eyelessgame

So here's this evening's relaxing schedule for the last day of summer...

• 4:00 pm: Sherilyn drops Kate off for soccer practice at Eureka School.
  
• 4:10 pm: Sherilyn, with Robert in tow, arrives at Excelsior School for Class Assignment Night to volunteer (serving pizza to 1000 parents and kids).
  
• 5:10 pm: I drop Josh off for his lesson at Tricks Gymnastics.
  
• 5:30 pm: I pick up Kate from Eureka. Note this is at another school in the same district, likely also having a Class Assignment Night, so parking will be ... interesting.
  
• 5:40 pm: (hopefully!) I arrive with Kate at Excelsior.
  
  • collect Robert
    
  • feed pizza to Kate, Robert, and myself
    
  • visit first, fourth, and sixth grade lists, posted at various places on the school campus, to copy down each kid's teacher names, room numbers, and known classmates
    
  • Kate and Robert find restrooms and change into their gis
• 6:15 pm: I drop Robert and Kate off at Granite Bay Karate.
  
• 6:40 pm: I pick up Josh at Tricks.
  
• 7:00 pm: With Josh, I pick up Robert and Kate at GBK.
  

My coworker's roommate was stumped by a problem on the MCAT that we'd discussed over lunch a few weeks ago. I had told them I was pretty sure my eleven-year-old could solve it.

So I decided to find out. At dinner on Monday I presented it to Robert.

"Let h(n) be the product of all even numbers less than or equal to n, so h(4) = 2*4, h(6) = 2*4*6, and so on. Is the smallest prime factor of (h(100)+1) ...
(a) less than 10
(b) between 10 and 20
(c) between 20 and 30
(d) between 30 and 40
(e) more than 40?"

Robert took about a minute, while chewing his sandwich.( Read more... )

He's already made his decision, but we want a poll of people who read my journal. (I don't pay for lj, so I can't do a poll directly, so please respond in comments if interested.)

What would you say is the most outstanding geographical feature of the state of Florida? Our candidates are:

(a) the Everglades
(b) the long coastline
(c) Lake Okeechobee
(d) its flatness
(e) the Keys
(f) other...

Comments welcome. He's doing research for the geography portion of his comprehensive Florida paper for 5th grade.

I have the most excellent friends.

Jason had a GeForce 4 just sitting around with no computer to put it in.

He came over last night and helped me install it.

The game is truly inspired, demented, and hilarious; there were loud hoots of laughter coming from the den as all three kids were clustered around the computer till I had to pry them off and insert them into their beds. He was up again this morning at 7 AM -- changed clothes, ate breakfast, brushed teeth, and started playing, all before either of us woke up. Go Robert!

One of our weekly meetings often starts with the officiant asking if anyone's heard a good joke. So yesterday I told Robert's joke about the atom, prefacing it by explaining he'd read it in a physics book.

Everyone laughed. "I'm going to remember that. It's worth repeating," one guy said. All were impressed that a nine-year-old not only understood it and thought it was funny but also could explain it to a seven-year-old.

They just mostly stared, however, when I mentioned that he is insisting that I explain relativity to him (he saw it in a book from the school library, but he needs it more thoroughly explained and needs to know why it works the way it does.)

(robert at the Easter party, having fun)

I've just seen Revenge of the Sith.

I went for two reasons -- one, to see it, of course; and two, to preview it and decide if it would be too intense for Robert.

Thus, two reviews. The first, which is this post, is my review only from the previewing-for-my-nine-year-old perspective. It shies away from any non-obvious plot spoilers, though I'll describe a few things you see, and what I think his reactions would be.

Capsule: I don't think he should see it until it's on DVD, at home on a small screen, but not for the reasons I thought I would have going in.

( Read more... )

I've done more journaling recently than I'd done for a while. Maybe because, with the end of the school year coming, it's a sense of transition, and I feel like documenting it; or maybe it's something else, I dunno.


Weight has satisfactorily dropped 6 pounds in the 6 weeks since the first of May -- which is excellent, and leaves only 34 to go. But it's starting to get serious: much of that 6 pounds dropped simply from when I was sick for a few days, and I managed to not gain it back in the intervening time. The moving average curve is now kissing the required-loss line, and I need to make sure I stay in the green. I also haven't been biking the proper five days out of the week, and it's slowing down and reducing my enjoyment of ST:TOS tremendously.


Upsilon really, really needs a better name. (Suggestions?) But now you can go from the countryside (big map) to a small-scale random 'wilderness' map, which has a down-staircase, to the first level of the goblin caves. I think this is all the styles of connectivity I need for the basic game structure, which means it's only a matter of adding a bunch of lines to switch statements (I know, I know, they should be object hierarchies, but they're simple enough that it's not worth constructing them as such yet) and you'll be able to wander around in all, um, 15 dungeons. (Well, or so. The game should have *some* secrets that people discover in play.) Time for the 100 Days to happen, which I only announced um six months ago. Damn I'm slow sometimes.

Character definition, I think, comes as a consequence of world complexity. The only reason to have a given player stat is when it impacts the world in some way. So when I add -- for example -- the ability to do rough identification of items, the perception stat (or whatever I use for it) and the various skills associated (alchemy?) become relevant, and are added, and there's no reason to add them until then.


I need to take a break from reading blogs. It figuratively raises my blood pressure (makes me cranky, anyway) without actually helping me learn anything. The fact that, for example, most people I talk to don't know about the Downing Street Memo, yet I do, does not really help my existence.


Some puzzles just aren't fair, at least to nine-year-olds. 'These colours should remind you of a fictional hero': the pattern was two rows of three colored circles: the lefthand column is two red circles, the middle column is two orange circles, the righthand column is a blue circle on the top and a yellow circle on the bottom. The critical detail (for me) required to solve this puzzle is in the specific way the challenge is worded. And in my ignorance I would have not thought 'fictional', but I suppose I don't know.


More later. I think I might try to journal the champions adventure before last, because they actually won something. And maybe give a synopsis of some untied threads from previous adventures (the source of the cursed guns, for example, or the crashed interdimensional alien ship).

Sherilyn can't journal about last weekend because she wasn't home, so I will. ( Read more... )

My son stuns me. But he is, after all, growing up...

( Read more... )