This summer, I got to do a one-night camping trip to Van Buren State Park outside of South Haven, MI. I was also riding my bike. It's nearly 50 miles one way, which is no big deal if I'm just riding by myself. But, I had never strapped a bunch of stuff to the back of the bike and hauled it with me. All of my own camping stuff is geared for kids, so we have a lot of stuff, none of it very…
The garden is producing in overdrive right now. Our selling season isn't half over yet and the flowers are just bursting.
My kids have been obsessed with this little thrift store find. Monza is simple on the level of Candyland and surprisingly replayable. You each choose a car and then roll size dice with different colored dots. There are three lanes you can choose from, each broken into colored blocks. You can use the dice in any order, moving your car forward from block to block. There's a little bit of strategy…
Books books books. Only two finished in July becuase the third I started is super heavy and just slow to get through. A Darkling Sea - James Cambias A space and ocean adventure all wrapped up into one. It's got Star Trek Prime Directive vibes paired up with language learning magic from Arrival as three civilizations try to work out who does what. The start of the book was a little slow, but I was…
Yesterday, I spent the day participating in the Amishland and Lakes ride in LaGrange, IN. My father in law was invited to ride by a friend at church and he, in turn, invited me. It's a sanctioned ride put on by the Michiana Bicycle Association and was way bigger than I expected. It's not a race - the whole point of the ride is to show up with friends and do as much or as little as you want. There…
I was looking over my ride history for this year and I noticed that today I passed my 2024 riding total. Two years ago when I started riding more regularly, I finished the year with 448 miles over 34 hours of riding. I didn't ride much in 2025 (not really sure why...), so I'm skipping that. This year, I just logged my 449th mile over abour 31 hours of riding. This week also put me over 1,000…
I've been using Strava for a couple of years and it's always felt a little bit...not right. I couldn't ever really place my finger on what it was until I tried Ride with GPS . It's the same kind of thing - ride tracking and planning - but it felt better . First, it wasn't trying to upsell me with every scroll. Second, it gives a lot more functionality in the free tier (route planning, in…
I was thinking about my trip last year to the Boundary Waters and I remembered that I had done a small sketch of Fourtown Lake from our final campsite. It's a small thumbnail, but I think it's become one of my favorite in my sketchbook.
I finished two books in June during my first month off of school for the summer break. Much better than the zero books I finished in May. Raising Hare: A Memoir - Chloe Dalton Very similar in tone to James Herriot or James Rebanks, I really enjoyed this slow reflection of rescuing and raising a hare without trying to domesticate the animal. The care given to adapt to the hare's natural…
I've gotten back into riding a lot this year and I'm tracking rides with Strava . I don't like the upselling the app does, but I can overlook it because it also gives me a live link of my route I can send to my wife while I'm out. It's a little extra layer of safety given that I'm riding on backroads most of the time. One thing that really bugs me about Strava is that my data is locked behind the…
I rebuilt my blog last winter during the school break and since then, it's kind of just sat. There a quirks and rough edges, but they're things I can live with. This summer, I'd like to make some updates which will smooth out some of those cut corners. Add a media picker for posts. Right now, I can upload pictures to posts directly, but I can't browse pictures which are already on the site. Add a…
May was a failure for books. I finished none. To be fair, I started two or three but gave up because I lost interest or never really figured out what was going on. I tried This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar, but I was confused for more than the first quarter and decided to give up then. Next, I tried The Will of the Many by James Islington and also felt very confused for most of…
Chemistry students are finishing this year with redox reactions ( very basic redox) in the context of electrochemical cells. They learn about oxidation numbers, half reactions, reducing/oxidizing agents, and predicting cell potential from reduction tables. It's a lot of conceptual work as well as application. They do well because I have some good hands on labs, but it's a lot to push through. I've…
This weekend, we celebrated our 17th year married. We took our annual bike ride, this time on the Pumpkinvine Trail which gives a nice corridor between Elkhart and Shipshwana in northwest Indiana. It was a beautiful ride through farms and had plenty of places to stop and rest to make it more of a meander than a workout. Early into the ride, my wife's handlebar stem was loose and some other trail…
Since I haven't written in a couple weeks, here is a simple list of things happening in life in no particular order. The spring planting season has started. We've been starting seeds for several weeks, but now its time for them to move out into the field. We had one major frost scare which led to some last-minute frost cloth, but so far, things are doing well out in the ground. They'll really…
I can't believe it's already May. I finished three books in April. Farewell, Earth's Bliss - DG Compton 24 convicts are exiled on an automated ship for a one-way trip to Mars. Along the way, new names are adopted and they do not discuss their crimes. Once on Mars, they're faced with the harsh reality of the environment as well as the harsh reality of the Settlement. The narrative focuses on nine…
We're nearing the end of the year and this is when I do my simplified acid-base unit with first year chemistry students. We've just finished solutions and concentration, so this is a good extension unit where all of the same ideas are present (ions, concentrations, etc) in a specific context. It's also a good unit to probe students for previous learning because, at the surface, they all have a…
Original link This Ars Technica article has been breezing around the Internet for a couple days and I finally had some time to sit and read it this morning. It's full of very quotable nuggets that, more than anything, communicate the frustration teachers all over the world are feeling. But since the appearance of ChatGPT, the instructor’s job isn’t just to teach the subject and frantically attempt…
I've got a small app I use to keep track of student progress toward learning goals. I break my chemistry class down into simple "I can" statements for each unit and give feedback on students' abilities on performing those skills. They range from lab skills like "I can prepare a solution at a given concentration" to conceptual material like "I can explain why water's properties allow it to dissolve…
Only one book finished in March, but it was almost 600 pages long, so there's that. Eyes of the Void - Adrian Tchaikovsky What a marathon! The sequel to Shards of Earth took me much longer to read because it goes much, much deeper into the political nature of the conflict between Hugh, the Parthenon, and the Essiel. The ending came so quickly in the final chapters that I had to go back and read a…
I've thought some more about the human.json protocol meant to make site authorship more transparent. There are two things that stand out in my mind: There is nothing to prevent AI-generated sites from simply including their own human.json file with a couple links to well-known, individual-run sites. The Chrome/Firefox extension works well and is clear about who a given author vouches for. But,…
I took 20 minutes this afternoon and added my own human.json file to this domain. I'm still a little torn on whether or not this is a realistic solution to verifying which sites are made by people, but it's a start and it is zero overhead. The only thing I would do from time to time is to update my own list of vouches entries. The entire protocol is short and easy to follow . If you have control…
We finally had a nice Saturday where we could spend some time outside and get things ready for this growing season. There are always a lot of chores to do once the weather warms and this year isn't any different. First on the list was to move the beehives to a more secluded location. Unfortunately, I lost hives again over the winter. I'm having a hard time figuring out why I can make it through…
Original link: Scientists discover the nutrient bees were missing Honeybees rely on pollen as their main food source. It contains essential lipids called sterols that are critical for growth and development. But climate change and intensive farming have reduced the variety of flowers bees depend on. As a result, bees are increasingly missing key nutrients. Articles that share "breakthrough"…
Another little Daily Create assignment which sent me to the Surrealist Compliment Generator . I reloaded a couple of times to get this: Never was a man so badly meant to wear corrective glasses. The world and all its varied rhythms framed through my astigmatism