Ultranormal

  • Today’s Idea: TED Lesson Plans

    While we were up in DC for Steve’s wedding, TEDx Creative Coast happened down here in Savannah. I’ve had several conversations with folks about how high energy it was and how excited everyone was about the event, and that there has to be some way to keep that energy going.

    I got to thinking about it, and how cool would it be to create lesson plans for teachers around TED talks? They could show the video, then have a discussion with the kids, or some activity around the topics discussed in the video.

    I don’t have time to implement it, but I’m putting the idea out there in case someone wants to run with it. I figure it could be a wiki, or something wiki-like, where you take the video, and then build the lesson plan below it.

    I’m not sure TED has an API for pulling all the talks, but it wouldn’t be too hard to scrape the podcast feed and do it auto-magically.

    If you do something like this, or know of something that already exists, let me know!

  • Family wedding

    Kevin’s youngest brother got married on Friday. Here are some pics from the day:

    Brian fell asleep on the ten-minute car ride to the ceremony:

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    The groom:

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    Max and Kevin’s sister:

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    Kevin and me:

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    Kevin posted others here.

  • They’re preaching to the choir here…

    But still funny and worth watching (NOT SAFE FOR WORK):

  • Forgotten kidlets

    The school bus has forgotten one of my kids at school twice this year! What’s up with that? When asked, I tell people how much I like the school and how surprised I am to find it better than the vaunted Northern Virginia school system we left. Stop making me out to be a liar, school bus driver!

  • Random question time

    When the host on Clean House is trying to get a homeowner to give up sentimental but useless clutter, how come she never suggests taking pictures of the items before getting rid of them? Usually a person in this situation is holding on to things from a recently deceased loved one, things the homeowner doesn’t particularly care for except as a way to keep the deceased close. The latest example of this is a collection of painted eggs. The homeowner simply had them in a basket, stuck on top of a bunch of other clutter. She didn’t really have a use for them, nor was she displaying them, but she just couldn’t get rid of them. It seems having a picture of each egg and them grouped together would have helped her get rid of them more easily. The show let her keep one, and nicely displayed it in her living room, by the way. So that was nice, But I still maintain pictures would’ve helped her get there faster.

    Just wondering.

    PS- Remind me of this if and when I start screaming, “No, no, no, over my dead body” about my mom’s sheep collection, some of which are almost life-size. 😛

  • Happy June!

    There are so many great things happening this month.

    • The kids get out of school.
    • My oldest nephew comes home from Afghanistan. \0/
    • Kevin’s youngest brother is getting married. Woot.
    • Kevin’s grandma is having the first of her 80th birthday parties while we’re all together for the wedding.
    • Kevin’s other brother, who is in the Air Force, completes his psychiatry residency and moves to his first real assignment. Making this even better, he got orders to his first choice base, which is near his wife’s family. YAY!

  • Summer lovin, happened so fast

    Kevin wants to be all do-ey and create-y this summer, which I fully support. But I am not sure what I can do to be all do-ey and create-y too. Normally, I would throw myself into (finally) decorating our room. But it’s a rental, so I don’t want to spend that much time or energy on it. Same with the yard and gardening. Maybe I’ll take up splatter painting!

  • Almost paradise, we’re knocking on heaven’s door

    My MIL has a set of really cool two-sided 5×7 picture frames. I’ve coveted them ever since I first spotted them. I have a hard time picking which pictures to display, (and so I don’t display any) but with these two-sided ones, you can have twice as many available for viewing! And the 5×7 size is perfect for the professional pics we’ve had taken. I’ve been googling for ages for frames similar but haven’t ever found any. Until now. Lookie, from Bed, Bath, and Beyond:

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    Do you see how awesome these are? Can you image how good a pair of these would look in my room? And they are even situated for regular 5x7s and sideways ones.

    BUT! Why is there a white line painted on the glass? Booooooooooooooo.

  • My Summer Plan – Produce More, Consume Less

    When I get home from work, I’m usually pretty tired (OK, most nights, I’m really tired). So, I don’t do much other than:

    • Sometimes make dinner. Usually Jen makes it or we order out, but I do cook on occasion.
    • Play video games with the kids
    • Watch TV
    • Screw around on my ubuntu laptop, but mostly I surf or play games while watching TV.

    And that’s it. On rare occasions, I do community stuff like go to Refresh.

    Since I don’t travel much anymore, I can’t remember the last time I read a book. I have a stack of things I want to read that I just haven’t gotten around to. I have a ton of little personal projects that are sitting around partially done that I should finish.\
    So, this summer, I’m going to watch less TV and do more. I’m going to read some books, write some code and have some fun. I know reading isn’t “producing” anything, but it’s more educational and intellectually stimulating than watching fictional characters on TV have and resolve fictional problems.

    My first project? Redo this blog. I realized we’ve been running this blog Movable Type for almost 8 years, and running it on Dreamhost for over 7. This “design” (if you can call it that) has been here, basically untouched, but over 5. It’s time to do something else. I rarely post anymore because it’s slow. I put most little stuff over on tumblr, and only come here for longer posts.

    My plan for the blog is to build my own from scratch. I know, I know, the world has enough blogging platforms. I’m not going to make a “platform”. It’s just a blog for Jen and me that’s fun to play with and easy to maintain. It’ll be on Rails and backed by MongoDB, so it should be trivial to add new stuff, rip it out, start over, or move it around.

    I plan on taking my time, playing with new stuff along the way (web fonts, HTML5, writing tests, the design, etc), and will roll it out when I feel like it.

    I’ll take breaks to do some reading, but won’t be doing any other personal hackery until it’s done. Once it’s finished, if there’s time, I have an idea for a twitter app I’ve been wanting to play with and couple things I’ve started with other folks that I want to finish up.

    It should be fun. I’ll post updates as I feel like it. In the meantime, what are you going to produce this summer?

  • Parenting Highs, Max edition

    1. A couple of weeks ago Max participated in the State Science Olympiad competition at Kennesaw University, just north of Atlanta. Max was able to participate because he and his partner took first place in his event, Simple Machines, in the district competition (which had over 30 schools participate) and his school won the Overall First Place trophy. The Friday before the competition, Kevin took off from work, we pulled Brian out of school, and I canceled my appointment with The View (just kidding! One of my New Year’s Resolutions was to stop watching the show; one of the best decisions I’ve ever made) so we could go to the competition with the team. There were 16 members and a dozen or so adults and we were in high spirits, though most of us didn’t really know what was going on. We left Savannah early in the morning so we’d have time to visit the Atlanta Aquarium, which was right on the way. YAY for good planning. See pictures here.\
      The next morning, the competition started early and lasted all freaking day. There were 61 teams, the largest group in Georgia’s history and the largest group in the country, participating in 18 events. Max and a partner participated in two events, Simple Machines and Large Number Estimations. They didn’t place in either event, nor did any of his teammates. Not that we cared, we were just thrilled to be there. (I am not really sure how this Science Olympiad thing is supposed to work because everyone is paired up with a partner. Some of the events are projects, like Bridge Building or Water Rockets, in which it seems natural to have a partner, but some of the events are simple question-and-answer time. Max said he didn’t agree with his partner about a single thing during the Large Number Estimation event. It seems weird to have that extra, need-to-agree element.) But anyway, we were really happy to be surrounded by over a thousand kids and adults who valued education and participation.\
      A side note for my MIL, who homeschooled her two youngest kids. There was a homeschooling group that participated for the first time. I wasn’t sure if they had competed at a local level before being invited to the state competition. I didn’t want some group just jumping to the big game without earning it, you know, so I was keeping my eye on them a bit. They ended up placing in two competitions, and proved they definitely deserved to be there! 🙂

    2. Tonight was the school’s Spring band and chorus concert. (Max is in the chorus.) Both groups sounded so much better than the Winter concert from Dec. I am not sure if it was simply the extra time to practice or if it was the song selection. The audience, and principal, demanded an encore from the chorus and almost half of the audience got up to dance, with encouragement from the chorus director. It was fun and raucous, where appropriate, and the kids had a really good time and it actually made me tear up to see Max singing his heart out.

    3. The school district introduced a fun day of “hands-on learning experiences” honoring the top two performing fourth and fifth grade students on the CRCT Social Studies portion from each school. (The CRCT is a standardized test given to Georgia students in grades 1-8 each year.) Guess who was one of the kids invited? Yup, that would Max. Also, there is a fun day for the top scoring boy and girl from the fourth and fifth grade for the Science portion. And Max was invited to that too! His genius has been documented once again!