Doug Cornelius .com

Brian Mardirosian used his red kayak to commute using the Charles River, traveling from West Roxbury to Beacon Hill. Mardirosian started out on the Charles River at 5:30 a.m. on June 26 near Marie Louise Kehoe Park and Bridge Street and he arrived at work at around 11 a.m.

He documented the journey with a waterproof camera, which automatically took pictures every 30 seconds. He mashed those stills together to create the video below.

You will see the Hemlock Gorge paddling trip portion of the route starting at 1:30, Echo Bridge at 2:00 and ending in Newton Lower Falls at 3:00. Someday I will paddle the rest of the Charles River.

From the story: West Roxbury man kayaks to work on the Charles River by Carol Lawless for Wicked Local Roslindale

Owly is a cute puffball of a bird and is almost all eyes. The other creatures that populate the stories, including a worm, smaller birds and lightning bugs, are also cute and expressive. There is nothing to actually read in these books other than a few sentences from the books Owly reads. Dialogue takes place through pictographs symbolizing concepts like home and ideas.

I received a copy of the the first book in the series, The Way Home & The Bittersweet Summer, and the fourth book, A Time to be Brave, from the publisher.

My five year old has quickly become a big fan of these graphic novels. I like them just as much as he does. The stories tell the power of friendship, trying your hardest and caring for others. All great traits that I try to teach my kids.

You can read more in my latest post on GeekDad: Wordless Owly Books Are Good Reads.

Penn Jillette created a few great videos about the princess issues encountered with his daughter.

I wrote more about this on my latest GeekDad post: Is Your GeekDaughter a Princess?

On Sunday, October 25, 2009, Harry Potter The Exhibition opens in Boston. The exhibition will feature more than 200 authentic props and costumes from the Harry Potter films, displayed in settings inspired by the film sets — including the Great Hall, Hagrid’s Hut and the Gryffindor common room.

You can read more in my latest post on GeekDad: Harry Potter (The Exhibition) Comes to Boston.

I came across this great video of sites around the Boston. Around the Common, the South End and the Back Bay look untouched. The financial district, Faneuil Hall and MIT look dramatically different.

Thanks to Universal Hub: Flying around Olde Boston and

As I sat down with the Wife to plan some trips with The Son and The Daughter, I started creating a big wish list of places.

I added in some places that we had already visited. Then I browsed through some prior GeekDad posts and added some more. I asked for suggestions from my Twitter followers and began trolling the internet looking for more.

Then the list got out of control and became 100 Geeky Places to Take Your Kids This Summer. This is my latest post on GeekDad. I have already been to about a dozen of the places on the list and we are planning on going to another half dozen this summer.

In Beyond the Horizon: The First Human-Powered Expedition to Circle the Globe, Colin Angus details his attempt to circumnavigate the globe. The book is up and down as it goes around. Some sections are compelling. Others are just bickering with a lost partner and his critics.

Colin starts in Vancouver on a bike with his teammate, Tim. The team breaks up as Tim begins a romance with their Russian guide (required by the government.) Separated from Tim, Colin bikes the rest of the way across Siberia and Europe alone. Colin ends up crossing the Atlantic Ocean and biking North through Central America with his fiance. She penned her own story Rowboat in a Hurricane. Perhaps you can guess what they encountered during their journey across the Atlantic?

Since there is a big label on the book “The First Human-Powered expedition to Circle the Globe” I am not spoiling anything by telling you that he makes it. It was not an easy journey. He had to contend with forest fires in Alaska, storms in the Bering Sea, biking through the Siberian winter, hurricanes in the Atlantic, government bureaucracy and poor planning. There are some great sections in the book. You will enjoy those parts if you are an armchair adventurer like me.

You, the reader, also have to suffer through some inconsistent writing. The book is best when he focusing on the adventure, the challenges and his reactions to them. Unfortunately, he spends a big chunk of the book answering his critics and pleading his case. His critics include Tim, Tim’s family, the Guinness Book of World Records, others trying to also be the first and various other experts. Those parts of the book are not at all interesting and take away from the adventure and the accomplishment.

There are also a lot of mixed messages in the book. He starts off the journey using it to show how humans can reduce their impact on the environment and reduce their carbon-emissions. If he can get around the world without gasoline maybe we can do so in our own, more hospitable community. But then he focuses on the importance of being the first and the race aspect of the journey. Really, he just talks about the environmental impacts at the beginning and the end of the book. The discussion about the environment end up sticking out like a sore thumb. He could have weaved that it into the narrative if it was that important to him.

The expedition comes across as poorly planned and underfunded. I had the same feeling about the book.

On Father’s Day, The Son and I went to Boston’s Museum of Science. One of the highlights was Amazing Nano Brothers Juggling Show, combining atomic theory with juggling.

You can read more in my latest GeekDad post: The Amazing Nano Brothers Juggling Show.

I already wrote about the Crittercam exhibit at the Museum of Science.

In How Shall I Tell the Dog?: And Other Final Musings, the late Miles Kington offers his observations about his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. The book is structured as a series of letters to his literary agent about ideas for a new book. Miles is looking for a way to “cash in on cancer.”

The book is an interesting reading experience and occassionaly amusing. But I did not enjoy the book. In the touching parts he comes across as trying to be funny and the funny parts come across forced, as you see a dying man trying to make the best of his situation. The Afterword by Caroline Kingston was truly touching and moving.

At one point Kington writes: ” I love chatting to lonely people. Either I amuse and charm them, or I bore them silly, and then they value their own company when I leave them alone twice as much as they had done ten minutes earlier.” I think an analogy can be drawn to the readers of this book. Some will be amused and charmed, others will be happier to just put the book down.

The Son and I went to see the new Ice Age movie. He liked the first two and watched them over and over again. But that’s what kids do.

The Ice Age movies come out of 20th Century Fox, not Pixar. So they are in not in the same league as Up, Cars, Wall-E, and Finding Nemo. But I thought it was a good excuse to get out of the house and be the basis of a GeekDad post.

Read more in my post on GeekDad: Top Ten Things That Parents Should Know About Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.