"In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." –John 16:33

San Pedro Garza Garcia

Month: June 2014

GaugeCam update

A lot of you know I work on a volunteer side project called GaugeCam for the Biological and Agricultural Engineering Department at North Carolina State University. The initial program I wrote for the project was made on July 3, 2009 almost exactly five years ago, but the project really started a little before that.  We have worked on the project with varying degrees of vigor, but mainly we have kept going fairly consistently for all that time.  The most recent couple of events are pretty interesting.  I write about all that here, here, and here.

Norway water line measurement problems

The first came from Norway.  A researcher there wanted to put up some cameras in fjords there to measure water height.  My colleague, François Birgand sent the gentleman a camera and a calibration target which the researcher dutifully set up in a fjord and the thing did not work. At all. So François got some of the images that had failed and sent them on to me. I could see immediately we had a problem because my software would struggle with two things.  The glint at the waterline would confuse our current line find technique and it would be hard to calibrate on a calibration target that filled a very small portion of the field of view relative to previous images.  You can see the problem in one of the Norway images shown above.  So I started a major update of the program to address those issues.  We have now worked our way through most of the current problems and François started a large test run on thousands of images last night to see how much the changes improve our measurements.

Betty Blonde #133 – 01/19/2009
Betty Blonde #133
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Amy draws Grandpa Lauro

Niece Amy draws Grandpa Lauro

Our niece Amy drew this wonderful portrait of Grandpa Lauro and sent it to us. She stayed with Grandpa Lauro and Grandma Conchita for a time while she worked on her talent.  They love(d) her very much. She really is an amazing talent.

Walking and a new short term project

Dad's new walking toolsI have to admit I have been struggling a little with a lot of very little things over the last month or two. It is almost a perfect storm:

  • The kids are moving three thousand miles from home to go to college.
  • My day job company is just about to deliver on the first (really hard) product so I will start on a new, big project that does not require 60-80 work weeks.
  • We lost Lorena’s father(Grandpa Lauro) which did a pretty hard reset on my priorities.
  • I have delivered a ton of new functionality to GaugeCam so my work there will probably just consist of bug fixes for at least a few months and probably a year or so.
  • I am fatter and more unhealthy than at any point in my life.
  • A few months back it seemed like a good idea to “finish” this blog and go on to something else, but I can’t bring myself to do it.  The problem is I realize I do not have anything very interesting to say.

So yesterday, when I was feeling sorry for myself, I decided to try to do something about my weight and health, so I went out for a five mile walk.  About half way through, I realized I was getting a sunburn on my bald head, so I stopped and got some walking tools (a ball cap and some sunglasses) displayed in their full glory in the obnoxious selfie accompanying this post.  This morning, I got up early enough before Sunday morning meeting to walk to MacDonald’s for some oatmeal.  Before I left, I downloaded one of those walking applications from my Samsung S3 (My Tracks by Google) and used it.  It is very cool, but the only direct place to post results is to Google+.  The stats, map, and graphs are cool, but Google+ is not really where I want to post them.

So, I think I got a short reprieve.  It is possible to send the walking results as a CSV file to my Google Drive.  So, to keep me interested in continuing to walk and for a short-term project, I think I am going to try to write an application that takes the results of the My Tracks app from my cell phone and posts them to this blog.  That will give me a little more time to think about what I want to do with the blog, find some new, bigger projects on which to work, get a little healthier, and get my act together again.

Betty Blonde #132 – 01/16/2009
Betty Blonde #132
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What influence will homeschoolers have in the near future

The Well Trained Mind by Susan Wise BauerTom Gilson of the Thinking Christian blog has an article over at Breakpoint titled How Homeschooling and Classical Christian Schooling Could Alter the Leadership of the Future.  It captures some ideas I have had about the impact of homeschoolers in the near future–the next 15 to 25 years.  His reasons are different from mine. I, like him, believe the Classical Education movement will have a pretty serious impact on our society.  Gilson feels that would be quite I hopeful turn of events. My feelings are much more tempered. I think it would probably be a net positive, but wrote about why the way those methods are currently practiced can be problematic in a post (here) that is now seven years old.  The following quote from my post captures the flavor of my feelings about Classical Education as I had seen it practiced when I was looking at traditional school settings and trying to decide what would be a good way to educate our own children:

Our problem with “Classical Education” has not been so much the theory behind it, rather it has been the rigidity by which it is often practiced both in homeschool and private school settings.  The end product of such systems seemed to be little lawyers.  While that may be a fine end for many, we did not want that for our children.

There are some great things about Classical Education .  We successfully used some of the methods and materials described by Susan Rice Bauer in her book The Well-Trained Mind, A Guide to Classical Education at Home.  We highly recommend that book for anyone considering homeschool. I do not want to get into the nuts and bolts of Classical Education, but we completely buy into to idea that it can be a good way to impart knowledge to children. The use of that knowledge to argue with force is described in a quote from Susan Wise Bauer’s description of Classical Education on the Well-Trained Mind website.

The final phase of a classical education, the “Rhetoric Stage,” builds on the first two [Grammar and Logic]. At this point, the high school student learns to write and speak with force and originality. The student of rhetoric applies the rules of logic learned in middle school to the foundational information learned in the early grades and expresses his conclusions in clear, forceful, elegant language.

I am sure there are ways that “speak[ing] with force” and using “forceful” language can be interpreted to include grace and charity, but that did not seem to be how it was practiced very often in the Classical Education community with whom we came into contact. We tended toward books like Tactics by Greg Koukl which really talks about how to impart truth with grace and How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie which, well, is about how to win friends and influence people.  Neither of these books talked about force.  Rather they focused on the idea that there are humans involved in rhetorical interactions that can be accommodated in a much more effective way than by just the force of logic.

I wrote about something our buddy Luke‘s dad John Holzmann posted on his blog a few years back that captures my sentiments on the subject. I highly recommend reading the whole post. Here is the excerpt I posted from a speech titled “Homeschooling – Capturing the Vision” given by Kevin Swenson at the CHEC “Men’s Leadership Summit” in 2009:

He says if you dare practice rhetoric; if you dare stand up and give an answer; if you dare to get involved in the activity of the exchange of information and knowledge–he says, whatever you do, make sure you don’t forget to do it in the fear of God, and in humility before man. I’ll tell you, guys, the No. 1 sin that seems to be rampant in our society today, among educated people–and I’m talking about pastors, I’m talking about classical educators, I’m talking about kids that are out there blogging, I’m talking about pseudo-smart people who are trying to argue their point on the blogosphere–I’ll tell you, the No. 1 problem I see is the problem of pride. It’s everywhere. It’s insidious, and it’s ripping apart relationships in churches. It rips apart relationships in this movement.

As a final statement, I think it is appropriate to post a second excerpt from that same speech:

Now, it’s really interesting that Aristotle does an entire book on rhetoric. I bring up Aristotle because he is the grandpa of classical humanist education, so he does a huge book on rhetoric. I taught rhetoric through that book one time, and there’s so much lacking in that book that I don’t teach out if it much, anymore. But one of the things that’s lacking is any reference to fear and reverence and humility, and yet Peter – the apostle Peter – has one tiny little verse on rhetoric – on teaching rhetoric. He says, “Be prepared to give an answer to every man for the faith that’s within you, yet do it with meekness and fear.” [1 Peter 3:15 –JAH] He has one little verse on rhetoric. He doesn’t forget to include two very, very, very vital issues.

Betty Blonde #131 – 01/15/2009
Betty Blonde #131
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Thankful for big life changes that cause us to think about the big picture

Lorena and Conchita after the funeral

There were lots of big changes going on in our lives before my wife Lorena’s father died last week.  The kids were scheduled to move away from home to college on the other side of the country, we planned to sell the house in North Carolina to move closer to my work in Arizona, Lorena was to start back to school to finish her degree, and we had quite a lot of travel planned to help deal with my father’s Alzheimer’s disease.  We believed we had thought all of this stuff out very well, but things can change quickly. First we decided not to sell the house because nothing was opening up for us either with respect to the sell or our efforts to find a new place in Arizona.  Next Lorena’s father died. Now we are in the process of rethinking our rethinking.  God has his hand in everything and we are thankful for that.

Betty Blonde #130 – 01/14/2009
Betty Blonde #130
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Video: Singing solos after Grandpa Lauro’s funeral (2 of 4) – Kelly sings How Can I Keep from Singing

Betty Blonde #129 – 01/13/2009
Betty Blonde #129
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The never ending carne asada

Here is a nice picture of Kelly and her Tío Lynn at one of the many carnes asadas since Grandpa Lauro’s funeral. This one was at Tío Jorge’s casa del rancho near Allende en Loma Prieta, Nuevo Leon.
Kelly and Lynn at Tío Jorge's ranch cottage

Betty Blonde #128 – 01/12/2009
Betty Blonde #128
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Video: Singing solos after Grandpa Lauro’s funeral (1 of 4)

Everyone should aspire, sometime in their life, to attend a funeral like Grandpa Lauro’s.  It was truly a celebration of the life of a great man as well as a victory in finishing well–the way our Lord wants us to finish.  There is too much to tell and I will not even try, but I thought it might be nice to put up a few videos of the carne asada at Grandpa Lauro’s recently departed mother’s home.  Our dear friend Omar Tamez was very kind to sing for us.  The video that accompanies this post is about Mexico and shows the atmosphere of the event.  On another day, I plan to post one more by Omar, a favorite of Grandpa Lauro’s, O Sole Mio, and a couple by Kelly, Danny Boy, another Grandpa Lauro favorite and a Hymn, How Can I Keep from Singing.  Here is the first:

Betty Blonde #127 – 01/09/2009
Betty Blonde #127
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Grandpa Lauro passed away this morning

On behalf of the entire Pedraza family, we want to let everyone know that Don Lauro (Grandpa Lauro) passed away this morning at 7:00 AM, quietly in his sleep. We are very grateful for all the support we have received during this difficult time. We are thankful for his faithfulness to God and are looking forward to celebrating his life at the visitation later this afternoon and at his funeral tomorrow. Lauro was born on 1942, made a profession of faith in God in 1960, and died at age 71 in Monterrey.

Off to Mexico

Flying to Mexcio - Don Lauro's strokeRaleigh June 8, 2014 – I write this from the RDU airport as Kelly, Christian, and I wait to get on a plane to join Lorena in Mexico.  Lorena’s dad, Grandpa Lauro is in a grave condition to which there might not be a good outcome. We have someone at the house while we are gone, my boss said to take whatever time I need, and we have many people praying and communicating their concern to us.  We are very thankful for our family, friends, and colleagues.

Raleigh June 8, 2014 – We are in Mexico now.  An incredible number of people were at the hospital in Monterrey in support of Grandpa Lauro.  We were there maybe six hours and there were always at least twenty or thirty in attendance–not in the room with Lauro because his condition is so bad, but in the waiting room.  There were at least a hundred different people who came and visited and left.  There were many others who had come in the four or five days before we got there.  Some of the same ones come every day.  This in amazing credit to Lauro’s community–I have never seen anything quite like it.  We feel truly honored to be a member of this community. We still do not know whether Lauro will make it, but we continue to pray for him.  All your prayers are greatly appreciated.

Betty Blonde #126 – 01/08/2009
Betty Blonde #126
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OK. Now I am really inspired to write a book

My friend and colleague, Dr. Brad, read my last several blog posts and sent me a couple of awesome links.  If I was not inspired before to write a book, I am really inspired now.  My expectations are getting calibrated in a very good way–the audience for my writing will probably consist of family, friends, and those who have share my kind (not level) of educational values.  If my kids get famous after I am dead, I might get a bump then.

So, Brad found a couple of links that could be an absolute blast.  The best of which is the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).  People have a competition to write the best possible novel in a month.  Even better it is November which coincides with Movember.  I could get TOTALLY inspired to take a month off, grow a moustache, and write a novel.  Seriously!  Brad has some friends who have actually participated in this.  I am definitely going to have to consult with him on this.  Of course, if one competes in an event like this, one of these seems almost essential.

But, it does not stop there.  Brad also set me links to SOFTWARE WRITING TOOLS.  These are the Tim Allen power tools of the writing set.  Actually they look very cool and, for an engineer turning to writing, they might help me consider things and organize my efforts in ways I had never considered.  Brad especially liked the Scrivener tool and I do, too.

The only thing left now is to start participating in a writing community and get started.

Betty Blonde #125 – 01/07/2009
Betty Blonde #125
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So how does one start to write a book

I have been giving quite a bit of thought to this book thing and have decided I will start to take this off line until I have a plan a little bit better formulated. I think I do have something to say about homeschool.  There are some pretty broad categories of homeschool styles.  We fit into a pretty specific category when it comes to educational style and goals and another with respect to worldview training.  We know a lot of homeschoolers, but only one other family we met in Texas fits into a similar model to our own. They have experienced the same kind of success as us.  I talk about “kind of success” as opposed to “level of success” because we think people who follow different models achieve very high levels of success, often much higher than our own, but with different goals in mind.

I plan to write about the model we followed.  The funny deal, looking back, is that we had a fairly well established plan for what we wanted to accomplish within a few weeks or months after we reestablished ownership of our children’s education.  It would be interesting to understand whether other successful homeschoolers established the model they would follow early or if there was significant evolution of the model over time.  I plan to report back now and again as things progress, but to write about other projects and ideas until I start to actually have something a little more concrete on this subject.

Betty Blonde #124 – 01/06/2009
Betty Blonde #124
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Still forming ideas on how (and if) to write a book

Luke and Gene both made good comments about my ambition to write a book about our family’s educational experience.  Both Luke’s thought that not so many people would want to read the thing and Gene’s thought that such an effort is a fine thing to do for future generations of his own family seem exactly right to me.  I have to admit I was a little offended about the idea that not too many people would want to read my book, but on reflection I think it is true.  We, like other homeschoolers, took our own unique path in educating our children.  I suppose there are parts of they way we did it that will resonate with almost all homeschoolers, parts that only a few will like, and a lot that most will think ridiculous.  Even we think some of the stuff we did was ridiculous.

I think, though, that this will be a good exercise for me, for my family, and maybe for a handful of others who have similar values and educational goals.  My take-away from Luke’s and Gene’s comments are that I need to avoid doing this for any kind of selfish motive.  I mentioned in a follow-up comment to the previous post that I would write the book with the idea that I would print a dozen or so copies to give to the kids and for posterity, then give the book away as an e-book on this web site.  I think that is just about right.  I might charge a small fee for the e-book to either give away to an appropriate charity or create a small scholarship fund for homeschoolers, but it kind of depends on whether I think the book is even good enough to warrant that.

Maybe Gene and I can read each others efforts as we work our way through this.

Betty Blonde #123 – 01/05/2009
Betty Blonde #123
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Christian says I should write a book

As you might have noticed, I have been struggling for awhile trying to find a project that is separate from my day job, but that is interesting and somehow might make a contribution to something bigger than myself.  I have my GaugeCam project which meets all that criteria, but is really just more of the same kind of thing as my day job.  For a long time now, my son Christian has been encouraging me to write a book about our experience in trying to educate our kids. I never thought I had much to say about how other people should educate their children because we barely knew what to do with our own.  At the same time, we absolutely loved the whole process, had a modicum of success.

I have thought seriously about the idea of writing a book quite a bit over the last several weeks.  I have decided to put together an outline of what I might write, then determine whether I think someone might want to read that. If I think it might be interesting to other people, I will take the next step.  I always thought I would write something about our homeschool, but I do not think that will be the main focus of this effort.  Our educational path was more about getting our kids educated at as high a level as possible in accordance with our worldview.  It was less about which particular homeschool or traditional school methodology we used. So I believe this book would be a narrative more than a how-to.

Of course there will be big chunks about why we chose what we chose in terms of learning materials and methodology.  Sonlight, The Well Trained Mind, Mark Kistler’s Draw Squad, Singapore Math, and a lot of the materials we chose would rightly have to be a part of the narrative because of their great value in helping us to figure all of this stuff out and make the whole educational task tractable.  Still, this book would be a narrative about the particular path taken by a particular family.  We did what we did based on what our kids needed, the best knowledge we had at the time, time constraints due to work, how much money was available, etc., etc.

We felt like our educational path was successful for us.  We have no illusions that our children’s abilities and/or intelligence were greater than those of their peers. The were pretty good at some stuff, but very average at other stuff.  Still we experienced some success in our educational path to the point that Christian was able to skip high school to earn a BS degree in Applied Math at age 18 while Kelly skipped three years of high school to earn a BS degree in Statistics at age 20.  Both of them got funded PhD’s offers at tier one Universities which they accepted and will start this fall.

I have kept a record of our efforts on this blog for over ten years now.  The idea is to turn the blog into a narrative and fill in the many, many cracks where there is missing information to determine whether I might have a story that is interesting enough that someone might want to read it and maybe even use some of our ideas.

Betty Blonde #122 – 01/02/2009
Betty Blonde #122
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