App Development Time

I am working on new apps for my iPod and open to suggestions. Sadly I do not know any coding stuff so I am a bit light on the details of how to make these things actually work, but the idea is the main thing, right? right?

Virtual Cuppa - this app gets you through rainy days, boredom, slight illness, or anything else that cries out for comfort. You pour a mug of water, hold the mobile device over it, and type in what sort of tea you want and if you want any sweeteners. The app even heats it. There will definitely be a beta version for hot chocolate (gotta figure out how to whip the cream) and probably some coffee lover will insist on yet another similar app.

Not Today - allows you to hit the button and bump a crisis into the future. Bad day for the washing machine to flood the basement? Just access Not Today and it will be moved forward. (One guess what may have happened here today) I am pretty sure you will not be allowed to bump a particular crisis more than once, so use it carefully.

TruPaint - I have been thinking about the need for this one from way back in Commodore 64 days. This app Truly Paints your walls, furniture, car, whatever, just as quickly and smoothly as a paint program fills in areas on the screen - no drips, no spills, no missed spots, no brush strokes or gnats stuck in the paint. Just take a photo of what needs to be painted, highlight the area to color, and click on the desired shade. Voila - your item is immediately and perfectly painted, in just one coat! Did I mention it dries instantly to the exact hue you chose, no matter what the lighting is?

Math Meld - This app is pricey, sorry about that, but I call it a bargain. It allows the homeschooling Mom to simply wirelessly convey math skills to the somewhat frustrated child by accessing the app and placing her hands on the child's head, Spock style, assuring success in everything from decimals to factoring pesky trinomials to basic differentiation. 

ReDo - This is the biggest idea yet. It quite simply moves you back five seconds so you get a second chance to not touch that live wire, drop the casserole, or say the smart aleck remark. 

got more ideas? I'm sure I'll be adding more as soon as I figure out the details so the apps work.  :) 

Conquering X

Today on Scripture typer I finished off Romans 8 with verses 31-39. When I work on a passage I have a variety of thoughts go through my head, some of which certainly lack that certain spiritual je ne sais quoi.

Today I started thinking what the Homeschooling Mom's version of parts of this would look like, something like:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall standardized tests, or book fairs, or socialization, or clutter, or algebra, or writing, or noise?

Anyhow. They won't and that is good news.

But then following that encouraging part comes the part that does not seem to me to belong, according to my frail logic. Here we have this wonderful list of things that will NOT separate us from the love of Christ, and just when I would like to hear something warm and cuddly instead we get a nasty quote, something that might happen to hapless critters like hobbits:

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;

we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

And yet we are reassured that we are still more than conquerors. I do not often picture sheep as the conquering type. It is great that even silly sheep have One who makes them more than conquerors.

Even when algebra is whipping your students. :-P

Lions and Tigers and OH NO! THE DISTRIBUTIVE PRINCIPLE!

Maybe this will date me, but my Mum has always talked about   what happens when "an irresistible force meeting an immovable object."* I do not think people talk about that much anymore. That may be due to the whole postmodernism thing, though Miss Language assures me postmodernism is not a simple to grasp as I think - still, it does seem to have a level of uncertainty, perhaps not compatible with absolutes such as irresistibility or immovability, and so, maybe irresistible forces or immovable objects have mainly ceased to exist. 

But there remains at least one of each, currently residing under our roof. Mr Music is an irresistible force (ask anyone whose had to bat against his pitching), and, once again this year, he has impacted the immovable object of Distribution of Multiplication Over Addition in his math text. And it results in some sort of endless transfer of energy.

* be sure to check the fun link. The pizza reply is especially insightful.

Today's Theory

{Insert sarcasm font/} 
After almost a decade of schooling Mr Music, I have finally figured it out. The only logical explanation is that he has some sort of force field which drastically increases the coefficient of friction between his pencil point and the paper, thus slowing down its progress across the page. Yeah, that must be it. 
{/sarcasm font off}

How to Have Hope plus a Bonus Observation about Boys

This summer I've become a big fan of Scripture Typer, an online site that lets you work against your own best time to memorize passages. A recurring theme in my life for awhile now has been taking hope. I recently memorized this verse which strikes me with its counterintuitivity every time I read it:


Romans 15:4 For everything that was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.


It is counterintuitive to me because of the part I bolded: through endurance... we might have hope. What? Really? I thought it was the other way round, and I keep thinking so ~ in the Carpe Version the text reads through hope you might endure. But no, God says, we endure and somehow that gives hope. That is good news, it means that when I think I cannot possibly deal with a situation any more (such as teaching fractions :-P ) I need to preach to myself that by continuing to teach fractions I am building - not crushing - hope. 


~~~


Bonus observation:


Boys are like this. Mr Music complained the other day that since we moved, his socks have not been as clean AND that the new washing machine turns them inside-out. Hmmmm. I pointed out that at the same time we moved, laundry was reassigned from my to-do list to Miss Dance's and perhaps she is not taking the step of turning his socks right-side out. Hmmmm. Mr Music seems to think his understanding of the situation is more reasonable. 


I am glad I do not have to depend on his logic to have hope.

How Would You Like to Floss This?

Homeschooling continuously teaches me that my children pick up my strengths and weaknesses and oh so often magnify them.


I have had an interest in whales and all things whale related since I was about 8. So my children tend to hear random bits of whale trivia from time to time. And when this trivia blends with the flotsam and jetsam in their minds, you never know what will surface.


So. In geometry the other day, Mr Music had to classify triangles as obtuse, acute, or right. And then he had to classify them as scalene, isosceles, or equilateral. And Mr Music also studies Latin, so word derivations float around on the surface of his brain at all times. 


So. I was unsurprised when he looked blankly at the page for a moment or two and then said. "Sorry. The 'scalene' confused me for a minute. I got to wondering if /scalene/ is related to /baleen/ and then thinking about maybe it was more like the /scales/ of fish."

And then, of course, as all good homeschoolers know, we had to have a brief discourse on how baleen works, anyhow, and what things it was used for. I have always felt they must have been able to produce a great many corset stays from one whale's baleen. And then, Mr Music classified the triangles. But I only credited the worksheet in the "math" part of his daily log, not also under "history," "languages," and "science."

Eggs

Some things work the same way InRealLife and in schoolbooks and some things don't. Though, to be honest, at the moment, I cannot think of anything that does work the same way.


Anyhow. The thing that has been bugging me lately is eggs. Mr Music is at one of those fast growth periods where he eats and eats, especially protein. So I have become a big fan of The Egg. 


And the thing that stands out to me about eggs is the way they are sold by dozens (is this the case all around the world? It does seem rather arbitrary). In math books a dozen also works out to be such a handy number when you do fractions - it can easily divide in halves, thirds, fourths, or sixths. Then WHY IS IT that I never seem to exactly finish a carton of eggs? No matter how many Mr Music wants to eat at a pop, or no matter how many my recipe calls for, I always seem to have ONE left in the carton or need ONE from the next carton. In Other Words, despite the superior divisibility of 12... it just doesn't work for me.  :-P