Model Airplanes

Six-year-old Anna Schnell chose a zucchini today that looked like it could win, got help adding wood wheels and then went to work transforming the oversized squash into a detailed racing critter.

Glue and some red glitter added a racing stripe, then there was a feather, eyes and paint. With her creation ready to race, she launched “Dash” down a ramp beside a zucchini racer decorated by her 3-year-old sister, Katie.

“The zucchini race is always our highlight,” said her dad, Rick Schnell. “It’s so much fun to see them exercise their creativity.”

His tips after three years of zucchini competition include straight axles and a thinner squash profile. And, he noted, win or lose, the finished zucchini makes for a perfect pretend pet with a twine leash. Others leave their masterpieces behind as inspiration for the next competitors.

The Great Zucchini Race is a mainstay of the Boulder Creek Hometown Festival, which kicked off with a concert Friday night and wraps up Monday.

The festival also features live performances at the Bandshell, more than 100 arts and crafts vendors, an interactive Sports and Kids Expo, a food court, beer gardens and more.

While the Boulder Creek Festival

Article source: http://www.dailycamera.com/news/boulder/ci_28770046/boulder-hometown-festival-draws-crowds-downtown-car-show

Whatever you do, don’t call it a waterbed.

The Wavy Gravy-era fixture evokes a time when the free flow, water-filled mattresses were closely associated with shag carpet and bead curtains. These days, retailers like Marty Pojar prefer the term “flotation” bed, which are leagues apart from the mattresses of yore.

Today’s bed isn’t your mother’s waterbed. They have dual bladders or water-filled tubes topped with a layer of thick foam. Fibers within create a waveless effect. Quite often they aren’t squeezed into a hard wooden frame.

In almost every sense, the modern waterbed looks like a conventional innerspring mattress but with more give. Pojar’s customers place orders for beds and their parts from across the nation, and even as far away as Pakistan, Israel, Spain and Switzerland.

“It’s more than a fad,” said Pojar. “A fad doesn’t last 45 years.”

IF WATERBEDS COULD TALK

The bed once known for its leaky bladders and hippie following got its start in 1968 when Charles Hall, an industrial design student at San Francisco State University, created the first waterbed as part of a school project.

Not much of a hippie himself, Hall began handcrafting waterbeds from a studio and delivered them in his station wagon to band members of the Jefferson Airplane and the Smothers Brothers, according to news archives. In 1971 he filed a patent for his waterbed, but knockoffs abounded, and cheaper versions became notorious for leaks.

In 1976, as the market for waterbeds grew, Pojar got his start in the industry straight out of high school,

Article source: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/waterbed-681122-pojar-mattress.html

It’s hard to believe that it’s been less than four years since Skylanders debuted. This is a franchise that has so rapidly become a phenomenon that it’s difficult to imagine a world without it. While most trends aimed at children that quickly explode in popularity tend to fizzle out, Skylanders has managed to remain relevant and as popular as ever year after year. Even in the face of competition from LEGO Dimensions and Disney Infinity (which is especially great this year), Skylanders is still the undisputed champion of the NFC world. Heck, instead of competing with amiibo, Activision has simply brought Nintendo’s toys into Skylanders. With the fifth entry in the series set to debut later this month, we were invited to Albany to meet with developer Vicarious Visions and see just why Skylanders is poised to remain king in the toys-to-life genre.

It’s hard to ignore the corporate culture of Vicarious Visions. While it’s easy to feel swallowed up entering most large development studios like EA or Ubisoft, Vicarious Visions still very much seems like an indie studio. Not in scale, of course, as it takes up a large amount of real estate and features state of the art equipment and amenities to be expected from a large studio, but it still very much feels like an extended family. We talked to multiple members of the studio off the record during our time in Albany

Article source: http://www.hardcoregamer.com/2015/09/03/skylanders-superchargers-is-several-great-games-in-one-beautiful-package/165721/

Matt Duke’s young life ended in an ambush of gunfire on a lonely Cuban highway 55 years ago.

He left a confused ex-wife in Palm Beach. A woman who had once been a model, a Hollywood actress, an heiress and a society darling, but who decades later would die alone and in debt.

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Matthew E. Ducko — later Matt Duke — in his 1933 yearbook photo fron Hamilton Township High School in New Jersey … read more

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He left a rented twin-engine Piper Apache, where he died soon after touching down. The plane, resting at an awkward angle and surrounded by onlookers, was shown on the front pages of world newspapers. Parts of it are on display even now at Havana’s Museo de la Revolución, which continues to heap scorn on the Yanquis even as a thaw emerges after a half-century.

He left a U.S. government red-faced from clumsy efforts to fight a Red Menace emerging 90 miles from Florida. He was on America’s blacklist for making 33 secret flights to spirit people out from under the boot of Fidel Castro. His 34th flight, which began at the airport in Stuart, was his last.

He left relatives back in New Jersey, who’d had a hint of his secretive side business. They now had to

Article source: http://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/news/lifestyles/the-last-flight-of-matt-duke/nnYMW/