I am setting the table for breakfast. I announce loudly "Breakfast is ready".
Vian sits down at the table and notices that I had left two forks next to his plate of cantaloupe slices.
Vian: Who put two forks?
Me: Oh, I didn't realize I left two forks. My mistake.
Vian: No, it's ok.
Then proceeds to use both his forks to pick up two slices of cantaloupes and starts shoving them in his mouth. I was reminded of the poignant quote "There are no mistakes, only opportunities".
]]>The kids are having Pizza. One of the pizza slices had a trapped air bubble and looked engorged.
Yoshi: Looks like there is a crater in your pizza. (from her angle she could only see the gaping hole).
Sempi: (from his side he can only see the bulge) No it is the opposite of a crater. It is a meteor.
TIL the opposite of a crater is a meteor.
]]>We are at the breakfast table. Vian is having cereal and I am having hard boiled eggs for breakfast. I offered one of my eggs to Vian.
Vian: I don't like the yolk.
Me: I can take it out for you.
Vian: Yeah, if you can take out the yolk, I will eat just the skin.
Vian's last day of graduation was yesterday. It was a heartwarming ceremony where the teacher recognized each kid with a certificate for a certain quality and had the kids announce what they want to be when they grew up.
Vian was recognized as a problem solver. He then stood up and announced, I want to be a dad when I grow up.
Needless to say I was floored by this announcement. I was walking around with a big grin. It was the happiest day of my life (so far).
]]>Yoshi is having a serious conversation with the kids.
Vian is jumping around being playful and generally not paying any attention to Yoshi.
Yoshi: Vian did you hear what I just said.
Vian: Yeah!
Yoshi: Can you tell me what you heard?
Vian: I don't know.
Yoshi: But you said you were paying attention.
Vian: I'm just really good at forgetting.
]]>We're at a restaurant waiting for our food. My 9yo is discussing large numbers.
Sempi: Did you know that googol is 1 followed by 100 zeroes?
Me: Yeah.
Sempi: And googolplex means 1 raised to the power of googol.
Me: Technically it is 10 to the power of googol because 1 to the power of anything is just 1.
Sempi: Ok. (whatever).
Me: Also Google is named after googol.
Sempi: I know.
Me: Google's first office was called Googleplex, named after googolplex.
Sempi: Oooh. Cool!
Vian (6yo): Is that the biggest number in the universe.
Yoshi: I read that there aren't googolplex number of atoms in the universe.
Me: Well technically there is a number that is so unimaginably large. It is called Graham's Number.
Sempi and Vian: Oh. How many zeros does it have? 1000?
Me: No it is so big that you can't even imagine it. (I try reading the wikipedia entry without success)
Me: I can't quite explain it very well because I don't fully understand it myself.
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Next day I'm walking Vian to school. We're doing imaginative "talk play". Vian is describing a generator in Minecraft that can produce something infinitely.
Vian: It just keeps generating it forever. Actually that's not true, it only goes up to that number that you couldn't explain.
Me: Graham's number?
Vian: Yeah, that.
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I'm so proud that Graham's number is a casual quantity in our household now.
]]>Vian (5yo) is curious as ever. He asked me how old I am.
Me: I am 40.
Vian: You know 40 is not that old for an adult.
Me: Really? How come?
Vian: I can count to 40 really fast and it doesn't even take that long.
He then proceeds to demonstrate how quickly he can count from 1 to 40.
]]>Yoshi is making hot cocoa for everyone after our snow play day.
Me: I think I'm going to drink all the hot chocolate that Amma is making.
Vian (5yo): If you drink my hot chocolate, I'm going to punch you 5 million times in your face.
Me: You can't even count that high, Vian.
Vian: Ok then I'm going to punch you one hundred times.
I don't know how to play Minecraft. Vian (5yo) decided he's going to educate me. We're now playing real-world Minecraft in the front yard without a computer. He's narrating various aspects of the game as he's walking around the front yard. A leather armor, iron ingot, wooden pickax, bedrock and so on.
Then he delivers this pearl of wisdom.
Vian: Here's a good tip. When you're in the game don't mess with me. I'm invincible and I can fly.
Then proceeds to extol the virtues of bedrock and diamond pickax.
]]>The kids like to scare me by trying to jump out from under the covers and yell "BOO!". I like to pretend that I'm scared of their tactics. The other day I decided to return the favor by suddenly entering their room and yelling "BOO!". I managed to scare Vian and he started giggling in fear and shrunk back under his comforter.
Me: Hey Vian, looks like I scared the bejeezus out of you.
Vian: No! No! I'm not scared. I don't even have any bejeezus, so you didn't really scare any bejeezus.
]]>Vian is back from school, wearing a button up shirt and slacks.
Me: Vian, you look dapper today.
Vian: Yeah. Today was picture day.
Me: Oh yeah. Did you guys go out and take a picture?
Vian: No. It was just someone else taking the picture. I didn't take the picture.
Talking to my kids is the best way for me to realize how imprecise my communication is.
]]>Me: Whoa! It's very late, we should have started getting ready for bed 20 mins ago.
Sempi: 20 minutes isn't that much. If you think about it, it is only 4 time 5 minutes.
Sempi: And if you think about it, 5 minutes is just 5 times 1 minute.
Sempi: And if you really think about it, 1 minute isn't that long.
That's the spirit. I should remind him of this conversation when he starts doing planks.
]]>Sempi gets very creative when he's building Lego structures. So I asked him about it.
Me: How did you get so good at building these lego creations, Sempi?
Sempi: I don't know, I just like building things.
Me: Would you say that I should just keep building things and I'll get better over time?
Sempi: It is easy to create something for yourself. You know what you want and you can make a place for a boat or an airplane in your creations. It comes easily when you know what you want.
This sounded vaguely familiar and then I realized this is a paraphrasing of one of Paul Graham's advice about startups.
Build something you yourself want.
Tonight we read Calvin and Hobbes for bedtime. After I read the comic strip above, I tried to explain a little about Michelangelo.
Me: Remember, Michelangelo, we saw the statues he made when we went to Italy?
Sempi: Yeah.
Me: He's a great sculptor. Do you guys remember the David statue?
Vian: I know who Michelangelo is, he's a TURTLE!
o_O
]]>Vian was playing with his stuffed animals.
Vian: Watch my deer. It can do a somersault backwards.
Sempi: (thinks for a bit, turns to me)... if you call a flip a somersault, do you call a backward flip a wintersugar?
Me: What a terribly missed opportunity. They just call it a reverse somersault, those unimaginative linguists.
We are having dinner. Sempi is eating enthusiastically and suddenly cried out, "AAARGH!".
Me: What happened?
Sempi: I accidentally bit my tongue while chewing.
Me: I'm sorry Sempi, that must be quite painful.
Vian who is listening to all this plays around with the food in his mouth and suddenly declares:
Vian: You can actually bite your tongue anytime you want, not just on accident.
Me: That's.... that's not a feature Vian, it's a bug.
I'm reading a bedtime story to the kids. There's a picture of a Pterosaur in one of the pages.
Vian: That is not even a dinosaur.
I am quite proud that he know that Pterosaurs are not Dinosaurs.
Me: Oh, what are they?
Vian: They're just grown-up chickens in the sky.
Sempi: Argh! They're called Pterosaur, Vian. Ugh!
Vian likes taunting his brother, so he repeats his flying chicken theory one more time for good measure.
I like giving and receiving kisses from Vian (my 4yo son). Recently, Vian complained that my beard was prickly. Obviously, I'm now clean shaven (no more goatee).
On the nights I put him down for bedtime, he usually gets quite sleepy while I lay down with him. Occasionally he would run his hands on my cheeks and say "Amma?" (mom). That's gotta be the highest praise for shaving.
Today during lunch, he is sitting in my lap and munching on his pasta. He casually looks up and remarks,
"Your beard is getting bigger and your nose beard is getting big too".
Time to trim my nose hair.
]]>Vian (4yo) and Yoshi are snuggled up in the office couch with a cozy blanket around them, playing a game on iPad. Vian turns to me and says,
Vian: Appa, can you get me something to eat?
Me: Come with me, let's find something for you.
Vian: But I'm too comfy. You get me something.
Me: Ok, but you have to eat whatever I get.
Vian: Nevvvermind....
]]>Vian (4yo) runs into my home office and threatens to slice me. He strikes a pose with a hand on his hip, legs wide apart and a foam sword in one hand.
I turn on my music which plays an upbeat song on the speakers. His tiny legs start moving to the melody and pretty soon he's shaking his hip and bobbing his head.
The kid can't control himself when it comes to music. I've taught him well.
]]>Both kids insisted that they want to get ready for bed last.
I told Vian (4yo) in secret that we're going to trick Sempi (8yo). He should floss and brush but not do MiPaste (a Fluoride paste). Then after I get Sempi ready we can do MiPaste, Vian would be the last to get ready.
Vian bought into the idea and he brushed first with a mischievous glee. The plan worked like a charm, Sempi was happy that he was brushing after Vian and Vian was happy that he didn't do his MiPaste until after Sempi brushed, thus he was the last to get ready for bed.
I emerged the victor.
]]>When Sempi and I go on walks, we occasionally discuss something we both find interesting.
Today during our walk today, I told Sempi memory is a tricky thing. If we have to remember a sequence of numbers some of them are really easy but others are hard.
For example, we can easily remember 1,2,3,4,5,6,7. We can also remember 7,6,5,4,3,2,1 but it is quite hard for us to remember a random sequence like 3,4,2,5,1,7,6. For a computer remembering 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 takes the same effort as remember a random sequence like 3,4,2,5,1,7,6.
His response was, if you write down the numbers on a paper, you won't have to remember them at all. That's what the computers do. They write them down in a file so they can retrieve it later. That's why it is the same effort for them to remember a random sequence as well as a regular sequence.
I thought that was a pretty clever analogy.
]]>Sempi declared that he found a word that rhymes with Orange, the color Orange. He thought they had different spelling, after I corrected him the following conversation ensued.
Me: The color orange and the fruit orange have the same spelling. The meaning differs based on the context. For example, when you say my car is orange it means the car's color is orange, it doesn't mean the car is a fruit.
Sempi: Oooh! You can say that my car is related to orange, because a car can be a lemon.
I am kind of a celebrity at home for making really bad dad jokes.
Me: What does Darth Vader have for breakfast?
Kids: Um. What?
Me: Dark Toast!
---
Sempi (7yo) decided that he's going to try his hand.
Sempi: Why does Darth Baker make cookies in space?
Me: Um. Why?
Sempi: Because they go well with the Milky Way.
I'm impressed by his ability to make up a joke on the spot.
]]>I'm trying to work at home and Vian (4yo) is playing in the office next to me. He requests me to play with him. I took a break and told him that I'd draw with him. He insisted that I should play legos. So we made a compromise that we would draw then play legos.
After what seemed like a good amount of drawing vehicles for a while, I told him that it is time for me to get back to work.
Vian: But you said you would play with me.
Me: Oh yeah I forgot.
Vian: Remember, you said we would draw and then play legos?
Me: Yes, I remember now. You should be a lawyer when you grow up Vian.
Vian: Nah. I'm going to be batman when I grow up.
As long as he has realistic goals, I'm cool with that.
I'm playing with Vian and Sempi. Vian comes at me swinging a plastic sword. I stop it with my hand and hold onto it, to prevent further assault.
Vian: Appa is the strongest in the family.
Sempi: No, Amma is the strongest.
Vian: But Appa is bigger.
Sempi: He is bigger but Amma has more muscles. So she's stronger.
I've got nothing to say, that's just the truth.
I had the pleasure of attending !!con west last weekend. I met a lot of incredible people and listened to talks that rekindled my joy in programming.
I took out my trusty Stabilo point 88 and started taking notes. The person sitting next to me complimented my choice of pen. I got very excited that someone recognized the pen and shared my interest in stationery. She then proceeded to show me her stationery collection from Japan (tiny scissors, a permanent marker, multicolor highlighter, and a twist top eraser). It was awesome! There is an indescribable joy in finding out that someone else shares your weird and quirky interests.
I got caught up with Thomas (author of Curtsies and a fellow lover of awesome CLIs). He gave me a demo of ObservableHQ which was very cool.
I met Aaron Wood who gave an engaging and entertaining talk about ancient Greek mathematics. I had a strange feeling that I knew him from somewhere else. Turns out he went to the University of Utah (my alma mater) and we both worked as math tutors in the same department nearly 13 years ago. What a small world.
There were a ton of interesting talks at the conference. Here's a synopsis of the ones I remember.
Wolf, Goat, and Cabbage In Two Styles!!
A brief showcase of two very different languages (!?) to solve the logic puzzle of transporting a Wolf, Goat, and Cabbage across a river.
The Ancient Greeks And Their Restless Cattle
A wonderfully hilarious talk about mathematics during the era of Archimedes and how it was solved with modern techniques before and after computers. Aaron did a great job of explaining the math behind Pell's equation and walked us through the history of various attempts at a solution and finally showed an implementation of the solution in Ruby. I would highly recommend this talk.
Plotty Bird - Making Modern Games on Retro Pen Plotters!
Pen plotters are old school printers that literally used a robotic hand to draw diagrams on paper. Wesley managed to purchase one of them and hacked it to enough to start printing delightful things. They then proceeded to implement flappy bird that could be played by the pen plotter. They had brought with them a real pen plotter for us to play with and it was quite a bit of fun. There was one statement that Wesley made during the talk that resonated with me. We used to do programming because it was fun and pointless. Now that I'm paid to write programs it doesn't seem fun anymore. We should go back to doing more programming for pointless fun.
Packages, but in 3D!
I had no idea that packaging for snacks is an art. There are books written about how to fold paper/cardboard to make a specific style of packaging. Tiffany wanted to try out some of the designs from these books. So she built an image to svg converter which then feeds the SVG to a packaging cutter (sort of like a laser cutter) to try out some of the packaging designs from the book. It is now a standalone program on the web.
All in all, I had a wonderful time at the conference and I can't wait for the next one. :)
Vian (3yo) is in the bathtub and I'm trying to get him to come out. Sempi (7yo) is already out and changing his clothes. I am losing my patience with Vian and he is losing his patience with this toy that he's trying balance on the rim of the bathtub.
After pleading with him for a while, I lost my patience and stormed out and turned off one of the lights in the bathroom. Although this didn't plunge the bathroom in darkness, this did darken the room just enough to cause Vian to yell and scream. Suddenly who comes running but Sempi. He asked in a compassionate tone "Vian are you ok? Is there anything I can do to help you?".
Clearly ashamed by my actions, I went back to the bathroom and got Vian out of the bathtub. I told Sempi that I'm proud of his actions and I wish I could learn from him. Sempi said in a serious voice, I could teach you. Here's his teaching:
Sometimes when things don't go according to your plan, you'll be tempted to do something bad to hurt the other person. But the way to control that is to remember that you should always treat others how you want to be treated.
He said the best way to practice this is to go to someplace new that I've never been to. In a new place, things won't go exactly as planned and I'll find myself often frustrated or angry. That's when I could practice being nice and not mean to everyone. He offered to go with me, so he can be there to support me.
I am speechless. My son is awesome!
One of my favorite items is sourdough toast with butter. This morning I decided to spread some jam on the toast as a treat. Vian enjoyed it quite a bit and came back for a second helping.
Vian: Appa can you make me a loaf of jam?
Me: You mean a slice, not a loaf.
Vian: Oh, can I have a slice of jam?
Me: Yes! Btw, it's a slice of bread with jam.
Vian: Ok. (licking his finger distractedly).
Imagine a chubby 3 yr old with stubby legs and a cute smile. That's Vian. Vian can be a charming little kid when he chooses.
This morning I was helping him use the restroom. After he washed his hands I offered him a towel to dry himself. He refused the offer and decides to wipe his hands on his shirt. I told him with a hint of frustration that he should use a towel and not wipe his hands on his shirt. He turns around, looks me in the eye and says:
"No I won't, you fuzzy little mammal" and walks away while I stand there dumbfounded.
I'm lucky to say that I was present when a new insult was birthed into this world.
