Luke Holzman over at the Sonlight Blog wrote a post about how he learned less about history in his traditional school than he did in homeschool. That experience resonates with us. See here, here, and here. He talked about the Sonlight Core D & E Curricula that includes the Landmark History of the American People books. He is right and this is part of the reason we have been such big fans of Sonlight. They are awesome books and give a feel for history I have not seen anywhere else. Now if they could just kick that horrible Joy Hakim history curriculum to the curb and find a worthy replacement. It was less than useless for us.
Month: November 2011
Day 86 of 1000
I got to work sometime after 5:30 AM. As usual, I was the first one to arrive, but the CEO of the company (Bioptigen) showed up shortly after me. When I asked him what he was doing there so early, he said that he and two other colleagues were going to run down to the North Carolina Zoo to capture Optical Coherence Tomography images of the eye of one of the African elephants their because the opthalmologist from the NCSU Veterinary school needed them due to the fact that the elephant had cataracts. How cool is that!?!!
I would like to say one of the elephants to the left is the one that got the eye check, but it was against the rules to use the pictures because when people see them with no context, sometimes they think the elephants are being badly treated. Still, it was great to hear about it when everyone got back to the office. The elephant they imaged was a 12,000 pound African Bull Elephant. I will report back if I hear anything more about what happens
Day 85 of 1000
Christian is half way through his sophomore year in college. He has survived so far with a cheesy little 10″ HP netbook that he dual boots to Windows 7 and ArchLinux. We know he will need something better when he moves on from the community college to North Carolina State, University of Idaho, or whichever other place he decides to go. He saved up a bunch of money from his Engineering Internship last summer and now has almost all the money he needs for his next computer. He likes the small form factor because he can carry it in his backpack, but he wants as much power as he can get. He plans to dual boot to Windows 7 and some fairly lightweight version of Linux (probably Slackware or Arch).
So he has it narrowed down to two choices:
Alienware M11x
Processor Intel® Core i7 2617M 1.5GHz
(2.6GHz w/Turbo Boost, 4MB Cache)
Memory 8GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1333MHz
Display Panel 11.6″ High Def (720p/1366×768)
with WLED backlight
Battery 6 Cell
Video Card NVIDIA® GeForce® GT540M graphics
with 2.0GB Video Memory and Optimus
Sound Card Soundblaster® X-Fi Hi Def Audio
Hard Drive 500GB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s
Wireless Killer Wireless-N 1103 a/g/n 2×2 MIMO
ThinkPad X220t
Processor Intel Core i7-2640M Processor
(2.8GHz, 4MB L3, 1333MHz FSB)
Memory 8 GB PC3-10600 DDR3 SDRAM
1333MHz SODIMM Memory (2 DIMM)
Display Panel 12.5″ Outdoor HD (1366×768)
LED Backlit Display
Mobile Broadband Ready, 2×2 Antenna
Battery ThinkPad Battery 52+ (6 cell)
Hard Drive 320 GB Hard Disk Drive, 5400rpm
Video Card Intel® HD Graphics 3000
Wireless ThinkPad b/g/n
He is VERY conflicted. He loves the idea of the dual tablet/laptop of the ThinkPad because he needs to do a lot of sketches and drawing. He also loves the graphics capability of the AlienWare because he does a lot of image and video processing. It is a hard choice. So what do we do when we run into these kinds of very tough problems. We ask our buddy Andrew who ALWAYS comes through with an amazing and thoughtul answer. I wrote Andrew the following email:
Andrew,
Christian had a very important question. He wants to know your opinion about what the “cool kids” would buy if they had the following choice. Well, he wants to know what you think in terms of utility, too.
Any opinions will be greatly appreciated.
Ken
Here is Andrew’s great response (Thanks again, Andrew!):
Well, “cool kids” would probably pick the Alienware. It’s styled to appeal to a younger crowd, and it is tuned for gaming. Meanwhile, the Thinkpad is about as corporate as it gets.
The Thinkpad only has integrated graphics. That’s not a big deal if you’re just writing code, but for games or graphics programming, it wouldn’t be a good choice.
The slower hard drive in the Thinkpad is a downer. If possible, I’d *definitely* upgrade it to a 7200rpm drive, a small SSD drive (if you don’t need much hard disk at all), or an aftermarket Momentus XT, which is a 7200rpm/SSD hybrid hard drive that isn’t too expensive. I would be willing to trade a slightly slower processor speed for one of these faster drives, if possible (but hard drive prices will be higher for the next few months due a factory that flooded causing a supply shortage, so upgrading may not be as easy as I’d think).
I’m not a big fan of Windows tablets, and I think the “t” in x220t stands for “tablet”. Personally, I’d probably get the x220 (non-tablet) version — for the same dollar amount, I could probably get an x220 with more features than the x220t. But I haven’t used a Windows tablet in 5 years, and Christian may specifically be interested tablet features… if so, ignore me here.
You know I liked my Thinkpad a lot. I thought it was very well built and reliable, and it has a terrific keyboard.
Summary: if I were choosing between these two, I’d get the Thinkpad, because I’ve had one before and it proved itself to me, and I would personally favor faster processor speed over faster graphics, because I never take advantage of graphics these days.
But when I was Christian’s age, I almost certainly would have chosen the Alienware for its styling and graphics capability. And its lower processor speed won’t be a big deal in daily use.
Alienware has always had a good reputation and both of these models are well reviewed, so I don’t think you can go too far wrong 🙂
–Andrew
Christian is now leaning toward Alienware. We will keep you posted.
There is an article in The American Thinker (h.t. FreeRepublic) that explains just how bad government schools perform relative to their international peers. A phenomena is described that is one of my pet peeves. It seems like everyone in American suburbia believes the government school in their neighborhood is great because their kids get good grades. Well, it turns out they DO get good grades if you compare them to other schools in America. The problem is they are abject failures when compared to their international peers and even worse when compared to homeschoolers. This is a great article. I recommend it highly.
Day 84 of 1000
I wrote a post a few days back about C++ programming. I have been trying to figure out whether the language has enough legs for me to make a living with it for the next 10-20 years. I have reflected on that post quite a bit since the day I wrote it and think the answer is most certainly, yes. That was solidified even more after a recent visit to Charlotte. I went up there to see some new friends who need some help with machine vision. They have other devices beside machine vision. Every one of those devices has some kind of GUI, spreadsheet, or scripting language to handle the bulk of their applications. Many of them also have a software development kit (SDK) so all the functionality of the devices is accessible programmatically via libraries.
That is the thing that reinvigorated my enthusiasm for C++. All the easy functionality is available via the easy programming methods (GUI’s, spreadsheets, scripting languages, etc.). The problem is that many of the devices generate a ton of data. That opens up two opportunities: 1) Development of new functionality inside the device and 2) Analysis of the data generated by the device on an external computer. Number 1) is exciting because the computational capability (processor speed, memory, etc.) is so small that a very efficient, machine-centric language (C++) is the best option. Number 2) is exciting because the devices in question are shoveling lots and lots of data around and need real-time calculation results. That also calls for lots of efficiency of memory management and speed. It is possible to use Java, C#, Python, and even BASIC, but C++ works great and will always have an edge when it comes to those topics.
So, on Saturday at the NCSU D.H. Hill Library, I updated QT Creator on my laptop and will update the OpenCV libraries to the latest version. When I am all set up, I will download the IPP and prepare for my next project. In C++!!!
Day 82 0f 1000
I just bought three USB cables to charge our telephones at Amazon for $5.37 total including shipping. That was after Lorena bought one cable at RadioShack for $24, then turned around and took it back. We never buy anything at RadioShack anymore. It is kind of sad. Why don’t they at least TRY to compete?
Day 81 of 1000
As many already know, Kelly and Christian take a “writing” class at the community college where the dear leader of the class lectures on the evils of all things Christian, the beauty of communism and atheism, and the righteousness of drug legalization and abortion. Today’s topic was Christianity. He said he spoke about Christianity because we live in Raleigh. He would have made his outrageous, silly arguments about Hindu if we lived in India. Kelly read up a little over at the Wintery Knight blog to prepare and got a nice response after she tweeted Mr. Wintery Knight himself.
The “good” professor went on for about a half an hour about the evil’s of the organized church, for which the kids would have had a great deal sympathy if it were not for the his smuggness and arrogance. Like all stories, that of the organized church has two sides. He mentioned nothing about universities, hospitals, scientific method, the printing press, and all the other great foundings and inventions inspired by Christianity.
At the point when he made the claim that Adam and Eve could not have existed because of the scientific evidence for evolution, Christian raised his hand and said, “There is just as much scientific evidence against macroevolution as there is for it.”
“You don’t believe in evolution!” exclaimed the professor incredulously with a look of disdain and horror.
“We DO believe in microevolution. It is grossly arrogant for you NOT to question your own beliefs when it comes to evolution” said Kelly. “That is what you are demanding from us.”
The professor said, “Evolution is established scientific fact” and used several of the standard canards (fossil record, etc.) to establish his point.
Then they were off to the races. Fortunately, during homeschool, Christian and Kelly had read books like The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success by Rodney Stark, Understanding Intelligent Design: Everything You Need to Know in Plain Language by William Dembski and Sean McDowell, Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions by Greg Koukl, and Intellectuals by Paul Johnson. The professor was armed with shibboleths about the truth of macroevolution and quotes from John Shelby Spong about the virgin birth. John Shelby Spong!?!! You have to be WILDLY out of touch with both current scholarship and reality if you quote John Shelby Spong about virtually anything. He quotes the losers like Noam Chomsky and Bertrand Russell, too.
It is frustrating. Here is a writing a professor who fervently believes he is making students question their beliefs through these profoundly silly arguments. The subject matter is objectionable, but this guy’s incompetence is even more objectionable. He does not appear to understand the difference between scientific method and historic method (very important in discussion of the resurrection). Neither does he understand that it is impossible to argue for the primacy of scientific method without consideration of its philosophical underpinings. I guess I should be grateful he is incompetent with respect to his arguments–he does nothing to get the kids to question their faith or worldview. Still, a lot of taxpayer money is wasted on professors like this throughout the land.
Day 80 of 1000
I found a great article in the Wall Street Journal this morning titled Generation Jobless: Students Pick Easier Majors Despite Less Pay. It had some startling statistics:
Workers who majored in psychology have median earnings that are $38,000 below those of computer engineering majors, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data by Georgetown University.
Wow. The article tells a story about a student who switched from Electrical and Computer Engineering because her team stayed up past midnight in a lab to write a soda machine program. They could not get it to work, so to keep from getting a bad grade, she withdrew from the course. Then she switched from engineering to a double major in psychology and policy management. Her grades went from B’s and C’s to A’s. She said her high school did not prepare her for the rigor of an engineering degree.
So the upshot is that she is willing to work in a low-paying career for the rest of her life because she was unwilling to do what was necessary to pass a few hard classes. I have had this discussion with people before. If you cannot handle a specifc course, you can do a TON of things to make it happen. You can get a tutor. You can take the class two or even three times if needed. You can take a more remedial course, then try the tough one again. Is it worth it to go to school for a year or two more to do something you like and that pays well for the next forty or fifty year? It seems like a no brainer.
The crazy part is that even for those who want to do less technical jobs, it is best to prepare for that non-technical job with a hard degree.
Research has shown that graduating with these majors provides a good foundation not just for so-called STEM jobs, or those in the science, technology, engineering, and math fields, but a whole range of industries where earnings expectations are high. Business, finance and consulting firms, as well as most health-care professions, are keen to hire those who bring quantitative skills and can help them stay competitive.
We joked about this quite a bit, but I wanted to get it into the kids head that, if they went to college (not necessarily a given–preparation for many careers–pilot, electrician, writer, and small business owner are monumentally better served through some type of preparation other than college), they could study their passion, but they needed to start with a rigorous degree. We defined rigorous as anything that involves hard math. The use of hard math and statistics is creating new breakthroughs in a lot of fields right now: medicine, agriculture, sociology, etc., etc. etc.
One of our pet peeves during our homeschool years was a couple of homeschool guys from Oregon who wrote a book titled Do Hard Things when they were in high school, then went off to a liberal arts college whose only majors are Government, Journalism, History, Literature, and Classical Liberal Arts. Those are fine things to study, but are very far from the type of “hard” we are talking about here. The only math I could find in their core curriculum was Euclidean Geometry. If you want to get a book on doing hard things, forego the Harris book and get this one by Katie Davis has done at Azima.
Troy and Youngin mentioned on their blog that they have taken to publishing each year of their blog in a book to give as a keepsake for their young daughter Lucia. It is a great idea that I am sad I did not think of first (because it is all about me and I want to get the credit for the idea). Still, even though I am a Johnny Come Lately and have to give the credit for the idea (and implementation to someone else), I have decided I will copy TY&L and I try this out myself. I looked around on the web and found several sites to do this, but Troy sent me one this morning nambed Blurb that looks better than all the ones I found. I will keep you posted on how it goes and the costs and that sort of stuff.
Day 79 of 1000
Christian and I often talk about what he will do for his career. His plan is to study hard stuff, find something he likes and go from there. He has pretty much rejected the idea of getting a degree in Computer Science. His thoughts are that, when he writes code, he wants to write code to do something rather than for the sake and out of a passion for writing code. So, after his Math degree, he will probably do something in Electrical or Mechanical Engineering, but that is not even set in concrete.
Along that line, I got a note from my buddy Andrew the other day on a C++ library project called Cinder. I will quote Andrew:
You all might get a kick out of this…. looks like a higher-level API built on top of existing libraries like Standard C++ libraries, Boost, OpenCV, OpenGL, etc. to enable people to write graphically powerful apps without having to fiddle with as many nuts and bolts.
I write C++ code for a living and have wondered how much longer C++ will be a good basis for making a living. The way I figure it, I have, Lord willing, between ten and twenty years left in my career. Like Christian, I do not really like to program, just for the sake of writing a good program or to do generic things. I have a HUGE appreciation for people who do that. They make my life way easier by letting me just write code for the stuff I love (machine vision). The people who do programming for programming sake are also the people who make improvements to language, develop standards, and do all that other stuff that makes programming life easier and more efficient.
Garbage collected languages like Python, Java, and C# have been encroaching on my C++ world for quite a few years now. It is possible to write very good and even efficient machine vision code in those languages. It is often possible to write code more rapidly in those languages, too. They have rich GUI, math, database, and other libraries that make them useful in a lot of different scenarios. It is even possible to write a framework in the garbage collected languages and only dive down into C++ when something needs to run very fast or uses lots of memory that needs to be allocated and deallocated continually.
Still, even though I write some C# and Python–for some reason I have written very little Java, I am not good enough at it yet that I can go dramatically faster in those languages than the C++ I have used for so many year. That is why it give my heart joy to see some graphical programming tools that move C++ a little closer in capability to the newer languages. I read the whole website and was more fired up about my chance to stay with C++ for a few more years. I will continue to work on the new languages, but plan to try out Cinder and look for other such tools.
Note: Part of the reason I started this post out the way I did was I wanted to put up this picture of Christian on his sixteenth birthday.
Day 78 of 1000
Kelly tries to resist Dave’s fruitcake
We went to a Wednesday night bible study with a guy named Dave D. when we lived in Albany, Oregon in the town of Jefferson. Shortly after Thanksgiving the first year we were there, Dave gave us an aluminum foil wrapped block and told it was his secret recipe fruitcake. Up until that point, I had not been reticent about expressing my utter disdain for what I thought was a pseudo-food. Much to my chagrin my impressionable young daughter told Dave, “I hate fruitcake!” and then looked at me for approval. That was 8-9 years ago and Dave still reminds her of that statement everytime he gets the chance.
We set the aluminum covered block on the console between Lorena and I in our minivan on the way home from the bible study. I knew that I would feel bad if I did not at least try the stuff, so I could lie to Dave about how good it was when I saw him the following week. I was STUNNED. It is not only the best fruitcake I have ever eaten, it is arguably the best cake and maybe even the best dessert I have ever eaten. The fruitcake was gone by the time we got home.
I LOVE that stuff. Last year was the third year in a row that we had to live without any of Dave’s fruitcake. Lorena could not stand it anymore, so she begged Pat (Dave’s wife) to have mercy on us and send the recipe. The problem is that it is Dave’s SECRET recipe. He worked for years to refine and improve his recipe. We were quite saddened when we realized that we were out of luck and suffered through another year without Dave’s fruitcake. It was a hard year.
Yesterday, however, that all changed. I got an excited call from Lorena when she got home from her workout at the YMCA. She had received a care package from Oregon with two (count them–TWO) fruitcakes. We are wildly grateful! We have decide to nibble on one over the next couple of days and save the other for Thanksgiving dinner. It was as good, maybe even better, than we remembered. If you ever, ever, ever get offered a fruitcake from a guy named Dave in the mid-Willamette Valley, accept it and be very, very thankful. It doesn’t get any better than that.
Thanks Dave. We are very grateful and we LOVE your fruitcake. We will do WHATEVER IT TAKES to remain on your list.
Update: Kelly just messaged me to say that she was traumatized by the event and STILL feels guilty for having said that and cringes everytime she thinks about, but it was worth it as long as the fruitcakes keep coming.
Day 77 of 1000
Our 1000 day plan has given everyone in our family lots of energy to get on track with a lot of stuff. Now that we are in the last third of the semester, Lorena and the kids hit the books hard most nights and most of the time on weekends. We miss workouts more often than we would like, but that is because of all the school work. I like to fill up the time when the kids do their school work with learning projects. I am all fired up to do something cool, but now that Troy has moved on to more important research and we have hit most of our big milestones for the GaugeCam project, I am struggling with finding something that really excites me. It would be very cool to work on a project like this Flying Machine, but do not have the mechanical skills.
I have what seem like very good options, but every one of them have some caveats. BleAx is great, but Kelly will not have time to really jump back into her Betty Blonde comic strip until after spring semester. I could move on with GaugeCam, but we have not really defined what we want to do next. The Android programming is fun, but I have not identified anything that is not already done that I want to do. I work want to work on SQL, but that suffers from the same problem as Android. Maybe I will talk to my buddy Jeff to figure out something to make that requires a control system and vision.
Update: And another thing. I am WAY to fat. When I get in this mode and do not have a project to distract me, I eat way too much. I have to find a project.
Day 76 of 1000
We returned to standard time this morning so I really should be sleeping instead of writing this post. I went to bed early because I was tired. That is why I am up writing this blog post at 6:00 AM. We had a nice weekend. Weekends seem to go MUCH better when everyone does well on their tests the week before. We went to breakfast, as I mentioned yesterday morning, at a restaurant we had never tried before in Fuquay-Varina. It was a pretty average restaurant with very slow service, but that was a good thing because it was a nice chance to sit and talk. There were posters for old movies on the wall, one of which Kelly decided she liked a lot with Debbie Reynolds and Leslie Nielsen titled, Tammy and the Bachelor.
Next, we went to the Willow Springs Festival which was essentially a craft fair with a couple of groups playing music at a church in a small community south of Raleigh. The Wake Technical Community College Ensemble sang as one of the groups. It is the first chance we have had to hear Kelly sing with the group since she started with them at the beginning of the semester. All we did after that was work on stuff at home and go to bed early. It is a good thing, though, because I needed to rest up for the potluck we are having after church today.
Day 75 of 1000
We went to breakfast this morning at Cooley’s Restaurant in Fuquay-Varina. It was OK. We have yet to find a really good breakfast restaurant within short driving distance of our house. Pam’s Farmhouse over by the NCSU certainly qualifies (Thanks Troy!), but it is too far away for an every Saturday visit. We are still looking. Our driving radius extends mostly to Fuquay-Varina and Garner, but we have had very little luck and have been here now for four years.
Day 74 of 1000
Kelly stayed up until about 2:00 AM Wednesday morning in preparation for a Calculus III test. Like a lot of complicated things, calculus is hard until you know how to do it and have used it for awhile. We were surprised when someone told her that it does not help to study anymore within ten hours of the test. I can think of no reason why that would be true other than to give one’s self time to get some rest. Both Kelly and Christian took the test and did great–maybe even better than expected. When we talked about it later, they both mentioned examples of things they read or learned five minutes before the test started that improved their grade. That has been my experience, too.
One of the things I have told the kids time and time again is to just keep the pressure up. The classes where you get all great grades without too much effort are probably not worth taking because you do not learn much without some effort. You will get some low scores on some homework assignments and labs in those difficult classes about complex subject. You might even get a low score on a test or two. If you quit trying and tell yourself you cannot understand the material when that happens, you can fail the class. The reality is that lots and lots of people have figured out how to do Calculus, Physics, Chemistry, and Statistics. If you study, you can get it. So the key is to not get discouraged and always keep the pressure up–study, study, study.
There are six weeks left in the semester. With Thanksgiving and Finals week, it means there are really only about five weeks of actual class. There are papers to write, speeches to present, homework to submit, and quizzes and tests to take. Everything that lead up to this point was just to get the kids to the point where they have a shot at a good grade. NOW is the time when they have studied hard for three months and are tired, but need to add additional study and work pressure to finish well. If that means it is necessary to work through the weekend and stay up late one or two times per week, so be it. It is the most exciting and nerve wracking part of the semester.
Very important update: In the service of familial and marital peace and tranquility, I must also note that Lorena got an “A” on her Financial Accounting mid-term.
Day 71 of 1000
The need to pay for a class that is worse than worthless is a frustration. The kids’ Argument-Based Research writing class is a required class. All I felt was a sense of relief when Kelly texted me to say the class was cancelled. The professor grades them on their writing, kind of, but lectures harangues on a hard left wing, pseudo-libertarian talking points during all of class time. This includes the beauty of drug legalization, the evil of capitalism, the bankruptcy of Christianity, etc., etc. etc. We talk about his lectures after class. The think that boggles my mind is that he appears to be unaware that his arguments for these positions are so sophomoric. The idea is that it will make the kids really think about what we believe. He is not bright enough to realize that many, if not most, of the kids in his class have already thought about and correctly rejected his nonsense. An open mind is a good thing when there are worthy questions and ideas to consider. He is so wrong about so much, one wonders whether he knows anything about writing.
Still, I pay at least part of his salary, both with my taxes and the kids tuition.