Back in June, blogged about Ben, a young man with autism who had a fierce devotion to the Snow White ride at Walt Disney World, and who was the last person to ride it, after more than 3,500 turns on it.

Ben's father, Ron Miles, has published a memoir of his life with Ben, in which he narrates his journey as the father of a child with a profound mental disability, his love affair with Disney parks, and Ben's development through the extraordinary adults in his life (including some very special and caring Disney cast-members). It's an unflinching -- and sometimes unflattering -- account of the challenges of parenting and the special challenges of parenting a child with autism.

I read it very quickly, and often had to dab at my eyes, but it's not a weeper, really -- there's plenty of hilarity and thoughtful wonder and appreciation of the sweetness of parenting as well as the difficulties. Here's the blurb I sent to Ron for the book: "Brimming with heart and tragedy overcome, this is a book that captures the tribulations of parenthood, the magic of Disney World, and the wonderful online communities that allow us to lend aid and comfort to strangers around the world."

It's called 3500: An Autistic Boy's Ten-Year Romance with Snow White, and it's just out, and I heartily recommend it to you.

3500: An Autistic Boy's Ten-Year Romance with Snow White

A filmmaker named Melton Barker travelled America from the 1930s to the 1970s, making and remaking a short movie called "The Kidnapper's Foil," which featured a large cast of kids. He'd roll into small towns, announce that he was going into production, and advertise for proud parents who wanted their kids to break into the movies. He'd raise local money to (re)make the film with an all townie cast, have it produced, and leave it behind. There are lots of versions still extant, but there are probably hundreds more that may never be recovered. They're a fascinating insight into the lives of Americans across the country and the years.

She estimates that Barker made hundreds of versions of “The Kidnappers Foil,” but fewer than 20 have been unearthed and digitized. In advance of his arrival to a new town — like Reidsville, N.C., or Allentown, Pa. — Barker, who Ms. Frick said probably died on the road in 1977, would broker a deal with a local theater to screen the film upon completion, handing over the reels once they’d been developed, either by himself (working in his hotel room) or by a lab in Dallas. (During part of his career Barker, like the filmmakers of his era, was working with cellulose nitrate, a wildly flammable film stock that is difficult and dangerous to store.) All the currently accessible prints are available to view on meltonbarker.org, a Web site Ms. Frick and her colleagues built to raise more interest in Barker’s work. That collection, Ms. Frick reasoned, might lead to the recovery of more prints.

Dan Streible, a film historian and an associate professor of cinema studies at New York University, is the director of a recurring symposium for so-called “orphan films” like “The Kidnappers Foil.” Mr. Streible said such films, which he defines loosely as “amateur films and home movies, medical films, outtakes, uncompleted films, fragments — things which were not commercial features,” are also “the ones that need the most preservation and advocacy.” He added, “There wasn’t an obvious commercial value to them, and there isn’t always an obvious owner in the legal sense, and they’re films that are left behind in archives for any number of haphazard reasons.”

These lost artifacts can become essential cultural documents, and what they occasionally lack in narrative coherence or flash they make up for in historical worth. Unlike Hollywood films set in fake small towns and populated by professional actors, “The Kidnappers Foil” captures, however incidentally, an authentic American culture and locale. “By going to all those small towns, throughout the South and all over, Barker was preserving regional dialects that cannot be heard in a single Hollywood film,” Mr. Streible said. “No one else was recording people in Childress, Tex., in 1936, and here they are, a large group of them all talking in their natural voices.”

The Legacy of a Camera-Toting Huckster [NYT/Amanda Petrusich]

(via Making Light)

(Image: Texas Archive of the Moving Image)

Yan sez, "It was really, really cold outside today (-29°F/-33°C) (With the wind chill factor), so I decided to use the opportunity to show my kids what happens when you throw really hot (boiling) water in the air outside at this temperature. Just seeing the look of wonder on my kids' faces was all I needed to justify going outside today."

It’s really cold outside today here on the south shore of Montreal (QC, CA). Really, really cold. The temperature outside currently is at -13°F (-25°C), but when you add in the wind chill factor, it feels more like -29°F (-33°C). Since it rarely gets this cold, I decided to use the opportunity to show my kids what happens when you throw really hot (boiling) water in the air at this temperature. You can check out the video of the experiment below (and put it in HD and full screen mode to observe the effect more closely.)

Turning Boiling or Hot Water into Snow at -13°F (-25°C) [Video] (Thanks, Yan!)

Mimi sez,

A new research report released by the Connected Learning Research Network is a call for educators, parents, youth, media-makers, geeks, creatives and intellectuals everywhere to work together to make the learning riches of the online world accessible to everyone. The researchers provide evidence of the importance of making, tinkering, exploration, collaboration, and problem-solving in learning to thrive in today's networked world. They also cite growing equity gap between young people who are highly connected and activated 21st Century learners and those who are subject to no-frills education and have little support for enriched, socially networked, or inquiry-based learning.

'We're seeing the tremendous potential of new media for advancing learning,' said says lead author Mimi Ito, a professor of anthropology, informatics and education at UC Irvine. 'But, right now, it's only the most activated and well-supported learners who are using connected learning to boost their learning and opportunity. We believe many more young people can experience this kind of learning, but there's no question we're at risk of seeing yet another way privileged individuals can gain advantage -- even though the Internet and digital technology has the potential to even the playing field and multiply the opportunities for all youth to find their place and achieve.'

Mimi Ito is one of the world's leading experts on how young people use technology. The Digital Youth Project she led is a spectacular must-read, even now, years after its publication. This new report advocates technology in the classroom, but not as a mere means of cutting costs or standardizing curriculum -- rather, as a way of giving young people and teachers the power to do individually tailored, passion-driven learning. It's a humane, sensible, evidence-based approach that is a welcome tonic for the stupid technology good/technology bad debate. Must-read.

Connected Learning: An Agenda for Research, Design, and Social Change

Lorraine Robinson from Fairy Meadows Miniatures made this dollhouse inside a guitar for her daughter, as a 25th birthday present: "She is a music and travel buff and just about to start a new episode in her life and attend Flinders University."

Fairy Meadow Miniatures

I'm in Toronto visiting my family with my daughter, Poesy. I was intrigued by Makerkids, a makerspace for children that does after-school and summer programs for kids who want to hack toys, use the woodshop, learn Arduino and electronics, use Minecraft to product Printcraft 3D prints on the Makerbot Replicator, and more. Andy Forest, the space's co-founder, was gracious enough to show us around and to get Poesy started on hacking a robot, and to get her cousin Jaxon working on disassembling a Wall-E robot and changing its arms and such. It was a great day -- and it's a great space -- and Andy has put up a blog post about the day.

My daughter Zhen figured out how to make candy flowers, and kept us well fed with sugar.

Next to arrive, Alex brought with him a huge box of speakers. He loves taking things apart, so he brought the parts in to see what he could make. He ended up making a speaker box out of wood and wiring it up to our stereo!

Audrey arrived with her brother Wilder and a plan – she didn’t want to slip on the ice any more! So after designing some strap-on ice cleats on the whiteboard, she got right to work. Next, she moved to the wood shop. She mastered the jigsaw to cut out some plywood soles and drilled holes in it for the ice-cleat screws. She’s coming back next week to finish it off.

First time visitor Arbor produced a huge list of crazy ideas and narrowed down to making a light-up head. She learned to solder and wired up LEDs, batteries, resistors and switches like a champ!

We also had a maker kid creating a video game with the Alice software. I peered over his shoulder and it looked interesting!

Friday Open Shop

Marlene sez, "I have knit my son a tres chic R2D2 hat. It is based on a pattern I found on the Ravelry website by Carissa Browning. I'm very pleased with how it has turned out."

Ravelry: marlene-duck's R2D2 Hat

The Chinese website Tencent reports that a father got so upset with his son's nonstop MMO playing that he hired an in-game hit-squad to kill his son's character whenever it spawned, in the hopes of discouraging the young man from playing. Here's some of Kotaku's English summary, by Eric Jou:

Unhappy with his son not finding a job, Feng decided to hire players in his son's favorite online games to hunt down Xiao Feng. It is unknown where or how Feng found the in-game assassins—every one of the players he hired were stronger and higher leveled than Xiao Feng. Feng's idea was that his son would get bored of playing games if he was killed every time he logged on, and that he would start putting more effort into getting a job.

Despite being sick of getting killed every time, Xiao Feng decided to stick up to his father and tell him how he felt. He was quoted as saying, "I can play or I can not play, it doesn't bother me. I'm not looking for any job—I want to take some time to find one that suits me."

Father Hires In-Game “Hitmen” To Deter Son From Playing (via Super Punch)

Last month, I brought you the delightful news that Adafruit was launching a kids' puppet show about electronics called Circuit Playground. Now Adafruit has begun to offer plushie toys based on the characters from the show, including Cappy the Capacitor Hans the 555 Timer Chip, Mho the Resistor, Connie the Transistor, Ruby the Red LED and Gus The Green LED.

These are electronic component plushies – The Circuit Playground plushies are here!