Year: 2008 Page 10 of 15

Yesterday was the “official” last day of homeschool. We still have a couple of minor things to clean up–Kelly has a little math, they both have a little bit of reading, the reports are finished, but need to be formatted so we can post them on the web, etc. It all works out well because tomorrow the kids switch from evening to morning swim team workouts. Both of them got their ribbons from the time trial swim meet in which they participated Saturday. While the kids were swimming, Lorena and I went into the workout area at the new YMCA. Lorena works very hard on the elliptical machine. Both of us have been going about 40 minutes per day.

Last night, I started lifting weights again. Lorena will start doing some weights, too, as soon as the kids start their morning swim workouts when the gym will not be so crowded. I love to lift weights. At 52, I know I have to start in slower than before, but I really do not mind. The plan is to do five minutes of cardiovascular work to warm up followed by a weight workout followed by another twenty minutes of cardiovascular work. I am a numbers guy and have always written virtually everything down in my workouts for thirty years. There is just not as much satisfaction in writing down the three or four numbers for a cardiovascular workout (time, calories, distance) rather than the tons of numbers you get to write down for a weight workout (weights and repetitions for five sets of three different exercises along with the times and calories burned during the cardiovascular part of the workout).

I really enjoyed going down to work out with Lorena. It would be great to figure out a way to do that every day, but this summer, to make my schedule work, it looks like I will need to get up at 5:00 AM to get into the YMCA when it opens at 5:30. I hate for everyone else to have to suffer those kinds of hours, so I will try to revisit this again in the fall when school starts.

Note: We might be able to take some Chinese art lessons from this person.

We found this photo waiting for us when we returned from South Carolina this weekend. Congratulations to Eric, Audrey, and all the kids for their beautiful new baby girl. They picked a great name, too! America Laverne. I am starting to figure out the use of an alliterative strategy in the naming of kids. If you yell at the wrong kid, you can still make the case that you were really yelling at the right kid, but they just heard wrong. If your kids have names as different as say, Jimbob and Mortimer, that strategy does not work as well. If you name them Addie, Adriana, and Amercia, it has a chance. For those families with children as well-behaved as this family, the only reason to chose alliterative names is because they are very cool! I know several people were waiting to see this picture. Thanks for sending it to us and congratulations again!

We went to a graduation party near Greenville, South Carolina this weekend. That is a beautiful part of the world. To suggest that the people we met this weekend were merely hospitable would be a gross injustice and and understatement. We went to what was essentially a church potluck that set my diet program back by at least three weeks. We are talking about massive amounts of food. It is about a five hour drive from where we live, so we stopped at a Walmart to pick up some food to take to the potluck a little before we got there. I talked to the greeter there for about twenty minutes while Lorena and Kelly shopped and Christian worked on his PDA. He was a retired business man and a graduate of Greenville’s highly rated Furman University. He took the job as a greeter at Walmart so he could remain active, meet people, and get a little exercise. What a wonderful ambassador for Walmart, Greenville, and North Carolina. I left thinking he was a remarkable guy, but by the end of the weekend had come to the realization that hospitality seems to be ingrained in South Carolinian culture. It was very nice to be with a group of people who made lots of effort to be nice to us and to each other.

My friend, Evan from work has a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Duke University. He will be marrying another Ph.D. Electrical Engineering student from Duke in a couple of months. She is hispanic and going through Duke on a fellowship she received through the Department of Defense. Her undergraduate degree is in Physics. Evan and I talked yesterday about educational choices for students entering their undergraduate education with an eye to going on to get a Ph.D. He made the very good point that, if you want to study humanities it matters a lot more where you get your undergraduate degree than if you study engineering or one of the hard sciences. If you want to get into Harvard to study sociology, psychology, education, or archeology, it is pretty hard if you get your Bachelors Degree from Southern Oregon Universtiy or Linfield. On the other hand, if you get an engineering or hard science degree with good grades from a school like Washington State, Oregon State, or North Carolina State, do well on the GRE, and have the added bonus of being hispanic, you can get into places like MIT, Stanford, and Princeton and even get good assistantships and/or fellowships.

While we were talking about that, I mentioned that Kelly was a big fan of Condoleeza Rice, who went to good schools at a young age, played Mozart with the Denver Symphony when she was 15 and accompanied Yo-Yo Ma in a concert at Constituion Hall, etc., etc. We looked here up on Wikipedia and found that she speaks Russian, German, French, and Spanish in addition to English. That got me to thinking about the kids language education.

They are going to finish their second year of Rosetta Stone Spanish next year. Both of them speak Spanish quite well at least partially because we speak it at home. When they finish with that second year, our plan is to start them on more intense grammar work from textbooks in addition to third year Rosetta Stone Spanish at a slower pace. The textbook work is partly to prepare them for the CLEP Spanish Exam, but also to provide them with a better working ability to read and write Spanish rather than to just speak and understand spoken Spanish. At the same time, I want to start both of the kids on a third language. We have assumed that should be French for a number of years now, but I am not sure that would be a good choice.

The kids speak a romance language and a germanic language. It very well might be better for them to get a language from a third language family. Lots of people suggest Mandarin. I think Russian would be a good option, too. Comments?

Other than the posting of Kelly’s report on the Lost Colonies and Christian’s report on Artillery, this will be the last post of the 2007/2008 school year. It has been a great year. Kelly is well prepared to move on from Junior High School into High School and Christian is ready to move on from Elementary School to Junior High School. I will hit just a few of the highlights for the past year and then describe a little about where we go from here. I will finish up with some of our educational plans for the summer.

Christian’s year

Christian finished his first year of Sonlight‘s two year survey of world history. He has finished up Elementary Algebra, Apologia General Science, all the Easy Grammar workbooks, and his final year of cursive writing instruction. Christian made some great strides in his guitar playing this year. His new teacher, Andrew Kasab is perfect for Christian both in motivation and instruction. This is really the first time he has had an uninterrupted year of instruction from the same teacher since he first started taking guitar lessons. Another area where we have seen an elevated level of dedication and improvement is in his Spanish. He finished Rosetta Stone Spanish I and is well into Spanish II. Christian did very well on the PASS standardized tests we took for this year. Next year he will move on to Sonlight’s second year of world history, Teaching Textbooks Intermediate Algebra and Geometry, Apologia Physical Science, and preparation to take the CLEP Freshman English Composition test by the end of the school year for six semester hours of college credit.

Kelly’s year

This was Kelly’s last year using the Sonlight curriculum. She did a one year survey of U.S. History. It provided a good coverage of the sweep of U.S. history, but Kelly did not feel that she got either a big picture view or an understanding of how major events, places, and people tied together into a whole until she studied for the CLEP U.S. History I test. In addition, at the end of the program, the instruction tended to be from a hard left viewpoint. We were glad Kelly could pick that out, but we were disappointed all the same that she had to. Still, because the course was relatively thorough and because of the less politically charged CLEP preparation course, Kelly had a good year both in history and literature. She also finished Teaching Textbooks Intermediate Algebra and Apologia Physical Science. She finished Rosetta Stone Spanish I and moved on to Rosetta Stone Spanish II. We are really glad that Kelly is hitting it off with her new piano teacher. Her piano planning has really gone to a new level since she got here to North Carolina. Of course, Kelly has worked hard, but a lot of credit goes to her new teacher, Brenda Bruce, too. Kelly also did well on the PASS standardized tests we took for this year. Next year she will go on to Geometry, Pre-calculus and Apologia Biology. We have started a big push to get her ready for the Community College. As part of that, next years goals will be to pass a good number of additional CLEP test. I will describe those in a later post.

Summer schedule

We joined the brand new YMCA that opened up near us at the beginning of May. Christian and Kelly are on the swim team there. They have their first time trials on Saturday and the first swim meet is the week after that. They will be going to swimming practice early in the morning, Monday through Thursday. Kelly will continue with piano and Christian with guitar through the summer, but at a reduced schedule. Their only solo academic pursuit will be to do 15 minutes per day on Rosetta Stone Spanish per day per kid. We have three learning projects we will do over the summer, but two of them are hobbies and one of them is a very interesting read-aloud.

• We plan to draw every evening when I get home from work. We are working our way through a great book on how to accurately draw faces. We enjoy this very much and have discussed it before in several places.
• We plan to study for the Amateur Radio Technician Class license with the thought that we will even go on to the General Class license if we have time this summer.
• We plan to read the world view book each night that we started earlier this week.

I just got a call in from Eric. It is a baby girl–8 lbs. 10 oz., 21 inches. Congratulations to Eric, Audrey and all the kids! As soon as I can confirm the babies name and get a picture, I will put it up here.

My buddy Evan and I continue to work on the volcano computer. We now have a solid specification for the first item we are going to send out for testing. I am writing about it here right now so we can have a documentation trail. The first computer will feature a single camera to reduce power, lower the cost and assure we have everything working as expected. Here are our approximate costs so far:

• Computer: NorhTec MicroClient JrSX $140 plus $51 shipping (from Thailand)
• Camera: Imaging Source USB 1280×960 color camera DFK 41AU02 – $870
• Camera: Imaging Source USB 640×480 color camera DFK 21AU04 – $350
• GPS: Garmin 18 LVC ~$80
• Miscellaneous: Circuit board stuff ~$59

So here are the material costs for several different camera configurations:

• Low resolution (640×480 color), one camera system: $680.
• Low resolution (640×480 color), two camera system: $930.
• High resolution (1280×960 color), one camera system: $1200
• High resolution (1280×960 color), two camera system: $2070

One of the most critical features of this system is its low power consumption. Here are the power requirements for each of the system elements:

• Computer: 1080 mA @5V
• One camera: 500 mA @5V
• GPS: 60 mA @5V

An additional thing we have discovered is that we have to put a circuit board between the MicroClient computer and the Garmin 18 GPS module. It is because there is latency if we use only the USB or RS-232 communication protocol and hardware. There is a PPS (Pulse-Per-Second) signal line that is only on the Garmin 18 LVC which has a bare wire cable leading from the hockey puck looking GPS module. It looks very easy, but we have to trigger the camera using the PPS signal to be accurate to within a microsecond. There is a kernel patch we have to add to our Linux kernel. A really good description of what we have to do is right here.

Finally, we get to the description of what the first pass of this computer will do. While we have come to an agreement with our friend at the USGS who will be putting the thing into the volcano, we expect to add a lot more functionality to improve the image processing, communication, and ease of use after we get it going. Here it is:

To start with, there are two things you will be able to do with the computer:

1. Upload and download image and configuration files using FTP.
2. Check computer status and start and stop capture sequences using an ssh client (like putty) running on a Linux or a Windows computer.

You will be able to connect to the computer in two ways:

1. Wireless
2. Wired ethernet

You will be able to get images and configuration files on and off the system in two ways:

1. Using FTP transfer
2. Taking the Compact Flash memory card out of the computer and putting it into a compact flash card reader connected to a Linux or a Windows computer.

Each run configuration file will contain the following information:

1. Starting time/date for camera 1
2. Starting time/date for camera 2
3. Image capture frequency time/date for camera 1
4. Image capture frequency time/date for camera 2
5. Stopping time/date for camera 1
6. Stopping time/date for camera 2
7. Maximum number of images to capture for camera 1
8. Maximum number of images to capture for camera 2

The filename of each captured image will contain the following information:

1. Camera number
2. GPS precise time of the capture

Three Mexican women form a singing group named Pandora. I do not think they are together anymore, but I like them a lot. Here they are singing El Farsante (The Fraud), a song written by Juan Gabriel. If you are a fan of blues lyrics

Nobody loves me but my mother,
And she could be jivin’, too.
Now you see why I act so funny, baby,
When you do the things you do. –B.B. King

you would love this music. I usually write in this blog after I come into work in the morning while I drink my first cup of coffee. When I write code (or in my blog), I often listen to Pandora (the music aggregator–not the group). When I turned on Pandora, this is the song that came up. It is one of my very favorites. I thought I should share it.

We started early on this year’s summer reading last night. The book we are reading is titled Understanding the Times by David Noebel. The book describes worldviews associated with Islam, Christianity, postmodernism, New Age, and Marxism. It describes how each of these worldviews think (generally) about such things as sociology, psychology, law, politics, economics, history, and other areas. I am sure that the worldview of the author will not be exactly in line with my (our) own worldview, but it will probably be pretty close and it will give us a framework within which we will be able to discuss all these issues. As the Kelly and Christian are getting closer to the point where they will be taking college classes, I think it is a good idea to get them prepared for some of the worldviews with which they will be confronted there. I really believe it is important to understand what one believes and why other people believe differently to be able to effectively sort truth from falsehood. It should be in interesting summer.

Rumor has it that two of our good friends in Oregon are getting married. A friend dropped a note revealing as much, but I got mugged by my WHOLE family because the facts in the email were quite spare. They are beating me up for facts regarding this joyous occasion. LOTS AND LOTS OF FACTS. HELP!!!

Update (06/02/2008): Here they are. I love this picture of Lisa, Brian, Mari, and Bryan. They are both great kids and we wish them the very best. Congratulations!

I usually get up at 5:30 AM to go into work. That is mostly because I want to beat the traffic in the morning and I want to get home early so I can work on homeschool with the kids. Last night, I worked until about 1:00 AM in preparation for an upcoming field trial of the equipment we are designing at my work at Centice Corporation. It is very interesting work and it would not be nearly as rewarding if there were not times like this where a special effort is required to meet technical requirements on a schedule. Still, it makes for a long day to work from 6:30 AM to 1:00 AM the next day. I got up a little later this morning to get into work a little after 8:00, but it feels like I am half-way through the day before it even started. There is a lot left to do for the field trial and, after today, there will only a week and a day until school is out for the summer. We have a lot to do between now and then. Kelly’s belated birthday party is my marker for when I think we will be able to catch our breath. That happens on Friday the 13th. We are all looking forward to it.

We have been our new house now for five months. It works well for us. We love to sit on the screen porch and look at the trees in the woods behind the house. We love the big open kitchen with the fireplace and all the windows that all look out onto the woods. We only considered after the fact that all those windows face east so the sun shines into the room in the morning, but is shaded in the heat of the day. There are ceiling fans in many of the rooms that keep it way cooler than the rental house we lived in last year in Apex. There are some small issues that we need to remedy like the lack screens on many of the windows and some work we would like to do on the yard outside, but for the most part we are very, very happy with the house. The kids like their rooms a lot (they both have great views and huge walk-in closets). We love the master suite downstairs (a big change — we have always been on the second floor) with its even huger walk-in closets and high ceilings in both the bedroom and bathroom.

There are two rooms that are under utilized. The formal dining room has been empty since we moved in because we are using our dining room table in the breakfast nook in the kitchen so we can use our round plastic Costco table out on the screen porch; we have been having dinner there quite often this spring. The other room is the living room. The problem is that we really have two living rooms. We have our two sofas and coffee table over by the fireplace in the kitchen area because that is really where we do most of our “living”. All we have in the other living room is the piano and the computer. Lorena is pretty happy with the piano, but pretty irritated that we have the computer their in her beautiful living room. It really does not go so well with the decor, but it is way to hot up in the bonus room during the summer. What we need to do, when we can afford it, is to get an elegant computer hutch for the computer (to hide the cables and avoid the wrath of Lorena) and another set of living room furniture. I hope we can afford it before Lorena tries to trade me in for a leather love seat at Costco.

Kelly and Christian had their first swim team practice last night where the actually got into the water. They said it was just perfect. They got a really good workout, but it was not so onerous that they could not handle it. It sounds like there is some good coaching going on, too. They will be swimming in the evenings for the next couple of weeks. That works out well for us while we are still in school. They will switch to doing a morning swim starting in mid-June. That will be great to get everyone out of bed and going during the summer. The YMCA where they swim is a beautiful, brand new facility. While Christian and Kelly are working out in the pool, Lorena goes indoors to work out on an elliptical machine. The exercise is great for her, but I fear that she is watching Oprah while she spins!! The kids have never swam in a meet before. They will get the chance to do that several times this summer. We are all looking forward to that.

Our next big project, and for the Chapman family this is a very important project, will be to find a place to either pick or buy a TON of blueberries. I got to North Carolina this time last year and remember there being some of the most beautiful blueberries I have ever seen on sale in Harris Teeter. We love to load up the freezer with blueberries, then eat them like candy for the rest of the year. I will keep you posted on our progress.

This will be a short post, but I should be back in the saddle with something better tomorrow. I worked over the three day weekend. We did go to a great potluck on Monday, but but that does not really make up for a full three days free. On the up side, this is the first weekend where I did not blow it really, really bad on the diet. I am only up one pound!

…this is just a picture of the progress Bryan has made on his diet! That is FIVE, count’em, FIVE notches already cut from his belt. We are all sitting on the edge of our chair to find out whether he meets his stated goal of 60 lbs. (lost) by his 50th birthday! With a week to go, it is going to be nip and tuck. We expect a picture and a daily report (to be posted here)!!!

Bryan whacks off five belt notches!!!

We have slowly been converting from a Microsoft Windows family to a Linux family. If it were just me, we would have switched a long time ago, but there are a few remaining programs we use for homeschool that were written for Windows that we have not taken the time to try to run using WINE. I thought it might be interesting to list some of our most used programs and which computer use them on. First it might be helpful to list the computers. We get very low end computers and upgrade them (a little) if the need arises.

• A three year old Compaq, 512 MBytes RAM, AMD64 based computer that runs Ubuntu Linux (32 bit) 8.04
• A four year old Dell Presario, 1.2 MHz Pentium, 1GByte RAM computer that runs Windows XP — we got an ATI graphics card to go with it.
• A four year old Dell Inspiron 130 laptop upgraded with 2GBytes RAM that runs Windows XP, but that Christian regularly boots to Ubuntu from a 4GByte memory stick.

Now I will just list some programs of interest. I will start with the obvious ones.

• Web browsing – Firefox for Windows and Linux
• VOIP – Skype for Windows and Linux
• Photo editing – GIMP for Windows and Linux
• Email – Thunderbird for Windows and Linux
• 3D Rendering – Blender for Windows and Linux
• C++ Programming – Kdevelop for Linux, Visual Studio for Windows
• C# Programming – I use MonoDevelop on Linux, Christian uses SharpDevelop on Windows
• Office suite – OpenOffice.org for Windows and Linux
• Bible – e-Sword for Windows and Linux
• Internet filtering – DansGuardian on Linux
• Desktop publishing – Microsoft Publisher on Windows. I am trying to get the kids to switch to Scribus which runs on Windows and Linux, but they already have everything set up for their KaktusKids publication and do not really want to switch. I might have them do a project on Scribus this summer to get them off center.
• Vector Graphics editor – Inkscape on Windows and Linux. Christian has started developing all the clipart for KaktusKids using Inkscape. That might be the thing that finally gets him converted over to Scribus as the Microsoft clipart library is the main thing that keeps them on Publisher.
• Video editing – Pinnacle Studio on Windows. This is about the only item we use for which a Linux replacement is a year or so away.
• Language program – Rosetta Stone on Windows, but as soon as we finish with Spanish 2, we will install the next Rosetta Stone course on Linux under Wine. Several people in the forums say it runs just fine there.
• Anti-Virus – ClamAV for Linux, AVG for Windows.

We are not really very far away from being an all Linux family. Lorena has made the switch to Linux and is really more comfortable using the Linux computer than the Windows computer. Because of the applications that are common to both Windows and Linux, the transition was very easy for her. Kelly does the vast bulk of her email reading and writing on the Linux box, only moving over to the Windows box to work on KaktusKids or to do her Rosetta Stone homeschool. Christian and I experiment a lot, so it kind of depends on our mood which OS we use. Still we are moving more and more to Linux all the time.

We have visitors this weekend. Tio Rigoberto and Tia helen from Milwaukee, Wisconsin brought their son jonathan down to do an internship at UNC Greensboro. They are leaving tomorrow.