Category: People

Chippy With Legos

Tonight we have a guest blogger. Elizabeth wants to talk about her new Lego project.

“I have two littlest pet shop hamsters Chippy and Chipply and I wanted them to have a place to sleep. I built them a Lego bunk bed with a canopy on the top bunk. Here are some pictures. I hope you like it. And one more thing: Chippy is my favorite Pet Shop pet. He was a birthday present from my Unlce Martin.”

GE Music Update

Here’s an update to the GE Music music player. Erik and Glenn have put up hundreds of new tracks! Wild stuff, and an incredible range of diversity, masterful treatment of lots of styles. Rock, jazz, heavy metal, orchestral, electronic; its in there. In addition to lots of instrumental tracks for TV shows, commercials, and the like, there are a few straight-up songs with vocals. Just leave on shuffle play for few hours for a mind-expanding tour of sensational sounds.

Go to GE’s homepage (http://www.gemusic.com/) and click on “Music” in menu on the top. Or if you prefer, here”s a direct link (http://www.gemusic.com/player/geMusicPlayer.html) to the player.

Fun With Chess

I’ve been having lots of fun lately teaching Lizzy chess. I’ve tried this before a few times over the last couple years, but she was mainly interested in the drama of the game (“Oh no you captured my knight!!!”) and then the captured pieces would make friends and collude to plot their escape, or the king and queen would go off and get married. Girls, go figure). Now she’s at an age where she can think in terms of groups of pieces and sequences of moves, attacking, guarding etc., so things are a lot more interesting. Perhaps most importantly, having a Nintendo has taught her it’s fun to play a game even if you lose again and again, because slowly building skill with the end goal of beating the boss can be rewarding in its own right.

I remember about that age – 7ish – being really into chess and playing mainly against my brother Martin. It seemed like the thing to do once checkers got boring. Our dad started us off but we learned fairly organically, playing game after game until we got pretty good. When we got older we studied it a bit, but I’m no great expert. Also, I haven’t really had anyone in my life in ages who was regular chess partner at me level, so it’s nice to have a chess partner, even a beginner. However all this said, we play fairly loosely, and I often spot her a few pieces, or even a lot of pieces, and give her hints on what might be a good move, let here take back moves and play out “what if” scenarios. Sometimes we’ll switch sides in the middle of a game. So we do get into some rather uncommon board positions from time to time.

One of them came up the other day when I had a king on the run with just a few pawns and a bishop. I moved onto a square that would normally be check, but the pawn that was threatening the square was pinned because if it moved it would mean discovered check for her side. So the question came up, is this a legal move? Is the pawn really threatening the square if it can’t move? Is the pawn considered to leave the starting square *before* arriving the end square, or is it in some sense simultaneous? I’ve never seen this situation before and wondered did I happen upon something extremely clever, or was I just breaking a rule? Since we had no immediate way to decide the question, I just moved somewhere else instead. My guess is it’s probably not a legal move or would have seen it used before.

Summer Camping, Part II

We just got back from another weekend of camping, this time in the opposite end of the Catskills, with our friend Seth and his daughter Erin, and our friends the Blickers, and bunch of friends of theirs. We’ve been doing this a few years now, and it seems to get larger every year, so we’ve dubbed it Blickapalooza. More hiking, canoeing, hanging around the campsite making fires, cooking food, singing songs and drinking beers. How can you complain? Well this trip was too cold for swimming, and hikes we took were kinda short, but we had lakeside campsites and I got to do a lot of canoeing with Michelle and Lizzy. And it rained Friday night, but at least the fire kept going and then the stars came out and our new tent stayed dry, so now we know it rocks!

Also, after years of never practicing guitar and having only a basic knowledge of simple chords and a repertoire consisting mainly of Neil Young songs, I’ve decided for what I do it actually sounds pretty good, and it might be worth it to learn some more chords and some new songs, so I’m thinking of getting a new acoustic guitar to replace the one I got for trading an old boom box years ago. That guitar is amazing in that it has almost no wood at all in it, but it still has a great bright tone. Unfortunately neither the action nor the intonation is very good, so it’s a bit hard to play.

We took tons of pictures. I think Lizzy took about 20 just of Erin’s feet. Here are a few to start with; a more complete gallery will follow on sometime later. Most of the feet pictures will be removed as part of the curating function.

Summer Camping, Part I

We just got back from a weekend of camping in the Catskills with our good friend Nick and his family, and my brother Martin and his girlfriend Kathleen. The weather was great (no rain!), and we got to do some good hiking, swimming and canoeing, and lots of hanging around the campsite making fires, cooking food, singing songs and drinking beers. Ahhh, good times.

Double Feature: Road Trippin’ *and* Fun With Shapes

Part 1: Road Trippin’

You may be wondering why it’s been over a week with no new post. Well it’s because I’ve been on vacation! I just got back from a trip to upstate New York and Canada to visit family. Lots and lots of family. Four towns, two countries.

Saw my brother-in-law and his family on the 4th. We had hoped to spend the day in his pool, but the rain gods had other ideas, so instead we visited the Strong Museum of Play in downtown Rochester. The kids had fun there, but the part that was most interesting to me was a hall of old toys from the 19th century. No plastic in anything. It was all tin and wood, glass and leather. And perhaps obviously, no electronics. Plus there was a whole gallery of obsolete household items like inkwells and oil lamps. Makes you wonder what things we all have around the house that’ll be in a museum someday. Plus there was a fun area to play with shapes. More on that later.

Visited my parents, had some barbecue, did some rollerblading. One day we took the kids and my Mum up to the Falls. Pictures below. Visited my brother Martin in his new house. Lots of very nice woodwork. In addition to remodeling the place, he’s also in the beginning phase of an internet startup company, so life is interesting for him. Perhaps the highlight of the trip was the cousin’s reunion from my grandmother’s side of the family on Sunday in Port Colborne, Ontario. Lots of people there I haven’t seen in a while, including my cousin Barb, my cousin Peter all the way from Florida, and all my motorcycle riding, building and racing second cousins. All in all very fun and relaxing. More pics to come.