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drorzel | December 5, 2015I feel a little bad that I'm doing two photo-of-the-day posts in a row that are just pictures of SteelyKid, but my day today was dominated by a taekwondo tournament down in Duanesburg, SteelyKid's first actual competition. And she got second place:
SteelyKid with her silver medal from today's taekwondo tournament.
This is somewhat less impressive than you might think, because she was in a division of three. She actually lost her one bout fairly badly, but did slightly better than the third girl in the field, thus getting the silver medal. But again, it was her first time competing, and on…
drorzel | December 5, 2015Both SteelyKid's elementary school and her after-school day care had "book fairs" this week. These include a bunch of display cases full of books at various reading levels, and also a couple of tables of plastic toy crap. One of the marginally less crappy plastic toys was a marker with ink that fluoresces in UV light but is otherwise inevitable, and SteelyKid kept bugging me to get one of those. I eventually caved, because it required only loaning her one dollar to supplement her allowance, and it was worth a buck to me not to have to listen to the complaints that would've ensued otherwise.…
drorzel | December 4, 2015So, yesterday was my big TEDxAlbany talk. I was the first speaker scheduled, probably because I gave them the title "The Exotic Physics of an Ordinary Morning," so it seemed appropriate to have me talking while people were still eating breakfast...
The abstract I wrote when I did the proposal mentions both quantum physics and relativity, but when I actually wrote the talk, that made for a really awkward transition, so it's all quantum, all the time. I cover quite a bit of ground-- the no-animation-effects version of the slides is 42 slides and Word has it as just over 2500 words written out…
drorzel | December 4, 2015For obvious reasons, I don't have a photo of myself speaking at TEDxAlbany, but since that was my only real activity on Thursday, I need something to document it, so here's the stage before the show got started:
The stage for TEDxAlbany.
You can see the stage and the podium a bit, but I went with this shot because it includes the funky space room in the background. The event was held at Overit in Albany, where they do some shooting of commercials and so on. The big white thing in the back of this shot is a kind of curved half-box that's used for a sort of green-screen kind of effect--…
drorzel | December 4, 2015The Internet was really flaky at Chateau Steelypips for the last couple of days, and I was kind of busy yesterday, so I've got a bit of a backlog of photo-of-the-day posts.
This is another document-my-activities post, from a day full of talk preparation. As a change of pace from just reading the text out loud in an empty room, I decided to try writing it out again from memory, at least in outline form. These three pages of illegible scribble are the result (artfully blurred in the photo so you can't see how bad my handwriting is...).
Outline of my TEDxAlbany talk, as part of the preparation…
drorzel | December 1, 2015I've been a little bad about self-promoting here of late, but I should definitely plug this: I'm speaking at the TEDxAlbany event this Thursday, December 3rd; I'm scheduled first, at 9:40 am. The title is "The Exotic Physics of an Ordinary Morning":
You might think that the bizarre predictions of quantum mechanics and relativity– particles that are also waves, cats that are both alive and dead, clocks that run at different rates depending on how you’re moving– and only come into play in physics laboratories or near black holes. In fact, though, even the strangest features of modern physics…
drorzel | November 30, 2015Not an incredibly artistic or innovative bit of photography, here, but I spent a good chunk of the day taking The Pip for his annual physical, so the only pictures I took were of SteelyKid's schoolwork:
SteelyKid's second-grade assignment to imagine and illustrate a conversation with a turkey.
This assignment asked her to draw herself asking a question that a turkey would then answer, and then the turkey asking her one in return. Her writing is more enthusiastic than accurate as far as spelling is concerned, but she has a good imagination. In case you can't make it out (spelling corrected…
drorzel | November 30, 2015We had our usual tv time on Sunday morning at my parents', with the kids alternating picking what they watched. When it came around to SteelyKid's turn, she opted for MythBusters, which wasn't available on demand, but she has several episodes on her tablet. Of course, if SteelyKid was going to watch video on her tablet, then The Pip had to watch video on his, which led to this shot:
SteelyKid and The Pip watching video on their tablets.
And also blissful, blessed quiet, a gigantic improvement over the sounds of "Paw Patrol," which was The Pip's cartoon of choice on this trip. And, well,…
drorzel | November 27, 2015So, today, we engaged in the traditional Black Friday activity of, um, going to the park and chasing birds:
SteelyKid and The Pip scaring geese with their swords at the park on the day after Thanksgiving.
It was an unbelievably warm day for late November-- if you look closely, you can see that SteelyKid is wearing shorts and a T-shirt-- so we couldn't very well sit inside. So we went across to the other side of Whitney Point Lake to Dorchester Park to let the kids run around. We hiked up the stream, played on the playground, and chased the big flocks of Canada geese into the lake.
This did…
drorzel | November 26, 2015We're at my parents' house in Scenic Whitney Point, NY, for Thanksgiving, so of course there's only one appropriate subject for the photo of the day:
Thanksgiving dinner.
That's our traditional turkey dinner, from my seat at the table. We ate very, very well, as always, and the kids have been generally very good (with a few minor squabbles). SteelyKid got bored during dinner, but I made up some math problems to entertain her, so all is well.
If you're celebrating Thanksgiving, I hope your day was full of awesome food and family and other stuff to be thankful for. If this isn't a holiday…
drorzel | November 25, 2015We're visiting my parents for Thanksgiving, and one of the highliughts of any trip to visit Grandma and Grandpa is that they have Nerf swords for the kids:
SteelyKid and The Pip in their traditional Nerf sword battle.
This raged for a good while before dinner. Hopefully, they'll sleep well tonight...
drorzel | November 23, 2015The Pip is nute about superheros at the moment, primarily the Justice League, and particularly Batman. He's got quite the pile of toys around this theme, making for a decent photo subject:
The Pip's collection of superhero toys.
Technically, these aren't all Bat-Toys-- you can see a Spiderman Lego set in there (from some alternate universe in which Peter Parker got Tony Stark to buy him a Spider-Copter) and also a few Transformers. But Batman holds down a pretty solid plurality in the toy population.
The Bat-Boat that's front and center in this shot (which ended up in the bathtub shortly…
drorzel | November 22, 2015I try not to have this be the cute-kid-photo-of-the-day, but really, how could I not use this shot:
SteelyKid and The Pip discussing the finer points of Lego superhero stickers.
The Pip was not a huge fan of the antibiotics that came with his strep-throat diagnosis, so we bought a sticker book as a bribe reward for taking his medicine. Yesterday afternoon, in one of the brief quiet periods of a busy day, SteelyKid sat down with him and they had an intense conversation about the identities and powers of the various heroes and villains represented in the sticker pages.
Which is too cute not…
drorzel | November 18, 2015the Pip officially has strep throat, and thus had to stay home today, but the antibiotics he started yesterday (over his very strenuous objections) have worked wonders, so his energy level was pretty much back to normal. Which means that we spent a while out in the back yard raking up a big pile of leaves, whereupon:
The Pip mid-leap into the leaf pile in the back yard of Chateau Steelypips.
This is a small fraction of the leaf pile we used to be able to get, before we had the big maples that used to be on the south side of the yard taken out. It's not even everything we can get now, as…
drorzel | November 16, 2015So, a funny story about this. I posted a snippet of a fantasy story back in August, and enough people said nice things about it that I actually got off my ass and did some playing around to format the full story as an epub. This was, of course, complicated by the fact that computers are awful, but I think I finally got a version that doesn't have gibberish characters all over. At least, as long as you're not using the worthless free epub reader I initially downloaded, which makes a hash of even actual purchased professional ebook files.
I was all set to post that-- had the post all typed in,…
drorzel | November 14, 2015This is a pure document-my-day shot, not one of my random attempts at artsy effects. One of The Pip's birthday presents was a big vinyl wall decal from Chic Walls, a gift from Aunt Erin in California. These are a little complicated to install, and SteelyKid being sick messed up the whole week, but I finally got around to putting it up Friday:
The Pip's new Gotham City wall decal.
So, our superhero-crazy Little Dude now has Gotham City on his wall. He's all fired up about this.
And that's it from Friday; I'm still fighting a cold of my own, so between this and some video shooting for a…
drorzel | November 12, 2015Another day with a staged-for-talk-prep photo:
My desk, with social media on both computers.
I needed a picture of social-media apps on computer screens for an upcoming talk, so I took one. After first tweeting a cute-kid photo:
Cute-kid photo because I want to take a picture of Twitter to use in a talk. pic.twitter.com/QIYHTda0vL
— Chad Orzel (@orzelc) November 12, 2015
Yeah, it's shameless. But look at them, they're adorable! And the reminder of their adorableness was really needed today, because it's been an incredibly frustrating week, kid-wise.
I should note that I do not actually…
drorzel | November 10, 2015Another delayed photo-of-the-day, because SteelyKid was sent home with strep throat yesterday. She complained that her throat hurt any time we asked her to eat anything other than ice cream, but other than that was basically unaffected. Which is sort of the most irritating sick-kid scenario possible, because if she were actually sick and listless, I could just put the tv on and let her doze on the couch while I worked. But instead, she was up and playing more or less as usual, skipping over to my computer regularly to interrupt me.
We had some fun-- watched Shaolin Soccer on DVD, and some of…
drorzel | November 8, 2015The day was dominated by the previously mentioned birthday party for The Pip, so it only makes sense to have the photo of the day be an action shot from said party:
The Pip shaking a parachute with balls on it at his birthday party.
This is from the games portion of the party, which included shaking a parachute loaded up with plastic balls so they flew all over the place. Which is the sort of thing that plays very well with the four-year-old crowd.
And now, having celebrated in style and substantially increased the supply of superhero-themed toys in Chateau Steelypips, it's time for bed.
drorzel | November 8, 2015The Pip's birthday was yesterday, but we're having his birthday party today, because that's when the indoor playground was available. He had two requests for his birthday: that we have a party at Tumbling Tykes, and that one friend in particular be invited. So, well, we're having his party at Tumbling Tykes, and his buddy D. will be there. along with 9-10 other friends from day care.
This post is mostly an excuse to post this graphic of the invitation, because I'm proud of my rudimentary design skillz:
The Pip's having a birthday party.
And also to say that this is about all you're getting…