Happy New Year 2009

Well it is a new year. Last year was an interesting year in just too many ways to recount. But we have, in a sense at least, a chance for a fresh start with 2009. I wish my readers all a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year. But especially happy and healthy. I’ve been taking care of my father this week as he recovers from surgery and complications and that really brings home the idea that health is the most important of those three. And family is pretty darn important as well. I hope your family is well as well.

One of the New Year’s greetings I received via Twitter included a link to a cute little program written in Small Basic. This program writes out Happy New Year using Turtle graphics in Small Basic. Most of the post is written in Japanese but there is a caption that explains some of how it was done in English. The sample code is there as well. This is code the old fashioned way which I think is actually a very good thing. To me it brings home some better understanding of how things really work. Plus it opens the door for some real creativity. The fact that it ties in to getting images from Flickr brings in the idea of mashups as well. Great opportunity to talk about licenses, fair use and other related topics around intellectual property as well.

Thanks https://twitter.com/biac for sharing this project with me via Twitter! (BTW I’m on Twitter at https://twitter.com/alfredtwo and if you are on Twitter lets connect.)