Category: Weekly Review (Page 2 of 5)

CMTC23

I’m attending (and presenting at) Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference.

Presentation

My presentation was on H5P & Me (you can see it with the link).

I like where the presentation is at this point. I’ve presented this a few times with lots of changes. It is now at a point where there is enough flexibility with solid content.

AI

Well, if there was any question at all, AI is THE topic in education. I really should’ve presented on AI at this conference.

So, naturally, I attended a session on AI. It was fine. Nothing earth-shattering, but some good perspectives.

Of course, this is why AI sessions are so popular. There is more that we don’t know than we do. At least we think so. We’re really

Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. The offspring were both in the house. We had a great time.

Holiday Season

The Holiday season has kind of officially begun. That is, I decided to put up the outside lights before a full frost, frozen ground situation.

Search Creative Commons

Thanks to the wonderful Alan Levine (@cogdog), I can now type gcc in my URL bar (then hit the tab key) in Chrome to invoke a search of CC licensed images.

You can too.

https://cogdogblog.com/2021/12/forcing-google-image-search-cc/

(Please head over to Alan Levine’s site to read his write up. For me, I’m posting the actual search engine code needed.)

https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&tbm=isch&tbs=il%3Acl

AI Art

I started another AI Art session. This one is with a “challenging” class of all 8th grade boys. We’ve had a minute to come to grips with my expectations.

Bronco

The Bronco had a voluntary recall. I scheduled the service a couple of weeks ago. We arrived to drop off the Bronco on the night before. Upon arriving at the dealer to drop it off, my wife waved me over to let me know that there was still cold air coming out of the vents (we’d driven far enough for the air to have warmed up). So, I left a note on the drop-off slip about the cold air.
I got a call at the end of the day. The recall was all set, but the cold air was the issue of the water pump failing. Bad news, the water pump is on backorder and not available until the end of the month. Then, we just did one last week under an “emergency” and got the part in two days (uh oh, now it sounds like a more common issue). The timing couldn’t have been better in one respect. Apparently, the water pump led to the loss of anti-freeze. So, because of the recall, I was able to get the issue addressed without major damage.

Battery

Since the Bronco is still in the shop, a spot is open in the garage. So, out I went to move my little old Focus into the garage for a nice warm overnight stay (yea, no scrapping windows). Er, except the Focus wasn’t starting. Being old and having experience, I knew immediately that the battery needed replacement. I pulled out the Mustang and gave the Focus a jump (confirming the battery issue).

In the morning, I jumped the Focus again and headed off the fix-it shop. Upon arriving, I asked if they had time to replace a battery. (Why not replace it myself you ask? I’ve had the battery replaced once and it is tucked under the vents and crammed in.)

Winterize

I took a day to prepare for winter. The patio table has been put away. The flower pots on the deck have been relocated to the shed. Markers to line the driveway for snow removal have been put into place. Heat mats for the steps out the back door have been installed.

Kennebunkport

Every once in a while, we like to head off to somewhere we haven’t been. Kennebunkport was the choice this week.
Kennebunkport was a nice visit. We found some nice shops and a wonderful beach. Since it is after Labor Day, there were several dogs running around the beach. There was a nice coffee shop, a vinegar shop, and more.
Kennebunkport will be on our return list.

Vault

The Vault was this weekend. Since it is after Halloween, the focus was Christmas (insert eye roll here). We ended up purchasing a bi-level tray for the kitchen and a serving tray.

Kitchen

The kitchen is finally tiled. After waiting overnight for the tile to fully dry, I reinstalled the appliances:

• Dishwasher
• Stove
• Refrigerator
  D1 swung by to help me relocate and “nail” down the island. After having the island up on dollys for quite a long time, the island now seems low. I’ll get used to it, probably pretty quickly, but right now it just seems low.

I still need to clean up the cabinets and refinish at least one.

Voting

This November 7th was voting day for Maine. On the ballot were eight citizen initiatives. I made sure that I voted.

Shoeshine

Since my wonderful wife and I enjoy movies, I’ve subscribed to Delphi’s Screening Room. The latest movie available was Shoeshine (1946). This is an Italian movie with subtitles.

Snow

First bit of snow this morning. Not enough to “stick”, but counts as first snow.

Week note appears to truly be a misnomer. This is the first one in a while.

Kitchen Redo

The kitchen floor was scheduled for this coming week. Monday night I got a text asking if they could start tomorrow. Well, no. There were plans for Tuesday. However, Wednesday was cool to start.
So, Tuesday night I pulled out the fridge, the dishwasher, and the stove. They showed up on Wednesday. Since we picked a smaller tile, there was a discussion about the tile that we had chosen. The tile is a smaller brick style. This takes longer to install; there is more of it, more spacing, etc.
The job was planned as a three-day job. Wednesday was the installation of the backer board and prep (mostly backer board, as I had leveled the floor and removed everything). Thursday was installing half the tile. Friday was installing the next half, well, almost as there was one corner that is a tight fit between the cabinets and wall to finish. So, no using the kitchen over the weekend. We did go to D1’s house on Friday, with friends, pre-planned. Then, we went to D1’s house again on Saturday to make and eat dinner. Rm went to D1’s house to cook up some soup on Sunday.
Monday, tilers finished grouting the kitchen. We’ll have to wait until tomorrow (Tuesday) to clean up and start putting the kitchen back together.

Breakfast and a Show

On Saturday morning, since I couldn’t make pancakes, we went out for pancakes. We went to a local spot. We sat at the counter. The counter faces the servers and the kitchen. There was obviously a mistake made in entering another order. There was lots of discussion. A server came to get our order. More discussion between the cooks and the servers. Next, our server went into the back area and came out wearing a coat. She then walked out the door. The servers were confused and concerned. (** I truly hope that she is OK and whatever she is dealing with gets resolved.**)

Breakfast was terrific, it’s always good. I got the 2-2-2 Riverview. 2 pancakes (big as my head), 2 eggs (over easy), and 2 slices of bacon.

Screen Door

I made progress on installing the front screen door. I had to create a transom to support the door in the open position so that I could install the door hinges. I made an error in failing to account for the spacing of the hinges. This was a quick adjustment, and now the base of the door is installed. (It’s also painted, not shown.)

WordPress Auto-Generated

The kitchen floor renovation began on Wednesday and finished on Monday. Due to space constraints, one corner took longer than planned. Accustomed to at-home meals, the author visited a local restaurant for breakfast while the kitchen was unusable. They witnessed an unexpected incident involving a suddenly emotional server. Meanwhile, they made progress installing the front screen door, overcoming minor errors in hinge spacing.

What a week this was. I base that largely on one event.

Disseratation Defense

My youngest successfully defended her PhD. She is now a Dr. Her dissertation, THE EVOLUTION AND DEVELOPMENT OF AWNS IN THE GRASS SUBFAMILY POOIDEAE, allowed me to learn a bit more about what she does.

We left to visit. The night before involved a bit of last minute sewing and dinner. She was obviously very ready to defend her dissertation.

It was really wonderful to meet some of her colleagues. It was especially nice to her others describe her and her work.

She did the work. All credit goes to her. I’m just impressed and proud of the work that she has done.

Parent Night

I’ve also scheduled a Parent Tech Night for work. This will center on student use of devices, what the school does to help keep students’ safe, and what parents can do.

Karma

I posted an issue on Reddit about Darktale (menus not displaying correctly). It was deleted (pending moderator approval) as I don’t have enough Karma points.

Darktable issue was quickly solved through the Darktable forums though. And then I wrote it up.

Karma Part 2

Then there was this article on leaving teaching and going to work for Costco. Someone trying to tell me something?

In truth, the ex-techer makes more now as she has risen up to do training for corporate. The article headline is thus, a bit misleading.

Volunteer Sheet

I had to update the Volunteer Sheet. Thankfully, I had fully written up this process on this site. For some reason, I had to re-add the filter individually. Not sure why I had to do that, but everything works perfectly now.

Well, it’s been a summer. I have once again failed at keeping up on posting a weekly update. Hopefully, with the restarting of school, I can return to regular updates.

In the meantime, here is a quick overview of the summer.

Kayaking

I only got out a couple of times to kayak this year. In one trip, I watched some of the Sturgeon jumping on the Kennebec River. It is an amazing sight.

That trip was cut somewhat short as while attempting to pull Hazel back into the kayak, a nice little wave hit, and I capsized.

This led to the realization that I was not fully prepared with kayak re-entry procedures.

Bird Removal

Part 1

While dog sitting for my eldest daughter, I arrived to find a robin hanging out in the attached porch area. It took a good bit of broom work, the robin kept flying up to the ceiling fan, but the robin was eventually freed.

Part 2

A hummingbird decided to enter our mudroom. It is interesting how incredibly still they can be. Anyway, a bit of collaboration between my wife and I, and one hummingbird was returned safely to the wild.

Kitchen

Painting

The kitchen is now mostly painted (still a bit of touch up work to do). The difference is phenomenal. The kitchen looks so much better.

Floor

Tiling the floor turned into quite the project. A friend, Joe, and I ripped out the tile to see if the floor below was redeemable to be refinished. It turned out not to be a good path forward.

So, I had the kitchen measured to have someone else tile. Originally, I was going to do the tile, but there’s a story. Anyway, the measuring guy “forgot” to say that the floor really needed to be leveled. The tile company said to get a general contractor to level the floor. Now, to be fair, I’m not really looking for the floor to be level, just not quite as far off level as it currently is. For example, when we bought a cabinet that was about four feet wide, it sloped down 3/4 of inch over those four feet. Anyway, Joe and I went to work to make the floor flat and closer to level. It was quite the job, but I’m happy to report that the floor is now flat and close to level. It took five sheets of subfloor and about ten bags of leveling cement. Oh, and about 500 screws. Anyway, it looks good. Hopefully, we can get on the tile schedule soon.

Oh, redoing the floor meant a few weeks of applicances out of the kitchen. And, of course, we had to grind one section down, so dust is now present throughout the entire house.

Well, technically not a week, but a “weeks” note. I apparently fell off the posting regularly wagon once again.

AI

AI continues to dominate the thoughts and news (around education and in general). Some are saying that this will bring about as big of a change as mobile phones did. I’m not sure that I’m there yet, but I do think that there is “something” there. Currently, I’m thinking that AI will be more and more integrated into other tools. We are already seeing a good bit of that.

Mother-in-Law Visit

My Mother in law visited for a couple of weeks. In order to increase her comfort level, we’ve added a day bed to our setup. I think that she had a good time visiting a variety of places.

Continuing Redecorating

We headed off to the Vault and ended up picking up a couple of lamps. The original goal was to pick up a desk and chair that Rm had previously spied.

Rm also found a cabinet for the kitchen. That one was the result of the trip to see D2 at D1’s house. The real struggle was getting the cabinet (two pieces) into the Bronco. Ultimately, we failed. D1 came and took the top half of the cabinet.

Indictment

One of the biggest news pieces this week has been the indictment of Donald Trump (which he referred to as being “INDICATED”, in all caps of course). There were tons of people (especially politicians) coming out in defense of Trump before the charges were even revealed. Trump is, of course, using this as a fundraising opportunity – (Hey, I’m a billionaire who is really business smart, and you make minimum wage, but I need $47 from you for my defense).

Principal Fill In

Due to the Principal and Vice Principal being out, I did some duties as the Administrator. The challenge for me has been the difference in culture. The most important thing in filling in is to support the vision and culture existing in the school. Some of my expectations and requirements are very different from what is in place.

BookWyrm

I’m exploring Bookwrym as a reading tracking site.

Snow Day (s)

Friday was a snow day. We ended up with about 4 inches of snow.
Now, Monday is another snow day. The weekend was cold, but no additional snow. This will be our last traditional snow day. From here on out, we will be utilizing remote learning days.

Heatrak

I purchased some Heatrak mats for the stairs going out the back door (not cheap, but the stairs are seriously dangerous when iced). These have been a great investment. However, one of them has stopped working. (Good news, it is really obvious which one). A call to the company and a replacement is on the way.

NOLEJ

Because of the Snow Day, I finally got a chance to play around with NOLEJ a bit. NOLEJ authors materials (quizzes, flashcards,glossaries, etc) based on a resource. So, I took a YouTube video (Gettysburg: Animated Map) and let it create material. The material is created as H5P resources. I then put that into Moodle. You can check it out in the MasterMoodle course (no registration required, but you may have to click on the Login as Guest button). These are the raw files, no additional editing. Obviously, they can (and should be edited). The questions fall into basic knowledge category and some grammar needs to be corrected. This could be a way to quickly create some of the basics of a course though. The teacher would need to add higher level thinking material, questions, and learning opportunities.

Free to Use Browser Extension

I’m enjoying the Free to Use Browser Extension even more than I thought that I would. Basically, this extension displays a Public Domain image in your browser window whenever you open a new tab.

Extension sets the background of blank tabs to a photo from the Library of Congress collections that is free to use and reuse.

I just find these random pictures a source of great joy. I frequently pause for just a minute to wonder what is going on in the picture.

Books

I’ve finished “Poguemahone” by Patrick McCabe. I liked it a ton. This is really different than most of the books that I’ve been reading. It is written in free-verse focusing around the 1970’s and music. Kind of. Sort of. Largely the story of Una and her reflections.

I’m starting Frederick Backman’s Us Against You. This is a follow up to the wonderful “Beartown”. Fredrick Backman is one of my favorite authors. He has several books out. I recommend all of them that I’ve read so far.

COVID

COVID finally caught up with me. Thankfully, I’m fully vaccinated, so the disease wasn’t fatal for me. Relatively, this was a like a pretty bad head cold for me. Be safe, and take precautions.

More AI

Tami Brass has a neat write-up about AI, teaching, and middle school. It is definitely worth a read.

Christmas

We got to spend some times with the kids around Christmas. This is one of the biggest reasons that we moved to Maine. It is great to have those opportunities.

We also got to spend some time with some new good friends.

Christmas with Kennerly

We did attend “Christmas with Kennerly” at the Portland Symphony. It was a good show and help us get into the Christmas mood.

After Twitter

“The internet’s town square should never have been one specific website with its own specific rules and incentives. It should have been, and should be, the web itself.”
Brent Simmons

I’ve pretty consistently heard Twitter referred to as the digital “Town Square”. However, Town Square as a privately owned rather than a publicly available place seems to be heading in the wrong direction. Whenever one person has complete control of the Town Square, it no longer becomes the Town Square, but a Square of an individual.

This is part of the balance that should be in America. America should really be reflective of three different components: People, Business, Goverment. There should be tension amongst those three. However, far too many people believe that Business (this is often pushed in terms of “freedom”), should be the default for everything. This leads to abuse by businesses. Business is designed to make money. This is partly why the stratification of wealth is continuing to be skewed. Business has managed to bake into the American psyche that freedom, letting business do what it wants, is what makes America great.

Twitter is proving to be a place that I don’t want to be. I’m working at making sure that I control my information. This is another thing that sounds great but takes effort. Mastodon is having a moment, but there are issues with Mastodon as well. Lots of people have moved to Mastodon, many looking for it to be “Twitter”, but the experience is different.

At the end of the day, people tend to want easy. Dr. Doug Belshaw and I have had a couple of conversations about this. I still believe that people want things to be very obvious and don’t want to learn how to control things. Dr. Belshaw is more optimistic.

With people moving to Mastodon, there is talk about the “return of the web”. This refers to blogging, and really people owning their own data. I’m still not convinced. The smallest roadblocks can be experience enders for many. People need to have something clear and easy to start with.

As one example, I’ve been hearing about how Linux is going to be the big thing this year.

Linux

I heard for years about how “this year is going to be the year of Linux”. It is finally as easy to use as Windows, gives you much more power, you can do so much, …. And, yet, we still haven’t gotten to the “year of Linux”. Yes, Linux is just about everywhere. But, it is “unseen”. Linux is used as an embedded system.

People clearly don’t want the maintenance and effort that Linux requires. People seem to want things that are familiar, and “easy”.