Family
So today we went to our two boys' soccer games. We went home with a new dog. Of course! Isn't that what happens to everyone? Well, Iowa was playing Wisconsin so there was a lot of game traffic so we took a different route home. That took us by the pet store. Not much into pets, I walked across the parking lot to a Panera for coffee. In the time it took me to get my coffee and walk around a bit my family had fallen in love! My wife, Karen, has been looking into the Japanese Shiba Inu breed...
Recently, I received a review copy of the book, "The LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Idea Book" by Martijn Boogaarts. I'm definitely an avid Mindstorms user, so I'm always looking for good books. My sons and I are always playing with our set, I started a robotics club at my younger son's elementary, and I co-coach a junior high FIRST LEGO League team. Finding great projects is a good way to supplement the creative homebrew creations. The included instructions are great for ideas, but you want more after some time.
I really enjoyed this book. The layout is well-done with a good number...
Last Sunday night we went to the first big concert we've ever been to as a family. We've been to a number of classical, jazz, world, and other shows in the past few years, but never to a big-name concert in a larger venue. My boys love this particular artist, and listen to his music all the time. They don't listen to a whole lot of bands yet, so this is a large part of their personal musical exposure at this point. Any idea who this is? I hope that you recognize him as "Weird Al" Yankovic! My...
If there's one thing my boys love, it's projects! We always have a large stack of "How it works" books, workshop tools, Make magazine issues, electronics kits, magnets, Legos, and other stuff laying around. I grew up always wanting to take things apart to figure them out. As my boys have grown, I've naturally shared this passion with them, in the process teaching (both them and me!) about astronomy, physics, geology, programming, and other stuff. I always feel guilty that I can't spend even more time with them, and I wonder if I'll look back with regret at...
Well I think that I can say that this has been my longest post-free period ever! No, I haven't died... My family and I went on a trip to Costa Rica in July. It was really something. We attended Spanish language school, lived with a host family, enjoyed the town of Turrialba, and went on a number of tours. We went repelling down waterfalls and trees, zoomed down zip lines, climbed one volcano (Volcán Irazú) and hiked around another (Volcán Arenál), went to a plantation (coffee/macadamia/sugar), and toured a coffee processing plant. There was so much much to see and do. ...
My son, Damian, competed last Summer in the Bassmaster CastingKids competition in Iowa and took 1st place at the state level. CastingKids is all about using a hookless lure to practice casting towards targets on the ground. The actual competition was held as an event at the Iowa State Games. He had practiced quite a bit and was very excited to have won. Just over a week ago (January 18-19) Damian competed at the regional (semi-final) level in Gadsden, Alabama. There were two age groups and most states participated, so close to ninety semi-finalists were there to try to make...
So my sons, Damian (12) and Gabriel (9) decided to build a twin catapult today. Gabriel saw a similar project in the back of the monthly Lego magazine so they sat down to give it a try. They did a great job, and then programmed the NXT brick to operate. They went with a sound sensor wait block to activate one catapult, then another sound to activate the second catapult. Finally, a third sound resets the two catapults and loops. If the button is pressed at the end of the loop, it plays a tone and exits. Straight-forward, and it works! ...
We went to Six Flags yesterday (Saturday, 9/24). What a day! We woke up at 5:30 in the morning, stayed until park closing (7:00), and got home at 1:30. My sister and her husband each got free military passes so we didn't have to pay admission. There sure were a lot of coasters! Most of the rides were coasters. I expected more diversity. There were a few other things, though many of those required extra money. We were originally planning on going with another sister of mine and her family, and another brother of mine and his family, but they...
So as promised, I'm finally posting some information about Mindstorms NXT. Quick impression: it's really cool! We've built several robots already and come up with a few of our own. My Bluetooth adapter wasn't compatible with the Lego software, but I have a new one that works now. Much better! USB works fine for data transfer, but we are constantly disconnecting and reconnecting it in order to properly test it. I'm pleasantly surprised that they even bothered to include Bluetooth in it. I could understand an add-on module, but not built-in. My boys (9 and 11) figured out the building...
Great title, huh? I love rechargeable batteries. I hate the idea of throwing away batteries all the time, and in a house full of toys and gadgets (well, I guess toys is the right word either way!) we sure use a lot of them. Going rechargeable means that we can always reach into the drawer and find fresh batteries. Of course they aren't as cheap as conventional alkaline batteries. Heck, before we went rechargeable we got a 25 pack of AA's for $5. Were they Duracell? No, but they sure seemed to last long enough. Now I buy 2600mAh AA...
I was looking through some papers that my younger son, Gabriel, brought home today from school, and one of those was his weekly news items that he writes. I particularly enjoyed this one from March (spelling errors corrected): I love the weather today. I finished the brick tower behind my shed! I use it to get on top of my shed. I showed it to my dad and he said, "Take it down now!!" So I did. Sadly! Night is falling. There was a big storm!!!! There was rain...
Yesterday was a great day, with my sister giving birth to her third child (second daughter), Felicity! We've had her other two to help out and they can't wait to get back home with new sister. Everyone is healthy and everything went smoothly.
Check out the gallery of pictures!
Well my wife and I went with our boys to see Narnia on Friday (opening day!). It was actually Karen's birthday, and boys split the cost of her ticket for their gift. We read the books (the whole series) as a family about a year ago. We all greatly enjoyed them, but lamented the lack of a great movie adaptation. We'd seen the animated and BBC-produced live action movies of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe before, but neither were particularly impressive. Fun to watch for what they were, but definitely not doing C. S. Lewis justice.
When we first started...
My brother and his wife had a new baby yesterday! Alexander Agustin is 9 lbs, 4 oz and 20" long. His two older sisters are delighted, as are all of us! We wish them all the best of luck and our prayers our with them!
Both of my boys are in Cub Scouts. Each year we have the Pinewood Derby (racing wooden cars), and the Raingutter Regatta (racing wooden boats). Both are great character-building activities whereby the parents try to cajole the kids into sanding, painting, or some other token effort so it's not just the parents' work. This year for the Raingutter Regatta we decided to see if we could find any neat ideas on the internet. We had done this with the Pinewood Derby and gotten some great ideas for cutting and decorating. Well, Google served us well,...
Well July was an interesting month for the Kulp's. I attended a church music conference in central PA, visited relatives in Pittsburgh, and spent a week in Mexico (Cancun). I plan on writing a little bit on each of these things soon. I took over 700 pictures between the trips and some of them are even good! I'll be posting some this week. I did no email during any of the travel, so it was a pretty disconnected month. I did have some work days in-between trips though so I didn't get too far...
My wife and I have decided to give the boys something to keep them occupied during the summer, and hopefully after that. They love to draw, and even write about things we do as a family. It seemed like a great way to tie all of this together was to try scrapbooking. Honestly this whole new fad has just gotten on my nerves. I'm that way though. When things become popular I just get annoyed. But it seemed like a good idea for them. Maybe even for me. I have thousand of...
Well we've caught a new bug! Not that new really, but definitely new to us. Little by little I've been reading about fun adventures with GPS units, and the sport called geocaching. I suppose to call it a "sport" is a bit of a stretch; it's a recreational activity. It's a lot of fun though, and I recommend it to anyone who likes to be outdoors, or feels they should be more.
The problem with being a computer programmer is being stuck indoors all the time. I realize how sad it is when my knowledge of...
Well I wanted to help my son with his spelling list at school each work so I developed a spelling quiz program for him. It uses the built-in Windows Speech feature and requires the .NET Framework to run.
When you launch it, you can either go to the word list or generate a quiz. Words can be entered with a phrase to make it easier to tell what word it is. This is pretty standard in oral tests, but pretty important with synthesized speech since it isn't really clear enough to understand a word in isolation.
After entering the...