I've had this idea forever, and at first it sounds like nothing new, but when you see how the pieces fit together you'll recognize it as something a bit more original.

The idea has its origin in a Star Trek exhibit that the Franklin held many years ago. One of the more creatively inspiring things about the exhibit was the user of the LCARS interface elements on each exhibit display. If you're only marginally familiar with Star Trek the Next Generation, you'll know the look of these things on sight. They're really a contrivance for the show, offering no real UX benefit at all, but some computer applications have taken the look of LCARS and used it to produce some interfaces for things, whether they're Star Trek-related or not.

The idea this spawned for me was a video game in which the participant was a student/cadet at Star Fleet Academy. The idea is that there would be a good amount of interesting fiction and story, but the fundamentals of space exploration - read: astronomy - would be taught to the user in an entertaining way. In other words, use the Star trek franchise to actually teach kids real things about space in a fun way. After all, this is the purpose of the Franklin, right?

Well, we all know that Star Trek isn't anything about honest-to-goodness space exploration, so the melding of those ideas probably wouldn't stick. But the idea of educational software on the topic of astronomy tied with a franchise has always been an interesting thought for me. Moving on to the present day...

I have this application on the iPad called Star Walk. Star Walk is in essence a map of the sky. What makes it interesting is that it uses the internals of the iPad (there's a version for the iPhone, too) to make the map live and interactive. The end effect is this: If you hold the iPad up to the night sky, you see an overlay of labels and constellations on the astronomical bodies that exist behind your view of the iPad itself. It's like putting an educational overlay on the sky.

I could speculate as to how this works, using the iPad's internal sensors - the GPS, accelerometers, and compass - to figure out what's behind it. But the main thing is that the pad becomes a transparent device to the universe behind it. People might call this artificial reality, and that's fine and good, although I think that the term is a nice buzzword for "I'm going to sell you crap by showing you new places to buy things" than anything else, but it's useful for explaining this whole game idea I promised in the title.

Because if you look at the capabilities of these devices, there are enough sensors on board and enough processing power and enough display capability that you can do something that I think is pretty neat.

So imagine that you're Johnny, maybe 9-12 years old. You're going on another of those annoyingly long trips to wherever that your parents always drag you on. You love Star Wars/Trek and space, and you like to play video games.

Your mom or dad loans you their iPad for the trip. On the iPad is a game that, having been pre-programmed by mom/dad, knows the GPS route that you will take in the car. But instead of showing you real things as you pass them in the car (which could still be pretty neat), it turns outside scenery into astronomical features of a video game.

The Starbucks? An intergalactic energy station. The McDonalds'? An enemy stronghold.

Hold the iPad up to the windows an look "ouside" the ship (car) to see what's going on outside. Maybe this is a material collection game. Maybe it teaches you about astronomy as you go. There are a lot of options, and the "game board" would be helpfully generated by actual real-world places.

The best part, for the parents, is that the game knows when the kid has reached the "dock" destination, and doesn't have to fight the kid to turn the iPad over when you reach Grandma's.

The game doesn't have to be exclusively astronomy-oriented, either. It could be a safari or some other kind of Earthly adventure. There are plenty of skins you could put on the game to change the angle of presentation and type of education imparted. Or it could simply be all fun, rather than impart any direct education at all.

The main potential blocker I see is the ubiquity of parents willing impart their iPads to a kid for long car or train (plane?) trips. It would be useful if the next Nintendo portable had some external sensors or the capability to connect to external sensors wirelessly for this purpose.

When this type of game comes to market, I'm going to have Berta do most of the long-distance driving.

For our 10th wedding anniversary, Berta and I stayed over night in Philadelphia. The interesting story is less about what we actually did than what we tried to plan.

Mostly, you wouldn't call it a plan. Friday night, we dropped the kids off at Mom's then raced home to decide what to do. It was still early enough to consider flights out of Philadelphia, provided that they were late enough.

We'd been thinking about getting away for a while, specifically to exercise our passports one more time before they expire. Berta has stamps from Mexico, and I've got stamps from France, and we both have stamps and visas for India. I thought it would be nice to be "world travelers" and add another stamp to the book before it was retired.

It's kind of strange explaining these trips we take. It's like we just need to get away for a while, and it's not about being pampered or being extravagant (although the travel might seem that way), but more about just getting away from home. And so on Friday night we simply looked for a reasonably cheap flight to anywhere that wouldn't keep us away longer than the weekend. This is harder than you might think.

There aren't any places that really answer the question, "Where can I fly to from Philadelphia in the next 30 minutes?" Thinking too much about it, why would there be? Not many people plan trips like that. Usually you at least know where you want to go, or you're leaving well into the future. On the other hand, there have to be more people like us that would just like to get on a plane and go, right?

As we looked for a flight that worked, it got later, and as it got later, it came down to choosing a flight out on Saturday morning. There just wasn't enough time to get to the airport. As it turns out, the best places to look for flights when you know the origin and not the destination are the small airline sites themselves. Since the small carriers only run between certain airports, that lets you limit your options significantly.

One of the carriers we checked was Spirit Airlines. Spirit flies out of Atlantic City, and had we left in the morning, that would work out fine. We could leave really early and simply fly out, or leave Friday evening, spend the night at a hotel in Atlantic City, maybe visit a casino or two, and fly out the next morning.

I skimmed the list of destinations available from Spirit. Aruba... Atlanta... Cartegena? Ok, I gotta see this...

Keep in mind that we had spent the past hour or so looking at flights to Europe, so flying to South America had certain things against it in our minds at the onset. First, the cheapest flights to Europe were about $1300 per person. Second, there weren't any that fit our timeframe, or at least, none that would let us leave the airport after we arrived. I clicked through on Cartegena, just to see what crazy price we'd get, have a laugh, and continue down what looked to be another dead end.

Imagine my surprise when the Spirit checkout showed two (that's both) round-trip tickets to Cartegena for $1200. More than that, the flight was at 6am out of Atlantic City, and would arrive in time for lunch. Berta and I looked at each other for a bit, and looked at the itinerary in front of us, and looked back in disbelief.

I said, "Ok. What's in Cartegena, anyway?"

As it turns out, it looks like a pretty neat place. There are beaches, and what looks to be a lively old city with shops. The city is on a coastline, and was a beachhead in the early explorer days. As a result, there is a very large fort with a city inside. The hotels looked pretty extravagant for what I expected to find in South America. All of that and it's not only a different continent, but one we haven't been to yet!

So... We obviously didn't go. What stopped us? The return flight.

The flight wouldn't have gotten back to New Jersey until 11:30pm on Sunday. Then we'd have to drive back, pick up the kids and be at work the next day. That just didn't seem tenable for such a short trip.

Even after noticing the warning on the State Department site on Saturday, I think we're still interested in going. Sure, we might be kidnapped for ransom by Columbian drug cartels, or mugged while on a hike through the woods, but that could happen just about anywhere, right?

Instead, we decided to shelf the trip to Columbia for later in the year. I think we should make plans to go for a weekend. It'll be cheaper if we wait, we'll appreciate the warmth if it's cooler here, and it'll have almost as much wow factor if we do it later as if we just jumped on a jet and headed south.

This is not to say that our trip into Philly was unpleasant. Actually, that is a story all it's own.

When we used to travel as kids, the entertainment in the car consisted of counting cows out the window, playing the "I'm going on a trip" memory game, looking at the maps stuffed into the pocket in back of the driver's seat, and as a special treat, those "magic ink" puzzle books. But what we most often did in family car trips was sing songs.

It's a very unusual idea now to think of singing songs in the car, since the advent of in-car DVD players, MP3 players, and the GameBoy, but for little kids who don't have the toys or aren't interested in those things, some interaction with the family via singing in the car can be fun.

This morning, the kids woke me up by playing a CD of kids songs and nursery rhymes far too loud. Some of these songs were songs we used to sing in the car on our long-ish trip from home to the Bay. There were many songs that we sang that were not on their CD, and quite a few nursery rhymes that I didn't know anyone had put a tune to.

Some sample staple songs include "I've Been Working on the Railroad" and "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain When She Comes". I also remember singing "Swing Low Sweet Chariot", which seems like an odd traveling song to sing, now that I think about it. There were a few other tunes with religious overtones, like "Michael Row the Boat Ashore", which is interesting to think about as an adult who can better appreciate the origin of these songs.

I've had no luck so far with teaching Abby how to sing in the round. The best rendition of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" is still a bit out of reach. Also, songs that support harmony, like "You Are My Sunshine", are not quite ready. Maybe we just need to practice more.

Riley does a great solo job of "Baa Baa Black Sheep" these days. Often after school while waiting for Berta to come home, the kids and I would sit on the family room floor and see how we could change the sound of the familiar songs. For example, Riley was thrilled with the sound of "Baa Baa" when put to a "We Will Rock You"-like percussion pounded out on the family room floor.

We also learned a few songs in Scouts when I was younger. In particular, a song I didn't learn, but heard at camp once and loved, was called "The Cat Came Back". I searched for the lyrics recently, but without the tune to accompany it, it's hard to recall how it goes only having heard it once. It's a fun song, though.

Searching for "The Cat Came Back" in particular I've found that it's one of the few children's songs that uses a minor progression in the song (although they won't say explicitly what it is, which is bothersome for trying to figure the tune out). Exposing kids to different types of music is good at Abby and Riley's age, and I hope they are able to benefit from it.

It's only a matter of time until they're too old for kid music and prefer to sit in the van with their headphones on listening to top 40. I hope I can expand their musical horizons to the point where they enjoy more than just that, and perhaps in the future have the same happy memories of singing in the car that I have, just as I will look back on the happy days of them playing kid music far too loud for me to sleep in on Saturday morning.

I've taken the train only a on a few occasions. I realize that this is strange to some more urban denizens, but out the suburbs the train only really seems to go into the city or away into the hinterlands. Even at that, this week holds some landmarks for me in riding the train.

My prior trips included a jaunt to New York City. This trip consisted of getting on an Amtrak train in Downingtown, and riding it the entire way to Penn Station in New York. I didn't have to transfer, and there was only one stop. No mess at all; hardly a train experience.

I later traveled via train to the airport when I left for Paris. This required one transfer at 30th Street Station in Philly, which was only a bit of a challenge, having never switched trains en rout somewhere before. Paris also yielded many metro transfers, which didn't phase me at the time, but seemed like something different. The interesting bit being that I did not use a car to get anywhere for that entire trip.

Yesterday, I took the train into Philly to be in Philly for the first time ever. It was an interesting experience. Planning the times to catch the right train, figuring out the fares -- all challenging in an odd, unfamiliar way. It's like learning how to get somewhere in a car after you first learn how to drive. This is not something that you should feel at my age, I think.

Then, upon realizing that my stop wasn't exactly near the place I was going, I figured out today how to use the Philly subway to get there and back. The Philly subway is the cruddiest I've ever been on. Still, I managed.

I can't say yet whether I prefer the train. It takes the same amount of travel time, and depending where you go, costs about the same. The convenience of the car for going when you want to can't be beat, and waiting in the parking lot for everyone else to file out in front of you is a drag. But not having to actually drive is a pretty nice bonus.

It's liberating to know - and I always assumed I could, but to actually do it is another thing - that I can move in and around the city now via train, whereas I was always driving before. It's really nice to know the option is open.

On this day in 1999, we were sipping free champagne on a flight between Amsterdam and New Delhi to celebrate our first wedding anniversary.

I was working at Kruse at the time, and our off-shore contractor wanted us to come visit and have some personal contact with the team. The ramp-up for the visit was quick - only two weeks, which was quite possible in the days before 9/11. When it was decided that I would be going on the trip and the date was picked, the question was essentially, "Got anything going on that week?" And my answer - "Just my first wedding anniversary."

I have the impression that sending your wife with you on a week-long business trip around the world because it was during your first wedding anniversary is not something that most employers would do. Mine did.

So we found ourselves packed into coach seats for the 11-hour second leg of our flight to India, sitting next to a man that smelled like bad beans. We told the flight attendant it was our anniversary, which would be spending almost entirely on the plane, and she provided us with two small bottles of champagne.

Landing in Delhi that night was interesting. In 1999, the conflict between India and the rebels in Cashmere was still ongoing. As a result (or maybe this is the standard practice), there was a noticeable military presence throughout the airport. With the security restrictions in place, we had to find our way from the jet (no jetway, just a set of stairs to the tarmac and some pointing toward a door of the airport) to where our hosts were waiting for us.

I'm not sure what I was thinking it would be like, looking for someone at the airport. We followed some military personnel down a hallway, hoping that it led the right direction, but they entered a door at a dead end with a sign that read "no entry". The people that followed us because we seemed to know what we were doing were quickly divested of that illusion.

After collecting our bags, we made our way to the airport exit, where mobs of people pressed against a gate, looking for the arrivals. I don't remember how we encountered our escort, but was very relieved that we didn't have to figure out where our hotel was on our own.

My trip to India was primarily for business, but our hosts spent quite a bit of time hauling us to various locations in Delhi to sight-see. There were some very old structures in our tour, though it's been so long I might only recognize them in photos. Unfortunately, our camera was "misplaced" in the hotel, so we don't have any photos of the entire trip. Note that in most of the interesting places, photos were forbidden anyway, and not just by "no photos" signs, but by people carrying automatic weapons.

During the almost obligatory trip to Agra to see the Taj Mahal we had plenty of time to chat with our hosts. The contractor assigned two escorts to us, a man and a woman, both about our ages. Neither of them had seen Star Wars. We also discovered more of the culture there by talking with them.

The woman said she would be in some trouble because of how late she would be getting home for escorting us. Apparently, the whole of India shuts down at 6pm or so. People don't usually eat dinner out. Anyone that does stay out for entertainment or food too frequently is labeled a miscreant. She didn't want her mother (with whom she lived) to think poorly of her, and so she hoped that her boss would be able to smooth things over.

Driving in Delhi is... interesting. The road is painted with two lanes, but there are five lanes of cars. All of the cars are tiny. When you rent a car in Delhi, it comes with a driver. The drivers communicate via nearly continuous horn blasts. Cows in the road cause much distress as drivers press their cars even closer to each other to allow the cow room to move. Giant orange trucks overstuffed with something resembling cotton also plow their way through the city streets. It's a surreal and deadly dance.

Of note on the trip to Agra--

There was an elephant and camel-parking station about at the midway point, where food was served.

Our hosts did their best to find food that they thought would be palatable to our tastes (especially meat, since apparently Americans are incapable of eating vegetables), even though we kept insisting that whatever they ate was what we wanted to eat. And so we ate a lot of chutney and fried cottage cheese.

We stopped at a "small" historical building outside of Agra that had interesting acoustics. There were many odd wild animals there. There were peacocks, monkeys, and parrots around this place just like you might find squirrels here in Pennsylvania.

The experience at the Taj Mahal itself was interesting, especially since I hadn't thought that we would be able to take the time to visit. There were things I did know about it, but quite a few things that I didn't know.

The Taj Mahal is a tomb and a Muslim shrine. It is significant that it is Muslim because much of the region is Hindi. The big white building that you see in photos is not the whole thing. There are several buildings surrounding that that make up the entire structure.

The marble construction of the building is amazing. Around the entire surface of the building, the marble is engraved in very fine detail. Very fine. And the building is very big. Yes, it's an impressive bit of work.

We were informed, like many of the historic places we visited that the British (a term flippantly used interchangeably with "raiders") had stolen all of the gold that used to be part of the shrine. Inside, the roof used to be covered in engraved gold. To obtain the gold, the British simply lit fire to bales of hay and melted it from the ceiling, causing much fire damage to the inside, and leaving none of the beautiful gold artwork intact.

Another thing significant about it being a Muslim holy place is that you aren't allowed to walk on it in shoes. At the base of the main building's steps, there is a place to leave your shoes so that you can enter on bare feet. Yet the stones of the steps are worn with ages of people walking them.

We did some shopping around Delhi. They took us to the fanciest stores first - stores that are basically set up for foreigners to waste their money. I don't think they truly understood the kind of travelers we are until we were set to leave. They eventually took us to Connaught Place which is really what we were looking for. Lots of small kiosks and simple items. When they finally realized that we wanted to shop where they themselves would shop, things became a lot more relaxed. Sad that they didn't get this earlier on.

We left them in New Delhi and secretly took a flight to Pune. Pune (pronounced "POO-nuh") was the home of another contractor that was trying to woo us into selecting their services.

We had been warned not to drink the water on our trip, and to only drink bottled or explicitly "safe" filtered water. On the flight from Delhi to Pune, our plane was loaded with the bodies of two soldiers who had died in teh conflict with Cashmere. The flight was delayed for the necessary loading and paperwork. During this time, we were served Coke with ice cubes in it.

The Pune area contains a thriving university town, with three universities, if I remember correctly. The food there was quite different from what we had in Delhi, but still tasty.

Our stay in Pune was short and not too thrilling, although I spent most of it with our host while his wife took Berta shopping. Her account of the shopping trip is fairly interesting, and the odd items with which she returned are still decorating our house.

From Pune's small airport, we had to hop to Mumbai for our flight home. The flight times were arranged such that we would have to stay in the airport overnight to wait for the flight. With the Indian military guarding the airport entry, and a hole in the ground for a toilet, we slept warily for the six hours before our flight home arrived.

On the flight to London, neither Berta or I felt very well. I think it was the water in the ice cubes on the flight to Pune that finally did us in. After we landed in Heathrow, I got a cup of Sprite to settle my stomach a bit, and ended up barfing into it. So much for taking a quick tour of London while waiting for our plane to arrive.

We managed to talk a ticket agent into seating us in an emergency row for the return to Philly. This was a great boon, since it put use closer to the restroom in addition to giving us room to spread out.

Since that first year, we've not done much for our anniversary. One year, we stayed overnight without the kids in Atlantic City to see a concert (Puddle of Mudd, which was good) and last year we spent the weekend in Disneyland, also without the kids. That was a good trip. Still, it's hard to top the India trip for crazy anniversary destinations. I think when the kids get old enough to appreciate it, we might use our anniversary as an excuse to travel to some additional exotic locations. I've always wanted to see the pyramids.