Abigail, our oldest daughter turned 6 yesterday. My brother and his wife did an excellent job with birthday presents. Among the presents was an old low-tech toy, a Slinky. Tonight after dinner, Abigail was playing around with the Slinky, trying to figure out what it was good for. The stairs in our house are a bit tall for optimal Slinky action. I remembered reading on the side of the box that an inclined plane was a good surface for Slinkys. So I grabbed Abigail and headed for the back deck, complete with a supply of boards suitable for an inclined plane. The rest of the kids joined in and soon we were happily sending the Slinky down the plane. Julie arrived with the cameras, and then we had the idea to try to take a video with my new Nokia 6600 (actually we could have done it with Julie's 3660, but the Bluetooth mechanics are all worked out for my phone at the moment). Herewith is a movie of the Slinky. The 6600 takes movies as .3gp files, which can be rendered by Quicktime 6.4 or newer. I suppose this will finally be the incentive for me to learn to use iMovie.

Postscript:
While composing this post, I discovered that there are some really hardcore Slinky resources out there. We'll find out if they are too much for a 6 year old.