Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

Public Speaking
March 28, 2011

Abby’s been preparing a presentation to her class about Clara Barton, the founder of the Red Cross, who apparently also “did a lot of other stuff”, including being a nurse during the Civil War. Abby’s got the good bits down - she seems to know her subject well, which is the best start for any public speaking gig.

I’ve done a few of my own presentations of this nature over the years. There was the 2nd grade play of Stone Soup, where I was one of the two main characters. Due to a cancellation of a scheduled presentation, my friend and I ended up giving a short presentation on model rocketry to our day camp. I also presented a book report on Tom Sawyer around 7th grade or so, where I did like her and dressed and talked in the period of the character. Both my book and my report used the “N” word, which was quite scandalous in middle school.

Friday Morning Contemplation
March 25, 2011

Riley’s making a Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich, singing “peanut butter jelly time, peanut butter jelly time” as he spreads. I’ve got The Cure’s “Friday I’m in Love” stuck in my head. Abby’s affixing suction cupped controller nubs to the face of her iPod Touch to play Lego Harry Potter while ignoring her Cheerios.

I made my coffee this morning. This itself brings many thoughts to mind. Amazon is discontinuing their “subscribe and save” program for the 24-count boxes of K-cups we use to make coffee. They’re instead offering to ship 50-count boxes, but I have to respond to their email in 11 days or I won’t be able to switch my subscription. On top of that, we’ve changed the formula for the coffee after it’s brewed: Instead of the flavored creamer we were using, I’m adding sugar-free hazelnut Monin, half-and-half, and a pack of Truvia. The box of wooden stirrers I bought is working out well to reduce the churn of spoons through the dishwasher.

Kickstarting
March 23, 2011

Kickstarter is a website that lets you contribute money toward getting people’s business ideas started. The idea is pretty simple – someone comes up with an idea they’d like to implement but they don’t have the money. They post the idea on Kickstarter with a video and a description of what they’d like to do, and ask for the money needed to start the project. Individuals offer to contribute toward the total. Depending on the amount pledged, contributors are awarded with different gifts. If the total required to get the project started is contributed by the end date set for the project, then the project gets the money and the gifts are awarded. If the project isn’t fully funded, then nobody pays, but there are no rewards, either.

I’ve pledged on a handful of projects, both successful and not. My first project was for a roleplaying game called “Human Contact”, which is by an author whose other game I already own. He posted about the project on his web site, and I thought is was an interesting idea, so I contributed. With the funding from Kickstarter, he was able to write the new book and have a first batch printed, for both rewarding contributors and for future resale.

Silent Alarm
March 22, 2011

For Christmas this year, the kids got iPods. Abby’s been using hers for an alarm for a while now, which is a mystifying use of the iPod to me. I’m really taking this as the first signs that I’m getting irretractably old - I like watches and traditional alarm clocks, and don’t understand the use of cell phones and iPods as primary timekeeping devices.

Riley, on the other hand, is not taking to the alarm as well as Abby. At first, we were having trouble getting him to charge his iPod because, unlike Abby who already had a clock with a built-in dock, he was plugging his into the wall near his bed on a short cord, and would often forget to charge it. More than that, since it’s only using the iPod speaker, it wasn’t loud enough to rouse him from sleep when the alarm went off.

Little Projects
March 21, 2011

When I first learned to program computers, each project was a small task oriented towards teaching a specific concept, while building on the concepts that I already had learned. Small projects each solved a single problem or puzzle that you could only use the computer to accomplish.

Project Euler reminds me a bit of this type of individual puzzle, but it’s lacking one essential element for learning: Passion. That’s not to say the puzzles aren’t interesting, and perhaps this is more a factor of my interests today as opposed to what they may have been when I was 8, but after solving a few of them, the novelty wears off a bit. They’re not really solving any critical or fundamental life problem, and my interest in doing heavily computational math wanes in proportion to the number of every day problems I feel like I could be solving.