Life is the Little Things: Felgeroth and the Spartans Fly True

It is the end of a tiring week.

With the help of Melissa Dawe, I managed to write a program that makes little birds fly after each other, but not into the sun. The golden leader Felgeroth follows my direction through the mouse icon. The little bird pictures change if the bird is flying left or

right, following its leader.
Melissa found the pictures on the web, converted them to bitmaps, standardized the color of the sky and the background of each bird bitmap, made a golden bird by some photoshopish alchemy, made reverse images so the birds could flip around, and gave me a lot of advice and encouragment to do it. It feels like such a triumph.
Kelson named my leader Felgeroth on Saturday morning when I was teaching him how to write in C++. He sa

w my assignment and asked if I would teach him to program, so I accepted the challenge. It took some swift gymnastics to translate computer programming logic metaphorically into something a 14 year old boy could relate to, process and remember, but it was a great excersize for me. He understood and asked attentive questions, and after a little he sat there and typed in the commands, copying and pasting and paying attention to detail. It was really quite fun. I can't wait to show him the program in action.