Tag Archives: 2015

2015 – Engaging with my son…

The PolyBlog
January 4 2015

The sixth item on my vaguebooking list was “Six years and growing (Jacob)”. I confess that relationships with others are notoriously challenging to add any sort of rigorous planning to them. Social interactions don’t work that way in general, and even less so when what you’re talking about is a “relationship” with your own family.

And in the past, I’ve let that obvious limitation block me from any sort of overt commitment. Not this year. This is the year I commit, and my commitment to Jacob can use some work.

First, I don’t get to see much of Jacob during the week. Andrea has been doing morning routine with him, and picks him up from the daycare. She is home with him for a bit before supper, but by the time I get home from work, it’s time for supper, and then there’s barely enough time for short interaction when I’m usually tired, and he’s off to sleep. This scheduling challenge isn’t unique to our family, or even unique to this year — we hated last year’s schedule, and hence the change in schedule for Andrea so that she can pick him up and get him home early enough that he can play before supper. Great for Jacob, and for Andrea, but I’m still on the same schedule that we hated last year. While I can’t change much of that, I am going to change two things in the schedule. Each week, Jacob and I are going to have a “boys night”. Just him and I usually, although if Andrea wants to come, she can — I feel it’s more of a double opportunity for him and I to do something as well as for her to have a regular night off if she wants to do something on her own. And once a month, I’m going to adjust my schedule so that I can be the one to pick up Jacob early. An extended boys night, if you will. If the cliché is true that 90% of parenting is showing up, it’s time I started showing up more during the week.

Second, if Andrea is on morning routine for Jacob’s bathroom routine, I should be handling Jacob’s nighttime routine. When my mom was sick, and afterwards, I kind of drifted away from the “work” part of being a dad, and Andrea picked up the load since I was a slacker-doodle. Obviously, there will be some nights that I won’t be home, or will be busy with something else, or Andrea will just want to do it, or Jacob will want Mommy instead of Daddy. So I can’t exactly commit to “every” night, just a guarantee of failure. But I think it’s safe to commit to five nights out of seven. And track it. I also need to get back in the routine for putting his lenses in during the morning. Andrea suggested I could maybe do it on weekends since we’re pressed for time during the week.

Third, I also like the idea of “doing” more things with Jacob. Outings, dinners, games, wrestling, etc are all great, and I love them. Most of them Jacob seems to love too. But I’m looking for something unique too. And I hit on some ideas. I am going to do one special project a month with Jacob — something we build, something we go and do together, something different. I have this month’s project, but I can’t say what it is yet because Andrea reads the blog and I want it to be a surprise. I can tell you that it is relatively simple to get me / us started, and involves construction paper, scissors, glue and two colours of yarn. High art? No. Fun? I hope so. Memorable? I’m counting on it. I want Jacob to remember both presence as well as special projects. He wasn’t interested in Boy Scouts, but I’m kind of thinking of it partly as a “Boy Scouts” type idea. Heck, I might even design some badges for us hehehe Future months are likely to be projects off the SonicDad website or maybe a big lego option. I saw an Imperial Star Destroyer online today in Orleans for $100 used, regularly $149, but that would be mostly for me with him helping! And I’m tentatively planning for March to be the month that Jacob and I work on one of my bucket list items — designing a game!

Fourth, I want to engage Jacob in photography somehow. We haven’t yet found him a good option for taking photos. He can use his tablet (kind of big), and one of our phones (hard to manipulate angles and press button), but I suspect he’ll go farther with our P&S camera. I really have wanted to get him a camera of his own, but the kids ones are too basic, the rugged ones are limited for upward learning, and the regular ones that have room to grow are kind of expensive for a “kid” camera. Haven’t found the sweet spot yet. I’m not as worried about the ruggedness though, as Jacob is remarkably good with electronic items. I’ve never seen him drop any of them. I suspect for now it will just be uploading his stuff to the web and letting him browse through it, to see his work, but more to come in the future. Maybe printing them in a book.

Fifth and final is the easiest of all. I’m going to tell him that I love him every single day, likely repeatedly. I already do this, and I’m going to keep doing it, even if he gets embarrassed by it. *Then* I’m going to do it twice as much. 🙂

#1-3 are amenable to Seinfeld-style tracking, and #4/5 don’t need it.

Next Thursday is our first Boys Night, and we’re going out to eat (probably Chinese, although I might cave and do wings-type food) before going shopping at Chapters in Kanata — Jacob got some $$ for Xmas from his aunt, and he wants to buy more Magformers! The week after will be our “project” week, if I can kick Mom out of the play room for us to work.

2015 – A meme for you, and a meme for you, and a meme for you…

The PolyBlog
January 3 2015

The fifth item on my vaguebooking list was “Five golden days (Melodious Monday, Thoughtful Tuesday, Wild Wednesday, Throw-back Thursday, and Funny Friday)”. I’m not actually sure those will be the names for the five days, or even the themes, but it is what I have so far.

Late last year, I started playing with some memes. Some of them you might have seen, like “You might be an astronomer if…” or “You might be a statistician if…”. I also did one for my wife about whether memos were urgent or not. I quite like doing them. I also really like doing quote ones. But I kind of put them together a bit haphazardly when I was doing them, or iterative at least. Not all the same design, or layout, inconsistent branding, etc. Theoretically I’m building a brand with my websites, but if you want to do it properly, one is supposed to be consistent in look and feel. There are a few sites on the net that I really admire their look, and I want something similar for my memes.

But I haven’t designed them yet, that’s a January project that I haven’t quite actioned yet, and so my goal is to have them launch later in the year. I’m thinking some of them will start in February, may even try out a few designs on people this month and get them to vote.

As that sounds like a bit of a vague plan, let me make it concrete — I commit to making 200 new memes this year, and to use the Seinfeld method to track progress. That should allow me enough incentive to get busy, although I’m hoping I blow that number out of the water. However, since I knew that I have another project that will affect my output in November, I’m taking into account that January and November will likely have no regular memes at all.

Oh, and while I won’t go into details about the extra project until November 1st, it’s going to be meme-tastic too. Meme-rrific. Memerable even. (Hey, it’s my blog, and I can pun badly if I want to…).

2015 – Seinfeld is golden

The PolyBlog
January 2 2015

The fourth on my vaguebooking list “Four related names (Jerry, Elaine, Kramer and George) where only one is important”. Obviously, the four have one thing in common — the Seinfeld show! What do my 2015 goals have to do with the show? Absolutely nothing.

But the goals do have something to do with Seinfeld the person. If you do anything on goal-setting, lessons to improve habit-forming, time management, etc., it doesn’t take long before you trip over references to the “Seinfeld method”. And it does refer correctly to Jerry Seinfeld. Seinfeld adapted a simple monitoring technique and turned it into habit-forming gold.

Basically, you take a calendar and some goal that you want to do daily. Maybe it’s writing, maybe it’s to practice juggling, maybe it’s working out, maybe it’s eating healthy, whatever. But it has to be something that can be worked on “daily” (more or less). Then, with the calendar, every day you do your task, you get to put an X on the square. Sounds simple enough, and most gurus would stop there. But that isn’t the gold.

The gold is that Seinfeld used gamification (before there was such a word) to challenge himself — how many Xs could he do in a row without breaking the chain? How long a chain could he build? The sub-goal then is reinforced by a second goal — keep the chain growing.

Eventually, you’ll miss a day. Maybe you’ll be sick. Maybe you’ll be doing something else. Maybe you’ll forget. Again, whatever the reason, you don’t get an X. But that in and of itself isn’t a big deal because that just ended a “turn” so to speak, and now, the next day, you get to start the chain again. How many Xs will you get this time? Can you beat your last one?

So I have a large list of goals, of which I’ve revealed about 2.5. I’ve tried monitoring them before but never using the Seinfeld method. This year, it’s fully in play. I’m also going to adapt it a bit for things that I track weekly.

How many days/weeks/months in a row can I keep growing the chains?

Gratitude for laughter, skills, selection and orbits

The PolyBlog
January 2 2015

Today I am feeling grateful for four things. First, Jacob’s laughter. Andrea and I regularly comment that we have to get an updated version of his laughter on video because when he gets going when he is giddy, it is incredibly infectious. Tonight was no exception! Thanks, dude…

Second, Jacob’s new-found computer skills. I think I’m grateful. Double-edged sword. I have joked about Jacob being eventually able to hack my computer, etc, or that he has shown Nana things on her iPad. Well, Jacob has learned how to move the icons around on my phone, so he decided that all “his” apps should be on “his” screen (I have one screen where most of his games were). But “his” list has grown to include some of my games, like backgammon. So he just went into the folders where they were and moved them all over to the other screen. He’s seen me do it, and it’s not rocket science, but I was a bit surprised last night to find some of my favourites suddenly missing!

Third, it’s a bit weird, but I am grateful for living in Canada where there are selections of goods like at Ikea. Way too much time there this afternoon, to get only a handful of things, but the selection was nice.

Fourth, I am grateful for the moon. My blog earlier today for my goals was about the wish to get back into astronomy, and tonight’s moon was awesome. I ended up just doing a bit of naked-eye observing, but it was a clear moonrise today, hanging out there for all to see and enjoy.

That’s it for today! Onward in the journey…

2015 – To the moon…

The PolyBlog
January 2 2015

When I was doing my vaguebooking countdown, my third one on the list was “03. Three people who have inspired part of the announcement (Aliza, Vivian, and Stephan)”. Aliza was already tagged in the first one, since she was a part of helping me figure myself out during my Tadpole years (age 28/29 to 33/34). And thus was a key inspiration for goal #1 — PolyWogg 4.0.

I tagged Vivian too but didn’t explain why in the last post. She was the one who invited me to present on HR competitions to the young officers at CIDA in the early 2000s and to appease HR, we had to name it a “completely unofficial guide”. It was my first formal presentation of my tips and tricks, which also meant I had to write something down. Eventually, it became my deck, and I’ve used it almost countless times (actually I’ve presented to about 250 people so far on my way to presenting to 1000, and it’s zipped around the government email system an unknown number of times at different departments). Now I’m in the process of writing it as a book. So while lots of people have contributed to the development of my ideas over the years, Vivian was definitely a catalyst both for writing something down and the eventual name. And the related goals of 500,000 words this year plus finishing my HR guide.

Stephan, by contrast, is a more recent inspiration for a giant goal this year, and one I haven’t previously announced. When I was about 12 or 13, I think, I got a telescope. It was a hand-held thing, more a mono binocular than anything, and like most people who get the same style/design, my interest waned pretty fast. You think, “Wow, I’m going to see amazing things” but then you look through the cheap scopes and think, “Meh.” It’s not much different from naked-eye observing. And since I didn’t have a star party or anyone else around who was interested in the sky, I didn’t jump on board. Fast-forward about 25 years, and a couple of the planets were low on the eastern horizon, with enough conjunction (which basically just means they’re close together in the same part of the sky) that they made the news. Stephan had a telescope and offered to show it to me. So off we went, over by Dow’s Lake and the Agricultural Museum. It wasn’t the best of observing sites, but it was darkish. I remember that I didn’t like the setup for his scope, too fiddly for my taste, which sounds like I’m looking a gift horse in the mouth. I’m not, and Stephan knows this too, but the choice of the type of mount and setup is about your own style of observing. I’m a grab and go type of observer, not a “let’s spend a lot of time setting up and getting it perfect” observer. Stephan has an equatorial mount, which is more finicky than other types of mounts. But regardless, I saw a planet. Plus some other constellations. I didn’t swoon, but it did whet my appetite for more astronomy. We even went to an RASC presentation at the S&T museum to see photos from the Saturn probe. Cool stuff.

Fast-forward another five or six years, Stephan is pushing his astronomy park idea, I’m on the board and doing the website, and I bought my first telescope with money from my inheritance from my Mom. It is a much simpler mount than Stephan’s, different style scope, etc. If I’m just doing the scope and setting up in the backyard, it’s 10 minutes tops from start to finish to get set up, and that includes alignment. It doesn’t include schlepping all the stuff from the garage to the backyard, setting up the table, etc., but those are all accessories.

Unfortunately, my interest in astronomy waned a bit last year. In early August, something futzed on my mount (there are three parts to a scope — the mount (i.e. tripod it sits on), the optical tube (i.e. the part that people think of as the real scope), and the eyepieces). The mount is what rotates the scope to look at the various parts of the sky, and mine comes with computerized controls and motorized movements. A fantastic beginner scope and suits my observing style perfectly (I borrowed five or six scopes from the RASC library last year, and still prefer mine the best). But the mount’s electronics and gears stopped working together, forcing me to send it back to the manufacturer for repair. It was gone two months, early August to mid-October, prime viewing time for astronomers in our time zone and latitude. I was so disheartened with the repair time, that I started to lose interest. I even stopped photographing the sky. It doesn’t help that the last three months have been exceedingly bad for night skies — only a double handful of good nights between mid-October and now to even do naked-eye observing. I haven’t even tried the scope since I got it back.

Which means that I need to re-kickstart and commit to astronomy. It’s all Stephan’s fault, of course, but in the meantime, I need to set my goals. And here they are.

First, I’m going to commit to moon fever. It is the easiest thing for astronomers to start with, and there are a lot of choices of targets on the moon’s surface. It is amazing to see the ridge detail in even a small scope, and mine is way overkill for such a close object, so it should be good. In practical terms, it means I’m going to blog about my experience, of course, as I complete the “Moon observer” certificate with the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC). As part of that, I’m also going to learn at least twenty-five major landmarks on the moon. And, last but certainly not least, I’m going to image the heck out of the moon, including completing a full cycle of images (likely spread over several months, but day 1, day 2, day 3, etc. and publish/print it as a collage with the full moon in the centre). I’ll even try for the lunar eclipse on September 27th.

Second, it’s time to check out a planet or two again and to use my collection of filters to see different types of detail. I have to order a couple to complete my set, but OPTTelescopes seems like a good choice, reasonably priced. For my schedule, I’ll concentrate on ones I haven’t seen much before or combinations/conjunctions such as:

  • Mercury in the first week of May (or early morning on October 23rd);
  • Venus in the first week of June (or early morning on December 7th, including a daytime occultation);
  • Jupiter with Venus on June 30th;
  • Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Mercury in the dawn light of October 8th or Moon+Mars+Venus+Jupiter in the dawn light of November 7th.

Heck, even this month I have a shot at Venus and Mercury (Jan 9th at dusk), Mercury alone (14th at dusk), Mars and Neptune (Jan 19th at dusk), Venus and Mars (Feb 20-21), and Jupiter’s moons occulting with a triple transit (Jan 23/24). I’ll also check out the Perseid shower on August 12-13 and Geminids on Dec 13-14. For my first Astro imaging of stars, I’m going for Big Dipper, Little Dipper, Andromeda, Orion, and the Perseus Double Cluster. 

Third, I’m giving serious thought to attending StarFest this year in August, but at the very least I’m going to make it out to Nirvana near Denbigh or head to some areas in Quebec that I’ve heard about. At the outside edge of possibilities, I’ll think about a trip to one of the big dark sky sites for Ontario.

Finally, I need to tie myself to the community. That mainly means RASC and the continued involvement in AstroPontiac, but I will also do more engagement with the online community, including blogging about newbie experiences.

Stay tuned for photos. And remember, it’s all Stephan’s fault. Or moon fever. One of the two.