This one’s been around a while and just feels so true…
Sat, 10/28/2006 10:24am

From JJ5′s web site.
Wed, 10/18/2006 11:08am (what a thing to see so early in the morning…)

From left to right, Ted Neward, Rocky Lhotka, Chris Sells’s cardboard cutout and his electronic image projected to building 33 in Redmond, WA from Lake Oswego, Oregon, Patrick Cauldwell and Scott Hanselman.

From Keith Pleas, Microsoft Patterns & Practices “Open Source in the Enterprise” panel organizer
10/11/2006

My youngest son’s teacher found out I work at MS, so now he expects me to come into his class to teach them cool stuff. I’m happy to do that, but now I’m worried about putting together a cool 1-4 hours of stuff to do, e.g.

• Cool PowerPoint stuff (wowing their classmates)
• Cool Excel stuff (doing their math homework)
• Cool Web stuff (building their own web site)
• Cool Programming stuff (writing their own PC/XBox 360 games)
• Cool Hardware stuff (programming a robot)

Obviously, I’m not the first person to want to teach kids how to do cool stuff w/ their computers. Can someone point me at some activities for a classroom for of kids to do in these (or other) categories? Thanks!

P.S. My son is a 6th grader, making his class 11 and 12 year olds.

Posted without permission after reading it in today’s paper
Sun 10/01/2006 3:01pm

• USB SD/MMC MP3 Player + Card Reader + S/H: $18
• Kingston 1GB miniSD Card + S/H: $19 (at the time)
• Being able to listen to Teenage Dirtbag on the same device that I can use as a 1GB USB HD and SD, mini-SD, MMC, RS-MMC and T-FLASH reader/writer: $37 (duh — $18 + $19 — you thought I was going to say “priceless” didn’t you?)

The sound quality ain’t that great, but don’t criticize the dog for being off key…

The Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express (Beta) is available for download:

″XNA Game Studio Express enables individuals and small teams to more easily create video games using new, optimized cross-platform gaming libraries for Windows and Xbox 360. This beta release targets the development of games for Windows. The final version of XNA Game Studio Express will be available this holiday season and will enable development of games which target Windows and upon purchase of a XNA Creators Club subscription, the Xbox 360 as well.”

Has any other console vendor every let an individual develop games?