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A small article 🙂 on nanobots tickled me. As well as the title, it included this quote:
Among the nanosoccer drills that will be demonstrated in Pittsburgh are the two-millimeter dash in which nanobots seek fast times for a goal-to-goal sprint across the playing field
No, not that one…
You may have read this in emails – if so, sorry. As you’ve probably realised we’re off to be Tudor at Kentwell again this year. It’s going to be 1588, so lots of Armada stuff on top of all the usual stuff (see the web site for what that means, including lots of photos).
We’re going to be doing it for the first week – if you visit then you’d get to see us in funny clothes and we’d be pleased to see you but have to sort of pretend that we didn’t know you as you’d be weird visitors from the future. After that it’s on for a further 2 weeks. We’re arranging a visit with local home educators, but the date isn’t fixed yet. Anyone we know reading this would be very welcome to tag along – the dates so far are
If anyone fancies visiting but is too far away we’d be happy to provide floor space, food etc. We’re slightly double booked on 28th but in a way that we can juggle.
Saturday was a nice pottering about the house kind of day, to recharge after busy feeling weekends before. I managed to mow the lawn and do other jobs, but nothing amazing. I did, however, manage to lose my patience with L at bed time in a huge and bad way 😳
On Sunday Katy and I did prayers (intercession and thanksgiving) at our newer church. It felt nice to be part of the service, and also to balance the choruses and PowerPoint presentations by doing old fashioned prayers without music backing or punctuation. (Bah humbug. The new stuff is nice, but it’s easy to get caught up in the trappings and forget what it’s all about.)
As there are no swimming lessons this week due to half term, we all went swimming on Sunday afternoon, to a pool a few villages over that I hadn’t been to before. Much better for children than our local one or the one they have lessons in – a separate shallow pool with a shallow end they all feel safe in and a not too scary water chute. L and K were eager to go on the chute with Katy and me, and J eventually realised that it was fun (just in time – we were the last ones allowed on). There’s even a speedometer with a big display when you get off the chute, although strangely it only stops timing after you’ve walked on for a bit. A went in one of those inflatable baby throne things and J, K, A and I had a lot of fun playing pass the A.
Katy IM’d me at work yesterday saying that one of the cats had brought in a bird and eaten some of it but left the rest under the kitchen table. I wasn’t looking forward to clearing it up. By the time I’d got home she’d polished off the rest and lay down all evening (feeling fat, I expect). I was glad there weren’t any bits of foot etc. lying around.
When I got in I took all the children up to our bed, to give Katy a bit of a break / let Katy cook the tea (what an enlightened husband I am, letting my wife cook tea like that). This was a bit interesting. L was cooking things on the DS Lite, A was pottering about occasionally getting tickled by K and me, and J and K were wrestling me and also sometimes getting on the receiving end of a tickle. I was trying to keep the boys off the girls so they wouldn’t get squashed / have their game spoiled. A found a little foil packet buried in a box near the bed, and I relieved her of it but didn’t put it in my pocket as I should. J then found it, read the writing on it and then started asking me about it:
wrestle, tickle, protect L, wrestle
J: Daddy, what’s this?
more wrestling, me thinking “Do I duck this one again, or do I just go for it? If I go for it, how far do I go, and how do I phrase it all?”, more wrestling, I decide to go for it
Me: You know that book on the human body, with the Mummy and Daddy machine?
(J has this book, that skates over all this by suddenly switching from cartoons of bodies to cartoons of machines.)
J: Yes
more tickling
Me: Well it’s for that
J: What do you do with it?
more wrestling
Me: It’s a bit like a glove for a willy
J: Puzzled silence. Yuck. Why would you want to do that?
more tickling
Me: To stop having babies
Fortunately at this point it came to an end and I think J pounced on me and I pushed him over or something. K tried it later but I chickened out and changed the subject.
After tea Katy was at the shelves where we keep various kinds of drinks and found a prehistoric bottle of Baileys that we consume at a rate of 2.3 mm per Christmas on average. She poured some out and asked me to test it. Suddenly all the children wanted a try too, and suddenly found they really liked it. A asked for some, like she asks for food (leaning forward, pointing, looking eager), so after some persuasion from Katy I gave her some on my little finger – mmmmmm! I think they’ve all had some kind of spirit when they were growing their first teeth, so it’s A’s turn. Also, apart from something like alcopops, Baileys is probably the most child-accessible (but not appropriate!) form of alcohol.
The second of our two Freecycle goldfish died, and I buried it in the garden this morning before work. The children seem remarkably chilled about the whole thing, particularly considering how big a deal the first one dying was.
As I tucked J up last night he asked about supercomputers, and what you’d use them for. I told him how computers are very good at doing things with numbers, like adding a pair of numbers together, so everything we get them to do has to be reduced to numbers in some way, like numbers to stand for the dots on the screen. Supercomputers (I doubt he’d criticise me for saying supercomputer => SIMD 😉 ) can do the same thing to many numbers at once, so if you had 1,000 pairs of numbers to add, a normal computer would work through them one at a time but a supercomputer could do many at once and so finish more quickly. Things like rotating a digital photo could work like this (I thought that trying to bore him with matrix multiplication at bed time was a very bad idea, particularly as I’ve forgotten all the details. 😉 A level maths seems so long ago, possibly because it is. 🙁 ) I promised more tomorrow, and during teeth cleaning tonight I tried to explain ray tracing, but probably failed. Radiosity can wait for another day :). Hope that’s given you enough to pause and think about Michelle :).
The colleague who normally gives me a lift to work is on holiday this week, so I’m driving myself in. As I went round a roundabout near the office, having just changed gear, I realised how un-American that was – roundabouts and manual gear boxes. It’s weird what you think is normal but others think foreign. I learned a while ago that Americans don’t know the word fortnight, but only recently I found out they don’t know fiddly either. How weird is that? I know they don’t use tap (for water taps), but fiddly?!
Katy bought the children straw hats from eBay for Kentwell, but they’re too small to fit on their heads even though there’s lots of brim. So she has unpicked one to make a long woven spiral and has just finished sewing it back together, bigger somehow. Very impressive – I would have given up in a huff long ago. Speaking of historical things – I’m very glad I caught Supersizers Go Restoration. Very entertaining, some nice history (Good night darling, stay thick) and weird food.
An excellent TED video about the biggest geological feature on the planet (and other things), plus the Jason Project (looks like lots of stuff for free).
Ooo ‘eck long time no proper blog. This is a v. quick recap of what we’ve been doing (which will probably turn into a long rambling waffle knowing me).
We have finally bought the children a joint DS Lite – thanks to the givers of birthday present money a very long time ago. It’s pink (minor squabble in the shop) and so far it hasn’t been dropped or the source of too many arguments. It’s also a new motivational tool – another go on it once you’ve done your maths. Yes, we’re mean nasty parents bwa ha haa!
We’ve been trying out a new to us / family heirloom tent from the Beans (photos soon on Flickr). We’ve been reunited with the camera we left in London, so some old photos should go up on Flickr soon. This was via a nice visit from the Frabjous Days posse, so we got to see how much X had grown and Katy introduced his mum to the ways of wraps (slings, not Mexican food). K has written an excellent story via dictation which may turn up on here soon.
Two piano-playing colleagues spent several hours learning how to tune a piano by having a go at ours. One of them (Rick) bought all the tools a while ago, and he and his able assistant Steve did an excellent job despite an occasional child audience. The middle 3 and a half octaves are tuned a semi-tone flat (rather than randomly tuned around an average of a tone flat), the lower notes they didn’t get to aren’t too bad, but the high notes still induce brain failure in people with perfect pitch. It sounds a lot better to practice on.
A is getting more of a little person, but also has learned how to screech loudly :(. This is getting long and I have photo-twiddling to do so I shall stop.
UPDATED: I forgot to mention that last night J cooked us tea. He and L played mud pies with soss-mix, then fried them, grilled some potato cakes, scrambled some eggs and chopped up cucumber and pepper. Katy had to help him overcome his fear of spitting hot oil (which was out of proportion), and give him tips on what to do and when, but I think it’s fair to say that he prepared the meal.
Just tell yourself they’re being Elizabethan. Rather fluid and weird spelling is in evidence in e.g. the letters of William Herle, passing intelligence back to Elizabeth’s court.
A Tudor remark that Katy passed on after the Kentwell open day (something like): Unfortunate the man who can only spell his name one way. Bob. Bobb. Bobbe (not pronounced Bobby, thank you). Qkbob (silent Q and k).
We went to the compulsory Kentwell open day on Saturday, to get our costumes approved and also to buy missing bits like shoes for the children. It was hot, crowded, long and the head honcho gave a long slightly tedious speech as ever. But we’re basically approved – the girls need aprons, and some spare shifts need making.
I took the boys out to the front sward (lawn) to escape the hot and hustle and bustle, and we chilled out under a huge oak tree. While I was lying looking up at the leaves I noticed some movement to my right and sat up a bit to see a peacock about to peck my hand in a curious kind of way. Unfortunately I scared it off and then was too slow on the uptake to get a camera ready in time.
On the way home we stopped off at our nearest mega-Tesco to give the children some food quickly as it was late and we were all tired. Apart from our knives (which stayed in the car) and the concession of modern shoes, glasses etc. we were in full costume. I managed to forget to buy something the first time so I went back to the till for a second time and told the bloke there that in case he was wondering, we were Tudor re-enactors. He displayed a remarkable amount of wisdom and humility, when he said “You get all sorts, and I can’t judge seeing as I’m in a hat and a hair-net”.
Sunday started with a walk to church in the lovely sunshine, and communion with the altar in the middle of the church in celebration of Pentecost (God among us, like at Christmas). Home via a picnic in a small park we often drive by but had never been to. Katy did her occasional Superwoman trick of carrying one child on her front in a sling while giving another child a piggyback. When it was K’s turn on her back he had his hands joined around Katy’s shoulders and told her “I’m making a circuit”. They boys have been playing with an electronics kit that Katy got cheap from eBay, which they’re managing to get things from even though it’s for 11-14 year olds. (At the moment I’m letting them treat it as magic lego, but we’ll add in some of the theory over time. They’ve already got the idea that you need to complete a circuit to make anything work.) This got on to how Katy’s dad keeps himself safe when doing electrical things and why that’s important.
When we got home I managed to finally mow the lawn and everyone else pottered / snoozed / felt wrung out and suddenly it was tea and Scrapheap Challenge.
Apart from not blogging all that much, and not putting photos on Flickr… (Camera is in London, so few photos until we are reunited with it.)
A is being demanding, but also starting to make cute identifiable sounds for things. As lions always go RAAAAAAGH! her sound for lion is ra, or sometimes just ar. Giraffes don’t have an obvious noise, so they are rar (subtly different – short for giraffe), and zebra is bbbbbrrrr (this is where I ought to break out my imphlabet, but I’m far too rusty). Beardie: it’s a bi-labial thing part-way between a b and a v. L came with me and A to vote yesterday and we had a nice chat about what voting is, and how 100 years ago Mummy couldn’t have voted, and saw the local swan on her nest. Last night she was sick – twice – which led to sense of humour failure 😳 on my part and two changes of bedding. Fortunately she’s better now and so will be back to normal food tomorrow.
K lost his first tooth tonight, and is immensely proud of his gap. There will be a poor quality mobile phone picture of that on Flickr soon. He swallowed it at tea time, having had a hard time with its wobbliness interfering with eating. Fortunately there was no blood and it didn’t scratch. J is reading the next Invisible Friend book, and I subjected him to an excellent TED video about the Large Hadron Collider that’s going to be turned on this summer and either help find the God particle or swallow the entire planet and kill us all.
