After a fun weekend, Isaac mowed most of the lawn for the first time on Sunday. It turned out to be a good workout for him given the fertilizer has started working this spring and the lawnmower isn't self-propelled. We made a good crew; he mowed, I ran the weedeater.
Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Eckhart Tolle
From io9, using the microwave to measure the speed of light.
(Frequency) x (Wavelength) = Speed of Light
Set List with YouTube Videos from BuffettNews. This was the "Under The Big Top" concert on 04-27-2010. They have the lyrics on the BuffettNews site.
1 Nobody From Nowhere
2 License To Chill
3 School Boy Heart
4 It's Five O'Clock Somewhere
5 Pencil Thin Mustache
6 Changes In Latitudes, Changes In Attitudes
7 Volcano
8 Take Another Road
9 Boat Drinks
10 Where The Boat Leaves From
11 One Particular Harbor
12 Big Top
Intermission
13 Everybody's on the Phone
14 Woman Goin’ Crazy On Caroline Street
15 Creola (Nadirah on lead vocals and Jimmy on ukulele)
16 Cheeseburger In Paradise
17 Come Monday
18 Son Of A Son Of A Sailor (with a plug for Lulu's)
19 Cuban Crime Of Passion
20 A Pirate Looks At Forty (with Zac Brown)
21 Back Where I Come From (Mac on vocals)
22 Tampico Trauma
23 Southern Cross
24 Margaritaville (with the lost verse with Zac Brown)
First Encore
25 Last Man Standing
Band Intros
26 Fins
Second Encore
27 Lovely Cruise (Jimmy acoustic solo)
Best flash game ever. Super Mario Crossover, you can even choose your characters, they keep the same powers as their original games.
[via CrunchGear]
Great read from Downhill Both Ways. The last line is a useful quote, describing the street-side concert led by the saxophone player.
Far from purposeful, close to perfect.
The inches we need to win are everywhere around us. We just need to find them.
Slow motion video of the Apollo 11 lift-off, including an in-depth narration of the events.
Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch (HD) Camera E-8 from Mark Gray on Vimeo.
Promotional for Iron Man 2 and AC/DC, the company uses an old English castle as their canvas.
via io9
The Foreign Service Institute has their extensive language course online for free. However, as one of the commenters pointed out, the course by itself does not replace the extensive immersion from having conversations with native speaking instructors and classmates.
via lifehacker
Vimeo link says this short was made with a 5K budget, amazing effects!
Parental warning: PG13 for one language foul up behind the dumpster at 3:39.
Inspired by "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," we decided to begin with the smaller project of taking apart and fixing the gasoline windblower the previous owners had left behind.
These are pictures once we finished taking it apart. We had to order the fuel lines and filter, we'll let you know if we get it running.
Carburetor and throttle
Engine
The offending pieces, broken fuel lines.
A few pictures of our celebration with Buela and Tia Marie.
Here's the rest of the set, complete with some of Isaac and I having a jam to "Everyone was Kung Fu Fighting" (he had learned it in guitar lessons that week.
We visited the music store for a new strap and tremolo bar for Isaac's guitar. Throw in a cool hat and he was rocking. Check out his technique. You should hear it with "Sweet Home Alabama."
From All Songs Considered, Be Very Careful plays a cumbia. Reminds me of fun times being one of the few gringos on the dance floor with my lover and her sister. But a gringo who can cumbia!
I hadn't seen this CrossFit training method before, but it looks good (tons of example videos). They seem to combine Olympic lifts with body weight exercises to increase power (speed + strength) production.
They even have a kids version of it. The football kids should be expecting some of this in the summer.
In celebration of Earth day, No Impact Man suggests creating gratitude lists on Twitter. Of course, Google will search anything with this tag (#GratitudeList), so I thought I would do mine on Blogger (which will replicate to Twitter in a few seconds anyway).
beautiful wife, beautiful son (who likes to take stuff apart), listening/understanding family, HTML, family night with the ruggers, brown dog
Check out this flash game, Monster Evolution. Reminds me of the Spore game we just started playing.
Time/Life magazine has just released pictures taken the day Einstein died on April 18th, 1955. The Einstein family had previously asked the magazine not to release the pictures. The photographer was able to take these exclusive pictures after bribing people with Scotch.
Here's the gallery.
Instructions from LifeHacker on how to play Wii games from an external hard drive.
We've also received the disk for streaming Netflix movies and TV shows to the Wii. Watched the 1st episode of Battlestar Galactica last night with Isaac. However, our very first Wii movie was the No Impact Project. Very fun!
Pictures from the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in Iceland.
Here's some good discussion from NASA.
Article from io9, a science fiction blog, attempting to show both sides of the NASA reduction story.
I'm curious if tea party (remember the original tea party patriots where asking for representation for taxation, not less taxes) goers may be tempted to simultaneously rally against government spending, and complain about NASA budget reductions? Is this analogous to asking for reduced deficits and lower taxes at the same time?
Have a listen to this Engines of our Ingenuity discussing Prime Numbers. It mentions the Sieve of Eratosthenes. Seems like this will be a good algorithm for our initial programming project in finding divisors.
Just read the first few chapters of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" last night with a smile on my face the entire time. It is hard to believe how relevant this discussion of philosophy and technology is today.
I love the comparison of the journey and its discoveries and discussion to the Chautauqua. I couldn't help but think that blogs and various social networks allow a modern day Chautauqua. While the interaction medium is different, it seems it can be just as inspirational.
I can't wait to continue the journey, and hope my family is ready to get their hands greasy.
While I was talking to Mom this morning on her birthday, dodging in and out of hectic traffic, we seemed to co-discover this useful quote. It seems especially good to reflect on when celebrating birthdays.
Try to learn everyday, maybe try to learn a little more than you forget everyday.
Happy Birthday Mom. You make us better children and better parents everyday. We love You.
Here is a quote she left on the blog several days ago which seems appropriate. This seems to be the link it came from but not sure. Also an appropriate picture, who doesn't like dimples, from Pioneer Woman's Photography competition.
I have seen too many dear friends leave this world too soon; before they understood the great freedom that comes with aging.
Whose business is it if I choose to read or play on the computer until 4 AM and sleep until noon? I will dance with myself to those wonderful tunes of the 60 &70's, and if I, at the same time, wish to weep over a lost love ... I will.
I will walk the beach in a swim suit that is stretched over a bulging body, and will dive into the waves with abandon if I choose to, despite the pitying glances from the jet set. They, too, will get old.
I know I am sometimes forgetful. But there again, some of life is just as well forgotten. And I eventually remember the important things.
Sure, over the years my heart has been broken. How can your heart not break when you lose a loved one, or when a child suffers, or even when somebody's beloved pet gets hit by a car? But broken hearts are what give us strength and understanding and compassion. A heart never broken is pristine and sterile and will never know the joy of being imperfect
Development work stuff here. Use for future reference. Continuous integration and deployment using the CruiseControl.Net.
Check out "Prime Baby." Prime numbers and Aliens in graphic novel / comic strip form.
Here they are in the N.Y Times. Try out chapters 2 and 3 to understand the story line.
I'm attempting to have a better understanding of practical mathematics from the NY Times article by Steven Strogatz. Here's my attempt at Calculus, the mathematics of change. The derivative tells you how fast something is changing.
Many times the derivative is displayed in graphical form as a slope. A general principle can by shown that change is slowest, or the most sluggish at its extremes (where the derivative is zero).
The example given, is Michael Jordan dunking a basketball. When he initially leaves the ground, his rate of elevation is changing rapidly. However, as he reaches the peak of his jump, the rate comes to a halt, the derivative is zero, or he is momentarily hanging.
He naturally expresses differential calculus without knowing. The article gives many other examples (they are everywhere) with much better explanation. I still feel lost, but take comfort in the observation of nature practicing the same basic principles.
Recommended for summer water balloon battles. I guess we're going to have to make one for each team.
Need to look into this new Makers group sponsored by the Houston Public Library and Make Magazine.
Finally, need to get some different mouth pieces to attempt some homemade instruments and experience some resonance.
We celebrated Isaac's 9th birthday celebration Sunday. Over a fine peperoni, extra cheese, stuffed-crust pizza (on his 9th birthday, Isaac discovered everything is better with extra cheese), we had a rousing discussion of comparative mythology. While making his way through the Lightning Thief, Isaac has become a lover of Greek mythology.
We tested our new Air Hog SwitchBlade, and discovered it doesn't seem to get enough lift when in flying (not hovering mode). We will need to investigate further to attempt to fix the Lift and Thrust necessary to maintain flight.
We finished up our quick celebration with a Wii exploration of evolutionary biology, they call it Spore. We tried to get the PC version running earlier in the day, but our computer turns out to be too old to merit messing around with upgrading the graphics card.
This article from Downhill Both Ways (this author is a great story teller), deserves its own post. Try to read it, I think it will help your vision.
Isaac and I had a discussion regarding the difference between 'live' (we live in paradise) and 'live' (we would love to see Jimmy Buffett live in concert). However, after reading the article, I want to make sure I'm fully alive while I'm living.
The author's list of things he would like to do (if he took the time) makes me giggle.
Many interesting discoveries reading this morning's feeds. However, might as well begin with a quote for the day. I think the trick is knowing when to act with purpose, and when to take it easy.
My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose. Bette Davis, The Lonely Life, 1962
I created this tag cloud by pointing this awesome application, Tagxedo, to our website. It only works on the current page; however, some interesting combinations. Reminds be of those refrigerator poem magnets.
I like 'Fun Love', 'December Easter', 'Green DIY', and 'Kids Amp'.
Interesting activity from Denise, living Green in Austin. Should be one of the easier places to try it.
Fun celebrations this weekend for Isaac's 9th Birthday and Easter. Thank you Nancy for being the photographer.
The preacher at Mom's church quoted Jimmy Hendrix as a great theologian on Easter Sunday.
When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.The quote is not attributed to a particular song, but here's another (less obvious) love sentiment from Hendrix.
Check out this "Tiny Desk Concert" from NPR of Jacob Dylan. Great and simple high harmony from the women singing with him. Sorry they don't provide a way to embed this one, you'll have to check out NPR's website.
I was working with the judge in Harris county who writes the Historical Case Of The Month for the HC District Clerk's website (this month's story is of the Astrodome). After going back and forth attempting to get the HTML formatting just right, he told me the Latin phrase 'imprimatur,' once he liked it.
For the students of Latin, any guesses, without looking it up?
Fun working with Judge Davidson on the website, he definitely has a passion for history.
Every month Roger McGuinn posts a folk song, along with chords on his site. Sure would be fun to give this one a go.
This family is biking, with 3 kids, on a bike built for 5 from Kentucky to Alaska. Now, this is homeschooling! Looks amazing and fun.
Hope this shuffling demo includes how to shuffle two decks at once for our favorite Cannasta.
From Make Magazine.
Filmmaker Cristóbal Vila produced this short animation, called Nature By Numbers, which shows examples of how mathematical relationships such as the Fibonacci sequence, golden ratio, and the Delaunay triangulation can be found in the natural world.
Nature by Numbers from Cristóbal Vila on Vimeo.
Found the poem in this article from ZenHabits. The implications are far wider than shoes. I especially enjoy the advice to "Smile and Breathe."
Empty-handed I entered the world
Empty-handed I entered the world
Barefoot I leave it.
My coming, my going –
Two simple happenings
That got entangled.
~ Kozan Ichikyo
YouTube video regarding replacing a Zune battery. Ours has become a brick with lots of good content hidden inside.
Who knew Catholic TV would be the web innovators? Now if I can only find the glasses from the Avatar movie we'll be set to go.
Looks like quite a few programs they've already produced; including, St. Peter's Square at the Vatican.
Certainly, we haven't had enough flash games involving unicorns. Remember 'Z' to jump and 'X' to charge.
Looks like a fun idea for egg decorating. The beaks are made from carrots, and the eyes are black olives.
How about this for Isaac's birthday cake? I understand its not officially a "cake," but the kids would have fun creating their own Death Star.
Missing Isaac by the way; while he's off vacationing in Mexico. Can't wait to give him a hug.
"Anxiety is nothing but repeatedly re-experiencing failure in advance. What a waste." Seth Godin
Be Cool!
This site, Downhill Both Ways, has a great collection of essays about everyday life. This one seems especially interesting, and makes me reflect on travel through my own downtown (the bit about the bibles is not the important part, it just adds to the irony).
Should the royalty come down to visit the commoners, they should not be embarrassed to sit on their floor.
This one is for the girl who has the best handwriting that I know (but I still encourage you to keep practicing your typing). Also take a look at the gallery.
This site lets you create your own study flash cards. It will test forwards and backwards, then ask the questions again that you might have missed. I need to try this out on the boring task of memorizing state capitals with my more than willing (and cute) Guinea Pig.
This service is in beta right now; but I see Houston, Austin, and San Antonio. Here are the directions from our home to my downtown office in Houston (admittedly, not a very bike friendly trip). It looks like it takes bike trails when available, and attempts to keep you off the freeway.
This is how we roll "Go Texan Day." We like some sand between our toes, and guitar around the camp fire.
The weekend project Sunday was making homemade pots from newspaper for germinating tomato seeds (used the technique described in this article). We had a great time washing our hands in the clean earth.
Used a soup can as our template.
Cut strips of newspaper for the pot.
Fill with dirt and tiny little tomato seeds.
Water. And Water.
Waiting for growth in the box.
Not sure if anything will grow, but lots of fun!
I completely agree with this article by Seth Godin, articulating that brilliant ideas do not necessarily take a lot of time. The working world should get better at measuring productivity by the amount or quality or brilliance of work done, not the volume of hours worked.
Also a book list for linchpins from Mr. Godin.
Isaac has spent the entire quarter in school memorizing all the US states and capitals. In a few weeks, given a black sheet of paper, he will be able to write from memory all 50 states and capitals (spelled, for the most part, correctly).
My question is, what has been sacrificed in order to commit this to memory. The ongoing assignment has taken the place of regular spelling and vocabulary study.
This reminds me of Seth Godin's frequent references to the lizard brain. The lizard brain tells us to go slow and be cautious. It tells us to memorize because every single other child is told to memorize this set of data.
However, what problems does this help us solve? How does it spark creativity and revolutionary thinking patterns?
Questions for the young student regarding this article.
An amazing interactive application which blends Google Maps of the Trans-Siberian railway with YouTube and various audio clips. You can listen to Russian literature and music along the way.
This article on MSNBC suggests that the recent earthquake in Chili may have shifted the Earth's axis enough to shorten the length of a day. This has happened before with large quakes, this time shortening the day by 1.26 milliseconds.
From NPR: A neuroscientist figures out why teenagers seem to have a poor concept of cause and effect. Turns out the frontal lobe is not fully connected. The nerve cell connecting the frontal lobe has not developed sufficient myelin coating. This makes the connections between cause and effect slower.
We have watched several course records broken during the last few years in the Houston Marathon. In preparation for the 2012 Summer Olympics, USA Track and Field have decided to let Houston host the marathon and half marathon team trials.
Bet they don't slow down on that hill you have to go up right before the Galleria like we did a couple of years ago. However, I imagine they won't play a rugby match the day before either.
Adjust the mass, velocity and position of the planets in your solar system. Play with the presets for cool options (I enjoyed the 4 star ballet). Sometimes they crash. Cool Stuff!
Great web design in this feature on BoingBoing regarding the Cassini Mission to Saturn.
Questions for the student:
We had so much fun with Pioneer Woman's dessert recipe how about another one? We do love a good and spicy pot roast.
Not sure how all of these ideas translate; but, interesting article about hacking the learning process. Talks about mapping facts and even numbers to other parts of your brain. Here's the author's website. Worth subscribing to the RSS feed for a few months.
Check out astronaut Stevie "Ray" Robinson on-board the international space station in the new viewing addition called Cupola. Perhaps the most interesting part of this is that the astronaut is writing Twitter posts from space.
A few pictures of the rugby game in January. Isaac and his merry band of brothers getting dirty, and a fit looking #5 (don't you think?)
Just had to upload this set quickly. We tried Pioneer Woman's Apple Dumpling recepie with great success. Peace! Out!
Just found out that Round Rock ISD has decided to name their district football stadium after my high school football coach Kelly Reeves.
This article from Seth Godin describes which customers might be most beneficial to shower with your limited attention.
However, I can see the principal being applied in many areas. As consumers, we should also realize which behaviors may merit additional courtesies from our service providers.
On a note regarding service providers, do public teachers count as service providers? I think they should. I will keep Mr. Godin's attention principal in mind so that I can be an attractive customer to attract extra services.
This article describes a pilot program being tested by several states to allow high school sophomores to take a graduation test. If they pass, they will get their diploma early and finish their 2 remaining years taking community college classes.
Seems like a promising program for aspiring students. I guess the negative side effects, if any, would be social programming.
This is a copy of the suggestion I sent to the management of my own company. Looks like an interesting development idea good for both the merchant (less costs) and the customer (more security).
I read an article last night, while waiting for rugby practice, in Wired Magazine regarding the changing face of money exchange (can’t find it posted online yet). It seemed an interesting development challenge/opportunity to address comments I’ve heard in our office discussing regarding credit card transactions.
It seems that Paypal has done a great deal of work to open their transaction system up to third party developers, looks like they call it “Paypal X”. The article mentioned that this system was gaining popularity even with larger companies not only with their customer interactions, but also business to business transactions. Because of increased efficiencies in the Paypal system, merchants are paying only 1/3rd of the prices previously given to credit cards; of course leaving more profit to the merchant.
Take a look at these photos of everyday stuff from the inside. It's a flash application so I can't put any pictures, but the one of the frog is very cool.
I believe the artists refer to this as an example of positive and negative space (I think?). Great ideas for projection art!
From the Empress of Dirt site. What if it's a hoax? Even if I only practice some environmental practices for self serving means, they are still beneficial to my pack.
