Chip Update

30 Aug 2010 16:08

So, I did name this blog so as to not create any expectations of regular updates. :)

I figure, though, the last post deserves a little bit of an update. To wit: Anya is still as cute as ever, chipped tooth and all. Here's a couple of snaggle-tooth pics, one from a few months after the incident and one from circa now.

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Tricycle Accident

30 Apr 2009 17:10

Yesterday, Anya tipped forward off of her tricycle and landed right on her face. Although it's tempting to think of this as karmic payback for the piggy-back incident, it's probably mostly because she just isn't great at catching herself. The thing where Guen split her lip was a rare exception — normally, she catches herself on the brink of disaster, movie-hero style. Anya, not so much. So, cracked tooth:

(Dentist appointment this afternoon.)

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True Knowledge Takes the Long View

29 Apr 2009 19:28

Yesterday, I went to a demo given by Stephen Wolfram about his new Wolfram|Alpha project. Some people are hyping it as a Google-killer, but it's not really like that at all. It's more like Encyclopedia Britannica with a built-in calculator — a cathedral of information built carefully by Top Experts™ behind a context-sensitive query engine with the ability to automatically produce charts and graphs for the output.

It was particularly interesting because it seemed much more in-line with the vision of the future lauded in Bill Gates's original version of The Road Ahead — where CD-ROM-based information was poised to reshape the world¹ — than with today's Web 2.0 common wisdom. There's no user-interactive experience, no crowd-sourcing, no social anything. Instead, you ask questions, and the almighty black box delivers Answers from on high.

That seems like it might be useful if it's got answers in a domain you're interested in — and if you can see where those answers came from and their justification — but it's no Google-killer, nor the next Wikipedia.

So anyway, today I came across True Knowledge, a competitor of sorts — it tries to "know" the meaning of your query by means of a big database of semantic connections and then give you The Right Answer. After getting bored of trying it out on practical questions (sometimes it knows, usually it doesn't), I asked it the thing that's on Anya's mind these days: "Are monsters real?", and it came back with "Sorry, I do not know whether real is untrue of every fictional species."

Okay, fair enough. And the cool thing is that it shows the interpretation of the question below: "Are any fictional species (made-up species in a novel, movie, game etc.) real, implying a perceptible existence to a significant subset of people?" Of course, that raises another question: when you put it that way, and still can't give a simple answer, isn't it obvious that this whole enterprise is doomed?

So next, I discovered they've hard-coded in an answer about the existence of God — it doesn't know, but unlike the monsters question, doesn't give you the opportunity to give the answer. Total cop out.

Next up: "When will the universe end?" And the answer:

Well, there's some perspective!

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Eventually Clock

24 Apr 2009 15:04

In case anyone is needing a clock like this.

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Drool

23 Apr 2009 03:11

Looks like rumors are solidifying — 100% viewfinder, better AF, many ergonomic improvements from the K20D (which in turn had many little improvements from my K10D). And it looks so pretty. Time to break open that piggybank that got dropped on my head.

The Japanese text translates roughly to: "Inheritor of a proud legacy". Hopefully, something like thie Pentax LX in digital form.

And also hopefully somewhere near my price range. Sigh.

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Emotional Math

22 Apr 2009 00:44

Guen told me tonight: "Daddy, it's easy to be sad when you are already sad."

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Friendship Math

17 Apr 2009 19:17

The other day at the park, Guen introduced Christina as "our babysitter". Later, I asked her if Christina was our friend too, and she said no, just the babysitter. So I asked if a babysitter was more or less special than a friend.

Guen considered for a bit, and then said: "More, because we have twenty-one² friends, but only one babysitter."

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Bedtime Song

16 Apr 2009 15:48

And so on.

Karen started singing the more-traditional version of this song to the girls at bedtime, which made them demand it of me. I couldn't remember the words, and when I asked Karen, she said to quit bugging her and to just make something up. So I did. This totally backfired on Karen, because now if you sing the song with less-silly words (and in particular if you omit the elephant), Anya gets very upset.

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Thanks, Paul and Jen!

16 Apr 2009 00:11

For Easter, virtual-aunt-and-uncle Jen and Paul brought over mimosa and belini fixin's, including some plastic champagne flutes. Jen made special kid versions using sparkling water instead of champagne. It was all very cute.

This morning, I asked Anya if she would like her orange juice in her normal pink cup. (It's good to ask, because if you just choose and get it wrong, suddenly it's the Anyapocalypse. And you're not one of the ones being raptured away.)

She said, "No, I want it in a glass cup. A tall one."

I pointed to the normal grown-up drinking glasses. "Like one of these, you mean? Anya, those are hard for two-year-olds."

"No, I mean juice goes in ones with a on a stick!"

Ohhhhhhh.

"Yeah. Those are the ones for juice."

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Sure you can.

15 Apr 2009 00:04

Guen: "I can play tic-tac-toe when I'm asleep, if someone tells me when it's my turn."

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Anya Explains

14 Apr 2009 20:15

We were walking by the Charles River. I pointed out a Duck Boat.

Anya laughed at me: "Daddy, that's a person boat."

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Bloody-Lip Easter

13 Apr 2009 19:07

So, Guen and I both got dramatically bloody lips yesterday. Like, blood all over. Me 'cause Anya accidentally dropped a piggy bank full of coins on my face, and Guen because she accidentally dropped her face onto a wooden toy. Hers actually looks much better than mine, because for her we went to the ER and got her lip super-glued back together. Good times.

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U is for Unfortunate

12 Apr 2009 02:53

From a set of cardboard stacking blocks my girls really love:

I can't help but think (in a squeaky baby duck voice): "Oh no! My mommy!"

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Hello World

11 Apr 2009 21:27

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