We're selling our house. Tuong has been doing lots of work already, including removing the front bush and hiring some landscapers to trim up our yard. E was shocked when she got home yesterday and saw the big bush gone. "My trees!" she exclaimed.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Stephanie's first Informational Poster: The Human Heart. Wow!
My friend Stephanie just showed me the first poster she made in a series she's planned on educational posters.
"Human Heart Poster" (by infographics).
It's great Stephanie! Keep up the awesome work!
Human Heart by infographic
Browse all the other art on zazzle
Browse all the other art on zazzle
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Zazzle donates $10k to Haiti Relief
We got to sign the huge $10k check at our company's all-hands today.
Proceeds go to "Partners in Health"
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Monday, January 25, 2010
J is working on his Mission Project
In California, fourth graders study the California Missions. I thought J would have to build a model of a mission, but among the mission project choices was "photo journal". Perfect! J and I decided he would do a blog. I set him up with a project-specific email, posterous, twitter and blog. Two weeks ago we had our "photography day" at the mission. We used EasyBatchPhoto (on the mac) to watermark and shrink all the photos to a nice bloggable size. Now J is going through the photos one by one and blogging them. It is a slow and laborious process because he can't touch type. To assist, I sit next to him with my hands on the table as though on a keyboard, and as he's typing I am pressing on the table where I would be pressing if I was typing. J looks at my hands when he can't find the letter fast enough and it zones him in on the right general area. J will make 3 posts per day until Friday, when the project is due. http://missionsantaclara.tumblr.com/
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Girl's day at the Discovery Museum
E & I dropped off T & J at a cub scout event, then went to the CDM in San Jose to hang out for the afternoon. Fun!
Mirrors forever
Watching something go up
"Planting rice" - plastic rice seedling an a nice brown foam paddy to poke them into.
Making a corn husk doll.
Traffic lights inside!
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Happy Birthday to me!
My coworkers at Zazzle got me this nice Zazzle card to remind me it's my birthday. Happy birthday to me in a couple days!
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Saturday, January 16, 2010
In the De Saisset museum, Santa Clara
There is a nice museum next to the Santa Clara Mission. J took this photo of me taking a photo of E who is sprawled out on the floor playing her DS in the California History section of the museum. Highly recommended for kids studying CA history and/or CA missions.
Bagels and smoothies for lunch
We just spent a couple hours learning about the Mission at Sabra Clara. Cramer's Bagels across the street for lunch...
Weather report: sunny side up
I hear on the news that we are supposed to be having some winter storms this week. But looking out the window and basking in the sun... just another sunny day in California.
I've been looking at winter pictures from some of you in Canada. BRRRRRrrr... I can barely remember what it's like!
Friday, January 15, 2010
Happy Birthday, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr!
I read Happy Birthday, Martin Luther King Jr. by Jean Marzollo to my daughter's class today. January 15 is Martin Luther King Jr's birthday, so we couldn't have picked a better day to read this children's biography of this great historical figure. The illustrations are etchings and very detailed. The entire class was silent as a mouse when we read this, and they all gasped in shock when they learned Martin Luther King Jr. was "shot and killed" in 1968. A drawing of Dr. King's gravestone was shown at the end, and I suggested that if any of the children were to visit Atlanta, Georgia, they might be able to see it in person. They found it hard to believe, but the teacher reassured them it is true.
Unusual food review: dried bean curd
This item remained a mystery to me for a while. It was one of those "I see lots of it in the Asian grocery store but I have no idea what to do with it" foods. Until my coworker Chris made me a stirfry one day! It turns out, dried bean curd is a delightful addition to dishes. It has a chewy texture that is pleasant and smooth, a bit rubbery even, unlike fried tofu which is spongy (unpleasant to me) or firm tofu which disintegrates quickly. Besides stir fry, it can be added to soups and casseroles. The trick is hydration. You can't just pull out a stick and expect to use it immediately. You have to nuke it in water for a couple minutes, then let it sit and soak for 20 minutes so the dried curd softens. When soft, you chop into small pieces and add to them to the final stage of whatever you are making. 1stick is enough for a family of four (you don't want to overwhelm the other main ingredients) so the pack shown is enough for several dinners. The second photo show what the bean curd looks like hydrated and chopped. Thanks Chris for this culinary tip!
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Supercharge your iPhone blogging: iGo bluetooth keyboard lets you touchtype!
If you enjoy photo-blogging from your iPhone like me, you'll find that the thing that slows you down is the one-finger typing on the iPhone screen. If you are a touch-typer on a regular keyboard, this is painful! Especially if you are an addicted blog-from-playground kinda mom like me and you want to say more than 10 words. Now you can. You need to get a bluetooth keyboard for your iPhone, like the iGo "Think Outside" keyboard I just got! (Thank you dearest hubby. You are wonderful. Happy birthday to me!)
The iGo requires the installation of the "keyboard" app on your iPhone (costs $5). Once you install that, and your iGo keyboard is unfolded and juiced up with batteries, you press "Ctrl-Fn-Fn" (control key + blue Fn key + green Fn key) and the keyboard app will "discover" your keyboard. Once it's on, you can then use the keyboard to rattle out some paragraphs of text (emails, mostly) that would take 10x longer using the iPhone touch screen.
The photos show the iGo keyboard folded up (it even has a nice little black carry-case not shown), unfolded (pretty sturdy! but it tends to be a bit "tippy" if you have it on a solid surface rather than in your lap), and in use. I had it set up on my laptop so I could go between blogging from iPhone (where the pictures are easily emailed to posterous to update the blogs), and using my laptop to view the blogs.
Cons: It's a bit awkward using the Fn keys for the numbers and special characters. The "/" slash key is in a weird place. (for a person who types HTML...) However these lessor-used keys don't typically slow you down that much, and the speed gained with the A-Z + punctuation far outweigh the annoyance of re-learning some of the other keys. If it's on a flat surface, and you press any key to the far left or right of the keyboard, it tips down (a little annoying). The tab key doesn't move you between fields when composing an email (grrrr). There might be a workaround to this that I'm unaware of, but for now I have to screen-touch to get from the "to" field to "subject" to "email body". Bit of a pain.
Pros: fast typing! Text output is 10x what you would normally do using your iPhone to blog. Small size is easily portable. I just stack it with my phone and it feels like you're carrying a small trade paperback book.
In my books this is an essential upgrade for touch-type phone bloggers.
You can buy this keyboard on Amazon for $169.00 here:
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
This is why I (almost) hate Firefox. And use Chrome instead.
I love firefox for its robust developer tools (tamper, specifically).
However, I use chrome as my day-to-day browser.
Why? It doesn't take 10 seconds to open.
Maybe it would be quicker for me if I used FF more frequently (not so many updates each time), but, it's seriously annoying.
Monday, January 11, 2010
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