Sunday, March 25, 2007

Online books

I've been looking at Scribd, a new Web2.0 company described as "Youtube for documents".

They are going to have serious copyright issues if the few docs I noticed there are any indication.  For example here's one book that I saw posted in full text:

and there are plenty more like this. Somebody obviously went through the laborious effort of scanning and then OCRing every page. There is no formatting, just page after page of sentences.

One neat thing they offer is an MP3 version of any document.  They use Nuance TTS in order to create a computer-generated podcast of any document.  I'm sure it's absolutely horrible to listen to a long work this way, but better than nothing when you're in a pinch.

Meanwhile, if you really are serious about online books, note that you can get free access to zillions of technical books at Safari.com by going through the Sunnyvale library home page.

http://sunnyvale.ca.gov/Departments/Library/ebooks.htm

You don't need a library card or any registration whatsoever.

Virtually all the O'Reilly books, plus books from MS-Press, Peachpit, and many many more are on line.

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Skin cream and Kids

For the past million generations, children grew up without much attention to hygiene. No toothpaste, no sunscreen, maybe just a bit of lard soap before a special occasion -- otherwise they just cleaned off automatically as they played inthe river.  Now parents want to throw all kinds of chemicals at them. Wired has the details about one popular skin cream, including this doozy:

BENZOPHENONE
Rub this flower-scented lotion on your skin or stick your face in a diesel's tailpipe, where benzophenone is present in the exhaust. Either way, you get a nice sunscreen. If swallowed or inhaled, though, the substance may disrupt hormones and mess with your brain. Scientists — and probably industry lawyers — recommend against using it on kids.

Friday, March 23, 2007

Summer plans with the kids

From an article by Linda Morgan: "Staying School Sharp in the Summer" [ParentMap Summer 2007]

Stowe Sprague, a Mercer Island mother of three children, ages 9, 7 and 4, likes setting "summer goals" for her kids. "It might be as simple as learning to tie shoes," she says.

Tuned into her kids' strengths and weaknesses, she knows which child needs extra help in math, which in writing. Summertime, she finds, is a chance to jump on those weak spots and build them up. Sprague also values her children's downtime. "We're talking about 15 to 20 minutes a day of reviewing," she says. "They have lots of time to play."


Sprague supplies the older kids with workbooks and texts -- and makes sure they study at the kitchen counter while she prepares dinner. "They protest, but get into the swing," says Sprague. "I think of it as another version of quiet time."

A busy mom with enough discipline to spend that kind of structured time with her kids probably sets goals for everyone in the family, including her husband.  Hopefully this summer she'll leave him "lots of time to play."

[also see: CNN ]

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

9/11 Movies

World Trade Center was my favorite 9/11 movie so far, in contrast to United 93, which took all my will power to watch.  Both movies are full of tragedy but WTC has a happy ending that makes you feel satisfied at the final closure.

I pride myself on my immunity to gory movies, but in United 93, there is just too much evil. The director is so good focusing on what might otherwise be mundane -- filling the planes with fuel, chit-chat among flight attendents talking about plans for next weekend, an elderly woman taking pills before takeoff.  It just left me feeling sick, during and afterwards -- sick with rage, of course, but also just a hopeless sense of frustration.

WTC on the other hand was much easier to watch.  It doesn't feel at all like an Oliver Stone movie -- no conspiracies, no dark and evil personalities -- just normal people caught up in an extraordinary circumstance and glad in the end to be alive.

Monday, March 19, 2007

Mercer Island Chess Winners

The winners of last Saturday's All-Mercer Island Chess Tournament are now posted online, organized by section.  That posting lumps Kindergarten and 1st grade together, so just for fun I dumped the results into a spreadsheet to see how they would have ranked if we combined grades.  Here are the top 30  measured by K thru 3rd grade:

 

1   ZHU, JASON 1026
2   EMANUELS, GRIFFIN 950
3   DIERKES, CHRISTOPHER 942
4   SHEN, DANIEL 931
5   ELLIOTT, CHRISTOPHER 899
6   PEHRSON, ADAM 895
7   TAM, OWEN 833
8   BERNSTEIN, OWEN 813
9   BOKSEM, MAX 809
10   SCHMIDT-WARNECKE, CHRIS 791
11   HASSALL, JACK 782
12   PADGETT, MATTHEW 777
13   QUE, JASON 761
14   BOKSEM, LUKE 735
15   KELLY-HEDRICK, IAN 726
16   BAUMAN, HUNTER 707
17   CUMMINGS, CAMERON 707
18   CHANSKY, MATTHEW 704
19   HIRSCHOWITZ, DAVID 701
20   BATALOV, PAVEL 693
*21   CHANSKY, JOSH 692
*22   BENSON, ALEXANDER 692
23   KIM, ERIC 682
24   NOONE, THOMAS 676
25   MAJEWSKI, DYLAN 668
26   PARK, JOSHUA 640
27   SPRAGUE, NATHAN 631
28   BURGER, DAWSON 616
29   ZIMMER, MATTHEW 613
30   BENSON, NATHANIEL 595

 

The surprising result is how many kindergartners are on this list.  If this keeps up, Mercer Island will have a very strong high school chess team in about ten years.

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Another try at Yuzen

We visited my favorite Mercer Island Japanese place, Yuzen, again last night.  I was happy to see a much larger crowd than on our first visit.  As proof of how good it is, I see that it's been favorably reviewed in JungleCity (a Japanese language web site serving expat JPs in Seattle), and in fact there were Japanese-speaking guests at the table next to us.

Incidentally, the restaurant is located in the Mercer Village Shopping Plaza, which was completed by Express Construction at a total cost of $1.74M last Fall.  The building was designed by Paul Franks Architecture. Apparently these are the same people who did that big shopping area at SeaTac, among others. 

Saturday, March 17, 2007

David Sedaris is James Frey?

 

The New Republic March 19th issue says humorist David Sedaris plays loosey-goosey with the facts.

[Here's the Slate summary]

A piece fact-checks the collected writings of essayist David Sedaris and turns up more than a few half-truths. In a passage from his book Naked, Sedaris describes an elderly mental patient rising from a gurney to "sink her remaining three teeth into my forearm." This incident never happened. The author argues that Sedaris might not deserve "the James Frey treatment" but also doesn't deserve the label "non-fiction."

I'm not sure I understand the controversy.  Hello?  The guy is a humorist, not a historian. 

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Prius vs. Hummer

I knew it! Here's proof that the Hummer is better for the environment than a Prius!

I told you: I bought mine for the gadgets and because I think it's a nice car. Let the tree-huggers drive around in their big, self-righteous Hummers; I've got the NRA on my side. And the Prius is better looking!

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Area Buick Owner Needs to Get a Life


Obama license plate (WA)
Originally uploaded by sprague.
Look at the license plate I spotted on this Buick, seen last week driving up 148th Ave in Bellevue.

I think this guy is in a hurry on everything. I caught him peeling off the road into a parking lot so he could skip ahead of the intersection and avoid waiting on the light.

Monday, March 05, 2007

Fourth Grade Bedtime is 9:30?

My fourth grade daughter polled her classmates about their bedtimes.  Of 24 responses, her data shows the median bedtime is 9:30pm.  I remember my childhood bedtime being 8:30, so these kids seem late to me.   I wonder what time they get up in the morning?

Our elementary school doesn't start till 9am, in contrast to the 8am start for our previous school in Los Altos.  Mercer Island shares buses among the schools, which is probably pretty common among schools like ours.  Los Altos skimped and didn't have bus service because the neighborhoods are so compact that kids all walk to school -- and the Prop 13-limited California school systems needed to save money wherever they could.