Happy Fourth.
The day started with Wander taking Sparkle and Glitter to the mall to play.
Then they had a lego-fest at home.
Then Wander made his traditional Fourth of July meal.
Then Wander took the girls to the pool.
Then they went to a neighbors for some fireworks. (There's currently a burn ban, so it was just sparklers and some fountains. Nothing aerial.)
Then we camped out in the living room and watched movies and fell asleep on the floor.
I got to enjoy my new toy. I really like it.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Friday, July 3, 2009
Anki - text to speech
I use Anki for our memory work. Or rather, I was using Anki, but we've been taking a break over the summer. Anki is still very much in development mode as it gets updated fairly frequently. I stopped updating as soon as a new release was out after getting burned with a couple of releases that introduced minor but very annoying releases. Then on a whim, I looked at the release notes for the latest release and found that a few releases back they had a new feature that I'd been wanting for a long time: text-to-speech for Chinese. I immediately upgraded.
As text-to-speech engines run, it's pretty bare-bones. It has a library about a thousand sound files representing all the syllables and tones in Mandarin Chinese. Then it finds the pinyin for each character and the corresponding sound file. You'd never mistake it for natural speech, but it's free and actually a fairly common way of automatically generating text-to-speech for Chinese.
So, now I'm in the process of adding audio to Sparkle's and my Chinese decks. This is just the breakthrough that I was hoping for when I was wondering what to do with Sparkle's Chinese studies. It's not nearly as good as a real live teacher, but a live teacher for her isn't doable for our family at this time. As long as I keep up my studies and stay ahead of her vocabulary and grammar wise, I think that we can limp along in learning Chinese for a while yet.
As text-to-speech engines run, it's pretty bare-bones. It has a library about a thousand sound files representing all the syllables and tones in Mandarin Chinese. Then it finds the pinyin for each character and the corresponding sound file. You'd never mistake it for natural speech, but it's free and actually a fairly common way of automatically generating text-to-speech for Chinese.
So, now I'm in the process of adding audio to Sparkle's and my Chinese decks. This is just the breakthrough that I was hoping for when I was wondering what to do with Sparkle's Chinese studies. It's not nearly as good as a real live teacher, but a live teacher for her isn't doable for our family at this time. As long as I keep up my studies and stay ahead of her vocabulary and grammar wise, I think that we can limp along in learning Chinese for a while yet.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Individually Labeled Crayons
I got tired of broken crayons strewn throughout the house and finally figured out something to do about it. The girls already have their own labeled water cups for their exclusive use, and I decided to extend the idea to crayons. Fortunately Glitter has recently learned how to recognize her name, or at least distinguish hers from Sparkle's.
I got out two fresh boxes of washable Crayola crayons and individually labeled eight crayons from each with their names. For a while I considered getting kid name stickers to use. However, $15 for 100 was more than I wanted to pay. So, I used regular paper and clear packing tape. Sparkle wrote her own name and I wrote Glitter's. Then we went through the colored pencils and repeated the process. Finally, each girl got a labeled pencil box to hold it all.
I explained to both girls that they were to use *only* their personal colors and not to touch each others. Then I dumped all the pencils and crayons together and had them sort them out into their individual boxes to ensure that they could tell whose was whose.
We're on day three of the system, and so far both girls seem to accept the system and I haven't found any crayons on the floor. I hope that the results last.
A few years ago I would have thought individually labeling crayons was insane. I still think it's a little insane, but if it works, I don't care.
I got out two fresh boxes of washable Crayola crayons and individually labeled eight crayons from each with their names. For a while I considered getting kid name stickers to use. However, $15 for 100 was more than I wanted to pay. So, I used regular paper and clear packing tape. Sparkle wrote her own name and I wrote Glitter's. Then we went through the colored pencils and repeated the process. Finally, each girl got a labeled pencil box to hold it all.
I explained to both girls that they were to use *only* their personal colors and not to touch each others. Then I dumped all the pencils and crayons together and had them sort them out into their individual boxes to ensure that they could tell whose was whose.
We're on day three of the system, and so far both girls seem to accept the system and I haven't found any crayons on the floor. I hope that the results last.
A few years ago I would have thought individually labeling crayons was insane. I still think it's a little insane, but if it works, I don't care.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Getting kids artwork out of the house
When Wander he opened his satchel to find something for work, he pulled out instead a bunch of "artwork" from Glitter. It made him laugh.
The girls usually leave their artwork for Wander on the stairs next to his satchel. However, some mornings, he doesn't get around to picking up all the pieces of paper littering the stairs. Apparently Glitter wanted to make sure that her artwork made it in to work by stuffing all of her drawings into his bag.
The girls usually leave their artwork for Wander on the stairs next to his satchel. However, some mornings, he doesn't get around to picking up all the pieces of paper littering the stairs. Apparently Glitter wanted to make sure that her artwork made it in to work by stuffing all of her drawings into his bag.
New Spelling Database Program
I've got my spelling database program into a semi-usable state. It is written in python and has a command line interface, which is mostly a system of menus. It is very kludgy and I have to make sure that my input is formatted correctly. However, it looks like it is doing the job. I've used it for three days so far, and it is far superior to manually scheduling reviews of words.
I love the functionality of the program, but it seriously needs a robust gui interface. I separated out the data into a standalone database so that I can easily work on the program without affecting the data. It will take me a long, long time to build up a gui. In the meantime we can continue spelling lessons, and I'll take down the blog I was using for tracking spelling.
Least I be demonized for doing spelling lessons, with Sparkle during the summer, I've really scaled back the spelling. We're just reviewing words (no new words), and she does only a couple of sentences at a time, far less than she was during the school year. Hopefully we'll work through all the backlog of reviews of the words from last year and then start fresh in the fall.
I love the functionality of the program, but it seriously needs a robust gui interface. I separated out the data into a standalone database so that I can easily work on the program without affecting the data. It will take me a long, long time to build up a gui. In the meantime we can continue spelling lessons, and I'll take down the blog I was using for tracking spelling.
Least I be demonized for doing spelling lessons, with Sparkle during the summer, I've really scaled back the spelling. We're just reviewing words (no new words), and she does only a couple of sentences at a time, far less than she was during the school year. Hopefully we'll work through all the backlog of reviews of the words from last year and then start fresh in the fall.
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