Photos: Hanging Rock

One pleasant surprise that we've discovered in central North Carolina are the great state parks. They've got some really awesome places to go hiking for the day, up and down mountains with huge rocks jutting out into the sky. Yesterday we went to Hanging Rock State Park and went hiking as a family. We walked and climbed for 4 hours, and I think we went 6 to 7 miles total. We were wore out, but it was beautiful and a blast. Take a look at some of the pictures.

Done for the semester

I finished my last exam this week, so I'm officially done with my sixth semester of seminary. One more to go! These last two semesters have probably been my least favorite semesters, mostly because I've been taking Hebrew. Whatever it is that people will confuse me with, it won't be with a Hebrew scholar. But I'm done with Hebrew now and looking forward to my last semester, when we'll be back on campus at Southeastern.

Inductive Bible Study Tutorial

I've posted the new version of my inductive Bible study tutorial. In response to some of the feedback I got, this one is more simplified and more structured than the last one. It's posted in my tutorials section.

Photos: Emmy's 6th Birthday

This week Emmy turned six. Time continues to fly. We had a small birthday party with some of her friends, and our family went out to Chuck-E-Cheese for dinner.

Scratch your itch

Much of the work I've done at MITRE has been programming. I still enjoy programming (even though God has redirected my career path), and I'd like to pass my love of programming to my kids. I've heard that kids need to be around 12 before they're ready to program. So I was excited to read about a project at MIT called Scratch.

"Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web.
Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design."

It's all graphical, almost like putting Legos together. I played around with Scratch for about an hour with Jacen looking on. The next day he used it to create his own project. Very cool. Download it and try it out.

Next step: the Lego Mindstorms.