Soda Bottle Water Rocket

I've been reading the GeekDad blog recently, looking for cool ideas of things to do with my kids this summer.  I came across their entry for making soda bottle water rockets.  It looked simple, cheap, and fun.  So we hopped over to Wal-Mart to buy a bike pump and an inner-tube.  It took us a bit, but Ann and I finally built a cork that would fit snugly in the bottle.  We were sorta testing it out and, uh, well, we accidentally launched in the kitchen.  Ooops.  Got water everywhere.  But it worked!  I can't wait till we try it outside tomorrow.

LibraryThing

Social networking sites are the rage these days. I already use Flickr to keep track of my photos, and now I'm using a new site to keep track of my books. It's called LibraryThing, and it lets me rate the books I read and comment on them. So if you want to see what I've been reading lately, click on "books" on the menu. And then go to LibraryThing to start your own free account.

Free Books

One of the pastors in our church is downsizing to a smaller home. Less cleaning for his wife; more free books for me, since the new house has less library space. What did I get? Several classics:
  • John Calvin's Institutes
  • FF Bruce's Paul: The Apostle of the Heart Set Free
  • Jay Adam's Competent to Counsel
  • Faith Bailey's George Mueller
  • AW Tozer's Pursuit of God
  • Francis Schaeffer's Escape from Reason

I also got books by Ravi Zacharias, CS Lewis, John MacArthur, and Elmer Towns. Now I just need time to read them all.

Tower Defense

Every once in a while I find a simple game with a simple idea that's wonderfully challenging and addicting. That describes Tower Defense. It's a Flash-based game that you play in your web browser, no installation required. If you play, enter your name and the group name "Garriss" when you finish, and you can compare your score to ours.

Maps for photos

Flickr has an option to associate photos with a map. So I found Hanging Rock State Park and associated those photos with them. If you want to see where we took the photos at, click on the word "map" under the picture.