Category: Alex

One Thousand Times the Wonders

Alex / / Alex, Mago Elf Liam

Me: Your world has a thousand times more wonders and distractions than mine did.
Mago: Because you didn’t have the internet.
Me: I didn’t have internet games, or games on phones, or really advanced consoles for games like the Wii. But I did have computers I played games on, and the Nintendo.

[I wish I had said: “We played Angry Birds through the snow uphill to and from school. And we liked it.”]

Mago: What computers?
Me: I had the Commodore 64.
Mago: What’s the Commodore 64?
Me: (face of dissapointment) That old computer I’ve shown you. With the giant keyboard.
Mago: Oh. What’ju play on it?
Me: A lot of things. That game “HARD HAT MACK” I’ve shown you, and a game called “ZORK” where it’s like you talk to the book–
Mago: Oh, and that game where you’re a mouse in a maze.
Me: “RADAR RAT RACE.” Right.
Mago: Wait. What’s “BLACK HAT SMASH?”
Me: Huh?…I think you mean “HARD HAT MACK?”

Where teh tooth is?

Alex / / Alex, Mago Elf Liam

After pulling Mago’s tooth out, I floss him for bed time. I look in his mouth and make a puzzled face. He sees this, and starts to be amused.

“Wait a minute”, I say.

He starts to giggle.

“Wait five minutes! Something is different!…”

He’s giggles more.

“Wait an HOUR!”

He laughs a lot.

Over the next few days he says to me at random times: “Wait an HOUR!” – and laughs.

Final NASA shuttle flight ~4 AM MST 2011-06-03

Alex / / Alex, Mago Elf Liam, Media, Nem Nem Niamh, Tia, Video

Last Friday we woke the kids up early and drove to a view down the street to watch the final space shuttle flight, which we learned would be visible over the west-northwest horizon.  It was, and I videotaped it.  This video features this and the kids, as well as repeated misuse of the term “rocket” where “shuttle” was meant.  The video player isn’t displaying high-definition popups at full resolution (a longstanding problem I’ve found no solution for, and no acceptable alternative player either), so downloading and playing it from the link will have to do.  Sorry, no medium-resolution version of this.

Trampoline Static (voice recording with Mago)

Alex / / Alex, Audio, Mago Elf Liam

I think I recorded this last summer.

Jumping on the trampoline, we discovered that if you have a static charge and slowly approach another’s nose with your finger (provided you’re in a dry climate like Utah?), that you’ll hear invisible static bursts jumping rapidly from you to the other person while your finger is still relatively far away – the bursts rapidly increasing until you get close enough to discharge all the static electricity.

The crummy little 16 Mhz recorder I was using doesn’t capture the whole range of the audio, but if you listen closely in this you can hear these increasing static micro-bursts at the lower sound wavelengths it could capture.

[audio:http://home.ussins.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/002_B_001_RAH_SP.wav-Mago-trampoline-static.mp3]

Download MP3 (1.4MB, 1.5 min.) – 002_B_001_RAH_SP.wav-Mago-trampoline-static

What sweeter fruit than this?

Alex / / Alex, Mago Elf Liam, Nem Nem Niamh, Songs

Reading in bed, I heard Nem-Nem and Mago in the kitchen arguing over apple slices.  After a while Nem came in and sat on the bed.

Dad, Mago didn’t let me have all the apples.

What happened?

Mago wasn’t sharing, and I wasn’t sharing.

How many apples are there?

Three.

What can you do?

She pauses, then says unhappily:

Share.

How?

I have three apples, and Mago have one.

Nem fills her mouth with an apple slice and starts chewing.  I ask:

But how does that work?

I hold up three fingers.

If there are three apples, and you have three apples,

– I put back down the three fingers

– there aren’t any left for Mago. What can you do next time?

After a long pause, then frowning, Nem says:

Mago have three apples, and I have one.

I hope there would be enough for you both.  But what can you do now?

After another long pause she says:

Hugs.  Kisses.

I have tasted the fruit of a tree which is sweeter above all.

The tree of life my soul hath seen
Laden with fruit and always green
The fruits of nature fruitless be
Compared with Christ the Appletree

This beauty doth all things excel
By faith I know but ne’er can tell
The glory which I now can see
In Jesus Christ the apple tree

For happiness I long have sought
And pleasure dearly have I bought
I missed of all but now I see
‘Tis found in Christ the Appletree

I’m weary’d with my former toil
Here I will sit and rest awhile
Under the shadow I will be
Of Jesus Christ the Appletree

This fruit doth make my soul to thrive
It keeps my dying faith alive
Which makes my soul in haste to be
With Jesus Christ the Appletree

FOUND: Divine Intervention

Alex / / Alex, Religion

Maybe two months ago, I accidentally deleted the boot sector (partition table) of my computer’s hard drive in the process of installing a new drive. What this means is that all of our data, though still intact, was impossible to access. Billions of bytes and many years of personal correspondence, photographs, creative artworks finished or in development (by me and by Tia).

I always keep two backups on separate physical media (a minimum best practice!), but in the process (it’s involved) I had destroyed access to both backups as well.

Ordinarily, various free or commercial tools can rediscover or rebuild a boot sector. But there were two difficult technical catches here: 1) The data was on a striped RAID array; one piece of data is on a first drive, the other piece of data is on a second drive; this array was also destroyed and would need to be rebuilt. 2) The data was in a truecrypt partition split over these drives. Truecrypt partitions are designed to be inaccessible without the “keys”, which were now either difficult to find or destroyed.

(Even the FBI cannot crack, and in some cases cannot prove the existence of, a well-made truecrypt container.)

I managed to non-destructively reassemble the RAID array, and after carefully making a sector-for-sector backup of the array, I scanned the backup. I found the operating system (Windows) and programs etc. partition quickly enough. I didn’t at first find anything indicating the truecrypt partition with our valuable data.

I tried many careful recovery techniques that “should” have worked, but increasingly, it seemed maybe impossible.

Now something else. A few weeks ago we vacated to the Northeast for my brother’s wedding (Yay!) After arriving home I soon realized my cell phone was nowhere. Tia called airlines, we scoured the house – nowhere.

This phone has pictures and videos of my kids on it that I never copied to my computer before losing it. This morning I realized this and pointed this out to God, who of course doesn’t need this pointed out to Him, but He is entirely about infinitely filling the universe with endless, countless babies. Children play on His feelings.

Dear God, if it is your will, return my cell phone to me. It has important pictures and videos of my kids on it.

Not one minute after uttering the prayer, I thought of and checked the obvious place (too obvious, embarrassingly obvious) and found my phone.

Hmm, I said to myself. That bait worked pretty well.

Guess where I tried this bait next?

This same day I got our data back. All of it, completely intact.

(I know that many ask the same and see no result. God restores everything good, only it happens on His time – which may mean the next life.  Or this life – case in point.  I thank Him for this!)

Next is a much more conservative data backup regime, and copying those pictures and videos of my kids..

From the Mouth of Babes

Alex / / Alex, Mago Elf Liam, Nem Nem Niamh

Me: Well, you guys did it!
Mago: Did what?
Me: You made a long, hard hike and saw a beautiful, rare arch.
Mago: Rare?
Me: It’s the only one like it in the world.* And I think God made it beautiful, so that we could see it.
Nem: Yeah, Heavenly Father and Jesus are beautiful, because they make everything beautiful.

*This is a safe generalization, as it may technically be true, but is probably generally false.

Princess shoes, Bakugan search

Alex / / Alex, Mago Elf Liam, Nem Nem Niamh

Recently, Nem-nem was very delighted to have me take her shoe shopping when I thought (mistakenly, I now learn) we were looking at all of her shoes and she didn’t have the shoes she needs. (But she’s outgrowing what she has quickly.)

At the store, she lit up, running from shoe to shoe, saying “Oh, look at this one!” – and settled with assorted “princess” (deliberately so branded) shoes.

On the way, Mago spotted a Bakugan he came to want, and was disappointed I wasn’t buying it.

He’s kept it in mind since, and decided today that he wanted to go buy it with money he earned. But the day grew too late with other activities before we could get to the store. I told him maybe I could go buy it with his money after bed time. The problem is.. while he clearly remembers the specific one among many, I’m not sure I do.

So, as we headed in to the house for bed time, I asked him to remind me what the Bakugan looks like. He says:

“I can’t actually demonstrate to you what it looks like. Unless I show you on paper”.

Mago couldn’t draw the Bakugan, so we tried a web search and found it. Says he, looking at a product search result for the Bakugan:

“According to someone, it’s four stars. According to me, it’s thirty-eight stars.”

Rocket 8A3 (SketchUp model)

Alex / / Alex, Art, Mago Elf Liam

I’ve been playing with Google Sketchup.  I suggested to Mago he could draw a rocket and I could model it.  He drew out a complete kind of Art Deco design in 20 seconds flat (the entire concept apparently arrived for him in an instant, and watching him describe it with his hands, it seems like he could sculpt the thing with sufficient materials and help).  I tweaked and added to the design in 3D with his approvals along the way (though it came to a point where I understood his design in ways I hadn’t before, and I’m going to redo a version closer to his design).  The below links to an animation of various angles of it:

http://www.youtube.com/user/narfnarfsillywilly#p/a/u/0/H1vJPMs45Sw

As you may have noticed, this is replete with a ridiculously insecure steel tube chair and jumbo Atari 2600 controller to steer the rocket.  The chair, controller and afterburner fire are all taken from models in the Google 3D Warehouse.

You can download the SketchUp file here to have a closer look. To see the different angles in SketchUp, click the tabs with scene names above the display area.