Author: bob

A pleasant evening

I was reading K his bed-time story tonight and he spontaneously started to read one of the words himself! Once I realised what he was doing, I steered him towards the phonetic ones, and I helped him by covering up everything but the word we were reading, and sometimes showing just a letter at a time. So far he’s managed: Mum, Dad, but, I, can. Proud daddy moment. Katy does all the hard work going through the letter exercises with him, and I get the nice results. 🙂

As I tucked him into bed he asked “Why is it stripey?” and I thought he was referring to the wallpaper but he meant his bed as it’s made of unpainted wood. We had a little chat about how trees grow and tree rings, which was a lovely way to end the day.

Then down to sort out J and we had one of those meandering Home Ed. conversations that are really nice and hard to remember how they start. I think in this case I remarked to J that he was reading a book by himself that I used to read to him, and that soon he’d be reading War and Peace. “What’s that, Daddy?” I fell into the trap of saying it was by Dostoevsky, but Katy and Google to the rescue: War and Peace was by Tolstoy; Dostoevsky wrote Crime and Punishment (among others). J said “Grommit read Crime and Punishment in A Close Shave” (amazing memory!) This then went on to me remembering my first secondary school’s houses, which were famous Europeans like Nobel, Tolstoy, Curie and some others so famous that I’ve forgotten them. (It was a long time ago!)

This then went to talking about the Curies. Another mistake from me – I said they got uranium from ore and it was instead radium. But I got the bit right about Pierre carrying a vial of it around in his jacket pocket because it was nice and warm, and he didn’t realise it was the cause of the large burn across his chest. He avoided dying of radiation sickness by being killed in a road accident first. (Got that bit right too.) I forgot to remember that Marie died of leukemia because of being a pioneer of X-ray photography during World War I – in those days the radiographers would check the strength of the beam by putting their arm in it and hoping it would make their skin peel. Ugh!

I mentioned the unit of measurement named after them, and then the Newton, and the difference between mass and weight with the aid of fictional space ships and weak tables made out of paper. The poor sausage was still going strong and tossed in questions about infinity (“What’s half of infinity?”) so his brain couldn’t have been completely scrambled.

Farewell NTL

Yesterday I finally managed to sever our ties to NTL. We used to use them for phone and broadband, then we switched to another phone service and yesterday I asked them to cancel our broadband.

The people we’re switching to aren’t cheaper, but they’re small and ethical. Also, they’re not NTL. This might seem a bit harsh, but NTL seem to have a knack of fouling up whenever they can. I shan’t go through everything here as it would get tedious quite quickly, but as an example there’s the time when we moved house. We had used NTL for phones at our previous house and wanted to move our number with them to the new house. I gave them plenty of warning and the engineer turned up on moving to sort us out.

Pretty much the first thing he said was “Where’s your box?” – we didn’t have one as none of the previous owners had been NTL customers. “I’m only here for a reconnection; I was told there was an old connection here.” Who, better than NTL, would know if NTL had ever supplied a particular house? 🙄

Anyway, NTL managed to go out in style. I phoned up yesterday and got their press-3-for-this system. I pressed what I thought were the right buttons and got through to someone. I told them my account number and said I’d like to stop my broadband and was told “Please hang on while I put you through the disconnections department”. OK, maybe disconnection is rare enough that it’s not something that everyone’s trained to do.

I got through to the disconnection department and was asked for my post code. “Hang on while I put you through to the disconnection person for your area.” Hmmm… this seems a bit poor, but OK. The third person then asked for my account number again, couldn’t find my account details on their computer system, asked for my post code and told me I’d been put through to the wrong area and so transferred me to someone else.

The fourth person seemed to be the right one! He was very nice and asked me why I wanted to cancel. I said it was because I got better service elsewhere, and he offered me NTL broadband free for 3 months if I’d stay. I said I’d already ordered the new broadband. How about super-fast broadband for the price of my current broadband? No, I’ve already signed the contract. OK. Long silent hold later, and all was done.

The irony of having to talk to 4 different people over 15 minutes to execute a really simple transaction was not lost on me.

Choosing presents

This morning K discovered half a dead mouse indoors, that had probably been left there by one of the cats. He asked why they did it and I said that it was because the cats thought that we were really special and so wanted to give us a present, and they would like a mouse as a present so they think we would too.

He said “Can’t we train them to bring us a present that we’d actually like?”

In other news, after a late start, L slept through again last night. This could be habit forming.

Milestones

J and L clocked up milestones this week. (I think J’s happened a few weeks ago but yesterday was the first time I noticed.)

Yesterday I took all the children to the park and J was eager for me to play football with him – L’s buggy as one post and a shrubbery as the other. This was occasionally tricky as K and L needed attention too on the swings and things. During half time when I was play equipment assistant I noticed J could swing by himself completely! Probably not a major thing and maybe even late compared to his peers, but another sign to me that he’s growing up and another way he’s able to enjoy himself without needing my help.

L may be messing with our heads, but one night this week she slept through completely, in her own bed :shock:. It was a bit of a shock to not feel v. tired the next day (just tired). She hasn’t done so since, but tonight was encouraging too. She went up to her bed after the boys were asleep but before she seemed sleepy. This normally lasts about 5 minutes and then there are footsteps coming downstairs :roll:. Tonight she didn’t come down at all. Hurrah!

Diversity

I work for a large American company (this wasn’t my choice – it bought the small UK company that I had joined). My limited experience of large American companies is that they worry about Diversity – note the capital letter and have directors dedicated to it, training courses for all staff and so on.

I’m sure that this is well-intentioned at least by some of the higher-ups, but sometimes – too often – comes across as lip service and window dressing. I know that Brits can be just as insensitive as Americans and any other group, so I’m not going to claim the moral high ground. The people from the German company we’re selling to at the moment say they have Diversity too, so maybe it’s all large companies these days.

Anyway, I was in Germany on business and got an excellent illustration of it done properly, i.e. with a small ‘d’. It reminded me that reading books on ecumenism is all well and good, but the proper way to be God’s family is to just chat and get on with people who go to different churches from you. Back to diversity. There were many of my US-based colleagues on the same trip, and so there was American, British and German in the mix. Actually one of the US-based people is really Venezuelan, and one of the Germany-based people is actually a Pole, but that just led to interesting accents.

So, I had an American colleague telling me where the rest rooms were in the office we were visiting (not the toilets or even Toiletten). We had Chinese takeaway for lunch (a bit random, but nice) and one of my US colleagues had stuff in a satay sauce for the first time (“peanut butter sauce”). One of the Americans was dying for some water that wasn’t Mineralwasser and so the satay eater said “Why not have some tap water?” which made me puzzled so I asked him what he called the thing it came out of. He said “spigot or faucet” – I had come across faucet before, but apparently a faucet gives out tap water, which was new to me. As was the fact that sandwiches in the US don’t usually have butter spread on the bread – you’re much more likely to have mustard, mayonaise or something else. I discovered that to get an outside line from a German switchboard you have to dial 0 rather than 9. I spread enlightenment by recommending (and describing) cream teas – this is apparently now on the list of things to do/eat when the Americans are next in the UK. Hurrah!

It also embarrassed me how poor my German has become, and my French. Then there’s Spanish, Russian, Mandarin and Hindi etc. – I suppose that’s the problem being a native speaker of the de facto international language – which foreign languages do you choose to learn?

Meme of three

I intensely dislike the word meme – it’s a pretentious alternative to idea as far as I can see, invented to make some people feel clever, and to spawn other pretentious words like “memepool”. Rant over – I was tagged by Jax, and I thought I’d do what I normally (OK, I’ve only done one other) do with these spread-the-love things: grudgingly do it, find it’s quite useful for me and then not pass it on. I started this ages ago, forgot about it, and now I want it done so I can properly forget about it.

1.Things that scare me:

  • George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld et al.
  • Government unquestioning belief in IT as panacea, such as in the ID card scheme in the UK.
  • Global warming.

2. People who make me laugh:

  • Katy.
  • My children.
  • Robin Williams.

3. Things I hate the most:

  • The stupidity and hence skewed priorities of the current US government, and their supporters.
  • My own failings.
  • Halva – I think I’d rather eat Oasis, which it resembles.

4. Things I don’t understand:

  • Bridge (the card game).
  • The attraction of golf.
  • Japanese.

5. Things I’m doing right now:

  • Listening to music thrown at me randomly by my computer.
  • Err, typing this.
  • Lots of really amazing chemistry that keeps my body functioning.

6. Things I want to do before I die:

  • Finish this list.
  • Live in a place where I have finished unpacking from the last time we moved.
  • Lots of other things.

7. Things I can do:

  • Tell a shaggy dog story involving a cute squid with a mustache.
  • Tell you meaning of the word “cran”.
  • Make my lower lip into two little horns and wiggle them a bit.

8. Ways to describe my personality:
This is v. hard to answer without sounding like you love yourself to bits or hate yourself. I give up!

9. Things I can’t do:

  • Put my ankles behind my ears.
  • Knit.
  • Solve differential equations.

10. Things I think you should listen to:

  • Your children (if you have any).
  • Your spouse / partner (if you have one).
  • God, however you interpret this. Failing that: Silence.

11. Things you should never listen to:

  • People who make you feel bad in order to make themselves feel better.
  • Jazz, if it’s the kind where you can’t tell if they’re playing the right notes or not.
  • That impulse to buy a pink fluffy toilet seat cover.

12. Things I’d like to learn:

  • How to play the sax, drums or piano.
  • How to speak German or French better.
  • How to fly a plane.

13. Favourite foods:
This is a bit too MySpace for me, so no answer.

14. Beverages I drink regularly:

  • Tea
  • Water
  • More water

15. Shows I watched as a kid:
Too many!

  • Bagpuss
  • Bod
  • Jackanory

Busy week at the grandparents

We all went to my parents for a week and a bit, which all seems like ages ago now even though it was last week. Mum and Dad have a nice big house and garden, so there was football and helping Grandad to pick the vegetables and feed the fish. He also gave them some rides in his wheelbarrow, which was well-received. J had a go at cooking some of them (the vegetables, not the fish!) into a veggie shepherds pie (with Katy and my mum as sous-chefs) which was very tasty.

We had a trip to The Lowry in Salford, and met up with three fifths of Stepping off the Path. I must confess to not being the biggest Lowry fan in the world, but it had some good bits to make it more than just an art gallery. J had a go at drawing me by looking through an empty picture frame that was fixed up like a window frame, and then Katy drew him and K – all very good pictures. Further round there’s a bit where you can try on hats and draw yourself by looking into a mirror, as many of Lowry’s pictures had people wearing hats. More drawing by J, which is always nice and especially so when it happens spontaneously. K had fun doing a pairs matching game of Lowry paintings. After shuffling round the gallery we went into the shopping centre opposite and found a shop selling extremely large and comfortable bean bags, where I could have easily stayed for the rest of the day as you could try them out (and they really were very large and very comfy).

Quarry Bank Mill is nearby, and we combined a trip to it with a mini sling meet. (A meeting up of people who use slings and so on to carry their children, so they can try each others out and chat.) The Mill was great as you get to see everything from cotton plants with their fluffy bits on through to finished cloth. There was a woman doing hand spinning and weaving, and then you got to see the machines that made people like her redundant :(. The noise must have been unbelievable – there were two machines running every so often and you had to shout to make yourself heard, but when the Mill was fully working there would have been whole floors bigger than tennis courts clanking away. Also, some of the machines were cleaned by having children sweep up underneath, but the cleaning happened while the machines were running which sometimes had horrible consequences.

Some of the stuff we skipped as it was for older children – things like social change, slavery, trade and so on. But there were lots of excellent big things to look at or play with to do with water and steam power, and some printing too. All very educational, and enjoyable too.

A micro-sling-meet (a micro-meet of slings, not a meet of micro-slings) at someone’s house meant that the children and I could watch Finding Nemo and Katy could talk slings and baby ponchos. This was on the far side of Manchester and on the way back we stopped off at the Science and Industry Science Museum.

More fab steam engines, some steam trains (including one cut open so you could see the innards), a surprisingly interesting exhibit about sewers and more printing. Also there’s an excellent hands on section where the boys lifted a Mini using gears, a pair of goggles that reversed left and right, and a hall of mirrors. Plus there was an excellent talk, just at the right level for our lot, about what Martians would be like if they existed (tall, thin, red, furry, with broad feet, big eyelashes and closable noses like camels). This included a Solar System parade, where J was Saturn (holding an exercise ball), K was the Earth (holding a tennis ball) and I was Neptune (football) and Pluto (marble) and we learned the mnemonic My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets (Mercury -> Pluto) although this is now shot to pieces by the IAU ruling about Minor Planets. 🙂

We missed out an awful lot of the museum and so have promised to return next time we’re up North. We also didn’t have time and energy at the same time to visit Jodrell Bank which we pass on the way home, so that’s on the cards for next time too. All the trips around Manchester involved the tram, which went down well, and will definitely be repeated next time.

A nice coincidence was that a friend of mine from school was getting married nearby while we were up, and we had a lovely time despite occasional rain (thanks to a very large marquee in her parents’ garden). There was a ceilidh at the end, and the boys joined in as did L (most of the time strapped to Katy or me!). There was a whole roasted pig which made K a bit puzzled (“Why do people eat pigs?”) but there was plenty of excellent food for herbivores like us too.

On the way back home we stopped off at large park in Peterborough so that Katy could meet some of her imaginary friends at another (non-sling) meet. The boys and I had a wander in the wild bit and found some mushrooms and different flowers that I had no hope of identifying (other than dandelion 🙂 ).

Sorry to ramble on, but this is partly to help me remember before it all leaks away.

Festival of History

This is being written way after the event, but with a mucked-about-with date so it appears at the right point in the flow of things.

English Heritage organise a Festival of History every year, and we heard about it via an email list that Katy’s on. It was pricey and the military side of things looked a bit more prominent than I would have liked, and the weather on the day was looking border line, so I was feeling a bit anxious that the ticket I’d bought in advance was going to be a waste of money. Then, on the way, we hit some very hard rain and I managed to get us lost so we were half an hour even later than we’d planned, so it didn’t get off to a good start.

But I’m very glad we went, and the children all want to go again next year because they enjoyed themselves so much. We took so many photos that one set on Flickr was too clumsy and we even managed to bump the “you have uploaded X% of your limit this month” thing above 1%. This is because it was a day long photo opportunity, which I shall try to remember the details of now.

The basic structure was re-enacters representing different periods from Romans up to World War 2, camped in the grounds of Kelmarsh Hall. They took it in turns to break camp and go and do something crowd pleasing in one of the arena areas in the grounds, and then there was a large march past of everyone at the end on the main arena.

As we hadn’t bought a programme (well worth it next year) we had little idea what was going on, and stumbled across lots of Vikings and Saxons about to recreate the Battle of York, where the Vikings wanted to come into York and the Saxons, who were there already, didn’t want them to. It took a little while to get going, and reminded me of an American Football match once it had, as there were periods of little activity (but much posturing) punctuated by mindless violence. The Vikings won (I think – it’s hard to tell as they look fairly similar from a distance) and the battlefield had lots of pretend dead on it at the end. I suppose it’s much like children’s games of war, except with period costume and beer afterwards. The dead had to rise at the end to make way for the Romans, who stood waiting like a column of Cylons from Battlestar Galactica.

The Romans were very impressive, and just went through a drill rather than pretending to fight anyone. The commentator was interesting and informative, and gave lots of details like the cavalry didn’t have stirrups as they hadn’t been invented and had saddles with four pommels instead. The infantry fanned out around the perimeter to do an air-stewardess-giving-the-emergency-briefing act as they went through all their gear while the commentator described it. There was some cavalry slicing up cabbages on horseback (no, it was the soldiers on horseback, not the cabbages), some impressive artillery, and my favourite bit was when the infantry did the tortoise thing with their shields. It really looked impregnable, and the re-enactors were very disciplined. The whole thing was rounded off with a horse race – again without stirrups but with funny saddles instead.

After that we saw some civil war people going through musket drill and then pike drill – this too had a very good commentator. There was a very nice bloke with a cannon who talked to the boys about all the bits and let J feel the weight of a half-size cannon ball – still rather heavy. I got talking to a very authentic-looking and slightly eccentric gent who was a polar explorer, complete with knitted balaclava, and a sledge with chests of Bovril etc. and a Union Jack on top.

The only low point for me was the World War 1 aviators. The wind was only just calm enough to allow some planes of the period to take off and stage a mock dogfight. (Surprise, one English bi-plane saw off two German mono-planes even though it flew at about half their speed and was often in front of them.) The planes themselves were fine, but there was an unpleasant commentary from people pretending to be British pilots of the time. They were authentically hostile to the Germans, but I would have preferred less authenticity for the sake of less hostility.

A definite crowd pleaser was the jousting. The knights had full armour on, there were lots of bunting and flags, and the nobles hammed it up a bit so that we didn’t think we were watching something from It’s A Knockout. There was a jester who was rather crude for something including young children, but fortunately that didn’t get in the way of the action – the chairs for the nobles did that as we weren’t early enough to get a good seat. The lances had been fixed so that the end four feet or so splintered on contact, which produced impressive showers of wood. I think our knight lost, but it was good nonetheless.

Then there was some very good Morris dancing and the big march past at the end. I’ve almost certainly missed things out – see the photos on Flickr.

Even with the World War 1 stuff I was left with a very positive feeling from the day. There were lots of people interested in preserving our roots and bringing them to life, who were friendly and informed, and all jumbled together so that you saw a Roman Centurion walking between some Civil War musketeers and a World War 2 US marine. The children all got a lot out of it I think, so we might consider doing Kentwell again next year, which will be a bit full-on with children in tow this time.

My little revolutionary

Over tea last night J said something about Gloucester and I asked him if he knew how to spell it. This led to a discussion of place names and how you can sometimes guess that the Romans or Vikings lived there by the form of the name. This turned into talking about the reconstructed battle of York at the Festival of History, between the Saxons and the Vikings, and how the Vikings came from Scandinavia to the north part of the country. J then asked “Why did the Vikings come and attack England?” to which we replied they wanted more land and to be in charge of somewhere else too. J then asked “Why do countries keep on taking over other countries, and why do companies keep on taking over other companies?” (We’ve talked about things like Nestle buying Rowntree in the past.) Katy replied “Because they want more money and power” which I think was a very good answer, but he didn’t ask any more questions after that. I imagine the gogs started whirring inside his head, and look forward to his revolutionary manifesto when he hits 15.

Flatness

No, I’m not talking about my stomach, as then I would have put “Roundness” or “Flabbiness” as the title. I’m cheating a bit as I’ve already put some of this elsewhere in blogdom. A nice thing about technology is when it lets you separate out bits of the world so that you can appreciate them.

We were discussing why shadows aren’t completely black and I didn’t come up with a good explanation beyond the fact that light usually gets to a particular point e.g. the floor via many routes, bouncing off other things or going direct from the sun or lightbulb, and usually the thing casting the shadow only blocks off one of the routes. I then found a video showing the effects of radiosity, which is the term (in computer graphics, at least) for light bouncing off things and going on other things. Most of the video is showing how whizzy some product is because it works out the radiosity instantly, but towards the end it shows what happens if you do computer graphics to show a room without worrying about radiosity.

The result is unrealistic and flat – obviously computer-generated. It turns out that to capture reality is really hard! The spotlight (in this case) shines on loads of different surfaces in the room – each surface is more or less shiny, has a colour, and is at a certain angle relative to each other surface in the room. The spotlight shines on a given surface and then some fraction of it (depending on how shiny it is) bounces off. What the reflection hits depends on the angles things are at and how far away things are from other things, and what colour the light is depends on the colour of the first surface – white light shining on a green wall will give only a green reflection.

The trouble is, this process repeats and repeats, with light bouncing all over the place. It’s limited mostly by the fact that the surfaces don’t reflect 100% of the light as they’re not perfect mirrors, so eventually it all peters out. Doing all this in a computer involves lots of maths (beyond me), and the video is saying “Look, we can do this maths really quickly”. I showed the video to the boys, who were impressed more by the music than the pictures *sigh*. To be expected, I suppose.

I really liked The Incredibles DVD – the story was fab (the children loved it too) and there were some nice extras. One of the extras was for geeks like me, about the computer graphics. They deliberately aimed for a cartoon kind of look, but there were some things that they worried about, such as the hair and skin. It turns out that the surface of skin traps the light falling on it a bit, so that it bounces around inside and makes it glow slightly. If you don’t model this in your computer graphics it looks like plastic rather than skin.

Radiosity reminded me of being in a sound-treated room in a linguistics lab, where nearly all of the echo was absorbed by the walls. (In a way radiosity is like the light equivalent of echoes.) We take echo so much for granted, but without it the world seemed flat in a very off-putting way. It’s hard to describe for people who haven’t experienced it – the closest is 2D sound rather than 3D – but not mono vs. stereo. I guess we subconsciously use echo to keep track of how far away things are, and without echoes our brain flails about as it doesn’t know where things are so well.