Caleb cutting out some vehicles from Made By Joel.
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Recently I’ve been writing some code to send Yammer messages via their API, and I enjoyed working it out. Now I’m keen to rewrite it and submit it to CPAN. This will be fun, and will give me some nerd-credibility. I could write it using Windows, but that would feel wrong. Perl and Linux go together well. I used to play around with Linux a lot at home, and learnt a lot in the process. Now I use Linux at work, and haven’t had a home Linux machine in years. I still know Linux well, but using a home machine has it’s own set of challenges. So I’m building a Linux machine. I’m using an old PowerPC MacMini, and it’s mostly working except for the Wireless network. I don’t have an ethernet cable long enough to do it wired, which means to install packages (to get wireless working), I need to do it via USB, which is a bit of a pain. I’ve also never setup WiFi on linux before, so am learning a bit about that too. I admitted to my 4 year-old son that the tooth fairy isn’t real. We were in the car, travelling to my parent’s house, when he asked “Is there a real tooth fairy”. The question is a little vague (as opposed to “is the tooth fairy real”), but Helen and I knew where this was heading. We didn’t want to jump straight into saying he’s not real, if that wasn’t what he really wanted to know. We were reasonably happy for him to think it was real – there is nothing wrong with kids thinking some fairy tales are real. Helen: You are getting bigger, but your baby teeth can’t, so they fall out and you get new teeth. You put the baby teeth under your pillow, and the tooth fairy gives you a gold coin. Caleb paused for a few seconds, but we could tell that the conversation wasn’t over. Caleb: But is there a REAL tooth fairy? We still didn’t necessarily want to admit it. He was only 4, and hadn’t even lost any teeth yet. We also didn’t want to lie directly to him and say that the tooth fairy is real. He would then ask about other fairies, and what the tooth fairy does with the teeth, and how did he get into the house, and ultimately he wouldn’t beleive us anyway, and we would have lied to him. Helen: Do you think the tooth fairy is real? Not bad for a 4 year old. A sound and valid deductive argument. We admitted that he wasn’t real, and that it was just a special game and it’s fun to pretend. He understands that and I’m sure he’ll go along with the game when that time comes. It should be interesting when the issue comes up at his childcare, or his school next year. Telling him not to tell other kids would be weird, so I’m not sure how that will pan out. Hopefully it won’t happen too soon. I’m somewhat amazed that a 4 year old can make such a perfect deduction. December is 6 months away, and I don’t like Santa Claus’s chances. It’s also interesting that he has come to this conclusion so young. We haven’t even really discussed it, and haven’t really talked about fairies too much. We think he’s smart, probably above average, but not necessarily a genius. Sometimes we play games where I’ll say something that isn’t true, and watch him while he ruminates on it. Then there’ll be a look from him, a “hang on a minute, you’re tricking me”, and then some laughter. I think these games have taught him to be skeptical. Not everything people say is true. I feel I ought to feel guilty for removing some of the magic of being a kid, but I think the value of deduction outweights the value of fairies. I do show him some of the real magic of the universe, like looking at things through a microscope, and looking for satellites, that perhaps most kids don’t experience. I think this balances out. Flynn is a little too young to understand all this (despite being in the car at the time), but in a year or two this will all be fair game. I guess by then Caleb would be old enough to understand that it’s ok for Flynn to beleive in it. We think Flynn is smart, probably smarter than Caleb, so he’ll possibly work it out pretty early himself. It should be an interesting time. We are complex. Evolution describes a system whereby this complexity increases. Complex systems can evolve from less complex systems. This arises given random mutations, and natural selection. Given evolution, and enough time, you can create any amount of complexity you want, starting from almost nothing. Intelligent design states that the complexity of Human Beings could only be created by an Intelligent Designer, e.g. God. This complexity could not have arisen using any mindless process. For this Intelligent Designer to create Man, He must be fairly complex himself. And given that we could not design ourselves, the Intelligent Designer must be cleverer than Man, and therefore more complex than Man. This describes a decrease in complexity. It doesn”t answer where this complexity comes from. Who created the God that created God? I said above “from almost nothing”. Evolution requires two properties – self-replication, and random mutation. Generally this applies to organisms, but is true of crystals as well. The very first ”life”, was not created by evolution, but everything from that point was created by evolution. Some argue that this gap is where God created life, but if that”s true, the life that he created was simple life, far simpler than anything living on the Earth now. It was probably something similar to nanobes, or nanobacterium. An interesting thing about nanobes and nanobacteria is that it isn”t necessarily clear if they are life. Caleb is now 15 months old, and he is a riot. I’m off work today looking after him, as he is a little spotty and can’t go to childcare. Helen had a day off work 2 weeks ago when he had a cold, so it’s my turn. It’s rough having to not go to work and spend all day playing with your son. The things I put up with. Maybe I’ll draw some spots on him myself next week. I wonder how much family leave I get each year… We don’t really know what the spots are, but pretty sure it’s nothing major. The doctor wasn’t sure what it was, maybe chicken pox, maybe hand, foot and mouth, but the symptoms didn’t quite match – I don’t think it’s either. They’re almost gone now so it’s just one of those things – kids get spotty. I thought I’d give an update on his progress, on the off chance anyone still reads this blog, aside from the spammers. He is 15 months old, and is almost walking… will be walking within a month or so. He walks along pushing his trolley, and loves it. When he reaches the wall he hangs onto the wall while we turn the trolley around, and then he walks to the opposite wall. He’ll do this for hours cacking himself the whole time. He’ll also take a step as he launches himself from the TV unit to Mum or Dad. We stand him up to see how long he can stay… his maximum is about 10 seconds – he could stay longer but likes being caught as he falls. His laugh is incredible. He chuckles and cackles and squeals at almost anything, which is hilarious. His laugh is infectious so usually all three of us are laughing. I’ll try to record a clip of him laughing and post it. He also pretends. I think pretending is pretty clever… he knows the difference between eating, and pretending to eat. I was eating a chocolate and giving him a little. When it was finished, he was reaching into the empty packet, and then putting his fingers near my mouth, and I’d pretend to eat it. When I tried to do the same thing back to him, he wasn’t pretending anymore, and was a little upset that no more chocolate was forthcoming. He also pretend eats with a spoon, and has fed himself with a spoon a few times. It gets messy, but so does everything else, so it doesn’t really matter. We had a difficult month or two where he was too old for two sleeps, but too young for one sleep. He is now coping fairly well with one sleep during the day. In late June, I bought a new computer for my bike (i.e. a cyclometer), I figure it took 10 days to arrive, and for me to fit it to my bike, so it read zero as at July 2006. It recently rolled over 1000km, so I calculated how much riding I’d been doing. 1000km in 7 months, gives 1715K for the year. Because it’s wireless, you have to wake it up before a ride, and sometimes I forgot to do that, and I also did some riding on my mountain bike, with no computer. So lets make it an even 2000KM for the year. This seemed like a lot until I worked it out in other time-frames. It’s only 38K a week, or 5.4K a day. Not bad, but not great. Around the time of my birthday, I made a resolution – I will double my KM for this year. I will do 4000km between 18/2/2007 and 18/2/2008. I’ve made a slow start due to a cold and a sore wrist, but I will catch up. In theory this should be easy – I’m resolving to do more of something I love doing. 4000 a year is 77 a week. My commute to work is about 6-7K each way, so that’s 13K a day. If I do that 4 days a week, that’s 52K. An evening and/or weekend ride, and I’m done. I’ll also include a few organised rides, e.g. Spring Cycle Sydney, Sydney to the Gong. I’d also like to do NSW Big Ride, except it’s $810, which I think is excessive. I’d also like to do a metric century – 100K in one day. My bike is an Avanti Blade 8 (with a few modifications), and I love it. If you’re after a commuting/hybrid style bike, I’d consider the Avanti Blade line of bikes. Tell them Brock sent you. I have made a few changes to the blog. Changed name. The blog was called “A diabetic pregnancy”, but as Caleb is now 15 months old, that hasn’t been an accurate title for a while. I’ve renamed it “punctuated equilibrium” for a few reasons:
Enabled user registration Due to excessive amounts of comment spam, I disabled comments recently. But, as I’d like people to be able to leave comments if they want to, I wanted a better solution. Tonight I deleted 1787 spam comments, enabled user registration, and made it so that only registered users can make comments. It’s a little bit of hassle for you guys, but saves me having to wade through 1787 fake comments to get to the real ones. You can register using the link on the left-hand side of the page. If you have trouble registering, leave a comment letting me know. Upgraded WordPress WordPress is the software used to publish this blog, and I upgraded to the most recent version. Some layout may change as I play around with the new settings. Taken at Sydney Olympic Park in the pouring rain. When it started raining I almost got back in the car and came home. I changed my mind and stuck it out, and got some good photos After a storm a few days ago, the sky turned an unusual yellow colour. I’d also been talking about HDR photography recently, so I took this shot. I used 3 exposures, and merged them together. I think it looks like the end of the world as we know it. |
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