Key concepts: Yeast is a living thing (with no arms or legs or head), Yeast needs food, Yeast poops, results in risen baked products and Yeast food is sugar (carbohydrates for the 5 yr olds).
That's kind of the take home lesson for tomorrow in Frankie's classroom.
Tomorrow morning, I'll be lecturing to some 14 or so 3-5 yr olds about yeast, how it works and how it relates to the bread baking process. Demo and all.
I'll do a quick fermentation of flour, sugar, water, yeast and pipe the output gas into a saturated solution of Ca(OH)2 to make the insoluble Ca(CO3)2. I'll also do a quick demo on the side to show your breath contains a healthy fraction of CO2.
I don't know why, but this suddenly seems terrifying.
Wish me luck.
Update:
It went fabulously. I did a quick interactive chalk talk about baking, yeast, fermentation and yeast pooping. We proceeded with everyone taking turns helping to set up the demo and watch yeast do its thing on a batter-like mix of flour, sugar and water and even got the calcium carbonate to precipitate on a 3 yr-old timescale. The bunnies had fun and I was exhilarated. Frankie's teachers Diana and Robin helped immensely with classroom management that allowed it all to proceed well. Thanks you two!
Lesson plan here, if any of you parents get the urge.
January 25, 2007
January 23, 2007
Out a day with the kid
Yesterday, Frankie had a bad cold and I had chills and a low fever. We took the day off and watched SpongeBob, went to the bank in preparation of our last closing/refi for the rest of our lives, went out to lunch to split an Asiago Pizza Bagel at Corner Stone Deli and back home for more rest and SpongeBob.
Good father/daughter time. She told me I yell at her too much. And when I asked her if I really yell too much, she giggled. I think it might blip out once in a while, but I doubt it's as much as she said. Then she said when she grows up, she's going to cross the street without me. That almost did me in. She's going to grow up and do lots without me. I hope we stay close no matter her age.
It was a day worth being sick for (if not a bit sad).
Good father/daughter time. She told me I yell at her too much. And when I asked her if I really yell too much, she giggled. I think it might blip out once in a while, but I doubt it's as much as she said. Then she said when she grows up, she's going to cross the street without me. That almost did me in. She's going to grow up and do lots without me. I hope we stay close no matter her age.
It was a day worth being sick for (if not a bit sad).
January 13, 2007
Yahoo! Mail Spam Experiment
I like my Yahoo! email address. It's seen me through at least 4 jobs and 3 residences. The constancy of that address eases my anxiety through periods of uncertainty.
I don't entirely hate spam. I peruse the titles to see what the new trends in spam are because, frankly, spammers are clever people. They get by the guards with silly tricks to fool regular expression-type filters (! for an i, penjis for you know, etc.). Generally interesting workarounds to common filtering tricks.
But, the spam box has become immense lately. Despite setting my preferences to dump it after 7 days, it gets 400+ strong at times. And, I don't want it dumped immediately, about 1/100 real messages find their way in there that I need. So, I tried an expt. and am retrying it.
I'll set my preferences to dump the Bulk (spam) folder every 7 days. I'll peruse the Subject line daily to see if anything in there is actually something I need and simply mark it as "not spam" (when opened) and basically disregard the remainder of the Bulk folder resisting the temptation to "empty" it every day. (The other trick spammers have been using is resetting their dates of delivery. I have messages that have dates of 2008, but apparently Yahoo! knows when it was delivered and uses that date for dumping purposes.)
My hypothesis is: If little in the Bulk folder gets read over time, it will max out in about a week, achieve steady state for a while and then drop to nil. OR, will it keep getting pelted? I'll start the experiment today and monitor the bulk folder by date:
Results:
Day, Bulk Messages
01, 00 (reset, dumped Bulk)
02, 21
03, 55
04, 87
05, 119
06, 150
07, 189
08, 219 (auto-dumping should start soon, no "real" messages crept in yet either)
09, 257
10, 238 (auto-dumping has commenced)
11, 263
12, 289
13, 330
14, 230
15, 259
16, 283
17, 236
18, 264
19, 288
20, 328
21, 239
22, 268
23, 295
24, 214
25, 243
26, 281
27, 318
28, 214
29, 230
30, 261
31, 214
32, 249
33, 287
34, 331
35, 368 (2/17/07)
I don't entirely hate spam. I peruse the titles to see what the new trends in spam are because, frankly, spammers are clever people. They get by the guards with silly tricks to fool regular expression-type filters (! for an i, penjis for you know, etc.). Generally interesting workarounds to common filtering tricks.
But, the spam box has become immense lately. Despite setting my preferences to dump it after 7 days, it gets 400+ strong at times. And, I don't want it dumped immediately, about 1/100 real messages find their way in there that I need. So, I tried an expt. and am retrying it.
I'll set my preferences to dump the Bulk (spam) folder every 7 days. I'll peruse the Subject line daily to see if anything in there is actually something I need and simply mark it as "not spam" (when opened) and basically disregard the remainder of the Bulk folder resisting the temptation to "empty" it every day. (The other trick spammers have been using is resetting their dates of delivery. I have messages that have dates of 2008, but apparently Yahoo! knows when it was delivered and uses that date for dumping purposes.)
My hypothesis is: If little in the Bulk folder gets read over time, it will max out in about a week, achieve steady state for a while and then drop to nil. OR, will it keep getting pelted? I'll start the experiment today and monitor the bulk folder by date:
Results:
Day, Bulk Messages
01, 00 (reset, dumped Bulk)
02, 21
03, 55
04, 87
05, 119
06, 150
07, 189
08, 219 (auto-dumping should start soon, no "real" messages crept in yet either)
09, 257
10, 238 (auto-dumping has commenced)
11, 263
12, 289
13, 330
14, 230
15, 259
16, 283
17, 236
18, 264
19, 288
20, 328
21, 239
22, 268
23, 295
24, 214
25, 243
26, 281
27, 318
28, 214
29, 230
30, 261
31, 214
32, 249
33, 287
34, 331
35, 368 (2/17/07)
January 11, 2007
How cool is that?
Since we've moved, we've used the opportunity to place every extraneous piece of material in our basement in a pile and are dedicated to going through it, box by box, sorting and giving things away.
Although, you can't get a charitable deduction for items given to people, I've been using Columbus' local section of FreeCycle in which you post something like Offer: 8,000 Btu A/C - zip code. Then you wait for 8 million people to email you wanting your stuff. Then, sift through the list (supposed to do it chronologically, FCFS), start selecting the lucky recipient and make pickup arrangements on the side.
I did this a few days ago for this actual A/C unit and, after one misunderstanding, found a potential recipient. When they came to pick up the unit, it turned out to be friends from work!
Got stuff to get rid of that you don't want to haul? Give FreeCycleColumbus a shot.
Although, you can't get a charitable deduction for items given to people, I've been using Columbus' local section of FreeCycle in which you post something like Offer: 8,000 Btu A/C - zip code. Then you wait for 8 million people to email you wanting your stuff. Then, sift through the list (supposed to do it chronologically, FCFS), start selecting the lucky recipient and make pickup arrangements on the side.
I did this a few days ago for this actual A/C unit and, after one misunderstanding, found a potential recipient. When they came to pick up the unit, it turned out to be friends from work!
Got stuff to get rid of that you don't want to haul? Give FreeCycleColumbus a shot.
Bingo
Haven't been shooting much lately. So, I'll use other's images.
This shot by fellow flickrite, Dane, is just too cool not to show off. Kind of captures the theme of my life at this point.
Nice way to capture what most of us would have missed.
This shot by fellow flickrite, Dane, is just too cool not to show off. Kind of captures the theme of my life at this point.
Nice way to capture what most of us would have missed.
January 7, 2007
A little lost ...
This site started about 3 1/2 years ago with the sole purpose of posting Frankie's pics for the family to see. It's accomplished that well and will continue until Frankie's old enough to tell me to stop.
Then I thought posting my food experiments would be fun and the weber_cam was born. That's a fun, albeit occasional effort, and will continue to live on (my coffee roasting attempts have become quite successful lately). But, the main Dave's Beer site was started because I like to go on an occasional rant or to disclose soemething neat I found on the web. My most dedicated reader however, my father, recently died. I gleaned from our phone conversations, he read every syllable I wrote. It was only an audience of one but hardly insignificant.
So now what do I do? My audience is gone and I'm hurt. It's not that I don't have silly daily parenting stories to pen or neat things on the web to disclose, I just feel like I'm writing ... to no one. And, I hurt. I guess I'll just keep thinking about this space and get back to scribbling some things in days to come. I just need some time.
Thanks for checking in Wiseman.
Then I thought posting my food experiments would be fun and the weber_cam was born. That's a fun, albeit occasional effort, and will continue to live on (my coffee roasting attempts have become quite successful lately). But, the main Dave's Beer site was started because I like to go on an occasional rant or to disclose soemething neat I found on the web. My most dedicated reader however, my father, recently died. I gleaned from our phone conversations, he read every syllable I wrote. It was only an audience of one but hardly insignificant.
So now what do I do? My audience is gone and I'm hurt. It's not that I don't have silly daily parenting stories to pen or neat things on the web to disclose, I just feel like I'm writing ... to no one. And, I hurt. I guess I'll just keep thinking about this space and get back to scribbling some things in days to come. I just need some time.
Thanks for checking in Wiseman.
January 2, 2007
When your kids ask ...
An awesome place to go when you can't figure out how to answer your child. From digg.
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