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20080423 Wednesday April 23, 2008

Muir Woods 2008

Another trip we did about a week ago was up to Muir Woods in Marin County. The weather was perfect, there were not a lot of people around, we had great parking karma and this time I even remembered to take a better camera.

This year is the 100th anniversary of the creation of this park.

We went out on one of the high trails this time and we could look down on the creek that runs through the woods. Then we came back along a lower trail.

The cross section is from a tree that is over 1000 years old. It was planted in 909 AD and fell in 1930. You can see some important dates in history labelled across its rings.

The black shadows in the water shot are from a water strider.

From the distance we walked, I think that next time, Duncan will be up to walking one of the other longer trails that are available to the public. We may even get to see the ocean.

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( Apr 23 2008, 11:23:34 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink

20080421 Monday April 21, 2008

Princeton By The Sea 2008

Just over a week ago, we headed over to the coast to visit our favorite tide pools. According to the tide tables, the low tide that day was going to be -0.2 feet just after mid-day. As you can see from the images above, this gives you great viewing. We were able to go out further then we'd ever been before. We even took the dog out with us. She loved it and totally exhausted herself.

We also discovered pools which were teeming with wild life. "Just like Hawaii!" as one of the other tide-poolers said. I saw how shells were used to protect against the heat of the sun. I wasn't sure the creature inside was still alive until a little girl poked it and it closed right up. After that, I started seeing these little shell mounds everywhere.

Yes, that really is bird guano. Charming isn't it? Did you spot the big odd man out in that photo?

The giant ping pong ball building is on top of the cliffs over looking the tide pools. Here's its location. Anybody know what it is?

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( Apr 21 2008, 09:44:32 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [4]

20080306 Thursday March 06, 2008

Dog Biscuits

Our dog Dusti loves Jerky Tenders or similar products as a treat. This is like crunchy chicken jerky for dogs. The problem is that they are really expensive for what they are. A little while ago I tried googling to see if I could find a way to make something similar at a fraction of the cost.

I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for (if anybody has a recipe, then please share), but I did find this one for Peanut Butter n' Honey Oat Crunchies. It's got two of the main food groups that dogs love: crunchy peanut butter and chicken (broth).

Earlier in the week I made up a batch. I think I used every flat metal baking tray we have. And both ovens. I now have a huge ziplock bag full of them. Luckily Dusti likes them too.

There are several other interesting dog recipes on that web page. We'll have to give them a try when she's finished this lot.

When you start cooking just for your dog, then you know that she is no longer just a pet, but has become a loving member of your family.

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( Mar 06 2008, 08:00:43 AM PST ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [3]

20080213 Wednesday February 13, 2008

What The Best Dressed Dogs Are Wearing These Days

Whatever it is, it's not this. Lynea and Duncan went to Target last night. One of the things they came back with was this pink sweater for Dusti. Complete with pink fluffy baubles.

I can just see all the women going, "oh, isn't she cute!" Maybe, but I don't think I want to be seen in public with her wearing this. Where's the little leather doggie bomber jackets and the cool shades? That I could handle.

Maybe if we cut the baubles off it'll be okay.

I feel sorry for Dusti. The expression on her face clearly says "why are you doing this to me? Haven't I suffered enough?"

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( Feb 13 2008, 10:09:29 AM PST ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [2]

20080127 Sunday January 27, 2008

Pinewood Derby Racing 2008

Earlier this afternoon was this years Pinewood Derby racing event for Duncan's Boy Scout troop. After last year's abysmal performance we were determined to do better.

I read all the advice we got from comments to last year's post (thank you), and we applied some of them (the legal ones) to the design of this year's car. More on that later.

I also wanted to have a fall-back plan. Each den in the pack races against each other, and there are prizes for first and second place. Winners go on to regional events. There are also special prizes for categories such as most authentic design, most colorful, most creative etc. I wanted to make sure we had a running in one or more of those.

So we came up with the melon car. It was actually called Melon Car "Lee Baby" (geddit?), and labeled as such on the bottom of the car, just in case there was a special prize for best name, but the judges totally missed this.

You can see Duncan's car lined up with three others for its first heat and then the actual race. It came fourth. In its second heat it came second. Surprisingly, I'm not disappointed. In that first heat was also the eventual first and second placed cars overall for his den, and as you can see we were not that far behind. For a car that's totally not aerodynamic, this was quite an achievement.

After all the dens had raced, the special prizes were announced and the melon car won the category of wackiest car for the whole of the pack!

So what did we do?

First of all there is an area on the bottom of the car that was especially hollowed out, and a slice of weights was screwed in there. At the "weigh-in" a couple of weeks ago, we were quite a bit overweight, but it was easy to pull bits off until we were very close. There we just super glued a couple BB's to get it exactly at 5 ounces. There was nothing special about the position (front or back) for those weights. If anything, after they'd been trimmed, it was probably slightly heavier towards the rear of the car.

But I think the major factor was axle preparation. I used my Dremel in its drill press stand to take each axle, file down the rough part near the head, then applied a mixture of pumice and water with a cloth. Then we put the wheel on the axle, and the axle in the Dremel, and applied a generous puff of graphite dust, and let it spin at max. RPM's for about thirty seconds. We repeated this for each axle.

We also sand-papered the outside of each wheel to get the imperfections off, then applied wet-and-dry paper at max. RPM's, to make sure that was smooth too.

Finally, we set the wheels so that only three were touching the ground track.

Next year, I think we will try for an aerodynamic car and see if that improves things. I'm also not convinced 3 wheels are better than four, so I think we'll try for them all touching the track.

Anyhoo, even though Duncan didn't win, he came away with a big smile on his face and happily pinned the special certificate to the wall of his bedroom when we got home.

A vast improvement over last year.

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( Jan 27 2008, 05:36:55 PM PST ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [2]

20080114 Monday January 14, 2008

Where The Dogs Are

Over the weekend we took our dog down to the dog park next to Googleland in Mountain View. It's divided into two areas, for large and small dogs.

We'd been there once before on the weekend just before Christmas, and that time it was very quiet, with just a few other dogs. On Saturday, it was very busy. Most of the time she spent sniffing everything. She was very methodical, working her way around the complete enclosure. Every now and then she'd greet another dog. There were times when there were 3-4 dogs in a line, each sniffing the butt in front of them.

Close by, there is a great area for kite flying, with about 15 kites in the air whilst we were there. Plus a load of Indian gentleman playing a knock-up game of cricket with a tennis ball and fold up beach chairs as wickets.

A great time was had by all.

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( Jan 14 2008, 09:48:41 AM PST ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [1]

20080110 Thursday January 10, 2008

More Dog Tales

We've had Dusti for three and a half years now. It was my first dog. I wasn't always sure what to expect. I think I'm understanding a lot better now. I've also got a copy of the book How Dog's Think which I need to read rather than just skim.

I have three more observations.

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( Jan 10 2008, 11:18:22 AM PST ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [8]

20080102 Wednesday January 02, 2008

Monterey Bay Aquarium - December 2007

We visited our favorite aquarium on the last day of last year. It was definitely a lot less busy then usual and we got a great opportunity to spend much more time looking at each exhibit. That unfortunately didn't always help improve my photographic skills.

Here are the best shots with a little commentary below.

The latest new exhibit was the river otters (as opposed to the sea otters that are always there). The river otters were mostly lethargic although there was one guy swimming like crazy; (I need to practice my panning skills).

There was a batch of sand dollars and we got to see what they look like alive (as opposed to collecting them dead off a beach over at Half Moon Bay).

A couple of the creatures were doing a great service to the public and hanging out right next to their labels.

The jellies are still my favorite show though, and since the last time I was there (February 2007), they've changed a few of the tanks and are showing new species.

The last shot above is an Ocean Sunfish, (which thankfully is not in the same tank as the jellies). The aquarium has two of them and they are huge.

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( Jan 02 2008, 07:55:51 AM PST ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [11]

20071210 Monday December 10, 2007

Christmas Letter 2007

Carrying on the now yearly Christmas tradition of replacing a written letter in with the Christmas cards for friends and family, with an online collection of family related blog links, here's this year's list (with a few personal and fun ones thrown in).

Previous years: 2006 2005 2004

Non-friends and family feel free to ignore this.

Happy <Insert your religious festival or holiday here> everybody!

Chronological order (latest first). One thing is clear; I'm doing less and less family related posts each year. Maybe one of my New Year's resolutions should be to change that.

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( Dec 10 2007, 07:39:50 AM PST ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [1]

20071123 Friday November 23, 2007

Caffeine Free

Just under eighteen months ago, I stopped drinking sodas and switched to drinking just tea. I also tried to drink more water.

Over the last couple of months, I've been weaning myself slowly off the caffeine, hopefully for a healthier, cleaner lifestyle. For the last week, I've had no drinks with caffeine in them. During this last week, I've been over-tired, getting really bad headaches and suffering from lack of focus. I understand this is par for the course. I can now better empathize with all those mothers-to-be that give up the pleasures of coffee and tea while they are pregnant and breast feeding.

There's still a little bit of caffeine in the chocolate I eat (can't give that up), but I've cut that way down too.

To help compensate for all of this, I've been taking a multi-vitamin call Centrium (the silver edition). I particularly like that the vitamin B12 dosage is 417% of your daily requirement.

It's still earlier days, but after a week, with the headaches now eventually gone, I'm sleeping better and have a bigger appetite.

Now I just need to work on getting more exercise. Of course a 2-3K caloric intake and a lazy day yesterday didn't help at all with this goal. Still there is always tomorrow, um today.

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( Nov 23 2007, 09:10:53 AM PST ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [8]

20071031 Wednesday October 31, 2007

Instant Answers

I've mentioned this before. It's wonderful having the power of the Internet to instantly find answers to your kids questions.

A couple cases in point.

We were "reading" some Calvin and Hobbes cartoons last night, and we came across the word donor. I of course pronounced it dough-ner, and Duncan came back and told me I was wrong and it should be don-er. He was emphatic. We had quite the argument about it. So I went to the MSN encarta dictionary and typed in donor. I then clicked on the audible link. Several times. With a grin on my face. "But how come one of Santa's reindeers is called don-er?" he replied. One more Google search quickly showed him that the reindeer in question is called Donner. (It's actually Donder but I didn't want to go there just before bedtime). "Ah!" he said. He was finally convinced.

We went back to his bedroom and continued reading.

Then we had an earthquake. I initially thought it was a cat or heavy squirrel thundering over the roof. We get a lot of that. But no, we could see his lamp stand and a bookcase shaking away. We gave it about fifteen minutes, then I looked it up. It was of magnitude 5.6 but only about 12 miles away from us. Very exciting for a 9 year old (and his Dad).

Now if we hadn't been living in the age of instant answers I would never have been able to satisfactorily reply to a young child's questions so quickly.

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( Oct 31 2007, 07:52:13 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [5]

20070907 Friday September 07, 2007

Gingerbread Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

A family thumbs up for this recipe. We ended up with plump muffins (too much mixture), so they turned into cupcakes, but were still yummy! We also added some cinnamon.

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( Sep 07 2007, 06:50:05 PM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink

20070831 Friday August 31, 2007

Math Questions

I was checking the answers in Duncan's 4th grade Math homework last night, and came across this question: 

  Q. There were 15 problems on a math quiz. Keith missed two.
     How many problems did he get right?

To me, this all comes down to what exactly did they mean by "missed two"? Did he get those two wrong, or did he fail to complete them? For the former the answer is 13, for the latter, the answer is N.E.I (not enough information). It'll be interesting to see how his teacher marks it.

I used to hate questions like this. They should all be clear and completely understandable.

I suppose it could have been worst. At least it's better than these two: 

  Q. Duncan has 2,678 Pokemon cards. He only needs 10 more to
     complete his first set. Each pack costs a dollar and
     contains 5 cards. How much does it cost to get that
     first set?

  A. $254. (You never gets the ones you want).


  Q. There are five crows sitting on a fence. The farmer gets
     out his shotgun and blows one away. How many crows are left?

  A. None. (Would you just sit there if someone was shooting at you?)

( Aug 31 2007, 08:14:30 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [8]

20070813 Monday August 13, 2007

Family Things

Three family activities over the weekend.

Last Friday I bought a copy of Rayman Raving Rabbids for the Wii. When Bunnies go bad. Fun for all the family indeed. Big time. There's something blissfully compelling about shooting rabbits with plungers and making them cry. And you should have seen Disco Dad with a remote in one hand and the nunchuck in the other, trying to keep time to the music and keep a load of bunnies dancing. Or whirling the remote around over his head in preparation for throwing the cow as far as possible. Best game I've played in years! I can see some Wii games replacing my previous exercise regime.

On Saturday afternoon we all sat down to watch Bridge to Terabithia on Comcast On-Demand. MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD. Seriously, if you haven't seen this film yet and don't want me to ruin it for you, then don't read the rest of this paragraph. All I'd seen previously for this film, was the brief preview that Comcast provided, and from that I thought it was going to be another Narnia-like movie. So that was my mind-set going into it. Then, about two thirds of the way through the movie, we're told that Leslie Burke, the lead girl, was dead. I'm thinking, nah, she's just over in Terabithia and it'll all be sorted out by the end of the movie. I continued to be in denial right up until the end. What a bummer. Still, nice to see a Disney movie without a sickly sweet happy ending.

On Sunday evening at about 10pm, we headed over to the playing fields at Duncan's school, to try to watch the 2007 Perseids meteor showers. It's still unclear to me just how interested Duncan is in all this or whether he's getting swept along by what his old man likes, so rather than do the special Perseids event at Montalvo's gardens (thanks Alex), we'd try something simpler. It was a New Moon, so potentially good viewing, but we found that there was still a lot of distributive ambient light from the surrounding buildings, roads etc. Plus, by the time we got there, there was a little bit of cloud cover. In short, at that time of the evening, I only saw one meteor (Duncan and Lynea missed it). I then said I'd try to wake up in the middle of the night, and if the viewing was good, then I'd wake Duncan up. I got up at about 3:00am this morning, and saw four meteors within five minutes, so I went back in to try to wake the boy up. He was just too tired and didn't want to get up. Fair enough. I stayed watching for a few more minutes then went back to bed. Next year, assuming the viewing is potentially going to be as good, I again think we'll compromise, but probably go up into the local mountains hills away from the city lights and try that.

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( Aug 13 2007, 01:35:09 PM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [9]

20070730 Monday July 30, 2007

Little Old Faithful Geyser In Calistoga, California

The other stop we made two weeks ago before Safari West, was to the Little Old Faithful Geyser in Calistoga, California.

In looking around for links for this post, I discovered a web page from Wayne Boyd that states:

"The proprietors claim this is one of only three 'Old Faithful Geysers' in the world, one being here in Calistoga, one being in Yellowstone in Wyoming, and the last being in New Zealand. A little bit of research on the Internet, however, revealed the proprietors of this spout are not telling the whole story. In a number of places where there is geothermal activity, wells have been drilled and fitted with impermeable casements that allow them to erupt like geysers. Though these so-called 'artificial geysers', technically known as 'erupting geothermal wells', are not true geysers, they can be quite spectacular."

It's not on the scale of the Old Faithful in Yellowstone Park (which you can see via webcam), but it was certainly entertaining enough for a small boy. Even though their web site says it (faithfully) erupts every 20-30 minutes, a hand-written sign on the wall had adjusted this to 30-40 minutes.

We paid to get in (dollar off if you bring your AAA card), and headed out to the back where the geyser was. One of the first things you see is an enclosure with Fainting Goats in it. This is another misnomer. The goats don't really faint. According to the Wikipedia page, they just have "external muscles which freeze for roughly 10 seconds when the goat is startled. Though painless, this generally results in the animal collapsing on its side." We didn't see any fits of auto-goat tipping while we were there (YouTube has a video though), so we carried on to the geyser area.

After a few minutes a 2-3 foot high jet of hot water erupted upwards. We thought "was that it"? Unsure, we went further back and looked at the llamas (that to me seemed to be on the point of thinking about spitting at you at any moment), then headed back again to the geyser area.

Our timing was perfect. It erupted just as we approached it.

This attraction, like the Petrified Forest is fun for kids for about 15-30 minutes. Then it's time to move on.

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( Jul 30 2007, 08:22:18 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [2]