What is life like with three young children you ask?

Busy.

But not as crazy as you would think. Our little baby girl sleeps *extremely* well and has adapted nicely to the normal routine around the house.

I don't know if it's because she's a girl or just because I've done this before, but it seems that it is easier to bond (as daddy) to my new baby than it was with my boys. As a father, I'm not blessed with the crazy hormones of chemical bonding that mothers are, so it takes an act of my will to connect.

It just seems easier this time around.

:-)

So, I've fallen off the blog wagon.

I'm sorry, the last several weeks have been busy - I mean *really* busy.

To sum up:

1) Our new baby girl was born.
2) My work-load doubled.
3) We set up a small office for Gratisites.
4) Two major deadlines (these I met).
5) Did I mention the new Benjamite? (also, I can't breastfeed and blog...)

I have a variety of good posts cooked up as a result of all of this activity - they should follow over the next few days.

I'm going to try to post more with smaller posts. Let me know what you think.

I am a failure.

No, not at life in general or as a father or at any of the stuff that really matters. Not even as a result of my own mother stating, "I like to read Lindsay's blog, yours is boring". Rather, because my attempts this evening to make a Tesla Turbine out of an old box of diapers were a complete flop.

Over the last several days, I have been surfing various sites including: Hack-A-Day, Popular Science How 2.0 and Make Magazine. A common theme has been the recreation of various items designed and built by Nikola Tesla. This man was a genius - I think one of the smartest men of all time (though towards the end of his life he went a little nutty...). He invented things like Wireless Communications, A/C Power Transmission, Fluorescent Lights and most notably for this evening the Tesla Turbine.

This turbine operates without blades of any kind and will work with any fluid, including plain air. It's design is so very simple that a child could build a rudimentary version of one (not a grown man and father of almost three though...). It is essentially a series of platters fixed together with holes in their centers. The fluid enters the top and exits in the middle, transferring most of it's kinetic energy in the process (using the Boundary Layer Effect).

I found a version of this made completely out of cardboard on a "Turbine Builder's Club" that the author claims rotates at around 3000 rpm using nothing but his own breath pumped through a straw (see picture). I thought to myself, "I can do that" (and I knew it was me because I recognized the inner voice).

Thus, after dinner this evening, I whipped out some scissors and began chopping away at a box of pampers. I also had a package for an Ethernet patch cable that was (and still is) a perfect shape for this project. It has a circular central area with a tube attached on a tangent.

So, after much hacking and slashing I had created five perfect platters out of corrugated cardboard (don't use this stuff, it doesn't work...) and was attaching them to the pencil crayon axle. My final platter ripped - so my awesome turbine of goodness had four platters that were very thick with large gaps between them (this is not good design).

I recognized that my results would not be stellar, but I pressed on. I'm tenacious!

With the final assembled product in hand I began to exhale like a beached whale through it's blow hole (It's a good image, eh?). I have fairly powerful lungs and I can circular breath from my years of playing bagpipes. This part of the experiment I felt was in the bag - even if the system did not operate as a true turbine I could fake it through the Herculean power of my super human lungs.

So, I forced enough air through this thing to fill a hot air balloon and yes it did spin (at a relative velocity of about half as fast as my head was spinning from lack of oxygen - or about twice per second).

But the punch line in this story is not me passing out from a lack of air, oh no, it was my supportive wife reaching out and grabbing the (slowly) rotating axle and giving me her heartfelt encouragement:

"Oh boy, Ben. That thing has torque..."

As I said. I'm a failure.

Here are a couple of photos of this evening's efforts.

Here's a quick excerpt from the late Douglas Adams' book "The Salmon of Doubt" that struck me as particularly amusing (being the parent of at least one youngster who has troubles with the letter "R").

Here are two more things you should know the difference between: road and woad. One is a thing that you drive along in a car, or on a bicycle, and the other is a kind of blue body paint that British people used to wear thousands of years ago instead of clothes. Usually it's quite easy to tell these two apart, but if you find it at all difficult to say your r's properly, it can lead to terrible confusion: imagine trying to ride a bicycle on a small patch of blue paint, or having to dig up an entire street just to have something to wear if you fancy spending the evening with some Druids.

With that in mind, imagine me trying not to giggle while telling my son to look both ways before crossing the road...

As of late this blog has lost a measure of "geekiness". To correct this, I have decided to summarize my work for the last two days using primarily acronyms.

I have integrated JARs and SERVLETs into my application's WAR file to create SWFs from JSPs that create XML streams (using OpenLaszlo). The final goal is to provide an AJAX interface into the MySQL DB to do basic GIS (like reverse geocoding and the like).

There, I feel better now. :-)

This blog has definitely taken on the flavour of a book club...

This evening I finished Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden.

I enjoyed the novel thoroughly. I was struck, however, by how different my fundamental assumptions about life were from those of the main character.

Perhaps it is upbringing or maybe differences in culture and time setting ... whatever the underlying reason, the lack of character displayed at the end of the story I found very difficult to swallow. In the end, she did achieve what she had always (day)dreamed about, but there was a very callous back stabbing involved.

I do not intend to come across as a young know-it-all who has all of the answers. But character is very important to me. I want to see my children become strong oaks that do not bend to every wind of change.

I recommend this story.

If you read it, look past the happy ending to ask the question: "Does the end justify the means - regardless of past pain?"

It's been more than a week since I last posted.

My apologies to my faithful readers (all three of you). I have been very busy and this blog ended up on the back burner. So, this evening I will have to give you just a quick post.

As a diversion from my heavier reading (see previous post), I just finished The Dosadi Experiment by Frank Herbert. I am a Dune fan so this book appealed to me.

In summary, Mr. Herbert had an imagination that exceeded the number of pages contained in this book. The story gave glimpses into a very rich universe with subtle inter-workings of politics, religion and limited resources. The plot was complex and intriguing, but it was very easy to loose track of the various threads with all of the references to organizations and species that were never fully explained.

I suspect that a re-reading of this book would clear some of my unanswered questions up. I would not, however, recommend this book to someone who had not read the entire Dune series at least twice (and probably The Lord of the Rings).

In short, I enjoyed the book thoroughly but there are very few people I would recommend it to.

My two young men draw the strangest things from my lips. This evening, however, I had the joy of hearing something completely absurd pour forth from Lindsay instead.

A little back story is in order.

Our preschooler has become obsessed with Star Wars over the last several months (even rivalling his preoccupation with Star Trek), and has repeatedly asked to watch Clone Wars. Clone Wars is a series created by LucasFilm and The Cartoon Network that fits (time-line-wise) between "Attack of the Clones" and "Revenge of the Sith".

This cartoon series is really not for those under the age of about seven. Things get edited fairly heavily - as in he can only really watch about four episodes. I thought the other day that we should broaden his horizons a little and rented "The Phantom Menace".

My more sci-fi oriented friends may scoff at paying money for this movie (it did receive poor reviews), but my eldest son has talked of nothing else. From pod racing and light sabre battles to "bad robots", conversation in this house has revolved around the world of Star Wars.

I'm sure that you will appreciate my amusement when this evening Lindsay reprimanded a certain hooting youngster, bouncing on his bed with his "nank" held high above his head with:

"Go to SLEEP! You can be a Tusken Raider tomorrow."

As my blogger profile shows, reading is one of my "other interests" (I have many, the profile only shows a subset).

If you chose to look back through some of the past posts on this blog, you will note that not one of them is with regards to reading. I feel that this oversight needs to be corrected.

Generally, I have two or three books on the go at any given moment with another one or two waiting in the wings. My current book list is as follows:

1. The Art of Computer Programming, by Donald Knuth
2. The Annotated Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Author Connan Doyle
3. Head First Design Patterns, by a whole slew of different authors

I could go through and review each of these books, but I suspect that such a diatribe would bore you to tears. Instead, let me make a few comments about the first book in the list.

This book (actually 3, with several more in the works) was originally published in the 1960s and is still considered the bible of computer science. It has received some criticism for Dr. Knuth's choice of language for example algorithms (assembler, for a fictitious computer...), but it has stood the test of time and people continue to cite it.

When I read it, I feel very dumb.

To give you an idea of the tone of the book, let me give you a sample exercise from the preface.

4. [HM45] Prove that when n is an integer, n > 2, the equation x^n + y^n = z^n has no solution in positive integers x,y,z.

The ^ denotes exponent. So the equation reads "x raised to the power of n plus y raised to the power of n equals z raised to the power of n". The HM45 indicates that the problem is solvable, but will require "higher mathematics" beyond simple calculus. It may just take you the rest of your life.

So, exercise number four of this book is Fermat's Last Theorem, a problem that was posed in 1637 and was not solved until 1995. More than one extremely brilliant and educated research mathematician has dedicated his entire career to this one problem without seeing it solved.

I chose to skip the exercise and begin reading Chapter One.

I had a good post planned for tonight, but circumstances changed and, as a result, I must be brief. (See the previous post about starting posts with the word "I"...)

My second web server crashed this evening.

This is actually less scary than it sounds. When you've dealt with server issues before, it's really no big deal. Having said that, it is a problem that has to be handled immediately. Otherwise the phone begins to ring with that special ring that indicates grumpy customers.

The fix involved two things:

1. A reboot of the crashed server
2. A quick change in the BIND/DNS configuration

Neither of these things are a big deal normally, but with the DNS configuration out of whack I could not access my server. So, I had no way to reset it remotely.

So, I put in a trouble ticket to The Planet (the guys who have the vault with the servers in it) and 9 minutes later things were back up and running.

Wow.

That is stellar support.

Yay for them.

Blogs are inherently self centered.

I only state that because every time I sit down to write an entry, I try to think of an opening sentence that doesn't start with the pronoun "I". This is more difficult than it sounds (try counting the number of times the letter "I" appears in the last sentence).

One other unrelated note: I apologize for my lack of links in my last post. For those of you who haven't yet noticed, the links are often jokes relating to the text.

To say "sorry", each word in this sentence links to a different location.

Happy Surfing.

As of this week, my boys are beginning to share a bedroom.

As a result, Dad the heavy disciplinarian (similar to Conan the Librarian) has to make repeated appearances.

One particularly memorable appearance:

I burst into the aforementioned shared bedroom and had to force back a rising belly laugh when our preschooler turned his shocked (and very guilty) face towards me while scaling the side of our toddler's crib. It was absolutely priceless. He was swinging his left leg over the side like he would if he was mounting a bike and halfway through the act was completely busted.

Quote from the perpetrator: "No, no ... it was an accident!!!"

Me: "Right ..."

On a slightly different note, it is hilarious to watch a one year old "rock out" to tunes from the folk band Great Big Sea.

This evening, he placed his hands on the side of the table and proceeded to "head bang" until he was very dizzy. Once in this state, he tried to climb over the arm of the love seat.

Picture the scene:

Sprawled toddler lying on the couch with eyes rolling in his head with "What Do You Do With A Drunken Sailor?" blasting out of our stereo speakers.

I laughed very hard.

Quick factoid: The ignition temperature of Methane is 630° C and a Butane flame burns at 1,970° C, thus when a blast of Methane gas comes in contact with a Butane flame a fireball proportional to the volume of the quantity of Methane will ensue.

This factoid was inspired by a recent experience of yours truly (and his brother...) - which I won't describe on this blog.

I know, this post was juvenile. I haven't posted all week because it's been the only thing in my head to post about (I don't multitask well). Posting a truncated version of what I had originally planned was in the hopes of keeping reader offence to a minimum.

I do think that this type of humour is universal on at least some level. My sons spent several minutes today blowing "raspberries" into Lindsay's belly simply because they enjoyed the sound.

There are few things in life as funny as a toddler grinning from ear to ear and giggling at the sound that he was just able to mimic using nothing but his lips and mommy's belly.

I just typed out 17 pages of manual.

My aching fingers (see previous post) cannot handle much more in the way of blog entries tonight.

Well, maybe one quick preschoolerism:

The newest veggie tales contains a silly song with Larry entitled "The Gated Community"

I had a rather difficult time at supper trying to convince said preschooler that he *HAD* to pronounce the T-E-D part of the word gated in order for the context of the song to be maintained...

Q: What do masking tape, a door and 2nd degree burns have in common?

A: Gather 'round children as I regale you with the tale of "Ben's Obsessive Need For a Quiet Office".

Not all humorous stories in the Inkster household come from our two youngsters. Not by a long shot. Some even stem from those of us that call ourselves "responsible adults". This evening I decided that my office was not yet silent enough (even after installing the sound absorbing insulation). This decision prompted me to seek out the source of the sound leakage.

My search led me to the door.

The audiophiles in the audience will have already recognized that the door is a key component in a sound proof room. It is generally recommended to get either an external door (that's insulated) or a heavy, solid wood door. Whichever option that you should choose, you absolutely must have a seal in the air gap to prevent the sound from escaping (or entering as the case may be).

I'm pretty sure that my door is made of solid wood. Balsa wood.

As I do not have a spare door kicking around ("Hey Lindsay, have you seen that spare steel door?"...), I decided to do the next best thing and seal the door.

What works best to seal a door you ask?

I have no idea. But, I'm not afraid to try new ideas.

I tried masking tape. After about twenty minutes and an entire roll of the stuff I noticed that I still had an air gap of about a quarter of an inch. Also, I ran out of tape. No good.

Hmmmmm....

Inspiration struck! I could use hot glue to create a seal. Perfect.

So, I ran (not far... like about 5 steps) into the storage room to seek Lindsay's hot glue gun. After much rummaging, I remembered that it was in the desk right next to the door.

I don't know how many husbands out there actually keep close tabs on their wife's crafting materials, but I'm not one of them.

There it was at the back of the drawer, glowing in the pearlescent light shone down from on high like a sign from Heaven (or maybe just the fluorescent lighting in the basement). I pulled it out and realized that I would need more than the half glue stick that was loaded into the thing. So, back to the storage room...

... rummaging here for about 5 minutes ...

Back to the drawer. There were the extra glue sticks ... under the glue gun. Apparently I'm blind (but clever as our story will tell...)

Yes, now I was ready. I plugged the gun into the wall and waited for the glue to warm.

... time passed ...

The glue was liquid, the time had come. I closed the door and began to run a bead of glue down the crack on the hinge side of the door. Slowly, carefully, using about 400 glue sticks (give or take). I let the glue dry, then opened the door. Well, I tried to open the door. I had to give it quite the shove with my shoulder as I had just *GLUED MY DOOR SHUT*.

Man, I'm so smart. I suspect that I should have thought of that beforehand.

I did manage to get the door open with a tremendous snapping as the glue came unstuck and yes, the air gap was sealed. Victory!

Did it block the sound?

Well ... No, it didn't.

Hmmmm.....

Ah, yes. The top of the door had an air gap of about a quarter of an inch as well.

"I've done this before, I can do it again", I thought to myself and brandished my glue gun with the glowing red tip.

And before you can say, "DEAR MOTHER THAT HURTS", I was pumping searing hot glue into the crack just over my eye level.

I had nearly completed the job when an innocent little drizzle of glue fell from the tip of the gun onto my outstretched ring finger on my right hand. Don't ask me why it was sticking out, or even how I did it - have you ever tried to stick out *only* your ring finger? It's nearly impossible. In any case, the nerve endings in this unobtrusive digit began sending urgent messages to my brain at this point.

Did I scream out? Did I curse the day I was born? Did unwholesome words escape my lips?

No.

I held my tongue. In Proverbs, Solomon admonishes us with the phrase "Even a fool is counted wise if he keeps silent..." (see Proverbs 17:28)

Instead, I calmly wiped the glue away with my other hand.

Those of you who are "crafty" will recognize the folly of this reaction. Better to scream once and be done with it. Now three fingers and the palm of my left hand were beginning to send the aforementioned urgent signals to the brain.

Quote from the scene:

"AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!"

So, is the door sealed? Does sound leak? Is my lair completely sound proof?

Who cares.

I hurt. I'm going to end my story and go soak my blistering fingers in cold water.

I am a Skype convert as of today.

A fellow that I work with suggested that we begin to communicate over skype rather than the phone so that we can pass files and URLs and such back and forth. The final goal, I think, is to eliminate the need to leave the (sound proof) basement for meetings.

So, I dutifully installed the software and was instantly hooked. (I've become a zealot - I've converted two other guys that I work with...)

I have used MSN messenger for many years for all of my Instant Messaging needs, but the ease of use, sound and video quality of skype converted me. I immediately went to Future Shop and purchased a new webcam and microphone.

The other really cool feature with skype is the fact that it can interface with real telephones. So, if I want make a tech support call for some of my software to a user in the United Kingdom it costs me €0.017/Minute. This works out to 2.4ish Cents a minute in Canadian Dollars. Woo Hoo!!!

Conversely, if I want to have a phone number in the U.K. where my clients can get ahold of me, then I can set one up for €30.00/Year plus the airtime costs (€ 0.017/min) . This dramatically opens up possibilities for my business.

Skype Rocks.

Right now I am sitting in my "Lair" (my isolated home office with no sunlight) in beautiful, silent bliss.

Yesterday, I installed some sound dampening insulation between me and the rest of the house. This stuff is incredible. If one of the kids drops something heavy directly above my head, I'll hear the vibration through the floor joists, but apart from that I'm cut off from the rest of the house. When we finish the rest of the basement, this is what we are going to use.

As a side note, I learned something interesting reading Lindsay's Blog entry for yesterday. Apparently, my new title is "safety conscious do-it-yourself-er" on account of my fancy safety glasses (which our preschooler went wobbly over...). This was a surprise to me because I had thought of myself as more of a "point and pay" kind of a guy - apparently I was wrong. ;-)

Here are some stats on the insulation for the sound-geeks out there:

ASTM C 423
CO-EFFICIENTS AT FREQUENCIES
0.52 - 125 Hz
0.96 - 250 Hz
1.18 - 500 Hz
1.07 - 1000 Hz
1.05 - 2000 Hz
1.05 - 4000 Hz
1.05 - NRC

From http://www.bobgolds.com/AbsorptionCoefficients.htm

0.00 = no absorption.
0.50 = 50% absorption.
1.00 = 100% absorption.

Measurements are done according to a standard test method such as ASTM C423 or ISO. "In some cases, the measured sound absorption coefficient is greater than 1.00. As recommended by the test method, these values are reported as measured and not adjusted.""Differences in coefficients of less than 0.15 are not significant."

A blog is supposed to be a place to jot down things that you are thinking about.

So, what am I thinking about? Well, I haven't posted for the last couple of days because my life has been a bit of a whirlwind. As a geek, most of that flurry of activity revolves (whirlwind reference) around writing and supporting software.

On Tuesday, I had a deadline to present a data model (in SQL) and prototype front end to the Glenmore Christian Academy Report Cards Application (in Java) - so Monday night was spent in Netbeans. My 3D Box Shot program (in Delphi) had two tenacious people post over the last three days to tell me of a problem with saving the images, and someone canceled an order (this is not good). Also, my Windows Interface (in C++) to Evtech's OHI began spewing pointer errors - but only on two machines - and I can't duplicate them. Finally, the Eluminor Web Application (in JSP) project switched graphing systems to more easily and succinctly display data - so I need to port the existing code base (in Java - they're servlets).

Man, I sound like I'm whining!

I am not seeking sympathy, I'm just trying to clear my head. When you work in five different languages in three days, your thought processes get a little cluttered.

I love what I do. Software development is much more than simply an exercise in logic. It involves a great deal of time management, people skills and some serious tenacity.

The more you learn about this stuff, the more you find you have yet to learn, the more you groan at the cocky remarks you made as a rookie.

Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall
- Proverbs 16:18

This post is simply to say that I blogged today.

That is all.

No words were harmed in the creation of this post.

This post was brought to you today by the number Π (3.1415926) and the letter Φ (Phi).

Tonight I get to provide the counterpoint to Lindsay's blog entry.

She mentions that this morning she pulled out a box of cereal called "Life" and then proceeds to talk about the thought process that this stimulated in her. What she fails to mention is that our Preschooler upon receiving his bowl of "Life" declared them "Shreddies" and would not stand to be corrected.

Kid's say the darnedest things, but they also draw from an adult's lips some pretty strange phrases. While Lindsay was pondering "Life", I was comparing and contrasting two different brands of cereal. "No, no, no...Shreddies is a darker brown and it has a finer weave..."

One more preschooler-ism.

This morning at the Good Friday service, the Pastor described how God's grace is something that we do not naturally look for. The quote was, "Even as children we are conditioned to expect a reward for good behavior. 'If you are good then you can have a timbit', our parents tell us". At this point (during a silent, pensive moment) our preschooler belts out "I'M GOOD!!!" - expecting the good graces of Tim Hortons.