drawn cartoons were video-taped in the 1980s. My friend, Alex Wheddon, WLLN News, transfered the videos to digital format and uploaded them to Google Video a few years ago.

Here is a link to that video on Google:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5459310382883888296&q=Handmade+Christmas#

The best gifts are handmade gifts, from the heart.

love, eBeth

My Town Monday: Hiatus

I debated long and hard today, but I decided to take an official hiatus from My Town Monday posts until the new year. I'll be working on some new material though, in part because next semester I'm teaching a Michigan & Local History class to my lovely students (assuming I can get enough of them interested in it!)

I'm hoping to have a few posts along the way, but it's entirely possible that the lights will dim on this blog over the next few weeks. I've got a lot on my plate both personally and professionally at the moment (the price of working too many jobs, methinks.)

See you in the new year!