Why yes, I Did Buy a new iTouch

Ok, it may be hype. It may be just a toy. But yes, I do have an an iTouch. I’m still learning the interface but it seems pretty slick. The keyboard takes a bit getting used to and I’m using the backspace a LOT.

 

DIY Electronic Geek Heaven

Just found an incredibly awesome site…  www.electronics2000.co.uk.  They have beginner’s guides, forums, and all sorts of great projects that I can use to learn things and teach them to my kids with regards to electronics.

Best of all, they have free software!  Electronics Assistant is a Windows program that performs electronics-related calculations. It includes a resistor color code calculator, resistance, capacitance and power calculations and more. Details of calculations can be saved or printed.

 

They also include free for download on their site the EPE Magazine Index, A full index of all constructional projects published in Everyday Practical Electronics magazine.  The database has details of all constructional projects published since 1992, but doesn’t include details of other features and articles.

I’m really looking forward to trying out some of the projects once I’ve got my solar powered chicken coop up and running!

 

Solar Powered Chicken Coop – Update

Just a quick update on my project to take my chickens into the sustainable future of solar power.  The basic premise of solar energy is that you can take energy from the sun, store it and use if for later.

 

I’ve been wanting to experiment with solar for a while and I was at Fry’s Electronics the other day and they had just what I was looking for to get started.  A completely weatherproof, 12 volt, 5amp battery trickle charger, which just screamed “Put me on the chicken coop roof!”.

 

 

When I have my weekend free (hah!), I’ll be mounting this to a couple of 2×4’s on the coop roof.  What I like about it is that besides the compact nature, it also has a built in blocking diode to keep it from discharging the batter at night and, although it doesn’t really say, I assume a build in voltage regulator as it’s meant to charge a car battery.

The solar charger has 10 feet of wire and a pair of battery clamps, so it should be easy to run the wire down into a weatherproof box and clamp the leads to a car battery inside.

The car battery is in turn hooked into a small 140 watt power inverter inside the battery enclosure and a pair of 12 volt computer power supply fans.  Between the battery and these components I have two light switches so I can turn on either the AC power outlet or the DC fans.

 

The light switches are encased in weatherproof switches, and I have an old extension cord plug plugged into the inverter with the other end wired into a weatherproof outlet box.

Assuming this goes well, I’ll be adding a floodlight on top of the coop as well to be powered by the inverter so that I can have lights running in my side garden at night.  No more weeding by moonlight!

I’m hoping to have everything assembled and installed in the chicken coop by August.  Based on a 5 amp power supply from the solar panel, I figure I can run my .16 amp fans all day long and keep my chickens cool while I also charge up the battery.

It’s a fun experiment with solar power, I’ve got most of the components assembled and now it’s just a matter of putting all the pieces together and keeping my fingers crossed.  Assuming it all goes well, I’ll probably move my automatic watering timer onto the 12 volt circuit as well.

And while my daughter may only be four, I think this would be a great way to introduce her to the basics of solar power and DC current theory.  I also found a great web site at opamp-electronics.com with a section on various tutorials and experiments, absolutely great for the the beginning hobbyist who wants to do a little experimentation

 

Taking The Train

I ride MetroLink. The trains aren’t exactly something you set your watch by.  I have a lot of fun reading the site at www.metrolinktrainriders.com which reports the delays and other information that www.metrolinktrains.com doesn’t seem to have readily available to us commuters.

Now, at my company, I’m a big fan of the phrase “No Surprises”.  I tell my direct reports that I don’t care how bad the news is, the worst thing in the world that can happen is that I’m in a meeting with my boss and he asks me about some issue or other that I haven’t been told about – wether it’s a project running late, a production support issue, or buggy software.  I extend the same courtesy to my bosses – after all I don’t want them caught out in the cold either.

So it really surprises me when a large company like Metrolink that runs our trains into downtown LA seems to do it’s best to keep it’s riders in the dark about delays.  Everyone knows delays happen, but when the causes keep getting swept under the rug – I have to wonder why they even bother to hide it?  It’s not like we can do much about it – it would be nice to have a website i can check in the morning or even an email subscription alert go out when trains I take are being delayed so I can make alternate plans or drive to a different station based on the delays.

I can’t tell you how valuable it would be to me to know my morning train was delayed by 30 minutes and be able to spend a few more minutes with my daughter before heading off to work rather than sitting on a train platform waiting for a late train.  After all, if Domino’s can track my pizza, how hard can it be to track a train?

 

A New Favorite Site: ActivityTV.com

So I recently wrote about Virtual Gardening Video Games in my quest to find fun things to do with my daughter and newborn son.  I recently came across this site and I have to say I’m quite impressed.  It houses a plethora of fun ideas- like being in a smorgasbord  of kid friendly activities.

 

Crafts, Cooking, Room Projects and Science are my favorite sections so far.  Though I have to admit, LegoTV with their Star Wars theme videos does my geek-dad heart good.  I think this quote from their parents & teachers page does a good job of summing up what you’ll find here.

This programming is intended for you to participate with your children in all of the activities. Some of the activities require the use of materials that require adult supervision.
We encourage that Activity TV be used as an opportunity to spend quality time with your child or student. Creating or learning something together can be a positive rewarding experience for both of you.
You may notice that activities are scheduled to appear on digital cable ON DEMAND for a period of time, and are then updated with other new activities each month. You can always find, and view, all the activities that have ever appeared right here on the website.

I would encourage everyone to go check out this site and all it has to offer.

 

Virtual Gardening Video Games

I’m a big fantasy and sci-fi geek.  Slowly but surely my four year old daughter is becoming one too.  We have a Star Wars piggy bank, she asked for a dragon sword for Christmas last year, and she loves dressing up as a princess.  She’s also becoming very good with the computer.  She plays games like Elmo’s keyboard-o-rama, watches online movies from netflicks, and enjoys crawling into my lap while I’m working on the computer.

We’re also setting up home-schooling lessons for her as she expresses an interest in various things.  This has involved building a chicken coop, getting an ant farm (more about that later – let’s just say it didn’t turn out well), and our most recent purchase was a butterfly farm with 10 baby caterpillars that will hopefully become beautiful butterflies.

So, I recently started my garden seeds for the spring.  I was really excited about going to the store with her and picking out seeds and getting them started in a little seedling greenhouse.  She was excited about getting the seeds – and I also picked up a 72 disk seed starting kit greenhouse for around $7.

The concept is pretty simple – you have bunch of compressed disks of peat in a plastic container.  You pour water in, plant the seeds and put the cover on.  Seeds sprout in a couple of weeks and you put it in sunlight until they are big enough to plant outside.

Unfortunately, her interest in planting seedlings got about as far as opening the seed packets and discovering that the seeds inside looked nothing like the picture on the outside of the packet.

She loves the garden – loves to pick tomatoes straight off the vine in the spring and summer and helps pick peas and beans in the fall.  But I think there was just too much disconnect between the seeds and having them grow into plants for a 4 year old.  So I was left at the kitchen table finishing up the planting while she wandered off.

It got me to thinking about how I could teach her about the planting process and gardening and somehow compress the time-to-gratification into something more manageable for a 4 year old.  And as a computer geek, my mind naturally turned to computers.

With all the simulation games out there – maybe there was something I could use to help teach her the fun and exciting world of essentially watching grass grow.  I vaguely recalled a SimFarm game from years ago.  With a little digging, I even found a site where abandoned titles go to have a second life.  You can download the game here.  Unfortunately, it’s probably a bit much for a 4 year old to handle screens like these…

 

 

So – What else is out there?  I have to say that it was a little difficult to find kid friendly games about gardening, composting, and plants.  Guess there’s not that much money in making things you can’t blow up.  However, here’s a short list of games I thought were interesting and kid-friendly:

• Compost 4 Fun : Bravekidgames.com is a great website for kid friendly games.  This particular game is a bit hard to control with the mouse (the screen sort of bounces around) but it’s a great way to start a dialogue about what can be composted.
• Garden Dreams : Well, I wasn’t able to get the online version to work for me because I’m behind a firewall – but it looks like fun.
• Alice Greenfingers: Graphics aren’t great and you only get an hour of free play before you have to purchase it, but what it lacks in graphics it makes up for in playability.
• Garden War: Ok, it is a war/strategy game – but it’s with garden gnomes.  Doesn’t use timers and teaches strategy so kids can probably get the hang of it pretty quickly.  Don’t know how kid-friendly tanks are though.

I’m going to have to try a couple of these over the weekend with my daughter and see if they’re really as kid friendly and interesting as I think they are.  I liked them and I thought they were fun, but as they say the proof is in the pudding…

 

Article: Dad Warns Parents of Online Perils

Just saw an article the other day that really sends chills down my spine…

Fla. Dad Warns Parents of Online Perils

ORLANDO, Fla. — The father of a 15-year-old girl who was found safe 400 miles away from home a day after she ran away with a sex offender she met online had a message Wednesday for parents across America…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/03/AR2007100302707.html

It’s things like this that make me realize that when my daughter is old enough to actively surf the net, I’m going to be installing not only all sorts of Internet filters on the router to block certain sites, but will probably be actively purchasing and installing software like “The Boss“, that not only log URLs, but also e-mail, chats, web page snapshots, and restricts Internet access to certain times of the day.

At three she already knows how to use my wife’s old laptop to play games like Reader Rabbit Preschool, and she also can go to some of the web sites out there that we’ve set up menu buttons for like Elmo’s Keyboard-o-rama.

 

NASA’s ‘frozen smoke’ named lightest solid

Cooked up in a NASA laboratory, a gel that is 99.8 percent air has been designated the least dense solid in the world by Guinness World Records.

Aerogel, one of the world’s lightest solids, can withstand a direct blast of 1kg of dynamite and protect against heat from a blowtorch at more than 1,300C.

The substance, described as “frozen smoke” for its hazy blue appearance, is a new variety of a silicon-based material designed to collect particles in deep space.

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/05/09/record.gel/

 

OpenCourseWare Initiative

I recently learned about this initiative from a co-worker. As a constant advocate of continuous learning, I am always looking for new avenues of learning that i can do in my spare time. I have really been on the lookout for not only myself, but my daughter as well. Even though she is only three, my wife and I have decided to homeschool her. What this means to me personally is that I get to have an active hand in helping my daughter not only as a father and a mentor, but also share in the joy of learning as she discovers the world around her. What this also means is that I need to learn this stuff too so that I can one day teach it to her. I am a college graduate, but as they say, if you don’t use it, you lose it.

The OpenCourseware Consortium web page lists several colleges in the US that participate in this program, including the following:

• Defense Acquisition University
• Harvard Law School, Berkman Center for Internet and Society
• Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School
  of Public Health
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Michigan State University
• Tufts University
• University of California, Irvine
• University of Michigan School of Information
• University of Massachusetts Boston
• University of Notre Dame
• Utah State University
• Utah Valley State College
• Wheelock College

Now, being a Southern California local, I was especially interested in UCI, and found a really great course on the Fundamentals of Personal Financial Planning The coursework looks like it’s about 25 to 30 hours, and covers everything from taxes, insurance, investing, retirement and estate planning (I am especially interested in the estate planning since my father is an attorney who specializes in this field). The course description is as follows:

This course is not intended to replace the professional financial planner, but to help to make the general public better consumers of financial planning advice. The course was created to help those who cannot afford extensive planning assistance better understand how to define and reach their financial goals. It provides basic understanding so informed decisions can be made. The course can also be seen as a reference for individual topics that are part of personal financial planning.

Financial planning, in the broadest sense, is an effort to manage all aspects of a person / family’s financial affairs. Classically that begins with planning family spending and extends through risk management (insurance), taxes, wealth accumulation, investing, and wealth distribution (retirement and estate planning).