Before I'd been to New York City, I didn't like the architectural style of the World Trade Center, but once I moved to New York in 1980, it's ubiquitus presence changed my tune. You could see the towers from everywhere. They were always somewhere in the background. The shear size of the towers made them special.  (Some of these photos were taken many miles away in New Jersey.)

For this 10th anniversary of the attack on the towers, I've pulled together some of those WTC photos.

I was in Schenectady NY recently for the 5th annual Games In Education Symposium. Gamification of education makes so much sense. Here's some photos I took over the 2 days I was there.

Tobi Saulnier, CEO of 1st Playable Productions, LLC, the symposium organizer, introduces the keynote speaker...

...Chris Haskell. He showed an online system to help teachers gamify their curriculum.

Peggy Sheehy (top left) and Lucas Gillispie (bottom right) dicussed how they use World of Warcraft in their classrooms.

Joel Levin talked about using Minecraft to teach computer skills to second graders. His 5 year old daughter built this igloo in Minecraft, which convinced him the game would work with his second grade students.

Later in a hands on lab, Joel helps symposium participants play in Minecraft. (And survive a real earthquake.)

I'm running a 5th grade Minecraft lunch club at the school where I work this fall. The symposium gave me many ideas to help make this club a success.

Also, while checking out the neighborhood, I found these interesting buildings that should be fun to reconstruct in Minecraft.

Once again I've geared up to scan more of my old negatives. I think I'm about 25% done now. The scanning seems faster now, but I guess I've just gotten used to it. I'm getting 2 to 3 36 exposure roles scanned in an hour now. That's about twice as fast as when I first started scanning.

Meanwhile, I'm on vacation in Woodstock. Here's a few digital images of flowers and insects. More scans once I'm back in Brooklyn.

I couldn't sleep one night so I went out and took pictures.

I have taken most of my pictures during the day.

I can't decide which of the above two images I like better, so I've included both.

I've discovered a really fun game, where you can explore a huge world. I've brought back some photos of my travels. Here are my SNAPSHOTS FROM MINECRAFT

When I started exploring my first Minecraft world, I set off find trees to get some wood, and then I saw an interesting land formation and went to look, and I found some coal, then I realized I was lost. This photo is of the second home I'd built by digging out a cave. 

My son Kyle came to visit me in Minecraft, and he dug this underground abode for himself. He found a huge cavern that led him to some diamonds. I've only found one diamond so far.

Here's the entrance to Kyle's underground lair.

Here's an underground arena / theatre I built. The next one will be much larger, once I find the time it will take to build. 

I have fun just making shapes as I dig.

Wanna Play?

This is the back of the first mountain structure I built. Were looking North-West. Past the mountain is the spawn point.

This is the first ice I'd found. I was searching for Wolves to tame, since I'd finally gotten some skeleton bones. 

Several times I've come across huge holes that go clear through the world, but I'll come back later and the hole is gone.

Once I finally got back to the spawn point, I started building roads going North South East and West. This is looking West from the East road.

Here I am with one of the two wolves I tamed. Unfortunately both my wolves have passed on to the great wolf in the sky. I was digging a tunnel and hadn't stopped to put up any torches, so it was dark, and unseen by me, the wolf jumped in front of my pick-ax and I killed it. The other wolf fell into a lava flow.

This is my aerie in the 3rd Minecraft world I've started exploring. This one has skeletons, zombies, giant spiders and exploding creepers who come out in the dark.

It was a dark and stormy night!

When it's night time out on the world with monsters, I like to dig. Here's a stairway landing I like.

I've seen some very interesting sights in Minecraft.

The photo show ended, and I sold 3 photos, and then at Christmas we flew to Arizona.

Here's some photos taken from the airplane there and back. I'll post more images from the trip once I get them edited. (Remember you can click on the photos to see them larger. These photos look better large.)

                                              Leaving Manhattan the morning of the the big snow storm.

NY to Chicago was all clouds.

We got delayed in Chicago for 30 minutes so they could de-ice the wings.

Talk about your quilted landscape. I see all kinds of images in this. There's an angel and aztec like faces.

See how the farmers have left golden coins at the feet of the mountain gods.

Here's Phoenix.

We took a side trip to Mars.

Did I sleep through the apocalypse?

Here we have ancient circuit board diagrams, etched into the landscape.

Here's a classic farm.

Finally, signs of civilization.

Chicago was nicely lit as we flew over. The tallest black building is the Sears tower. It once was the talleset building in the world. It's still the tallest in the US, but is now 5th tallest in the world.

Gee, I suddenly feel like playing monopoly. I'm going to buy lots of houses.

And back to NYC, just missing the big storm. The only delay was a 90 minute wait on the runway waiting for a gate. We thank the travel gods.

Photos from Arizona coming soon.