My friend and former employer Seth Dillingham rides every year in the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge, a bicycle event that raises money for cancer research. Seth is very committed to this cause, and this year has assembled some terrific bundles of software that he’s currently auctioning on eBay.

The discs feature a smorgasbord of applications, ranging from games to Internet utilities to time tracking and billing utilities, the creators of which have generously donated them to the cause. There are discs for both Mac and PC, so fly, my pretties, and bid, bid like the wind!

UPDATE: If you’d like to help promote Seth’s auctions using a red stripe ad like the one I’ve placed in the upper-right corner of my site, include the following lines of HTML in your site. (Make sure they’re outside of any tables or anything else that would force the position to change.)

<div style="position: fixed; top: 0px; right: 0px; align: right; width: 166px; z-index: 1000;">
<a href="http://www.truerwords.net/5127"><img style="border-width: 0px;" src="https://www.mcmains.net/1395/enclosure/pmcbanner.png"></a>
</div>

UPDATE 2: I’ve tweaked the above HTML just a bit.

Hurricane Rita is headed for the Texas coast, and our state is in a bit of turmoil. People coming out of Houston last night took about 12 hours to get to our neck of the woods, rather than the usual 3, as mandatory evacuations started to go into effect in the region. Our local groceries are selling out of bottled water and flashlights, and friends’ houses are beginning to fill up with people who have left the coastal towns to be further inland.

For those who have expressed concern, we’re in a pretty good spot to ride it out. Our house is in one of the highest parts of San Marcos, so we should be safe from flooding, and we’re stocking up a bit on non-perishables, gas, etc. in case services get disrupted. We may be welcoming in friends of friends over the next couple of days as coastal populations move inland, but don’t expect things to get too wild. We’ll post further as events warrant.

For those of you who don’t know, yesterday was International Talk Like a Pirate Day. I began the observance early, greeting the kids at the table with “Avast, me wee buccaneers! I see ye be eatin’ your fine Cheerios and sea-tack already!” Curiously, instead of the usual chorus of “You’re wierd, Dad!” I instead got two separate cries of “Stop it, Dad!” Grumpy kids. They must not have had their coffee yet.

In other news, I’d been feeling very slightly smug even since Daniel had his bike accident back in April, as I’d been riding for a while without incident. My smugness evaporated this morning, as while I was taking a left turn from RR12 onto Holland Street (in front of Jive Turkey), my wheels, dampened from a slog through dew-moistened grass, went completely out from under me. I landed on hip and helmet, pretty well shredding my slacks. While I certainly felt the impact, my head was pretty well undamaged, thanks to the helmet doing exactly what helmets are designed to do. My forearm was a bit torn up as well, though I was fortunately in good enough shape to hastily get myself and my bike out of the road.

A quick trip home, a new pair of pants, some antibiotic ointment, and I was back on the road again, making it into the office the second time without incident. Huzzah.

Nintendo’s next-gen console, slated to more-or-less compete against the XBox 360 (lauching in November), and the PS3 (planned for 2006 sometime), is called the Revolution. While Nintendo’s let some info about the Revolution out, they’ve been very cagy about the controller. Until now.

At the Tokyo Game Show, they rolled this trailer for the controller. It can apparently be used to point at a specific location on the screen (Duck Hunt 3000, anyone?), but also tracks motion gyroscopically, and can be used like a baseball (or cricket) bat, sword, drumstick, flashlight, dentist’s drill, etc. As the DS has enabled some interesting sorts of games that nobody else is doing, so also should the Revolution open up some new possibilities. It’s great to see Nintendo carving out their own niche amid the clash of the titans that is console gaming these days.

UPDATE: It appears that the motion tracking may not be gyroscopic, but infrared that relies on an array of sensors around the screen. All things considered, that probably makes more sense, as gyroscopes would need calibration from time to time, and would draw more power from the batteries of the wireless remote. Having a separate sensor array also means that there wouldn’t have to be any of the screen flash you get with Duck Hunt or similar games.

UPDATE 2: Tilt-sensitive? Ok, maybe there are gyroscopes in the dang thing. Who knows. I’m sure someone will take one apart as soon as they’re in the public’s hands.

Sorry for the dearth of updates lately. I was sick for a fair portion of last week, and have been generally in a creative slump, so haven’t been turning out anything in the way of interesting writing or photography. A few items of note:

• Kathy and I enjoyed a great birthday party this past weekend for Jason Young. Thanks for inviting us to be part of the fun, Erin!
• I’m signed up for a Kayaking class on September 24-25, and am pretty excited about it.
• I pitched some of my nascent ideas about exploring games in education to one of the managers in my office, and he thought it a good enough idea to spring for my registration for the Serious Games Summit. So, I’ll be in D.C. on halloween, enjoying discussions of the pedagogical applications of interactive play. (No repeat of The Screaming Electric Pumpkin this year, I’m afraid!) I’m pretty excited about this one too.
• We went to Nava, Mexico over labor day for a friend’s parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. It was a good experience overall. We enjoyed raiding the excellent bakery at the a supermarket there, visiting candy and pinata shops, and being pretty well befuddled by a celebratory mass in Spanish.
• Emily went to her first school dance recently and, in spite of (or, as we like to flatter ourselves, because of) parental worry, had a great time.

We’ve all seen the photos, stories, and video streaming out of the devastated regions in the southern United States. I don’t have anything to add to those stories, other than a plea to help. How does one continue to live when not only has one’s home been washed away, but one’s job and the paychecks it brings are all underwater as well, and you find yourself in a place where you don’t know anybody? It’s too much — unfathomable for us comfortable suburbanites, I fear. One is reduced to quoting Blanche Dubois: “I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers.”

But we can help out. (I’m sure many of you have done so already.) There are a bunch of relief organizations that are lending a hand, and which make it very easy to contribute to their efforts. Mercy Corps is one of my favorites, but you can, of course, support whatever group you like.

Just do help somehow. (Liam decided to kick in the couple bucks he had saved to the relief effort last night, you’re not going to let a six year old show you up, are you?)

Go and give. Be generous.

Thanks.