You might remember at the end of this post, I included a picture of the hideous pink/gold room that the twins would be occupying. We started about two weeks ago and discovered that the pink paint had been applied many years ago and in quite a rush. Not only did they paint over the registers and wall plates, but they didn’t tape anything, so the baseboards were literally painted to the carpet. Here’s another tidbit: The room had been wallpapered (yuck) before it was pink, but they didn’t even remove the cable-jack plate to get the wallpaper underneath.

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If you haven’t seen it, you should check out Pixar’s Wall-E on DVD. One of the bonus features is Presto, the animated short that was part of Wall-E’s theatrical release. It’s the story of a magician, his magic hat, and his rabbit who refuses to work before he’s fed.

Googling Presto and Portal shows that many geeks have connected this short with the 2008 Game of the Year. The comparison is very apt as both works leverage the same insanely simple mechanic to explore new areas of creativity.

However, there is one part of Presto where they got it all wrong (which is very uncommon for Pixar). At a given moment, Presto “launches” a  ladder out of his hat at his striking rabbit. When the ladder misses its target and lodges in a doorway, the force sends Presto flying backwards. The problem is that the magic hat was already implicitly explained to conserve momentum. To quote Portal’s GLaDOS, “Speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out.” The hat would not be affected by changes in the ladder’s momentum; when the ladder hits the door, it would stop where it is and the hat would remain with half the ladder sticking out.

You might say that, like in the Looney Tunes that inspired this short, physics are irrelevant, but many of the gags in thie clip are only funny because of their consistent application of physics. Despite this inconsistency, the effect portrayed in the short is comical and it doesn’t really diminish what is a great clip.

The DVD also features a new short about Burn-E, an unlucky robot who had the shortest of cameos in Wall-E. It’s worth watching more than once (our children have watched it over and over and over again), and it actually made Ben laugh uncontrolably the first time. It also features another great send-off to Kubrick’s 2001:

Since he’ll soon be relegated to middle-child status, this post is for our rambuncous three-year-old. He loves to run around the house, but he hasn’t quite learned to dodge furniture. Here’s the evidence of his confrontation with the piano bench.

He’s enjoying his time as the cutest in the family (while it lasts). Here he is after a bout with spaghetti.

First, there is a new poll, you might want to read this entry before you vote.

We’re progressing on the twin’s room, but the fumes from the primer made Brooke sick. Her doctor was concerned, so Miles and I took her to the hospital for a longer-than usual Non-Stress Test.

She started having contractions as soon as she was hooked up… every three minutes. The other tests showed her to be well hydrated, and the contractions were pretty strong, so the doctor stopped worrying about the flu and started wondering if this was for real.

The Labor & Delivery midwife said, “I’m guessing about three hours before full-blown labor.”

A few more tests showed that she wasn’t ready for delivery, and they concluded that her being sick had triggered the contractions. To remedy this, they put her on an IV and gave her a relaxant. She was in the hospital for a few hours while Miles and I ran home and waited for Ben.

So now Brooke is on meds and bed rest until (at least) tomorrow when she has another appointment. Even though my parents came in town on Friday, Brooke has a hard time sitting still. I’ve had to give her laundry to fold (see picture), and to give Ben tattling authority.

Hopefully this is all just temporary.

While I was waiting for some spackle to dry in the twins’ room, I was stuck by the particular hideousness of the wallpaper in our bedroom. Our previous investigation into the monstrosity revealed that the current wallpaper was actually applied to a previous layer of equally horrendous patterns.

So I started picking at it. I discovered that the glue on the first layer (which had to be at least 20 years old) was completely gone. As long as I pulled at that bottom layer, huge swathes of wallpaper would come down.

So I invited the kids to help. They had a lot of fun, and we made it abundantly clear that they were not to do this without their parents permission.

A professor in my department has a son who is a senior at a nearby high school. His two loves are soccer and musical theatre, so when we heard that he would be playing Chad in his school’s production of High School Musical, we decided it would be better than having to watch a soccer game.

Actually, we were really interested in it because most of the culture around here is either not appropriate or boring for the kids. This was one chance to get out and do something they would enjoy as much as we would (or more than I would).

I have to say I was impressed. High school drama club performances are always exciting because you never know what will happen next. Will they be able to hit the next note? Will part of the set suddenly collapse? And so on. The closest thing to a disaster that happened was the wireless mics fuzzing in-and-out (which the techs blamed on people leaving on their cellphones). Of course, the theatre was small enough that they didn’t need the mics, but, hey, that would have left the techies with one less responsibility.

As someone who has seen HSM more times than I would like to admit, I can say that the on-stage adaptation is well done. A few characters are added to help with scene transitions, and some songs are moved and/or reformatted to incorporate more of the cast.

While this version borrows heavily from Grease and John Hughes movies, it also reflects more of modern high school culture than did the original. One number takes place entirely on cellphones, and the players’ wardrobe includes standard Holister and American Eagle gear. (The drama club sporting t-shirts from Broadway shows was a nice touch too.)

Overall, it was a pleasant way to spend an evening, especially when Ben couldn’t help but rock out to “We’re all in this together” and “Get your head in the game.” Also, it was worth it for this nugget: Today one of the kids in the ward told me his best friend was in the play. “He’s Zach Efron,” he said. Uh, yeah, sure.

My main job is teaching elementary and high school teachers to properly assess their students’ progress. Yes, traditional testing is a part of this, but so are interviews, observations, performances, etc. The first step is deciding what the students are supposed to know and do, then brainstorming some methods for checking whether or not they actually know and can do these things.

One history teacher wanted to assess some emotional (we call them “affective”) traits such as empathy. He proposed that his students take the role of someone in the past and write a letter to their present class. This forces them to relate the past to the present. His description of the activity was thus:

Students will write a letter from the perspective of a person living during the Cuban Missile Crisis to a person alive today.

I’m not sure if he realized that many people who were alive in 1962 are still living today.

This afternoon I was lying on the couch face-down when Miles climbed up and sat on my back. What happened next is a good illustration of how his mind works.

Sitting on Dad wasn’t that fun. So he stood on Dad’s back.

Standing still was only kinda’ fun, so he started picking up one foot, then the other.

But this wasn’t really fun, so he started jumping on Dad’s back.

But then he thought of something that could be the most fun of all. He climbed up on the back of the couch, took aim at Dad’s back and…

“Miles, don’t even think about it!”

Maybe sitting on Dad’s back was fun after all.

In April I wrote a Chutes & Ladder simulator to save me the hassle of actually playing a game based entirely on chance. Today Miles begged me to play Candyland with him. Well, that game could be simulated entirely in one line of JavaScript:

var winner = Math.floor(Math.random()*4);

But rather than simplify it that far, I actually modeled the Candyland board (did you know there are 133 squares?) and the deck of cards (there are 66: 6 singles of each color, 4 doubles, and six character cards), then shuffling the virtual cards and playing through. I even added the shortcuts and “lose a turn” squares.

You can try it for yourself here: http://brownelearning.org/tools/candyland.html

Brooke should really make this post, but she’s getting a routine non-stress test, so I’m here with Miles.

I work with two women who each have a three-year-old: One’s Hungarian (Janka) and the other is Chinese (Jie). (I know this sounds like a really bad joke, but it’s not.) Last Halloween I was teaching an evening class (what kind of professor would cancel class on Halloween?) so Brooke went out with Janka’s family. That started a little tradition where we get together for trick-or-treating.

This year I invited both Janka and Jie to bring their boys over to our neighborhood (which is awesome BTW). Jie’s parents are on an extended vacation here (while Jie’s husband finishes his dissertation in Tennesee), so they came to experience their first Halloween. They speak almost no English, but are extremely generous, as evidenced by the “candy” they brought for Ben and Miles:

Yes, this is Miles enjoying a Ferrero Rocher. He received his own 12-pack, and so did Ben. Needless to say, we’ve been… “sharing” a bit.