Homemade Yogurt

Yogurt (Yoghurt) is a great food. Compared with cheese and milk, it is better in terms of a healthy body. It can be used in a variety of ways for cooking, not only a standard cup of yogurt with fruit. Here are some of the ways we use yogurt: Muesli, fruit, milk and creamy yogurt ... Read more

Glycemic Index, Glycemic Load

With the Life Diet Plan the idea is multifold, with the goals of: Prevent disease Increase metabolism and energy Control appetite Enhance natural hormone levels Diet is one part of a two-part plan, the other being exercise. Just as the diet is specific in numerous ways, so is the exercise. This then comes down to ... Read more

Climate Temperature Increase

Wet bulb temperatures of 32c means that humans have to lie down and not take part in any activities, while 35c is lethal. Not only humans will suffer but all animals and plants. The potential for ecosystem failure and food insecurity is much higher than worrying about sea-level rise. Indeed, the collapse of ocean habitats ... Read more

Can I use PPAs on Debian?

PPAs are personal package archives that allow people to distribute application packages to Ubuntu distributions. Since Ubuntu is based on Debian, and PPA packages are in the .deb format, they can theoretically be used in Debian. However, there are several complications that need to be understood: Why PPAs are not recommended for use in Debian ... Read more

Candyland for Education

Candyland is a simple board game designed for 2-4 players ages 3+. It is a simple and quick game governed completely by luck, there is no skill involved. Candyland is a race game whose goal is to get from the starting to the finish line first. The game was first designed in 1949, and has ... Read more

Upgrade and Migrate Linode

I've recently migrated between datacenters, but not using any data center tools. Rather this is specific recreation of systems and importing of data. Much cleaner, and it becomes clear that there are advantages to data center processors and database cleanliness. Clearly there are some changes using php-fpm8.2 vs. 7.4 and while the mariadb process has ... Read more

Subversion

Subversion is a legacy source code control system. It is run by the Apache foundation. Subversion exists to be universally recognized and adopted as an open-source, centralized version control system characterized by its reliability as a safe haven for valuable data; the simplicity of its model and usage; and its ability to support the needs ... Read more

Personal actions on anti-trust

It is important, if one believes in anti-trust, to take whatever small personal actions one may take, as a consumer. For example, migrating off the large monopoly platforms when possible. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter -> Mastodon ($10/year donation) Gmail, etc., email -> Fastmail ($50/year fee) (referral code), may switch to mailbox.org, roughly the same price, but ... Read more

Automaticity in language, math

Fluency and automaticity Building fluency in math and language is significantly (though not exclusively) building automaticity in recognizing and recalling math facts, and the sounds, spelling, and meaning of words, respectively. Foundationally, building automaticity must in fact be based on tasks which do so. This seems obvious but isn't so, as an incisive article reveals: ... Read more

Ketchup recipe

Ketchup is a bit expensive and full of not-so-nice ingredients (or super expensive and organic). We make ours in about 10 minutes using tomato paste, water, salt, sugar, and vinegar. One can always add more ingredients (garlic, onion, etc.), but it is not necessary. Ingredients One small can tomato paste 1/2 cup water 1 TBSP ... Read more

Roman Cement

The main reason of my interest in Roman cement is the self-healing properties, especially in marine environments, and consequent waterproof ability, and adhesive strength. It seems to have many features which make it superior for stone pointing, stucco, tiling, and roofing uses, as well as for repair and restoration. > From a material perspective, Roman ... Read more

Bookbindery at Home

Printing is easy but making a nice binding is not as simple or easy. Many people use comb binding / spiral bound, which also make it easier to lay the book pages flat and to turn them. Useful when using the book as a reference, or simply having multiple readers. Lumbeck Bookbinding Lumbeck bookbinding is ... Read more

Science of Math

Science of Math has taken cues from the Science of Reading. Though it is seen as lagging by a few years, there is already a solid body of research regarding how children learn math and how to best teach it. As with the Science of Reading, the focus is on proven explicit, direct, systematic instruction, ... Read more

Collagen

Collagen - Harvard school of public health I thought it was a scam -- can collagen really turn back the clock? - The Guardian 24-Week study on the use of collagen hydrolysate as a dietary supplement in athletes with activity-related joint pain

MuseScore

MuseScore is a free and open source music notation application. Is MuseScore 4 a Sibelius killer? Installing MuseScore on Linux MuseScore 3 is available through standard software channels such as apt in Debian. MuseScore 4 (a substantial upgrade) is distributed as an appimage (as of March 2023, and may be available in Debian Sid). Not ... Read more

Learning the Piano

Learning Piano app (Simply Piano) My seven year old started to learn the piano at age 6, at first it was messing around with an app (Simply Piano), though he committed to 15 minutes per day. We did that for about six months, but using an app has many drawbacks. My children like this, but ... Read more

Problems of Homeschooling

Reasons for homeschooling Homeschooling is a way for parents to take on the primary responsibility for educating their children. By primary I mean as the sole guiding source of instruction. While in many cases, state or third party curricula is used, as well as shared resources or even online courses and enrollment in distance education ... Read more

Chicken Thighs

Cooking chicken thighs quickly and easily is important. The main concept is to have the skin side down for the first half of cooking (starting with a cold unoiled pan, or wire cooking rack, for about 15 minutes), then turning over for the final 10 minutes, and broiling. Oven temperature should be about 220c. Internal ... Read more

Samba on Linux

Note: to be honest I'm a bit lost with my configuration. I've had a bit of trouble but it looks like it is ultimately due to the USB interface I'm using to connect HDDs and sharing them. In any case, Samba is working, but I'm not too sure about what kind of mapping to do, ... Read more

Tortillas

This recipe is adapted from Robert Rodriguez's 10 Minute Cooking School Ingredients Note that in the video above he only uses half of the recipe, and the use of lard means that the butter does not need to be more. Therefore: 250g flour 40g butter 1/4 tsp salt 1/4 tsp baking powder 150g (more or ... Read more

Calibre Ebook Library, De-DRM, Conversion

Calibre is an ebook management tool. It is open source and cross-platform, and has been around for a long time. This explains the rather dated interface. While it is ugly, it works fairly well, and there is nothing that competes. Calibre Functionality Calibre calls itself an ebook management tool, but really any digital document can ... Read more

The Fediverse

The Fediverse is a disparate set of social media services across many implementations, with two core elements: They use open protocols to communicate across services and instances, creating a federation of users and uses. They are primarily distributed and decentralized. This decentralization (and federation) is not in the sense of a blockchain with multiple copies ... Read more

Mastodon, Pixelfed, Fediverse

Fuck Elon Musk. So, Mastodon. I'd created accounts back when it first got started in 2016, so I'm @[email protected]. The server feels a bit slow, so it may be useful to move to another server, and there is a migration path for users in that case. The main thing is to find other people to ... Read more

Modern Pentathlon

By 2024 the Pentathlon event will likely replace horse jumping with some kind of obstacle course. But is a run + laser pistol really modern? And fencing? Perhaps a complete rethink is actually needed. I do get that shooting and running are a useful combination, much like skiing and rifle shooting of biathlons. But an ... Read more

Kodable

Kodable is a somewhat slow website (and iOS app, no Android) which teaches "coding" in a somewhat rudimentary way. It is engaging for the children (tested on ages 4 and 6) but limited in what it can teach. Navigation is problematic as there are two interfaces and so sending a task from the teacher/parent dashboard ... Read more

Zotero

Install a repository to manage Zotero via apt. Install Chrome Zotero connector

Google Fonts

In January, 2022, a German Court Fined a Website Owner for Violating the GDPR by Using Google-Hosted Fonts. The fine was 100 Euros, but could be much higher, based on German law. The lesson here is to self-host all content (including Google Fonts), and/or stop using Google Fonts.

Honey and Children’s Cough

The result is that there is a significant difference between several honey extracts and an equally sweet placebo taken before bed, on ameliorating nighttime coughing and sleep disturbance.

Acellus Learning – Review

Hawaii Dept. of Education opposing Acellus Cloud of controversy follows Dr. Hydrogen Hawaii DOE’s Distance Learning Tool Very, Very Questionable The extremely weird story of a remote-learning company that’s making parents livid AKA Power Homeschool

Scone recipe

This recipe takes about 30 minutes, and is mainly about being organized. It is very useful to have rubber gloves to do the hand kneading of butter into flour, otherwise cleanup is a lot messier. 30 minutes 8-9 scones Ingredients 200g flour 100g butter 1 tsp baking powder 2 TBSP sugar (plus a little for ... Read more

The Best Way to Learn Spanish

Learning Spanish (Spain or Central American) is a popular past time, and is fourth in the number of non-native speakers (behind English, Mandarin, and Hindustani). It is also the fourth most spoken language by native speakers. For an English language speaker there are many similarities that can help in Spanish language acquisition. There are two ... Read more

Languages by Speakers

One learns a language to speak with a people and/or read their writing. All languages are useful to someone who has some use for them, though in general not all languages are equally useful in the abstract. Putting aside native vs. non-native speaker divides (which are hard to account for), languages are put to use. ... Read more

Canvas LMS

Canvas LMS is an open source learning management system. Not to be confused with Canva (which Google does all the time). Canvas can be downloaded and installed from the Canvas Github repository. It can also be used with a free teacher account which does not have all features (pdf), but many.

Linux and Debian Trademarks

The Linux Mark The Linux Mark is a protected (reserved) mark and beyond fair use, requires a sublicense for its use. The Debian Logo and Trademark The Debian Logo and Debian trademark are protected (reserved) and require licenses (or may not be used) in certain ways.

Global Birthrate 2022

The global birthrate continues it's ongoing descent. In some countries there has been a dramatic drop due to covid, such as in the Philippines whose annual births in 2019 were 1.5 million, and which dropped to 900,000 and 400,000 in 2020 and 2021, respectively. Thailand Birthrate In 2021 the birthrate of Thailand dipped below the ... Read more

Balena Etcher OS Flash Tool

Balena Etcher is software to flash Operating System images to USB drives and SD cards. It works well. Normally it is offered as an AppImage, but it is also possible to add the Balena Etcher github repository and install as a .deb file from there. Installing Balena Etcher on Debian with apt Debian installation instructions ... Read more

Roblox for Education

Getting started for developers - Education Roblox developer onboarding How to monetize games More on monetization Roblox business case Roblox for Education Roblox is considered part of the emerging metaverse. For children it is the main multi-player virtual world.

Create Wordle Clone in Scratch

Wordle is a popular five letter guessing game, akin to Hangman but guessing five letters at a time. A confusing implementation which shows how things should be worked out on paper first, to save time and frustratoin. More complicated implementation, include creating a word list.

Fig and Bash-it

At first glance, Fig seems to be re-inventing the wheel when it comes to autocomplete, but it is actually doing this at the OS level, and not integrating into the shell. Linux is not yet supported (10 April 2022), but coming soon. This means a faster implementation of extending the shell. Bash-it is the great ... Read more

Window Managers

Beneath every window-based Desktop Environment (DE) there is a windows manager. And beneath the windows manager, is a display server protocol such as X.org, Mir, and Wayland. When choosing a Desktop Environment, one can simply choose a windows manager and then add various other utilities such as menus, panels, search interfaces, configuration interfaces, etc. This ... Read more

Gutenprint printer drivers

Previously named Gimp Print, Gutenprint is a high quality package of printer drivers for CUPS on Linux, Macintosh OS X, and other POSIX-compliant operating systems. This project also maintains an enhanced Print plug-in for GIMP 2.x from the same code base. Gutenprint includes a large number of printer drivers for Canon, Epson, Lexmark, Sony, Olympus, ... Read more

neofetch cli system information

Neofetch is a CLI system information tool written in BASH. Neofetch displays information about your system next to an image, your OS logo, or any ASCII file of your choice. It is an active Github repository with 230 contributors and over 5,000 edits. Neofetch Readme > Neofetch is a command-line system information tool written in ... Read more

How to move a window that is offscreen?

In Linux, a standard shortcut is to use Alt + F7 and then drag the window back onscreen. Obviously some small bit of the window needs to be visible, but that is almost always the case. This works with Openbox and LXDE.