Children Snacking Behavior

Several research studies and a report by the American Association of Pediatrics on Preschoolers and Snacking focuses on parental behavior and child behavior objectives. It is worthwhile reviewing these findings and recommendations, as modern parents tend to fall into problem behaviors due to the convenience of poor eating habits as well as a lack of ... Read more

Your Baby is not Einstein

It is obvious that nearly all babies are not Einstein, the archetypal genius and polymath. Einstein is famously not created but arrived sui generis, emerged out of himself. As a child he didn't speak in full sentences until the age of five. This would be considered severely problematic, though it was obviously not due to ... Read more

Mothering Our Boys

Mothering our Boys by Maggie Dent Janet Lansbury spoke on her podcast with Maggie Dent who wrote the book Mothering Our Boys. Several interesting points came out of the discussion. Many people see gender differences in raising children as being purely cultural, and cross-cultural studies definitely bear this out. However, there are as well biological ... Read more

Daily Habit Tracker for Notion

Daily habit tracking is something useful, but can clutter up a calendar view. Also, not every day is each habit necessarily completed, for example if the target is 5 workouts per week, then missing two days per week is not terrible, but expected. Therefore it can be useful to have a separate widget that helps provide the overview of habits and to quickly check off the habit completion.

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Recurring Tasks in Notion

Notion Recurring Tasks

As of early 2021, Notion does not have recurring tasks. There are several workarounds for this, with various tradeoffs. Which approach to use has to do most with what kind of recurring tasks are being supported: daily habits, weekly or monthly tasks, ongoing tasks such as shopping lists, etc.

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WordPress Adminbar Sticky

WordPress Adminbar

In the attempt to remove as much of javascript as possible, certainly not relying on jquery and its ilk, we need a CSS-only sticky header and/or footer.

This is normally quite straightforward. However, the trick comes when logged into WordPress and the Adminbar is present.

If only the #mobile-header, .site-header, #site-navigation, or #masthead is needed for sticky, then voila:

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Thin Content – What to Do

Thin Content - What to Do

Thin content that Google clearly does not value (indexed but few impressions and clicks) is a problem for SEO and not only for that page, but for other pages on the site. The idea is that thin content detracts from higher quality content that Google does prize.

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Google PageSpeed, SEO, UX

Google Pagespeed

Google PageSpeed and web vitals are clear: a relevant site must load fast and not messily. The should be a speedy first contentful paint (FCP), and there should be little cumulative layout shift (CLS). A better user experience means a better search engine optimization.

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WordPress to Pelican

WordPress is highly functional, yet expensive to run in terms of resources (ram, processor), and maintain (time). Static site generators are meant to reduce this by a factor of 5 or more. However, there is a lot of functionality to support with the new system as well as a basic learning curve. Let's begin. Requirements ... Read more

Pelican SSG

Pelican is a python-based static site generator (SSG). Pelican has been around for a while (~10 years). It takes files, control files, and template files and generates static pages. Those pages can be kept inside git and then pushed to GitLab Pages or CloudFlare Workers. Installing and Configuring Pelican Installing Pelican Pelican Wiki Pelican Docs ... Read more

Python

First up, Python 2 is dead dead dead. Long live Python 3. Here are some steps to perform: Update alternatives for Python update-alternatives --remove python /usr/bin/python2 update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python python /usr/bin/python3 10 Edit ~/.bashrc to include an alias to python3 nano ~/.bashrc alias python=python3 Install the python-is-python3 application sudo apt install python-is-python3

Static Site Generators

Static Site Generators

The future of the web seems to be the past, namely static sites produced by static site generators. These effectively remove the database component (or reduce it tremendously) so that websites become much faster and easier to scale. This is not to mention the great impact that PageSpeed and Web Vitals are having on increasing the need for speedier and better user experiences on the web.

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OKRs (Objectives, Key Results)

OKRs

OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results. Those two terms show a fundamental relationship (goals are vague and need to be instantiated through measurable key results). However the complete picture of this goal-setting and goal-tracking method is more complex and much more rewarding.

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Monthly Tempo of Change

Gitlab and Telegram

There are two SAAS companies that provide a significant tempo of change worth of emulation: Telegram and Gitlab. Both have large scale and use, and provide monthly updates. This tempo is something that even small companies can emulate and manage. Monthly updates provide discipline and expectations both from customers and endusers, as well as employees and partners.

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SPF, DKIM, DMARC Email Security

Email for personal use and the enterprise tends to come down to only a few providers, based on the leveraging of email into an office suite: Google Workspace (formerly Gsuite, Google Apps for Domains) Microsoft 365https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365 (formerly or including Office 365) That said, in reality there are still a preponderance of providers and in no ... Read more

Keto diet

There are several advantages to a ketogenic or keto diet. The main problem is that one is faced with having to battle one's culture to do it. Keto as culturally rare Most developed or developing (non-hunter-gatherer) cultures are heavy consumers of carbohydrates: rice, pasta, bread. This is not to mention the impact of sweets and ... Read more

Facemask use for Covid-19

See all Covid-19 articles: Covid-19 Updates Covid-19 Vaccines Facemasks and Covid-19 Herd Immunity and Covid-19 Why People won't get Vaccinated Facemasks in the United States During the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the WHO and CDC initially performed a disservice by downplaying the advantages of facemasks. This was due to the critical shortage of these and the ... Read more

Future Studies and Pandemics

In the mid-2000s I attended courses in Future Studies at the University of Hawaii. Jim Dator, one of the founders of Future Studies in North America was there, and he had some useful, if soft, methods for going about understanding different futures. This is relevant to the latest pandemic because it is one of the ... Read more

Fortune and Cowsay

Fortune is a pseudo-random quote display, based on formated text file(s) and strfile(s). The runtime is available via apt install fortune, and then it is a matter of: Deleting current fortune files Creating one or more new fortune files Running strfile FORTUNEFILE to generate the .dat file Invoking fortune perhaps with cowsay in the /.bashrc ... Read more

Onyx Boox Nova Pro

The Onyx Boox Nova Pro is a popular 7.8" eNote device with grayscale e-ink Carta screen, and a Wacom touchscreen layer, under mobius and glass. The hardware includes USB-C, an on/off/sleep button and a back button, along with bluetooth and wifi. The main advantage, though still a bit incomplete, is the ability to read and ... Read more

Metric vs. Imperialism

If there ever will be a world government, one which speaks for and works on behalf of humanity for the entire planet, or most of it, that system will not use miles, pounds, ounces, inches, and yards. That system will be a rational measurement system that 99.5% of the earth already uses. This is how ... Read more

Ten Million Years

When one wants to understand what the most sigificant digits are regarding courses of action, it is vital to have the appropriate time-scale. What can be done in 1 day is a much more constrained problem than one can be done in 1 year, 10 years, 1,000 years, etc. Ten million years is sufficiently large ... Read more

Architecture Innovation

The saddest part of the discussion of construction innovation as defined by making buildings more efficiently, is just that. Missing are: Making housing more sustainable (see Earthships) Making housing more affordable (see tiny homes in Kristen Dirksen's channel) Mainstream Media Housing Innovation Coverage NYTimes - Piece by Piece, a Factory-Made Answer for a Housing Squeeze ... Read more

Generic Roadmap

This is meant to be a reminder of important issues/decisions that already have some thought put in them (usually by others). Automatic categorization of text is a core tool now Instead of offering advice, rank priorities Build a website first (before an app), some forgotten article but the point is: faster, and desktop users expect ... Read more

Reverse Sear Redneck Sous Vide

Apparently, a reverse sear is the best way to cook a steak, and the basic principle is used to cook everything. Essentially, the idea boils down to cooking at two temperatures: Low and slow (cook throughout) High and fast (sear) In addition, reducing the moisture on the outside of the meat should also be done ... Read more

Mnemonic Devices and Learning

On January 1, 2009 CNN published an article on memory. Now would be a good time to review and expand on that article, in the hopes of improving our own memory. It may be useful to conceive of the Art of Memory as having four broad application areas, a set of techniques (often called mnemonic ... Read more

Cuba and the Mother of Invention

Necessity being the mother of invention, what if a densely populated, but small (~10m) country were to have zero access to petroleum for fertilizer and agriculture in general? Sustailable Agriculture would be a result (or starvation). What if Sustainable Agriculture Weren't Theoretical? The Case of Cuba Cuba's Agrifood System in Transition How to make prosperous ... Read more

Prehistory and Post Apocalypse

The thing about history is that there is a lot of it. And prehistory, well, so much more. The highlights: carbon/methane sequestration 50mya seas and temperatures Return of the wooly mammoth Arctic resources Emigration for the next 1,000 years O Canada Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) > At least since 1997, the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum has ... Read more

Amazon Canada Incompetence

By Amazon Canada, I am referring to the Amazon Advantage Canada operation. Pure, unadulterated incompetence. Support requests go something like this: - Me: Here is my problem, with detail - AC: Request for information (which is already in the detail) - Me: Submission of requested info, again - AC: Thank you, please wait - AC: ... Read more

Spatial Visual Ability

I'll come back and write more about this later (especially how to help with this with one's children), but for now here are some resources: Submenu Navigation - Nielsen Norman Group Seeking information online: the influence of menu type, navigation path complexity and spatial ability on information gathering tasks Online Spatial Reasoning Task Recognizing Spatial ... Read more

High-Achieving, Gifted, Highly Gifted

There are significant differences between high-achieving, gifted, and highly gifted children. When one recognizes unusual, advanced early development, understanding what one is seeing is important. There are different vulnerabilities and burdens for each of these groups: - The Burdens of Gifted Children - The Truth About Gifted Versus High-Achieving Students - Vulnerabilities of highly gifted ... Read more

Bezos and Jobs on Hiring

Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs have similar insights when it comes to hiring the best. This is equally relevant when one is building a school. Hire the best teachers possible, if you want a high-performing school. Three Questions When Making a Hiring Decision From the 1998 Amazon Shareholder Letter: It would be impossible to produce ... Read more

Time Horizons in Terrible Times

For various reasons, now is a terrible time (in the world). (Note: this is 2018, and we thought that was terrible. 2020 laughs hysterically at you.) At the same time, my own time horizons have shifted due to having young children. My eldest may graduate from high school in 15 years, give or take a ... Read more

Childhood Fever

> There is no evidence that fever itself worsens the course of an illness or that it causes long-term neurologic complications. Thus ... improve the child's overall comfort rather than focus on the normalization of body temperature. - Pediatrics research article

Air Purification – Air Purifiers

Air Purification has a myriad of purifiers. There are roughly two kinds: Organics (formaldahyde, etc.) Particles (pm 10, pm 2.5, pm 1.0) Resources The effect of surface charge, negative and bipolar ionization on the deposition of airborne bacteria Air Quality Index (AQI) Basics Air Inoizer Ozone generators sold as air cleaners

Au Pair – Duties and Qualities

Note: other titles (with different duties) for the household staff include: Au Pair, Governor/Tutor, Nanny, &c. We are looking (again) for someone to perform the duties of Au Pair. Unfortunately there are two aspects we've been getting wrong: - An Au Pair is not usually expected to do general cleaning, and - An Au Pair ... Read more

Nissan Electric Vehicles

Asia Rollout of the Nissan Leaf 2018 Nissan Leaf First Drive Review Nissan set to release Leaf in the Thai Market Nissan Leaf EV to go on sale in Thailand 2019 Nissan Leaf specs (unconfirmed) Nissan IMx Next Generation Platform

Montessori Inspired Nonsense

A site called Living Montessori is a prime example of the kind of nonsense that goes by the name of Montessori Inspired. This site is particularly pernicious because the author claims legitimacy by having been a Montessori teacher and school director. The fact that the Montessori training was in the UK, which only recently has ... Read more

Rogue OSX Processes

By rogue I mean those processes which are not beneficial (at least for my configuration). To start with there are those processes which actual communicate over the network. View Processes on OSX with nettop nettop Nettop is a built in process communication display utility, useful, especially with seeing what network interfaces are being used (for ... Read more

Maria Montessori Education

What is Montessori? I am a great fan of Maria Montessori and her ideas about education. That said, she is long-dead and the Montessori we have is not her ideas (though we do have her books) but rather a set of institutions, schools, and teachers. We must look closer to see clearly. Because Montessori is ... Read more

360 Photos and Video

Technology has advanced to the point where 95% of the work in 360 images and video is now done by consumer-grade hardware. For a 360 walkthrough or tour of an event or architectural location, all that is needed is a tripod, monopod, or head-mounted camera, and remote shutter or automatic capturing (every 8 seconds). The ... Read more

Irresponsible Bloggers and Google

I've run across a variety of advice from know-nothings who can't evaluate the accuracy of statements, and use terms that they are unable to define. It is quite ridiculous, especially among the mommy-blogger set. Examples: Eating peanuts while nursing an infant is fine (no, peanuts actually do pass into breastmilk) Make a citrus enzyme for ... Read more

Cloth Diaper Detergents and Cleaners

Note: See also Soaps, Cleaners, and Detergents The main issue with cloth diapers (as well as cold water washing machines and line drying), is the need to have clean, smell-free, non-irritating/toxic system for cleaning that works and is cost effective. In this regard the following system seems to be effective: - Spray clean all soiled ... Read more

Apple Battery Woes

Lots of Apple devices suffer from the innovation of Apple Computer, including the iphone/ipod touch and macbooks. Some reality First, let's just say that non-replacable batteries certainly are replaceable. I've had the batteries replaced (with new ones) in my 2011 Macbook Air, and two 2012 iphones. This happened in 2016. Batteries and heat See also ... Read more