Tilting at windmills for a better tomorrow.
Over the past year, Miles has been building a city of Legos along one entire wall of his bedroom. It changes every day – tearing things down and rebuilding them, rearranging them… this is how it looks today, but it was different yesterday and will be different tomorrow.
Lego City from Scot Hacker on Vimeo.
Had so much fun playing Mad Libs as a child , diving headlong into surrealism and humor while learning the parts of speech. Thrilled to see Miles getting into Mad Libs now – we’re having a gas learning to tell our adverbs from our plural nouns. Loved the Nixon and other old-school political references in this one he completed today:
Ladies and gentlemen, on this
sleepyoccasion, it is a privilege to address such agassylooking group ofbirds. I can tell from yoursmilingcarsthat you will support mysassyprogram in the coming election. I promise that, if elected, there will be amirrorin everytoothpasteand twoleavesin everygarage. I want to warn you against mystinkyopponent Mr.Miles. The man is acoolshoe. He has aboastfulcharacter and is workingventinglovewith the criminal element. If elected, I promise to eliminate vice. I will keep thesea turtlesoff the city streets. I will keep crooks from dipping theirpencilsin the public till. I promise yourainygovernment,cleantaxes, andrunnyschools.
While researching ideas for the PVC pinecone catapult a while ago, Miles and I found these instructions for a blow-pipe Marshmallow Shooter. PVC is such a wonderful material to work with – cuts like butter, cheap as dirt, and all the elbows, caps, and T-joints you could possibly want are readily available at any hardware store. What’s not to love?
Today we decided to go for it. 10 feet of schedule 40 1/2″ PVC costs all of $2.50. With all the joints and fittings, total cost was a few bucks per “gun.” I put “gun” in quotes because this thing is just so darn playful, and I’m not sure it qualifies. It’s more of a “human breath marshmallow launcher.” And when the bullets are made of puffed sugar, it’s a stretch to call out the gun play metaphors.
Miles measured and marked out the segments after studying the comic above, I worked the chop-saw, and we assembled together. Total build time was less than 20 minutes. Mini-marshmallows fit cleanly into 1/2″ PVC (the snugger the better). We were completely amazed at how straight and clean these babies fly – we were able to launch them 25-30 feet and hit targets like the chimney on the roof, bus stop signs, or the sidewalk on the other side of the street with ease. They do sting slightly if you get hit at close range, but not at all through a light shirt or pants.
Miles finds his mark – Mommy gardening
They’re soft enough to be totally safe in the house, but don’t stomp ’em into the carpet or you’ll be sorry. Outside, they can probably be considered completely biodegradable.
Amazing weekend in the Sierras with Miles and my parents, highlighted by a 5.4 RT hike to Lake Margaret, off Highway 88. Weather report had called for rain, but we lucked out with sunshine that morning. By the time we made it to 7,700 feet elevation, just past Kirkwood Ski Resort, the temp had dropped to 40 deg farenheit (in August!)… and I was in shorts and shirtsleeves (fortunately had a sweatshirt and pants on hand for Miles).
The hike is a non-stop visual barrage of geological awesomeness – trekking across great slabs of granite pushed clean by a passing glacier some tens of thousands of years ago. Ancient cypress and bristlecone pines windswept into impossible shapes, tarns left behind by glaciers melting in place, trees cut short by beavers, just like in cartoons. The round trip was about the same length and technical difficulty as the Kalalau trail we did in Kauai, but the mile-high-plus elevation did a number on us – you get tired a whole lot faster with the reduced oxygen.
Tracked down a couple of geocaches on the trip. As we approached the first, hail started to trickle down on us, and on my bare legs. Had to keep moving to stay warm. The second geocache was hanging in a tree on top of a great granite slap pushed up by forces you shudder to imagine. It was a level 4 terrain cache, and we spent a good bit of time talking about how serious it would be to get injured miles from anywhere, and what it would mean to get helicoptered out. We agreed not to do anything stupid, to move slowly, not make any hasty decisions. Miles got it. Still, halfway up to Dawg Years we decided to back out and not go any further… until we spotted the secret back way up to the lonely windswept pine that we were certain held the cache. From there on it was easy going, and I let Miles do the honors.
It only got colder on the way back, as we listened to thunder rippling across the valleys, signaling the start of rain. Incredibly lucky – we only got sprinkled on, but it started to pour buckets just after we got in the car.
Decided to see what the camera in the iPhone G4 was capable of, and took all of these images with it. Impressed overall, but they’re still not at the quality of images from the PowerShot. From now on, will continue to hike with the PowerShot, but will be stoked to have the iPhone on-hand for spontaneous quickies.
Elevation profile:
Unfortunately, the weekend ended badly, when Mom slipped on gravel heading down to Cat Creek, where we were planning to do some swimming in the melt water. I was 10′ in front of her when I heard the “oomph,” and turned around to see her ankle bent at a very wrong angle. Dad and I hoisted her back to the car, and she ended up in the E.R. She’ll have to have a plate installed, and will be laid up for quite a while. Best luck and love to both of them getting through this – a horrible thing to witness and it won’t be pleasant for the next month. Much love.
The rails on our front porch were original from 1942. Wood had rotted out, and they were flimsy and unsafe. Not to mention ugly. A few weekends ago, finally decided to rip them out and rebuild. Miles and I went after them with crowbar and saws and they were gone in 15 minutes flat. Took three weekends to rebuild completely.
Good amount of time wire brushing, sanding, puttying, sanding again, and painting. New 2x4s and vertical 4×4, this time with supporting L-brackets, and the new wood was solid as a rock. More puttying and painting (we were lucky to find paint that matched the old paint exactly).
We had seen porch rails made of stainless steel cable on a house in the neighborhood, and were going to buy their system, when we realized how expensive their connectors were. Would have cost nearly $900 in parts to do the whole project! Recalibrated and decided to DIY it with stainless cable and annules from Ace Hardware, combined with a pile of turnbuckles I had inherited from the J-School years ago – they had been used to hang one of Ken Light‘s photo installations.
Installation went pretty smoothly once I got into the rhythm of it. Install eyehook, attach one end of turnbuckle, create cable loop with annule on other end of turnbuckle, measure cable length by eyeball and attach eyehook to other end with another annule. Three hours later I was done (except for one eyehook, which hit a rotted portion of the vertical we hadn’t replaced (because it’s part of the porch structure).
Not perfect, but close enough for jazz, and spent less than $150 in parts for the whole job.
See slideshow or gallery with captions.
After recently coming across a small package of Cheerios labeled “Donut Seeds,” decided to see whether Miles would go for it. He was skeptical, but yep – he planted a few in the back yard! I forgot about it until a few days later when he asked “Daddy were you joking about the donut seeds?” I was dodgy, and told him to keep watering them. Then, today, called him to the back yard, where I had stuck a bamboo shoot in the ground and slid a donut down over a branch.
When he came out, his eyes went wide. Took a full minute for him to reconcile what his senses told him with what he knew was possible and what was not. He figured it out of course, and enjoyed the heck out of his donut. Should have tried this when he was five instead of seven.
Miles and I spent Saturday building a PVC catapult for hucking pinecones. Started with inspiration from some YouTube videos, but scaled up and modified designs we found there. Capable of throwing a pine cone around 45 feet with a single bungie! Spent around $25 on parts. Build time ~3 hours. Considering adding a second bungie for extra distance, but don’t want to make it too strenuous for the kiddos.
Working with PVC is great – cuts like butter with a chopsaw, pieces slip together like Legos. In fact, the fit is snug enough that we’re not gluing it for now -nice to be able to disassemble for storage.
Finding the perfect throwing cup was the biggest challenge. Considered sewer pipe caps, chopped down paint mixing buckets, and tupperware, before deciding on this perfectly sized electrical junction box. Unfortunately it had a metal plate riveted to the back, which I had to hacksaw off – easily the hardest part of the build.
See full-size images and captions at the Flickr set (captions not available in embedded slideshow).
Shot some video too, but did that dumb thing where you record when you think you’re paused and pause when you think you’re recording. D’oh! Will try the video again later.
Catapult is available for rental for birthday parties and bar mitzvahs.
I just did something really hard – called up the San Francisco Chronicle and canceled the home subscription we’ve kept up for more than a decade. Working at a journalism school, I know exactly how difficult things are for newspapers these days, and how there is no online revenue model available that comes anywhere close to replacing revenue from print subscriptions. I really don’t want to pull my financial support, but the print edition just doesn’t make sense for our lifestyles anymore.
I’ve got nothing against the Chronicle. I’ve enjoyed it for years. Granted, we generally  only read it in 5 or 10-minute skim-bursts in the mornings, but I always enjoyed those sessions. Unfortunately, over the past few months, we’ve stopped the skimming too. The sad truth is that right now I’m looking across the room at a week-old stack of unopened newspapers on the kitchen table. We haven’t even taken the rubber bands off a week’s worth of great journalism.
So where has that time gone? Mornings are a whirlwind of pushups and smoothie making, combing the boy’s hair and packing his lunch, going over the day’s plans. And then there’s the morning email – it usually takes close to 45 minutes just to parse all the stuff that comes in overnight, every night. And part of that email time includes skimming the daily email digests I get from NY Times, Washington Post, and the LA Times. It’s not like I’m not getting any news. Just that my lifestyle lends itself so much better to reading news on the computer than in print.
On top of that, my Twitter addiction has made a huge impact. Stories that really matter to me (rather than to the editors at the Chron) find their way to the top through the organic bubbling process of the hive mind. As much as I hate to admit it, I find that spending 15 minutes on Twitter is way more efficient at surfacing great daily reading than any single newspaper (and yes, some of the articles I end up reading will be at the web sites of mainstream media houses). In effect, I’m subscribed to the whole internet – why do I need a dead tree version of just one city’s paper?
Finally, there’s the iPad. We don’t own one – just borrowed one from work a few times. But from those tests, it became quickly apparent that the iPad could give us the best of both worlds. If we could replace all of our print subscriptions (oh yeah – there are five magazine subscriptions in this house that are also going mostly unread) with iPad versions, we’d feel less guilty about the wasted paper, have less clutter, and (ideally) pay much less. We’ll see how that plan pans out.
Chronicle – I love you and support you in principle. But it no longer makes sense to support you with our wallets. So long and thanks for the good times.
Miles Rides the Cobra from Scot Hacker on Vimeo.
First couple of years at Marine World, Miles wouldn’t go near anything resembling a roller coaster. This year (age 7) it was a whole different story – ended up doing six trips on The Cobra, each one an adventure in unbridled joy. Reminds you why it’s so great to be a kid. Or to be near one.
Just returned from the most amazing rain walk with Miles. Two full hours in the drizzle, revisiting haunts and trails we’ve enjoyed since he was three. Came to grab some of the images from the day and realized I hadn’t downloaded images from the iPhone for a very long time. Here’s a sundry collection of fun stuff from the past six months. Visit the Flickr Set to see these with captions.
