Unschooling Cuts Half Hour off Dad's Airport Commute

Having the kids able to help out with our everyday lives has been one of the huge perks of unschooling. Rather than being off somewhere discussing life skills, or practicing life skills, or doing homework on life skills, the unschooling kid s here are out using their life skills as they develop them. Lately, as the gang have been out and about, living their lives, they've also been able to help me out. The 8, 6, and 4 year-old here have learned how to do shopping without me. We started out with them collecting items in the same grocery store I was in to save time. Now, we’re splitting up to hit different stores, and then meeting back at the bus stop. The latest advantage I received from unschooling though had to do with my airport commute in LA.

First, I was surprised to find out public transit works in LA! I"d heard the rumors that LA is a driving-only town, but they're just not true. There aren’t as many routes as there are in our hometown of San Francisco, but they get the job done. Over the years, I’ve worked out a serviceable set of routes between the airport, my hotel, and my work. While I suspected there might be better routes, the adult in me had squelched any attempts to find out. I’d think of heading to the airport a different way, but wind up mired in ‘what ifs’. “What if the new route was actually slower?” “What if there wasn’t a walking path where Goole Maps sad there was?” (It happens.) The route I had was doable. Sure, it took 45 minutes or so. Sure, sometimes I wound up marooned outside a train station for a stretch of time, but it worked.

Which is why I’m really happy to announce that I’m now a mere 15 minutes from airport to work, and only 25 minutes from airport to hotel thanks to the gang, 8 year-ol No. One, 6 year-old No. Two, and four year-old No. Three!

A few weeks ago, said gang and their nanny, (Director of Tactical Operation), traveled to LA with me. When One and I attended a technical conference of mine, (where she also presented in the junior track), a few months ago, she made a few buddies who live in LA. Luckily, the kids’ DTO grew up in LA, so for the cost of a few free plane tickets, we were all able to travel to LA, maintaining our usual schedule. We visited with One’s friends, and now Two and Three have friends in LA also!

One of the biggest perks of the trip, for me anyway, came on the last day. The kids and their DTO checked out the map from the hotel to the airport, found a faster looking route, and had the veracity to try it. Having a day to kill, and plenty of time to make mistakes, they all figured why not?

I’m happy to say the route worked like a champ! It did in fact cut half an hour off my airport commute this morning, and I never would have tried it if the kids hadn’t scouted it out for me first! For us unschooling isn't just about kids learning a different way, it's about them being out in their community not only benefitting from it, but also contributing back. It was really nice to be the beneficiary this time!

It’s good to have kids that live in the same world as me where I can benefit from their discoveries!

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:

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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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