Spent today catching up on on a backlog of podcasts. I’ve been trying to find a decent podcast manager in Ubuntu. I found a great application that works for me in Windows called Feedreader (which incidentally is also my preferred RSS feed reader for Windows), and am currently using Rhythmbox in Ubuntu. It’s not as good but is so much better than Songbird which drove me insane with it’s continual attempt to download all files in each podcast’s rssfeed. Rhythmbox does seem a little hit and miss in auto downloading the latest podcasts and I’m not entirely trusting it just yet but I’m willing to persevere until a better alternative is brought to my attention, or Rhythmbox itself gets an upgrade in the podcast department.
Whilst catching up on podcasts, I’ve been working through the resources we’ll use in our first year of homeschooling this year. Still coming up with a way to keep everything organised and it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the mountains of books currently taking over my office.
And now a last minute photo for today.
Another scintillating view from my office. This is the shelf closest to where I sit at my desk. Scarily despite the duplication I do often use all these dictionaries and thesauri though I did weed out a reference book that I wasn’t getting any use of recently. I grew up with the same edition of Roget’s Thesaurus as is shown and think everyone with vocabulary memory problems NEEDS to have one on hand. The Ladybird clothespeg is from a bouquet of flowers I received from husband. The paperweight is a gift from my grandmother-in-law and I love the flower design that was created within.
Saturday 2nd January, 2010 at 11:41 pm
Posted in General | No Comments »
I’m feeling a little rattled at 2010 having arrived already. I don’t have all my goals for the year jelled yet, though I have some pretty good ideas as to the direction some parts of my life are headed, which is a good start I figure. So while I’m working on all that – have a photo.
This is a tiny portion of my desk.
The flowers (hydrangeas) were picked and brought to me by my daughter yesterday, and are in a milk jug which is part of a wedding gift from my Grandmother – mainly because the vase I would have used has gone walkabout.
The mouse is one that works and I haven’t seen an upgrade for it as left-hand friendly mice with side buttons let alone at a reasonable price are pretty far and few between. Ultimately, I’d love to have a wireless mouse and I’m sure the perfect mouse will fall in my lap when it’s needed.
The mousepad is a gift from my Dad and is pretty cool. It’s a mouse rug and my one is a digital replica of a Tehran Qum flower rug. It’s really comfortable, is a great mousing surface and what makes it pretty cool is the image on it isn’t printed on but each individual coloured thread is glued to the base to form the overall design.
Saturday 2nd January, 2010 at 12:37 am
Posted in General | No Comments »
What is a Geoboard?
Well, to paraphrase the Wikipedia entry, A Geoboard is a tool often used to explore basic concepts in geometry such as perimeter, area or the characteristics of triangles and other shapes. It’s generally a board with nails partly driven in, and students are encouraged to place rubber bands around the nails to model various geometric concepts or to solve other mathematical puzzles.
Bit of trivia from the same entry: Geoboards were invented and popularised by Egyptian mathematician Caleb Gattegno in the 1950s.
Different Types of Geoboards
Basic Square Grid (the most common for squares/rectangles/oblongs, triangles, octagons, kites, rhombus etc)
Isometric (for hexagons, triangles, 3 dimensional representations)
Circular (for representing the parts of the circle: segments, chord, diameter etc)
Virtual Geoboards (program or website where you can click and drag “rubber bands” around without the worry of getting stung by one)
Paper Geoboards (graph paper with just the dot grid, or a rubber stamp of just the dot grid – generally just the Basic Square Grid but Isometric can be found)
Materials
The end result will be a 9×9 nail board that’s pretty utilitarian and it didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it would.
I’ve mentioned brand names and the stores I purchased them from in the hope this helps someone in New Zealand.
1x KaiserWood Standard Square Plaque ($2.99 from Spotlight)
81x Zenith Bullet Head Diamond Point Nails with Plain Shanks 1.2×25mm ($3.87 for a packet of 375 from Bunnings) If you don’t like how tall the nails I used turned out, don’t hesitate to choose a shorter nail.
1x sheet of graph paper (14K8 I had on hand – it’s 2mm Graph Paper with stronger lines every 1cm)
Assorted Coloured Rubberbands ($2 from our local Itzadeal). Warehouse Stationery didn’t have coloured ones. I suspect many dollar stores will have something similar.
How to make this Geoboard
1. Taking the sheet of graph paper, fold it along two perpendicular sides along one the strong lines so you end up with a square folded corner. Then take the square corner made, place it over one of the front surface corners of the wooden plaque and tape it in place. The end result is the top surface of the plaque is covered in graph paper so that the strong lines of the graph paper line up with all the edges and the graph paper doesn’t move around (though if it’s not taut it isn’t a problem).
2. You’re aiming for a 9 nail by 9 nail square and this is achieved by placing nails 2cm apart from each other and having a 2cm border around the outer edge of the plaque. It’s easiest to start hammering nails in from the center outwards and moving from left-to-right if the hammer is in your right hand. I made “concentric” squares starting from the nail in the centre, spinning the board as I finished nailing each side of the current square. Also, it’s worthwhile mentioning that standing to hammer results in straighter nails.
I gauged the height of the nail based on hammering the first two in and then eyeballing them with a third nail held against the side of the board touching the table, and then slowly hammering them further in til they were firmly placed but not poking through the bottom of the plaque. Despite my concern that I would do so anyway, it didn’t happen and I feel confident in saying if I didn’t screw that up – you certainly won’t! :)
3. Remove the tape holding down the graph paper and ease it up the nails and then rip it off. There’ll be a few fragments of graph paper left.
4. Voilà – your Geoboard is complete! Get out the rubberbands and have at it :)
There are a ton of activities, ideas and lesson plans available on the web so I won’t be elaborating on how to fully utilise your new Geoboard.
I have a circular plaque ready for making a Circular Geoboard which should be an interesting adventure. And for an extra challenge I could be convinced to make an Isometric Geoboard.
Thanks to Mama Jenn via The Crafty Crow for the inspiration to make my own version. :)
And if neither my version, or Mama Jenn’s, suits your needs – there are plenty of tutorials on making Geoboards out there. Not to mention pre-made plastic Geoboards generally seem quite inexpensive.
Monday 26th October, 2009 at 1:17 am
Posted in Craft, Home Education | 1 Comment »
I listen to quite a number of podcasts each week. I thought I’d highlight a few that I really enjoy:
Quirks and Quarks – A Canadian Radio Broadcast about various science topics each week. Most have some connection to a Canadian but there are topics that are based all over the world and the content is easy to digest. As an extra bonus often the segments are recorded the same week they’re published in mainstream science publications.
Grammar Girl – A quick and dirty guide to the intricacies of the english language. Comes out weekly plus the occassional bonus podcast.
Friday Night Comedy – A BBC Radio production and a bit of lightheartedness for the week. It seems to alternate between two shows and my favourite is the News Quiz which is easier to follow when you’re not from the UK.
FLOSS Weekly – Covering an opensource project each week this is a neat way to either learn some more about something you already use or know about, or to “discover” a project you haven’t explored yet. I like that they’re covering projects that are simply open source rather than restricting it to linux-mainly projects.
Mediawatch and many other Radio New Zealand podcasts – well produced and interesting podcasts, including history, current events, science, classical music and my favourite Mediawatch which is a look at what the media got up to over the past week. They once profiled how a newspaper covered a story which involved a group I was a member of.
Media 7 – Produced by the relatively new TVNZ documentary Channel 7, this is an interesting video podcast of weekly events in New Zealand and/or World media and related background topics where panels of experts are interviewed.
For Kids (and kids at heart :):
Sesame Street – Normally each week a segment is released revolving around a chosen word presented by the Sesame Street gang and a relatively well-known personality/celebrity.
Storynory - a british website presenting traditional folktales and fairytales in podcast form. Some, due to their length, are split over multiple podcasts. Pleasant voice to listen to with no overwhelming sound effects.
Storytime – a Radio New Zealand production. I haven’t listened to too many of these but they tend to be more contemporary stories with a Kiwi flavour than the kind Storynory produce. I have fond memories of listening to Storytime on a weekend morning especially Bad Jelly the Witch. You can find the podcast at this link.
Sunday 15th March, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Posted in General, Tech | No Comments »
Not a lot tonight because I’m tired, have other work to do, and still unsure about presenting the following two items alongside a bunch of home education stuff.
Why not change your desktop background for the month to one of these lovely background images featured on Smashing Magazine. They all feature a calendar of March 2009 but most are available without the calendar if you so wish. I grabbed the one entitled “Japanese Girl’s Day” as I like the japanese style and I’m a sucker for all things Origami :)
Quite a while ago now, I transitioned from two 17″ LCDs to one 19″ widescreen LCD and, now the novelty has worn off, I’m getting frustrated at constantly resizing applications to do work between them, to the point where I’m reverting to switching between virtual desktops, or good ole Alt-Tab, which seems like a waste of real estate. Just two days ago, I told my husband I was thinking about going back to the old LCD setup as it’s having a negative impact on my productivity. Well, just today my rss feed came to my rescue with this gem, MaxTo, which I can testify works alongside VirtuaWin. I should probably have prefaced this blurb with I’m currently running WinXP 32-bit having just “downgraded” from WinXP 64-bit, where I got tediated at the wrangling involved in getting my semi-supported printer printing. (via Daily Cup of Tech).
Thursday 5th March, 2009 at 12:42 am
Posted in General, Tech | No Comments »
I’ve been trying to do this kind of post “for quite some time now” (sorry, The Matrix is playing in the next room) and try and move away from my content-thin blogposts of late (and early).
So without further ado, I bring you my rss feed picks for today!
Craft
These Goodie Bags look quite simple to make (which is always an important factor for me. I can see they could have other purposes – she says looking at a number of plastic bags containing home education resources. (link via WhipUp.net)
There are plenty of tote patterns available if you go hunting around the innumerable craft blogs. I particularly like this one from Film in the Fridge because the directions are particularly clear, it looks easy to construct but at the same time has a nice pocket and a removable solid base. (link via WhipUp.net)
Home Education
The theme for next week’s Unplugged Project is Happy. I hope we can organise a project to fit with this theme. Perhaps something that induces happiness like blowing bubbles, or an activity involving emotions.
I’m including this link to this nicely laid out Lapbook on Racoons from Classical Homeschooling while Hawaiian Dreaming in this post to remind me that Lapbooking (or our own twist on it) might be a good way of combining and storing the work we’re doing each unit)
Misc
This weekend we’re definitely going to try making Mozarella, and possibly Ricotta. I’m going to admit to being quite plebian and say I don’t remember ever using Ricotta so this should be interesting. This recipe from Living Green is the one a couple of people I know have used and will probably be slightly more helpful being a New Zealand based tutorial.
After reading this post from WebWorkerDaily, I’m going to remove some of the things I receive via email and receive them via rss instead.
This post at Harvard Business is well worth reading. The three main points are: Choose three important tasks to complete each day, Turn off your email client, and Set up a weekly 20-minute meeting with yourself. I’m already doing the last one (though more like 3 hours), and can testify that it helps define the week and gives a time to reflect on the past week, how you did, and what to concentrate on in the coming week. I’m finding it also helps me to realise I’ve only got a certain amount of time til I will be sitting down and doing this reflection so there better be something decent done to reflect upon.
Limiting the distractions while getting work done and Choosing only 3 taks is something I need work on. I’ve been trialing using post-it notes to score what I need to do next – creating a small stack of 5 or 6 small tasks and then having the satisfaction of unveiling the next task and chucking the just-finished post-it. (via unclutterer)
My 101 in 1001 list has an entry that I’d like to give podcasting a whirl, so this post from Perfomancing was a useful read. I’m spending quite a bit of time doing stuff while listening to various podcasts especially while getting the dreaded housework done, and have been doing some recording of my voice whilst I verbally jot down some ideas, but I’m not sure about listening live as I don’t get to spend a great deal of time uninterrupted at my desk these days.
And lastly, I just had to link to this post from BoingBoing called Big Tent Atheism as it resonated with the antics of some people I come into contact with regularly. Certainly the sentiment can be applied to more than just political parties and atheists. I’m sure there are many people who can identify this behaviour in all sectors of society.
Lifehack had an interesting post today about Assuming Positive Intent. This is something I really struggle with, and combine my cynicism with my sarcasm and I can appear to be quite a negative person. Ironically, I would estimate I spend just as much time being cynical as I do amused at the vagaries of life and I laugh, at the very least, once a day.
Well, this leaves my rss finds for the day down to 4 programming posts which I need to read and digest more, and 1 post that really needs a post of it’s own if I get round to it this week. Yay! This has also taken at least 2 hours (the counter may be out of whack due to a browser restart).
I’m going to have to do some research into how legal it is to include photos from the blogposts I’ve mentioned as this is just a mass of text! I also need to consider breaking this up into several posts based on categories. I know very few visit this blog but I am interested in, if this becomes a regular thing for me, how to present it. One worry I have is that presenting each blogpost I come across as it’s own blogpost on my blog smacks of big blog wannabe.
Tuesday 3rd March, 2009 at 11:42 pm
Posted in Craft, General, Home Education, Kitchen | No Comments »
I seem skilled at finding spiders sitting inside the things I decide to take a photo of. This is the first photo I’ve taken this year that I’ve cropped before putting up. The depth to which my camera can focus is more than a lot of other cameras of the same calibre and I like taking macro-ish shots so I feel a little justified.
Monday 2nd March, 2009 at 11:45 pm
Posted in Daily Photo, Garden | No Comments »
So at the end of last year, for the first time ever, I wrote a list of goals for the coming year. I mentioned quite a few of them in this post.
I then worked out from those goals what I would attempt to achieve in the first quarter of the year (Jan-Mar) and then working from that what I would strive to achieve for the month of January. Amazingly for me, I followed through and at the beginning of February sat down and reviewed the quarterly and monthly goals and then wrote my list of goals for February. Now here is where it gets a bit creepy – today I sat down and did the same thing! I actually followed through with something three times in a row. And it was good. I did my weekly review at the same time, basing that off my monthly goals and other committments for the week and I feel so much calmer.
What I’ve found helps is for me to go off on a bit of a retreat. I pack up all my notes, planner, snacks and mp3 player and drive off to a secluded spot to do my weekly review and don’t come home until I’m done.
I took some photos on the way home – as you can see below it’s been raining today and so this was taken from a quick stop on the side of the road. I need to work on my “quick snapshot” techniques.
Field in Rain
Sunday 1st March, 2009 at 7:59 pm
Posted in General, Organisation | No Comments »
Daily Photo - Day ???
I wanted to capture the amazing texture of the lily, the transparency of the petals, and somehow give an impression of the amazing scent that is filling the room. Well, I managed the first one in my not so humble opinion. Having to use the flash at this late hour of the evening meant I couldn’t achieve the second goal, and the third? Pfft no idea how to accomplish that!
Speaking of things I have no idea about – no idea what I’m doing with the Daily Photo/Project 365 and the NaBloPoMo etc … just see how I go I guess *shrug*
Tuesday 10th February, 2009 at 11:50 pm
Posted in Daily Photo | No Comments »
Look what I came home to after an exhausting day taking a preschooler on a miriad of errands on a hot, humid day.
And the special occasion? “You seemed quite grumpy this morning and I thought this might cheer you up”. Well Mission Success.
For the record, the sunburn on my feet is healing nicely now, but it’s really itchy and kept me awake that night. Couple that with me not being the most chirpy of people in the morning and it pays to avoid me til I’ve woken up properly. He’s known me for almost 11 years now – you’d think he’d know this!
Nevertheless, some decent wife faction earned by him yesterday :D
Tuesday 10th February, 2009 at 11:35 pm
Posted in General | No Comments »
