The Joy of Walking Around with Kids

Recently a question came up (if you haven't checked out Winnie yet you should, it's kinda awesome!) If you hang out with two toddlers is it worth getting a double strollers, and at what age are kids done with strollers? I love having never had a stroller, so I was of no use on the two-seat vs. single seat part of the question.

As for the 'when are kids done with strollers?' part, I think the age for being done with the stroller for good largely depends on what the parent and the kid want to do. My really short answer is the kids here were done with the wrap when they turned two. Between two and three I occasionally had to hip carry or put them on my shoulders while I had the younger kid in the wrap, but for the most part they were down on the ground, and walking with the rest of the gang.

Now for the longer answer just because I’ve had so much fun not having a stroller and walking around with the kids. :)

As each of the kids learned to walk, I took them out of the wrap as often as they wanted—which was most of the time they were awake—so they could walk with me. It was really slow going at first, but by the time they were two each of them could walk a mile. While they were coming up to speed, (pun totally intended), even when they were a little too big for it, I wore the wrap because I could still use it to support a hip carry if they were too tired.

I’ve loved the advantages all of this bought. I think the kids are more engaged with our neighborhood and the people in it because they’re down on the ground interacting with everything and everyone. They’re all best-buddies with the gentlemen who own our neighborhood package/convenience store. We have to warn each new nanny that the gang is going to drag them into a package store to make introductions :) The gang are also best buddies with a woman who retired a few blocks away, and walks her dog through the neighborhood at the same time they’re out.

The kids all know how to get places on foot in several San Francisco neighborhoods. No. 2’s (who is now five, but was two when we moved here), version of ‘toddlers prefer routines’ was to insist that nannies follow the walking routes he was used to down to the side of the street..

We were very careful with making sure each kid learned about intersections. San Francisco’s ADA provisions made this super easy. All the corners have wheelchair ramps that have a set of grooved lines about four feet behind them. All the kids have learned that that’s where they stop and wait for us. Oh! Also, as long as I’m espousing the beauty of SF for kids, all the street names are etched into the sidewalk at intersections, which is a huge plus for learning letters! Anyway, since they’ve all learned to stop at every intersection, it’s been so nice to have them running up to a block ahead of us where we can keep an eye on them easily without having to worry if they’re keeping up or where they are behind us. It also gives the kids time to look at things in windows and interact with passersby without having to stop the forward progress of the whole group.

And now, having summed up what I love about not having strollers, I’ll go quietly beam for a bit, and then get back to work :)

More Cowbell! Record Production using Google Forms and Charts

First, the what : This article shows how to embed a new Google Form into any web page. To demonstrate ths, a chart and form that allow blog readers to control the recording levels of each instrument in Blue Oyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" is used. HTML code from the Google version of the form included on this page is shown and the parts that need to be modified are highlighted. Next, the why : Google recently released an e-mail form feature that allows users of Google Documents to create an e-mail a form that automatically places each user's input into an associated spreadsheet. As it turns out, with a little bit of work, the forms that are created by Google Docs can be embedded into any web page. Now, The Goods: Click on the instrument you want turned up, click the submit button and then refresh the page. Through the magic of Google Forms as soon as you click on submit and refresh this web page, the data chart will update immediately. Turn up the:

Cool Math Tricks: Deriving the Divergence, (Del or Nabla) into New (Cylindrical) Coordinate Systems

Now available as a Kindle ebook for 99 cents ! Get a spiffy ebook, and fund more physics The following is a pretty lengthy procedure, but converting the divergence, (nabla, del) operator between coordinate systems comes up pretty often. While there are tables for converting between common coordinate systems , there seem to be fewer explanations of the procedure for deriving the conversion, so here goes! What do we actually want? To convert the Cartesian nabla to the nabla for another coordinate system, say… cylindrical coordinates. What we’ll need: 1. The Cartesian Nabla: 2. A set of equations relating the Cartesian coordinates to cylindrical coordinates: 3. A set of equations relating the Cartesian basis vectors to the basis vectors of the new coordinate system: How to do it: Use the chain rule for differentiation to convert the derivatives with respect to the Cartesian variables to derivatives with respect to the cylindrical variables. The chain

The Valentine's Day Magnetic Monopole

There's an assymetry to the form of the two Maxwell's equations shown in picture 1. While the divergence of the electric field is proportional to the electric charge density at a given point, the divergence of the magnetic field is equal to zero. This is typically explained in the following way. While we know that electrons, the fundamental electric charge carriers exist, evidence seems to indicate that magnetic monopoles, the particles that would carry magnetic 'charge', either don't exist, or, the energies required to create them are so high that they are exceedingly rare. That doesn't stop us from looking for them though! Keeping with the theme of Fairbank[1] and his academic progeny over the semester break, today's post is about the discovery of a magnetic monopole candidate event by one of the Fairbank's graduate students, Blas Cabrera[2]. Cabrera was utilizing a loop type of magnetic monopole detector. Its operation is in concept very sim

Copasetic Flow

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