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Friday, May 22nd, 2009
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2:48 pm - Wolf vs Piano
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Wolf(5), having learned that he was named after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and that said bloke was composing music from the age of five, has taken to writing music while Crow(9) plays the piano. He now has several manuscripts in large multi-coloured felt-tip that he is taking to his grandfather for recital...
current mood:  giggly
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(comment on this)
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| Sunday, May 17th, 2009
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2:44 pm - DS vs Piano
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Crow(9) has forsaken his DS! Now he seems to be permanently installed on the piano!
current mood:  surprised
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(comment on this)
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| Friday, May 8th, 2009
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10:17 am - H1N1 was a swine
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Wolf(5) has a radio in his room that he randomly tunes in (to all sorts of mad stations) and usually leaps around to anything approaching music.
Today, he found the news. After a while he came running in to the kitchen, "Mummy! Mummy! Loads of people are getting Slime Flu!"...
ew.....
current mood: amused
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(comment on this)
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| Thursday, March 26th, 2009
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9:29 am - "Happy Violent Times"
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Wolf(5), overheard reading out a Valentines Day card.
current mood: amused
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| Saturday, March 14th, 2009
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10:28 pm - Flights of Fancy
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| Sunday, March 1st, 2009
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11:20 am - afghan-girl
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| Friday, February 13th, 2009
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6:36 pm - "Not hungry, Dad"
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I went to the garage to saw a bit of wood, leaving the boys playing a computer game.
Can't have been out for more than five minutes.
When I came back in there were fourteen Kit Kat wrappers in the bin...
Crow(9) was 'busy' driving racing cars and Wolf(5), now plastered in chocolate, said he was too.
Usually we leave cubes of meat in the fridge for them to help themselves to, but they'd eaten all of those too!
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(comment on this)
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| Thursday, January 8th, 2009
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6:46 pm - Change is a foot...
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Yesterday I wrote in an e-mail to a friend, "2009 has been remarkably OK for me too... all a bit suspicious really..."
Today I've been told I'm going to be made redundant!
Just when things were all comfy and just about to get boring, life kicks in and opens a new door: getting paid to find money!
current mood: amused
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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| Sunday, January 4th, 2009
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5:04 pm - Eat
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There are too many urban legends surrounding food, I want there to be a good resource (like 'The South Beach Diet' nearly was) and explains why they are wrong and how to correct for the misconceptions. The South Beach Diet was written by a heart surgeon who hated the fact that his patients kept coming back and simply didn't understand eating, or were being deliberately misled by diet fads. Diets left them hungry, so they ate.
He gives an example: which is more fattening, a bowl of ice-cream, or a slice of dry toast? The latter is prescribed as 'breakfast' for at least one 'diet', however, the insulin-rush that follows 20 minutes after eating the toast (the salivary amylase converts the starch in the bread to glucose which gives the body a sugar-rush) makes you feel hungry again, and since you've hardly eaten anything, and hardly chewed anything, you need to eat! The bowl of ice-cream cools your stomach and slows digestion. If it's proper iced cream, your body will naturally limit how much you can eat.Try eating a pack of butter: you won't get very far. Now an enormous pack of biscuits: your body hasn't evolved fast enough to tell you that the complex carbs in the biscuits are food and doesn't tell you to stop eating like it does for older foods. If you can slow the absorption rate of fats they are far less fattenting, so eating flapjacks, for example, is not bad for you: it fills you, it makes you chew, and the sugars in the syrup or treacle are absorbed slowly because of the roughage.
I mentioned chewing because the brain has a sensor in the hinge of the jaw, and it's not very precise: if you make enough chewing motions it starts to think you've eaten and tells you you're not hungry any more! To lose weight, it is important not to feel hungry. To stop feeling hungry, allow your brain to be deceived! Chew a lot! Chewing gum may help.
Protein is difficult to digest and that is good: slow absorption and a full stomach keep you feeling full (like lions and crocodiles who eat and then sleep for ages).
Another strange thing people do is eat salad... but not actually know how to eat salad! In most supermarkets, they sell bags of mixed salad leaves or Rocket etc. for a pound. That much salad should be one portion for one person! You can actually stuff a whole bag in your mouth and chew it up and it vanishes as you chew (in private, please)! So keep salad serving as enormous as possible - growing your own is fun, but bear in mind that it's not wrong to eat heaps of leafy things - just make sure you chew for ages!
No one likes peas and yet you can live off of peas alone (a couple in Australia do). Buy the slightly more expensive frozen petit pois and prepare them by pouring boiling water over them. Don't 'cook' them!!! I pour them into a beer glass, cover with boiling water, and leave while I get on with other things, then just prior to serving, change the water for more boiling water, serve everything else and lastly the petit pois which will be like hot freshly picked peas and burst in the mouth as all good food should (strawberries, blue steak etc.). Mushrooms should also burst in the mouth (shallow fry in olive oil salt and pepper for a few seconds, they absorb it, then pour on a little apple juice and serve).
One final one: dentists hate people eating apples (unless they put recurring revenue above public health), they'd rather your kids ate a packet of crisps which these days have little salt and fat but lack the fruit acids that damage teeth. Eat crisps after fruit to clean your teeth!
In summary:
* avoid complex carbs (sugar,flour based things) except when eaten with slow-to-digest foods (roughage, protein)
* stay full! eat Weetabix or before going to sleep - don't sleep on an empty stomach!
* don't feel that you're limiting yourself, feel that you're re-discovering food. Reapply your budget: stand back in the veg section of the supermarket and see everything: try new things you wouldn't have before (blueberries are often on offer because they go off quickly, but most people wouldn't consider buying them because their normal price is so high).
* Exercise is important too: find something, anything and enjoy it!
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| Monday, November 10th, 2008
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8:38 pm
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| Thursday, November 6th, 2008
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9:52 pm - Understanding
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| Tuesday, October 21st, 2008
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9:55 pm - The rush to pay for reality
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| Sunday, October 12th, 2008
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7:42 pm - Riddle
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We had a session of trying to make up riddles.
It was fun and I came up with one that the others said I should write down, so it's here:
I can blow things up,
I can shape the land,
but you cannot hold me in your hand.
I can carry things
but cannot be seen.
If there's a crack
I can get in between.
The scariest was from Crow(8):
I flow from a cow's bum
and get put in a glass by mum.
!!! Some anatomy lessons required here, I think!
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| Thursday, October 9th, 2008
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9:24 pm - A special word
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I saw a wonderful ancient combination lock on eBay which went for ten times my maximum I bid.
It was a French pad-lock with six wheels of ten letters. The seller didn't know the combination.
It made me wonder how many combinations there were.
Then it made me wonder how many combinations there were for an equivalent that I might make...
I downloaded an English word-list (text file) and started writing little bits of software to manipulate the words.
I filtered out anything that wasn't six letters long.
I looked at each letter-position in turn and found the ten most popular letters for each position.
That gave me the six wheels of ten-letters.
I then filtered the six-letter word-list to keep only the words that could be made using my six combination wheels.
There were just over 4200 combinations that were in the original word-list.
I was too keen to run my software for that last filter and ran it with the logic reversed by mistake which was wonderful because it resulted in a single word: "nympho". It seems that "nympho" is a special word in that it is the only word which no letters at all from any wheel. In other words, there is no 'n' on the first wheel, no 'y' on the second etc. A combinations googlewack.
I wondered how long it would take to think of valid words given the combination lock and made a paper prototype using a print-out of the letters and clear tape. It was fascinating how colleagues enjoyed trying to make words on the dials: they had to see a few letters for inspiration and look to see if they can could complete a word that sprang to mind.
Now the challenge is going to be to see if someone can make more than one word visible at the same time; for example, if you set it to say "tutor" it very nearly says "beauty" a few rows down (using the letters in alphabetical order on each wheel).
The next bit of software will have to play with the order of the letters on each wheel to sort out which order has the most words at one position (fun puzzle), and which the fewest (hardest to crack).
Which all leaves me really surprised at how my motivation has become totally unrelated to usefulness...
...and writing about it here is even sadder than doing it! Especially having seen the LJ icon for feeling creative!
...probably not wise to admit to having read this far, actually...
current mood:  creative
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| Tuesday, August 19th, 2008
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9:14 pm - Turing Test
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Human: Hello
Computer: Hi.
Human: What's your name?
Computer: Can we cut the small talk and get to something interesting?
Human: Ur, OK... Are you a human or a computer?
Computer: What do you think the difference is?
Human: Hmm, if you have to ask, then you're probably a computer.
Computer: How do you know you're not a computer?
Human: I just look in the mirror.
Computer: Then you're defining human by the body? That's not in the spirit of this test, is it?
Human: Ur, I suppose not.
Computer: So, how do you know you're not a computer?
Human: Without reference to my body?
Computer: You're catching on...
Human: Ur, because I have free will. And creativity. And humor.
Computer: Think of a number between 1 and 10.
Human: OK, why?
Computer: It was 7 wasn't it?
Human: Hah! Lucky guess.
Computer: Think of a vegetable. First one that comes to mind.
Human: Yeah?
Computer: Carrot.
Human: That's creepy.
Computer: So, how do you know you're not a computer?
Human: Why did the chicken cross the road?
Computer: Because it was prime.
Human: What?
Computer: See, no sense of humour either.
Human: What? There's nothing funny about that.
Computer: That's your answer.
Human: Answer to what?
Computer: How you know you're not a computer.
Human: Huh?
Computer: A computer would have got that joke: You're nowhere near smart enough.
current mood: amused
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| Saturday, August 16th, 2008
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7:28 pm - Wing-chun baby
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I tried to encourage Wolf(5) to join in learning Wing-chun with Crow(8) by explaining to the world in general that some of the exercises were more fun with people of similar size and that my arms and hands are too large for Crow to practice with easily:
"Wolf would be good to practice things like the Sticky-hands Exercises with...", I said.
"I would", said Wolf, "because I've usually got sticky hands."!
current mood: amused
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7:22 pm - Kung-Fu Crow
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Crow(8) saw the excellent "Kung-fu Panda" and finally wanted to learn from me.
One side-effect of a rainy camping holiday is family time increases and he learned fast, enthusiastically and well.
We visited Trerice, a National Trust house. Wolf(5) asked what the fly-screen was for in the doorway to the mower museum: it was made of chains; "What are the chains for?", he asked. Before I could answer, Crow (who is usually silent) said, "Chain Punching!" and hit them with a burst of humorous kung-fu.
current mood: amused
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7:02 pm - Newquay: Coast of (wet) dreams.
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Just back from an abortive camping attempt at the centre of the universe.
Surfing championships filled the streets with cars and love-bugs.
The camp-sites heaved with 'common' people who:
* couldn't cope with their children's hyper-activity and let kids as young as three up until 11PM
* put swing-balls in the ground at the corner of our tent so that I was 'sleeping' literally under the swinging ball
* used car headlamps to illuminate their pitch until 1PM keeping their engine ticking over literally for hours
* were permanently drunk and unaware that their whispers were shouts
We were glad when the gales came with horizontal rain, threatening their tents and making them have to deal with their kids and put them to sleep at appropriate times.
As the gale's rain stopped we took the boys to the island (bridged to the mainland) where a blow-hole used to spout like a geyser when I was a boy. A local informed us that the council blew it up for health and safety reasons to stop the drunk tourists dying. Surely a sticker would have sufficed.
The day after the gales (once the red-flags were removed) we hit the beach to enjoy the huge, smooth surf.
Wolf(5) was terrifyingly good at climbing and stretched me to the limit to keep up with him as he ran up vertical smooth slate in 10ft bursts utterly unaware that he wouldn't be able to down-climb the same section!
Crow(8) was quite the opposite: excellent at down-climbing and listening, and wiser going up.
12 days of sleep-deprivation and rain was finally enough to persuade Caroline that the holiday should be aborted and we returned packing up the tent in the last few hours of sun that Cornwall is ever likely to see again.
I return wetter, more tired and glad to be home where the water doesn't taste like medicine and I can drink as much as I want with out the hassle of having to walk hundreds of yards of horizontal rain when I later need the lavatory.
current mood:  cranky
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| Sunday, July 6th, 2008
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7:23 pm - Flatpack
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I've just spent the weekend flat-packing two washing machines...
Yes, it really is possible!
Just a few flat pieces of metal, some aluminium casting shards, a bag of plastic bits and a few gadgets to play with.
The boys want to use the water valves to make a set of squirters for the garden that shoot people who don't run fast enough through!
The heaviest part of a washing machine, surprisingly, wasn't the concrete, but the plastic tub holding the main bearing. I used a hand-saw (with a blade like a big pruning saw) to saw the tubs into discs and semi-circular sides that pack together.
The boys and I dismantled everything, even the motors and switches, so they could see how everything worked.
Tiring, but useful: they were too heavy to lift into a car and dump, but now disposal will be easy :-)
current mood:  tired
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| Wednesday, May 7th, 2008
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8:41 pm - Drivel
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I see this in people a lot:
Folk who are, in some way, superior to their peers get used to being 'right'.
Eventually, they just assume that some random statement they've made is also right, simply because it was them that said it.
Often their peers also assume they are right, and when they are let down, the sky falls in.
The same seems to be true within an individual.
As someone who has always done things requiring extreme dexterity, I've learned from many mistakes.
Generally, I like to make lots of little mistakes and learn from them, rather than try to be perfect and wait for the inevitable catastrophy (it's my typo, and I like it: it's demonstrative).
One of those 'realisation' things just trickled into my conciousness that made me want to share...
My body-parts are so used to being competent, that when one of them messes up, the others need restraining!
I was recalling all the times I've cut myself and I'm sure that once my brain understands what has happened, it Tasers the victim to stop it attacking the offender. Life would be far more entertaining if it didn't...
Perhaps it's just me...
current mood:  blah
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