I just stumbled across Google Forms, which lets you create forms and record the results in a Google Docs spreadsheet.

See my test form here.

I am slightly agog at this functionality, having spent 2-3 hours setting up a similar form at www.altarserverappreciation.org that just records info in a database.  Took about 15 minutes to set up a test on Google Forms.

This is a good night to play around with technology - seeing what’s out there on the web.  I am constantly amazed at the amount of free, reliable tools out there waiting to be used.

The Washington Post published an article discussing the rise of Graphic Novels:

I’ve wandered into an alternative universe, and I’m trying to decide if I want to stay. The setting is the lovely, old-fashioned library of the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, in midtown Manhattan. The event is a gathering called “SPLAT! A Graphic Novel Symposium.” I’m here because the organizers have promised to lay out, in the course of a single day, “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Graphic Novels.”

What I want to know is: How did this formerly ghettoized medium became one of the rare publishing categories that’s actually expanding these days?

More at: Drawing Power

Found at: Metafilter.

I got an e-mail from Schmap that my photo of the St. Louis Arch (shown below) has been included on their web site.

Schmap is an online travel guide, and they apparently use Flickr photos tagged with Creative Commons rights to create photo galleries.

See the St. Louis Schmap here.

It’s a pretty ingenious way to grab photos off the web for free.  I feel like a published photographer.

While in Australia the Pope visited my old alma mater, the University of Notre Dame Australia:

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI visited The University of Notre Dame Australia’s Sydney Campus on Friday 18th July.

The Holy Father had requested to meet with local young people at risk of alcohol and substance abuse, victims of homelessness and other forms of disadvantage. The University was privileged to host this occasion and a number of young guests within its precincts at Sacred Heart Church, Darlinghurst.

More at: Pope Benedict XVI visits Sydney Campus

The NY Times has a nice article on the childish humor prevalent in today’s comedies:

The male rejection of adulthood is now the dominant attitude in Hollywood comedy, even (or perhaps especially) in movies whose sexual frankness makes them officially unsuitable for children. Occasionally you will see a functioning if beleaguered dad, usually a widower, like Steve Carell’s character in “Dan in Real Life.” And sometimes, as in “Little Miss Sunshine,” a coeducational, multigenerational ensemble will carry the therapeutic and satirical burdens of the genre.

But far more often the center of attention will be a guy, his buddies and his toys. He will, most of the time, be nudged toward responsibility, forgiven for his quirks and nurtured in his needs and neuroses by a woman who represents an ideal amalgam of supermodel and mom.

Full article here.

The last paragraph could be a blow-by-blow description of “Knocked Up,” which I recently caught on cable.