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While I was getting ready to go to work this morning, Naomi stood in front of the refrigerator, and said, “Dad, watch what I have learned.” She opened the refrigerator, and demonstrated how she could press the switch in the front to turn the refrigerator light off. She proudly announced, “I figured out how this works. See,” she closed the refrigerator door slowly, “when you close the door, it presses this switch, and the light goes off.”
“Good investigation, Naomi,” I praised. “My little engineer.”
“Just like her daddy,” she responded, with her usual smile.
David:
David was watching an online episode of “Bleach” anime at the computer. “So, watching some ShÅjo manga?” I asked, sneakily.
Unusually, I fooled him. “Yes,” he replied, “Wait! NOOOOOO!”
Courtesy of Netflix streaming over our Xbox 360, my son David (primarily) and I have been enjoying watching Adam-12, the police television series that started the year I was born, and ran for seven years thereafter, and much longer in syndication. Adam-12 was one of my favorite televisions programs when I was a kid, and I remain impressed by its lasting quality, straightforward, honest characters, and clear moral implications. (Director Jack Webb, of Dragnet fame, was clearly not an “everybody’s-doing-it” kind of guy, even in the ’60s.)
Officers Pete Malloy (Martin Milner) and Jim Reed (Kent McCord) from the Adam-12 television series.
In 1978, I was in Mrs. Lovell’s third grade class at Parkview Elementary School, in Easton, Massachusetts.
One day we were reviewing vocabulary with a small reading group after a multiple-choice exercise. The vocabulary word in discussion was heroine, and, among the possible definitions was a medicine.
When the correct answer was given by another student, I suggested, a medicine, getting me quite a troubled look from Mrs. Lovell, who then asked, “Do any of you know what he is referring to?” “Drugs,” answered Dennis, with an implication of disgust.
I’d never heard the female version of hero, but Adam-12 had provided me with an excellent education in the dangers of illegal drug use. In my eight-year-old mind, heroin was a drug, and one obtained medicines at the drugstore, so a drug such as heroin perhaps could be classified as a medicine.
I was too embarrassed by the reactions of my teacher and peers to explain this logic, and the incident eventually became eclipsed by even worse incidents of faux pas that we shall consign to the horrible depths of “the junior high years.”
Today is Nichelle’s birthday. Generally, for reasons which have never been clear to me, it is considered impolite to ask or tell a woman’s age, so I won’t do that here.
A couple of weeks ago marked a watershed moment in MMORPGs: Star Trek Online wrapped up its mostly-open-beta program, and went live with its early-access-for-preorders launch. Delighted with the quality of the game, we sprung for a lifetime membership, which is approximately as costly as paying per-month for a year and a half. (I wish World of WarCraft would offer such a deal.)
The boys and I have been hooked. (Isaac, the weasel, has remained several levels ahead of me, and is about to get a promotion that will give him access to even better ships.) The game features space exploration and combat, and ground exploration and combat. The missions are described as “episodes,” and, like the plots of a television series, often require following unexpected developments and changing tasks as the plot unfolds across planetary surfaces and space. Each player captains his or her own starship, outfitting it with weapons, equipment that gives bonuses, and senior officers who also provide special abilities. I’ve attached a couple of screen shots of the gorgeously-rendered space exploration scenes below. The planets are beautiful, often including moving cloud layers that partly cover the ground below, as well as appropriate atmospheric illumination by the planet’s star, depending on one’s location in orbit.
The USS Naomi, approaching a planet within the Delta Volaris sector.
(My first ship is named the USS Nichelle.)
The USS Naomi, exploring a system in the Delta Volaris sector.
Ground locations are often also highly detailed, with a wide variety of plants and terrain. Some of the outdoor ground locations (there are also caves, and starbase and other complex interiors) sometimes seem very reminiscent of the ToS set locations, although generally with more detail than the show’s budget allowed.
Combat and exploration are both integral to the game. Combat is far more skill-intensive than most MMORPGs, particularly as one commands an “away team” to whom orders must be given, and as space combat works in three dimensions and often against multiple enemies. Some missions automatically draft the cooperation of other players, and nearly everything can be accomplished by choice as a teamwork exercise. Like the best MMOs available, there are also large PVP combat areas where players can earn even more rewards.
The game is still in early release, and is apparently only going to get better, but it still shows some weaknesses of an early release with higher-than-expected levels of demand on its servers, and some frustratingly common bugs, such as the game locking up.
Overall, though, our romps through the Star Trek universe have been delightful, with much future enjoyment anticipated.
Addendum, Stardate 201002.18: I am fully convinced that this game was worth every penny. Even my beloved World of WarCraft has never captured me with this intensity.
Beaming out after an away mission.
Rescuing diplomats taken hostage; the end of a truly well-crafted mission series.
We were at Merrimack High School this morning for a meeting regarding some testing Isaac had done over the past couple of weeks. It was just after morning announcements, and as we went to our meeting, the music from Star Wars could be heard coming from every room.
I caught enough of the description playing with an apparent news report to later learn that Merrimack High School had worked with New Hampshire-based filmmaker Jeff Capone to produce a Star Wars parody entitled Star Sports, that won for the Best Parody in the Fan Movie Challenge presented by Lucasfilm and Atom at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con International.
We ran into this problem when registering Naomi for kindergarten, and now, changes in government regulation require Isaac’s school to provide this information as well. According to the school:
The school is no longer allowed to report race as “not reported.” This means we are required to report your child’s race starting with the 2009-2010 school year.
The US DOE has modified the collection and reporting requirements for racial and ethnic data starting with the 2010-2011 school year. They now use a two-part question.
Amusingly, the questions the school is required to ask are as follows:
Now, how in the heck are our children going to pick a primary ethnicity?
Nichelle has been experimenting with making custom cakes for the kid’s birthdays. Like most things she attempts, she’s done great right out of the box. She invented some cool new techniques this time, and I was able to lend some engineering expertise.
Halo “Warthog” Cake, made by Nichelle.
Halo “Warthog” Cake, made by Nichelle, with model for comparison.
Here are my non-predictions for 2010 (things that are guaranteed not to occur this year):
(1) Popular musicians will realize that Auto-Tune is a waste of time, and rather than sounding “cool,” they sound depressingly similar to every other Reggae-imitating popular musician on the planet. Complex harmonies and skill will mark a new breed of popular musicians.
(2) Political and religious debate, regardless of the slant or extremes of one’s viewpoints, will be thoughtfully and factually engaged in. Conspiracy theorists will look at the hard facts and science, and admit that they were completely wrong about everything from Obama’s birth location to the moon landings to 100,000-mile motor oil.
(3) Everyone filing taxes will check the box on his or her IRS return that reads, “Check here to donate $1 to the Presidential campaign fund.”
(4) Hillary Clinton will apologize for being unjustifiably rude to the student at whom she lashed out in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Rush Limbaugh will admit he is disgustingly pompous and makes conservatives look terrible. Jessie Jackson will promise he will never run for political office or try to get a peace treaty signed in the Middle East.
(5) Congress and the Senate will refuse to allocate pork into any legislation, and will account for every line of every regulation passed, determining to do what is right for the country as a whole.
(6) Peter Ruckman will unequivocally recommend the ESV for adults, and the NLT for younger children.
(7) Hollywood will create films, rather than remake them.
(8) The American legal system will espouse justice; the guilty will be appropriately punished, and the innocent freed. Nuisance and other patently ridiculous lawsuits or compensation claims will be declined by every lawyer who is presented with one, regardless of the fee offered or potential winnings.
(9) NASA will be given more money than the combined budgets of the film industry.
(10) Palestine will be given an independent state; in return, the Palestinian Authority will effectively police its own charges, and terrorist attacks on Israel will cease.
(11) Apple will slash prices on all its products, and open its operating system to run on virtually any computer. Steve Jobs will announce, “Yes, our products are good, but you people are stupid to pay so much for them.”
(12) Massachusetts drivers will become polite and demure.
(13) Soccer will replace American football as the most popular American sport, as millions of American football fans realize that watching an hour of commercials and another hour of people walking around doing nothing is not nearly as exciting as a real game in which the clock never stops.
(14) Sports fans will no longer claim participation in, nor credit for, their favorite teams’ victories. (“We” will not win or lose.)
(15) Americans will stop whining, and realize just how fabulous a country we have. Further, they will universally take an active part in its politics, and realize that political and community participation and individual responsibility should occur far before and in far greater degree than complaining.
(16) StarCraft II will be released. (Just kidding … I think.)
Which of your early childhood toys had an impact on your adult life? Do you think the toys were wonderful because of your innate personality or skills, or do you think the toys helped get those skills going?
That got me thinking about the toys of my youth, and it probably comes as no surprise that most of the ones I most treasured involved building in some way or another. Of course, now I do more “building” with software than anything else, as programming applications is in many ways very much like building things out of Lego, but programming hasn’t eclipsed my lifelong devotion to Lego.
The toolbox my dad gave me at age 2.
One of the first toys I was given wasn’t really a toy at all, but rather a toolbox full of real tools (some of which I still have, just as I still have the toolbox). “How it happened was like this …” When I was born, I was diagnosed as being mentally retarded. My early foster care seemed to confirm this (due to lack of stimulation). My adoptive father declared, “Well, if he’s not going to be able to work with his brain, we’ll teach him to work with his hands.” So, for Christmas, five months after turning two, I was given a set of real tools. Screwdrivers, a folding rule, a hammer (the one thing that wouldn’t fit in the toolbox), and a pair of pliers. I have very early memories of getting in trouble for taking the screws out of the bottoms of the kitchen chair cushions and losing them. I was allowed to take the handles off the kitchen cabinets. When I first started, I wasn’t strong enough to get the screws tightened well, and the handles would often come off in my mother’s hand.
Good, old fashioned, gravity-fed Hot Wheels® track.
Hot Wheels® track was another great building toy. Although I often drooled over pictures of the Hot Wheels® super charger, I had untold hours of fun constructing dual gravity-fed tracks and racing my favorite cars, all the while developing a better understanding of rudimentary physics. Even more longed-for than the turbocharger was a loop; I even tried building one myself when I was a little older, but couldn’t get it to work right.
The Playskool Take Apart Car
The Playskool Take-Apart Car provided many hours of screwdriver-and-wrench assembly experience. The axles were large screws. The headlights and taillights used smaller screws and nuts, as did the wooden sides of the car. One of the trickier parts was getting the tabs for the hood and trunk in the holes when assembling the sides. The one drawback to this was the lack of interchangeability of the screws, although the headlight, taillight, and side screws were all the same size, and the bolt holding the removable engine block in matched the screws that held the wheels and spare tire on, although the bolt head itself wouldn’t fit in the same places. The jack provided (the middle tool visible in the photo) was completely useless. As I was writing this, my wife Nichelle told me that she had one of these, too. These days, I’d recommend Lego Toolo as the nearest equivalent experience.
I had a 100-piece bag of colored wooden blocks.
Wooden blocks are an essential childhood building toy. Generally, my goal was to build the largest tower I could, often getting it to my own height, or nearly so.
Tinkertoys have now made a bit of a comeback.
The only real problem with Tinkertoys was that I didn’t have enough of them. The small set I had just wasn’t enough to build the dreamworthy models pictured on the can. Part of this was supply. I know it’s impossible to believe, but stores in the 1970s were typically horribly supplied. (Computerized supply chains, a need to compete with online retailers, and cheap manufacture and import have radically changed this.) My father and I went out to a number of stores one day to find more Tinkertoys, to no avail. (He bought me a Tonka excavator instead, a conciliatory splurge I’m sure my mother would have never tried.)
This isn’t quite the same, but is not entirely dissimilar to the giant Erector set I loved.
One favorite building toy I haven’t been able to find a picture of was a giant, plastic Erector set, which came with a large, cloth storage bag. My favorite thing to build was a large robot, using gears as eyes and a short beam for a mouth. The large, red gears supplied also served as hubs for the wheels, and they didn’t fit together very well, either seeming hard to fit or too loose. The e-rings provided to put over axles were brittle, and easily broken. To be honest, I was never the best builder with this; I remember working with my dad one some of the pictured models, but really did enjoy it.
The voltmeter my Dad built to test mats for automatic doors.
During my childhood, and until his retirement my father worked as a maintenance man (later exclusively in refrigeration) for Fernandez Supermarkets. One of the things he built out of an old cheese box was the voltmeter pictured above, which was used to test the circuits on the mats that used to trigger the automatic doors. Another non-toy, this was essentially “mine,” and had an internal 9-volt battery, which allowed me to experiment with simple circuits, conductivity, and voltage. (My kids currently play with this on occasion.)
Then, when I was 5, my world changed.
My first Lego set, the #480 rescue helicopter
My neighbor-and-friend Chuck Altwein gave me my first Lego set just before Christmas, the #480, Rescue Helicopter pictured above. This was followed by the general building set #125 from my parents. Another Christmas brought #190, the largest Lego set at the time, which I only decades later realized was actually a farm (it was all about parts, really). Another Christmas or two produced some of my other favorites, Universal Building Set #404, the Space Cruiser (my first “classic space” Lego set), the Galaxy Explorer a year later, and later still Lego’s first castle.
Although I got away from Lego in very late high school and through college, I would jump back into them in 1998. While I was well-and-truly-grown, Lego and MIT developed the most accessible consumer robotics platform made up to that time, the Lego MindStorms Robotic Invention System 1.0. I was blessed to have the now-defunct Construction Site store in Waltham accept a phone order and deliver one of the first 50,000 nearly-impossible-to-get units released in the United States at rollout. Now I’ve actively continued my Lego collecting for years, and am a proud owner of the MindStorms NXT, and use it in coaching First LEGO League and teaching robotics with other self-created programs (such as Robot Sumo) at the Academy for Science and Design, a public charter school in Merrimack, New Hampshire, where my son Isaac attends.
If you’ll pardon the indulgence, I’ll return to my original questions:
Which of your early childhood toys had an impact on your adult life? Do you think the toys were wonderful because of your innate personality or skills, or do you think the toys helped get those skills going?
Nichelle with her trophy at the 2009 Granite State Open Bodybuilding Championship
Amidst a very busy Saturday, Nichelle competed in the 2009 Granite State Bodybuilding Championship in Dover, N.H. We were amazed by how much she’s improved since her last competition. I was particularly impressed with her onstage presence … she didn’t appear nervous at all, and performed her solo routine perfectly, despite having her toes cramp up.
Nichelle rocks! (And even though she can kill me with her pinkie, I’m saying it because it’s true.)
Charlie Dunn took far better pictures than I could have. We’ll post more when we get those.
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