From a reader:
I thought perhaps you could use an anecdote today. I have my 8th grade students researching a project on whether the priest should face "ad populum" or "ad orientem." With this I posted a few articles from WDTPRS concerning the topic. However, most of them were more intrigued by your animated hamster at the bottom of the the screen! They spent most of their time playing with it rather than doing their work. They thought it was "cute" though, and named it "Hammy." Just thought I’d pass it on.
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I’ve noticed, though, that you can’t bounce a pellet off his little noggin – I tried, but the pellet
keeps falling in front of him.
Is he a sort of auxiliary power source… y’know, powering the blog by a turbine attached to his wheel? Or…or… maybe it’s a prayer wheel like with the Tibetans (a Catholic one of course) so for every rotation there’s an Ave and a Pater, rather than an om and a padme??? ? . ………….. Ummm, maybe not…
My experience with teaching has been that you never know exactly what will stick… I’m sure that if you were able to wait a few months or years and ask those students about the ad populum/ad orientem issue some of them would immediately think of Hammy.
“I’ve noticed, though, that you can’t bounce a pellet of his little noggin…”
Yeah, you’re right about that, but, if you keep the cursor above the hamster’s head and move it
up and down, you can make it dance.
Hamaster? Wut?
Welcome to the wonderful world of youth ministry, Fr. Z.
The Latin title makes this pure gold
And yes, I had to look it up. For those similarly ignorant: Go read 1 Corinthians 9:22
golly, I never saw him before…lol
Where is this hamster? I’ve been looking for it for the past 10 minutes and can’t find it.
He is at the very, very bottom of the page on the left hand side.
Whhaaat? We can play with the Hamster?? I saw him and he is cute – but, I didn’t know we could play with him! That’s awesome. Not sure what that tells you about me.
Hamburglar, scroll all the way to the bottom of the page.
Thanks Fr. Z., we all could use a little fun and a little lighter fare in these times.
Well, I still remember my science teacher teaching us about spheres and hemispheres with a clay ball, a rod, and a Swedish Chef voice. However, everybody in class also learned what a sphere and a hemisphere was.
I’ve been trying to find out exactly how many pellets I can feed him before he goes for the water bottle, whether he can be distracted by another pellet (fallen or falling), whether I can make him change direction mid-stride with a pellet, and so on. (mad scientist here). My boyfriend just informed me that he’ll go to sleep, too. This I have to see.
I never saw this before! “Hammy” is kind of neat. I’ll say that’ll get a kid’s attention. I daren’t show this to my younger siblings or they will start looking on wdtprs at odd hours to see what the hamster does next.
I had not known that “Hammy” was there! I have now made him move about, fed him pellets, had him drink and run in his wheel – for those of you who haven’t done this yet, click on the yellow spot in the middle of the red circle.
Fun!
Thanks guys, instead of getting some work done this morning I actually just blew about half an hour playing with a computerised hamster.
Click on “abowman” at the top right hand side of the hamster gadgets. Then click on gadgets. The penguins are fun.
It’s nice to get a bit of light relief from all the heavy stuff
The title of this post made me chuckle.
Guess I’m slow with the technical stuff and also did not know we could play with Hammy. Now I have to go and see what can be done with him!
Oh my gosh, we can control him! He ate the nuggets! It doesn’t take a lot to amuse us here, does it! :)
I added this hamster to my personal homepage, and I just saw that it even sleeps!
This isn’t Phil, this is one of the students he was referring to in the post. he just showed our whole class the post, and it just made my day. So now when I have to research and I get bored, I’m coming to play with Hammy. I even saved the website on my flash-drive so I can get distracted by him at home. Thanks for the post, and all the comments! Yes, we are all easily amused, and distracted, so Hammy was perfect for us. Now I plan on showing this to everyone, and doing a happy-dance around the classroom! Bye!
Julianna:)