Month: January 2010

For our continuing dinner series at home, we’re going to work on learning new languages. We’re concentrating on basic phrases like “Hello” and “How are you?” and “My name is…” and other exciting topics.

Tonight we started on French, since that’s the language Kyra is learning in school. I think next week will be German, which is Alex’s choice (and I know fragments from years past). And Spanish will inevitably be next since Laralee knows it. Eventually we’ll get to more exotic ones like Russian, Japanese, and Farsi.

As of today we officially have a teenager in the house. Alex turned 13. Woo hoo!

Today we were teaching our science challenge class and our topic was the solar system. I was explaining how Mercury is closest to the sun so it’s really hot– around 800 degrees, in fact. And it’s tidally locked to the sun, so the same side is always facing the sun. In other words, the weather on Mercury is really hot and doesn’t ever change.

“Like Miami?” asked one of the girls.

Looking for an iPod Nano on Craigslist I came across this ad:

Including Bon Jovi! Sweet!

I just finished constructing the Wiimote glove that supplements the nifty pen to allow a sort of touchscreen interface for a big-screen computer. It’s basically a gardening glove with an infrared LED sewn into the index fingertip, a battery pack on the wrist, and a touch switch at the base of the middle finger. It looks vaguely high-tech with the wires and resistors, sort of like a poor man’s bionic hand.

By pointing to the screen and clicking the switch with my thumb, I can simulate mouse clicks and drags (the pen works the same way). It’s pretty fun, but honestly the pen is more accurate and a little easier to handle. I’d like to use both on something larger than my 50″ TV, though– I need a chance to use a projector and put up an eight-foot screen or something, and then “draw” on the wall with my pen or glove.

Laralee and I just got back from seeing Avatar in IMAX 3D. I had never seen a 3D movie before, so after laughing at the goofy glasses I settled in and found it to be pretty darn cool. I’m not sure the IMAX part was worth the extra dollar (the screen didn’t seem that much larger) but it was certainly fun to be overwhelmed with sight and sound.

All in all, I enjoyed the movie. There are a lot of people saying it’s predictable (it is), that the environmental message is a bit heavy-handed (it is), and that the characters aren’t all that inventive (they’re not). Despite that, the special effects are so breathtaking that you get lost in the magic. I admit there have been plenty of movies with weak plots where they hoped the effects would save them and they didn’t, but in this case the effects really did turn what would have been a mediocre movie into something pretty special. The soundtrack is quite good as well, and many’s the movie that’s been saved (or sunk) by the music.

I’m not sure I’m going to rush out to the theater more often so I can see new movies in 3D, but it was definitely a nice evolution in the moviegoing experience. I hear rumblings that one of these days we’ll be able to play 3D content at home, and that’ll be fun. Hopefully they’ll have glasses that are a bit more stylish.

La, Kyra, Zack, and I played a rousing game of Monopoly this evening. I don’t think Laralee has played the game more than maybe three times in her life, so she was kind of confused about what to do (general strategy: buy everything you can for the first ten or so turns). Once we started building houses she was in uncharted territory and had to leave anyway to pick up Alex at church, so I took over her position. She did pretty well for a while, but stumbled into my big hotel chain and fell fast.

Kyra managed to grab all four railroads and both utilities, which is a devastating combination. She racked up $200 every time someone landed on the railroads (which is surprisingly often) but in the end I pulled ahead by planting motels on my favorite properties of all: the orange ones.

I remember back in the late 1980’s I wrote a computer program that calculated the odds of landing on particular properties (I think many computer science and math geeks do this sort of thing. My model even incorporated three doubles (go to Jail) and the Chance and Community Chest cards that send you places like Boardwalk and Go and Illinois Avenue. In the end, it was clear that the most popular places to land are the orange properties. Other models I’ve seen support this conclusion, so it’s always my strategy to snatch those. Zack was a holdout this game and refused to sell me New York Avenue which was the only orange I was missing. So I had to start with the light blues, and at one point when he landed on a hotel and owed me $550 I offered to take New York instead. That was the beginning of the end– I quickly built up houses and then hotels on the orange, and after pounding Kyra a few times (she had a lot of cash reserves) managed to get the reds right around the corner. With hotels there after a few turns, it was all over.

Monopoly is interesting because it’s a zero-sum game: in order for someone to win, someone else must lose. It’s frustrating to a lot of people (Laralee for one, my mom for another) but I enjoy it. The kids are actually pretty good at it– Kyra lasted a long time, and Zack didn’t do too badly either.

The fifth annual Zing Ski Day was, as always, a rousing success. We went up to Breckenridge on Thursday and enjoyed the beautiful weather and light crowds.

Things started off nice and easy…

Photo credit: Rob

… and we made sure to keep it low-key and fun. Brian worked hard on this particular run:

Photo credit: Rob

Therese makes it look easy:

Photo credit: Rob

And of course Rob does some nice carving that makes all of us look bad:

Photo credit: me, with Rob’s sweet camera

We finished it off with a nice dinner in Idaho Springs. Good times all around. Thanks, guys, for a fun day.

“The most exciting phrase to hear in science– the one that heralds new discoveries– is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny…'”

— Isaac Asimov

Woot! I managed to get my Wiimote and infrared pen hack working this evening, so I’m now able to use the computer by pointing a pen at the screen and clicking on it. Basically it’s just a matter of setting the Wiimote on a chair off to the side of the screen, connecting it via Bluetooth to the computer, and calibrating the pen. Then it’s possible to use the pen like a mouse.

Here’s Kyra playing around in Tuxpaint on the plasma screen:

My next project will be to connect all of this to a projector so we can use the wall as a whiteboard. The end goal is to use it in my second-grade science class.

Oh, and I’m also going to buy a pair of cheap gloves and attach an IR LED to the index finger, so I can use my finger instead of a pen. Way cool.