A few nights ago, I stayed up late writing up a post for class, and I found myself wanting desperately to learn the ins and outs of the chemical reaction (Bohr, Haldane, Hamburger effects) of ventilation. When I finished, I kind of sat wondering what it is that triggers this sort of interest whereas college I was mostly bored with the whole experience (yes, I still look at college as a missed opportunity).
A few days ago, I picked up this app: Animoog, which is made by the venerable Moog music (worth the 99c and is worth the 29.99 which it will go up to at the end of the month – it is currently sitting at #1 in sales in the app store). I spent a few hours playing with it.
Last night I made this in Garageband:
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It is only 8 seconds long because I didn’t want to work with larger set until I figure out how everything works. It’s has five layers here: two of me playing the tabla (duet bwahaha), the ‘smart guitar’ (acoustic) playing the A minor chord, ‘smart bass’ Cello in A minor, and the drum machine doing a high hat and shaker (quiet, complex).
As I was working with this, I went downstairs to change the diapers around, noted the humidifier was full and fixed that. After that, I stood up and looked at the guitar, turned around and looked at all the instructional stuff relating to the guitar and wondered ‘why can’t I play the guitar?’
And then it made me wonder why I haven’t done a lot of things. Why haven’t I lost all the weight I want to lose? Why don’t I know more languages or read more books?
Going back to school made me realize I’m capable enough to do a lot of things and simply haven’t put the time in for anything else. I don’t want to roll into my forties being in the same situation… obviously, I’ll likely be an RT by then, but should that be my end goal forever and ever? No.
I’m not saying I’m going to succeed in doing anything above, but at least I’m mindful of what I’m capable of doing and the resources I have at my disposal.
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An update to the previous post about teaching Nora to read – she can read. No, not every single word or sentences but last night I gave her blocks with animal names on it that she’s never worked with before and I asked her to sound out the letters and figure out what the words are.
She did it. And she begged to keep going, but it was too close to bed time and she was getting a little feisty.
And that’s it: she was ready, but she needed to get over her mental block of relying solely on memorization. She can do it, and it’s clear she’s very proud of it, too.
Now the ‘problem’ is that this was she started all this by wanting learn her numbers, but now she has zero interest in that.
Next step is to bring up the chalkboard. When she gets on a roll, it’s like a torrent and the chalkboard is the fastest way to keep up with her.
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iOS 5.0 is very nice. I installed it on both my ipod and ipad. On the ipod, the feature set doesn’t bring the same sort of across the board improvement than what was brought to the ipad.
In sum, iOS5 has made me love my iPad even more (if that were possible) and convinced me to stick with android phones.
Steve Jobs said that the iPad was conceived before the iPhone, and I believe that the trickle down of ideas still continues. The iPad and the interface works so perfectly but on such a small device, android shines.
The Galaxy Nexus S is coming to Verizon, and it’ll likely be discounted by the time we’re able to upgrade, so that’s where I’m headed.
