News..

Nothing much new here. Kids are out of school and lounging. Alex isn't quite, actually. He and two of his friends are pursuing an idea that invoves designing a new symbol language for plotting brain function based on both brain physiology as we know it and some concepts from psychology. It's part of 'neural sceince' which appears to be a very new field of research because, 1) there are 'schools of thought' and, 2) everyone has his/her own language or symbology for describing the links between the brain and psychology. Alex is abusing my Univ. library card and internet journal access privileges. If anyone is tracking these things, they must think I've jumped Departments.

We just got back from the Crossroads Guitar fesitval in Dallas. It was put together by Eric Clapton and included Santana (disappointing), Joe Walsh, Larry Carlton, Vince Gill, Buddy Guy, BB King, ZZ top, James Taylor and a few others I didn't know. A 12 hour concert. I can now die because I've heard Eric Clapton play Layla.

Elicia's birthday was yesterday. We saw Harry Potter. Nice movie with familiar personages.

Sherry and I have been working, mostly trying to write. In the evenings I've been transferring our Hi-8 movies to DVDs using the Apple (excellent!) iMovie and iDVD. My Hi8 camera, which is on it's last leg, is hooked to my miniDV camera, which has a video translation mode (bought it for that) which then is output on firewire to my laptop where iMovie captures it. I then do the editing, titling, etc. and send it to iDVD to burn the DVD. Each 2-hour Hi8 tape must be put on two DVDs, since the latter only take 1 hour each. The main constraint is disk space. Two hours of video is 20gb. iDVD need another 10gb to assemble and translate that to DVD. My laptop also sucks a lot of air when doing the DVD translation.

I'm already looking forward to having us together this Christmas in Texas, if we can all swing it. Jim, there are some fine glass blowers in San Antonio, so maybe we can do a side trip.