Biking from Arlington to National Harbor

Shira and I had some time today to fit in a fairly lengthy bike ride. We busted out a local map and realized that National Harbor would make an ideal destination (it would be a mere 20 miles round trip - easy!). To get there from Arlington, it seemed simple enough: head to Old Town Alexandria, cross over the Wilson Bridge, and bam! you'd be there. See:


View Bicycling directions to National Harbor, Fort Washington, MD in a larger map

My only real concern was that the Wilson Bridge wasn't going to be particularly bike friendly.
The ride started off delightfully. The weather was perfect and the trails were effectively empty. Apparently everyone was either traveling somewhere or putting in their last few hours of work before taking off for Thanksgiving. We found our way to the Wilson Bridge easily enough, and what do you know, it couldn't have been more bike/pedestrian friendly.

The biking/walking path on the bridge is quite wide, and there are a number of spots to stop along the way to gape out at the amazing views. The bridge trail leads right into a crushed stone waterfront trail, which in turn, takes you right to the harbor. It took us just about an hour to get from our front door to the Harbor.

On the way back I managed to convince Shira to stop at Jones Point Park. This little park has it all: playgrounds, open space to run around and wonderful history. You can take in the lighthouse there as well as the various boundary stones that mark DC and Virginia. Heck, you can even fish from the park.

All in all, this was an absolutely splendid ride. If you haven't explored the Wilson Bridge on your bike yet, it's definitely worth it.

A few photos from our trip, all from my new Galaxy S3. Man I love that panoramic feature!

The 6 Essentials for Thanksgiving

About a week ago, I saw this video on Buzzfeed: 6 Essential Thanksgiving Rules. After thinking about it, I realized it really did capture the essentials of the holiday. Here, give it a watch:

Of course, we usually go out of our way to break every single rule here. Our ideal Thanksgiving: hot dogs, minus the TV and fuss of a big 'ol meal. We do usually clean up that night, though.

Here's two more handy articles: 41 delicious vegan Thanksgiving recipes and 34 insanely simple two ingredient dishes.

Whether you follow tradition or not, hope your Thanksgiving is a meaningful one. I certainly know I have a lot to be thankful for, like for instance, the fact that you read this post. Thanks!

Wear This, Not That, Exercise Edition

Is 54°F cold? During fall, sure. During spring, probably not. It's just all so relative. Which means that for years I've set off on a run wearing the wrong clothes because my intuition was all wrong.

Why, a few months ago I hit the road on a 50° night wearing long sleeves, long pants and a windbreaker. After a mile of running I was cooking. What could I possibly have been thinking?

For years, I've imagined tracking what worked and didn't work in the clothing department, and then being able to use that as a guide for future activities. Yet, I never seemed to get around to setting up this trivial spreadsheet.

The madness ends tonight.

Below is a spreadsheet I hope to fill in with notes to my self that will hopefully avoid me going out with all the wrong gear on.

Loving life on my new Galaxy S3

Shira took advantage of a promotion this weekend to pick up a Galaxy S3 for free (well, free plus 2 years indebtitude to T-mobile by extending our contract). So far, I'm loving the device.

The huge screen makes typing on it much more sane. I had Shira's myTouch 4G for months and still made typos because the closely spaced keys, not so on the S3.

I've retired a few apps because the Google version is now more or less standard. That includes trading phonefusion for Google Voice and  appbrain for installing from the desktop version of play.google.com. They were pioneering apps in their day, but have given way to more standard solutions.

I was most looking forward to the camera on board the
S3, and so far it hasn't disappointed. It appears to blow away any cell phone camera I've ever had in both terms of speed and quality. Though I always felt I managed to pick phones with dud cameras.

Time will tell if I buy into some of the gimmicky features, like saying "shoot" to snap a photo or using NFC, but for now I'm just satisfied with having a super sharp super fast phone.

Kuddos to my wife for getting me the device, I never would have taken the leap, and after 24hrs I'm so sold.

Attached are a few snapshots to show the quality of the camera.

Any tips or ticks for the S3 you'd like to share?

Watching the 2012 Gymnastics Team Do Their Thing

I'm not a fan of watching sports on TV. Football, baseball, tennis, gymnastics--you name it--I'd rather pass. So when Shira flipped over to the Kellogg's Tour of Gymnastics Champions, I knew I had to think fast. I grabbed my laptop and checked the the tour's planned stops. "Honey," I earnestly explained, "why watch this on TV when we can see it live and in person?"

Well, last night, she had me make good on my suggestion. We joined a crowd exclusively made up of mom's, their daughters, a handful of sons and a couple of fathers to watch the the 2012 Gymnastics team do their thing.

Thing is, it was actually a good time! Sure, I felt a little out of place without a kid (who would had loved the show, but it was way past his bed time). And did the men really need to perform most of the show shirtless? But there's no doubt these athletes have amazing skills, and it's nice to support them outside of the two weeks we watch the Olympics.

By the way, back in 2008 I surprised Shira with tickets to the same show. Man, I was romantic back then.

Here are some photos from the evening:

And here's the obligatory animated GIF:

That's Gabby Douglas - the clear star of the show last night. Good heavens she's tiny! It was definitely something getting to watch her perform.

Us

Photos by our 7 year old - as you can see, he's quite the photographer!

A Narrative Interface - The Ultimate Kid Friendly UI

As I recently came to appreciate, what makes a kid friendly software app successful isn't necessarily obvious to adults. Adults want clean and shiny. Geeks like myself might have affinity for elegance. But kids? Kids are a whole other story. They want interactive and fun. Our 7 year old has no problem using his imagination to see a castle where an adult may see an upside down cardboard box. But if it's not fun and in terms he can grasp, it's not going to hold his attention.

It was with these insights in mind, that I was especially thankful I tripped over Chris Ball's Narrative Interface post. Apparently Chris is heavily involved in OLPC, a project near and dear to my heart. In his post, he links to a wonderful talk that introduces the notion of a Narrative UI. I'll put the video below, and highly recommend you check it out.

Very briefly, a Narrative UI suggests that you turn the operation of a computer into something that approximates a story. For example, rather than merely showing a menu of apps, you might take the user on a quest - where each stop along the way involves a different piece of software (oh look, I'm at the Music Castle, where I need to make music). It sounded unnecessary to me at first, but after watching the talk I'm pretty much convinced.

The idea of walking a kid through the computer, ideally at their own pace and in a context that's customized to them, means that they'll get into an exploration frame of mind. I'd think it would make it easier to introduce new concepts in a fun way, all while proceeding at the child's pace.

I've always believed that the key to success at the one laptop per child project was not the hardware, but the software. Sure, the hardware is fun to play with, but it's the software that will actually determine whether kids are going to learn on these things. And that software needs serious innovation, which I think the Narrative UI is an excellent example of.

One last point before I shush up and let you watch the video. I think my next parent hacking software endevor is going to be to install Sugar on a Stick. That is, install the software that runs on OLPC laptops on a regular old USB thumbdrive and let our 7 year old go to town on it.

Diamond Age by sugarlabs

Stumbling Onto Hallowed Ground

This weekend, we met up with a friend in DC. While Shira and her were chit-chatting, I noticed a plaque on the nearby wall:

It marked the location where Herman Hollerith perfected and produced punch card tabulating machine technology. This contribution makes him (in my book, anyway) one of the founding fathers of programming. Without his work, I may not have a job today.

Herman is responsible for the powering the 1890 census, managing to complete it in 1 year instead of the 8 that the 1880 census took. That means that he's one of the first programmers to walk into his boss's office and blow him away by delivering a computer project early! What a thrill that must have been. Maybe we'll pull off such a feat again some day.

Seriously, providing that kind of optimization must have been beyond the imagination of most people. That's one of my favorite parts of my job: getting to work a miracle every now and again.

Update: As Nick so kindly pointed out, it sure would be nice if I had mentioned the location of the plaque. Here it is:

View Larger Map

That's 1054 31st Street, Washington DC.

Putting The Beautiful Day To Good Use

The sun was shining, and Shira was off from work, so we took advantage of the day by hopping on our bikes. I was curious just how much of the Mt. Vernon Trail we could do. It extends 18 miles or so, and ends up, as the name suggests, at Mount Vernon, George Washington's Estate.

Between my eagerness to overdo it, and Shira's stubbornness to not back down from a challenge, we managed to make it all the way to mile 0 at Mount Vernon. After 18 miles of biking, we downed the few snacks I had brought, and were back on the trail.

All said and done, it was about 34 miles of biking - and boy do I feel it! But the scenery was just amazing and what a thrill it was to finally tick off this challenge.

We were in such a hurry, I didn't capture many photos. But still, I couldn't resist grabbing a few:

It's such a picturesque area -- if you haven't explored the trails in the area, you really must!

Building A Microscope Out of a Laser Pointer

This is an sweet little hack for using nothing but a laser pointer to build a microscope thingy:

Plus, if you watch the video you'll be introduced to the Crazy Russian Hacker, who is as cool as his username suggests.

I've actually been surprised I haven't seen more uses for laser pointers. Up until now, the niftiest idea I had seen for a laser pointer was to mount it on your mini weapon of mass destruction as a super accurate scope.

Oh, they are also handy for getting arrested. Naturally, there are other hacks out there, so maybe I do need steal my PhD brother's laser pointer for some goofing around.

Regardless, don't forget: Safety is Number One Priority!

Review: 869 New Uses for Old Things

Given my fondness for improvisation, renting Real Simple 869 New Uses for Old Things: An Encyclopedia of Innovative Ideas for Everyday Items from the library was a no-brainer. The contents are just what the title suggests: pick an item, describe a few alternate use for it, repeat.

The book is clearly more interested in the breadth of items, versus the depth of uses for particular items. How else can you explain WD-40 having a two alternate uses listed (instead, of say, 2,001), or the bobby pin also having 2. It does, however, contain a number of Master Multitaskers which pick one item and fill up a page (of relatively large type) of uses for it.

My favorite three hacks:

• Using empty paper towel tubes to neatly store plastic bags
• Lighting a length of spaghetti and using it as an improvised, extra long, match
• All the use for olive oil

I was also surprised at how useful coffee filters can be, but because we don't drink coffee, we don't have any lying around to try them out. Nor do I think I can justify buying some just to play with the hacks (or maybe I can...).

For someone like myself, it's a fun book and if nothing else, it will get your creative juices flowing. Certainly glad I rented it from the library, and it would probably make a fun and functional coffee table book.

My favorite part of the book, though, is contained after the last item is discussed (zippered plastic bags, to be exact). It's a flowchart that lists 10 uses for itself for the book itself. Definitely a clever addition.

Thanh Van - The Best Little Hidden Vegan Restaurant in Northern Virginia

About a hundred years ago, before Barack Obama won his second term, and Super Storm Sandy Made an appearance, my parents came to town (OK, it was a little over two weeks ago, but you get the idea). I performed the usual Google searches to see if any new all-vegetarian restaurants had popped up since they had last been in town. Thanks to Yelp, I found that here was a Vietnamese restaurant just about 10 minutes away: Thanh Van. Whoo!

On Friday afternoon, while Shira was out running errands, I took my parents over to the Eden Center to stop in for a bite. I've been by the Eden Center, but never really into it. Never really had a reason to, I guess.

We arrived, and with the name of the restaurant in hand, started searching around. Holy Smokes. I haven't felt this culturally disoriented...since...well, probably never. The Eden Center is huge, from first glance, nearly ever sign is in (what appears to me) to be Vietnamese. Signs like this one were the norm:

(Got all that?)

I knew from the Yelp review that I would find Thanh Van on the inside of the mall, but wandering around only left me more confused. I asked a couple of folks standing around and nobody had any ideas. Finally, I asked a woman if there was a vegan restaurant near by - she had no idea what I was talking about. Then I mentioned, vegetarian -- ahhh, that she knew of. She pointed me across the parking lot and off I went with my parents.

After going down yet another hallway filled with cafes and shops, I found it. The only encouragement that I had found a vegan restaurant was the phrase "SPECIAL Diet Vegetable" in the main sign in the entrance way. See:

We stepped inside, past a compact buffet of hot foods and were seated in the small cafe. Two important looking individuals - one a man, one a woman - helped us get oriented. I've ordered Vietnamese a number of times, but it's usually nothing to write home about. We ended up getting one order of Pho, another spicy soup and one sampler from the buffet. One of our servers actually took my mom up to the buffet and together they put together a heaping pile of food (not sure if that's standard, or if they were just helping out a rookie).

Here's the part that really matters: the food was absolutely outstanding. The buffet was filled with what appeared to be mock-meat dishes, and they had excellent flavors and textures. Certainly as good as any vegan chinese restaurant I've been to, if not better. I thought I'd tasted every way to flavor/cook tofu and the like - apparently, I was wrong. The soups were also excellent, though I probably need to spend some time learning proper Pho technique before I'm really there.

The service was warm and attentive. They may have laughed themselves silly at the way we at our food, but they couldn't have been kinder to us.

The place is small and very much an informal cafe. So you'll want to dial back any expectations of fancy ambiance. But the food more than made up for that, and the casual atmosphere lends itself to asking questions.

I truly felt like a tourist, and even snapped some photos of the food. It was so much fun, I couldn't resist:

Finally, here's what you need to do to find this place. First, drive here:

View Larger Map

Next, look for this doorway:

Walk down the hall, which should look like this:

Near the end of the hallway, find Thanh Van:

You may have an adventure going there, but it'll definitely be worth it!

Another Geocaching First

This last weekend, I had about an hour of playtime with our 7 year old before we needed to meet back up with Shira. Given the success we've had, I figured trying for another geocache would be a good use of our time.

We went after this one, which had the two criteria I've find to be most important: (a) it was recently found (the day before!) and (b) it was large enough to contain some goodies for our little one.

This was also a fun one, because the map placed the cache in the middle of 4 Mile Run - not the road, but the body of water. How was that going to work? We soon found out.

While I used the GPS to get us in the right neighborhood, it was our 7 year old who actually found the cache! No hints or nudges from me, he outright found it while I was off poking around in the wrong location.

If you still haven't tried Geocaching, what are you waiting for? You know your phone has a free App for that, right? It's an easy and local way to have some outdoor fun.

A few snapshots from the area around the cache.

Election Night Romance

A couple snuggling at Taqueria Poblano with a tablet on the table and the TV above - both showing election results. Awww, how sweet.

That's so DC.

It's About Time This Kid Learned To Program - Embracing Scratch

OK, I admit it - I've been feeling a bit of geek dad guilt over our 7 year old and his computer hacking skills. Mainly, I've found plenty of fun activities for us to work on -- from paper airplane building to stuffed animal architecture. But all my attempts at doing anything on the computer beyond basic games have been a bust.

Don't get me wrong - he's amazingly adept at the mechanics of using a computer. He occasionally does math homework on the computer, and is a whiz clicking around. However, what I really want to teach him is that the computer can be used the same way he uses other tools (read: crayons, tape and whatever else can scrounge): to build stuff. In other words, I'd like to teach him to program.

Now, part of me is perfectly aware that the best traits of a programmer (like the ability to break down problems and finding and fixing bugs) are ones that he can learn and practice without a computer. But who am I kidding? As a programmer, I've got to at least try to teach him some basic skills.

But where to begin? Personally, I have an affinity for small and simple systems. That simplicity would make for an easier learning curve, right? Wrong. Sure, logo is a beautiful and simple language, but how can line graphics pull in the interest of a 7 year old? Not only that, but concepts like "turn 90 degrees" are totally foreign to him. Heck, at 7 he's still not sure what a negative number is all about. As a student exploring geometry, Logo may make heaps of sense, but as an introduction to programming, it's not going to work.

Same goes for small basic and my beloved Racket. Sure, for middle school or high school kids, these are no a brainer, but not for an elementary student.

Luckily, the insights above are nothing new, and there are those who have already figured out a solution. One approach: Scratch by the folks over at MIT.

Scratch allows programming through a snap together model. Kids (or in my case, parent and kid) can drag various behaviors and controls onto a canvas which in real time produce a program. Visual programming is nothing new, but Scratch manages to nail it for kids. The environment comes equipped with a healthy library of animation sprites, sounds and other multimedia features. Forget Hello World and Fibonnaci Sequences, Scratch makes it effortless to be a DJ and an animated storyteller.

In fact, the line between program, game and art creation are pretty much non existent in Scratch.

The Scratch team has gone further than developing a slick programming environment, they've developed a community to tie it all together. You're encouraged to browse through the projects, pick one you like, download it and tweak it. The community is a smart idea and means that you never need to run out of ideas of what to build.

For now, our little guy is most interested in hearing all the different sound clips that are available and jumping up and dancing to them. But that's OK. He's learning that he can control the computer, instead of the other way around.

Here's the first project we put together. I did most of technical work here, though he made the artistic decisions, including naming it "Animal Parade." Try pressing the A, S, and D keys to get the animals to "sing" along.

The fun part about Scratch is just how quickly you can make an entertaining creation. Go head, give it a try. One tiny bit of advice: spend a few minutes getting up to speed before you attempt to show your kid, that way you can be productive right out of the gate.

Good Minions Are Hard To Find

I feel for this guy (or gal?), I really do. In an effort to help him out, I'm reposting his craigslist ad verbatim:

Evil Genius needs minions to run innocuous "front" operation while plotting world domination.

Requirements:
Good phone personality to disguise our true intent. Computer literate, Minimum need of good Excel, Word skill. Familiarity with social network sites and internet for cyberstalking enemies and frustrating UN, MI-6 and CIA attempts to block nefarious plans. (and also to find decent Thai & Sushi delivery services).

Good organizational skills including billing, filing, and stocking of supplies for front operation. Will teach bookkeeping, office management, and care and cleaning of automatic weapons.

Long hours, low pay, occasional need to lift heavy items into Van or car trunk. (Discretely).

Serious inquiries only.

Of course, I'm usually more concerned with finding minyans, than minions, but either way, a good one is hard to find.

Cox Farms and Playing the role of responsible adult

Yesterday was a first: I tagged along with our 7 year old's class to act as a chaperon for their trip to Cox Farms. When I arrived, I was instructed to watch over our son and one of his friends. Other parents seemed to be wrangling larger groups, but I guess someone either took pity on me, or didn't think I was ready for a larger group. Either way, the chaperoning gig couldn't have been easier. My goal: have them back to the bus on time, and not require use of the first aid kit.

Cox Farms was an excellent place to visit. It was both similar to, and yet different from the recently visited Great County Farms. Both places had large slides and plenty of areas to run around. Cox Farms had a fairly long hay ride that kept the kids attention without scaring them. Great Country Farms had more maze options than the adult corn maze both have. Both are great on a sunny day for kids who like to get out and play.

The highlight of the trip was feeding the goats. Both boys were eager to feed them, but once their hands were filled with food and the goats crowded on top of each other, they got incredibly skittish. When they finally figured out the goats weren't going to bite their fingers off, they totally got into it.

All in all, a good time was had by all. Not quite sure the educational value of it all, but I suppose it was the kind of shared fun experience that adults use for team building.

And I managed to get the kids back to the bus with all their digits and limbs...so let's just call that a win.

Newt Brings The Cheap Gas To My Neighborhood

Yesterday, I came across this announcement:

Newt Gingrich will appear at a New American Energy Opportunity Foundation “Gas Can Man” event taking place at the Pentagon Liberty Store at 2300 Columbia Pike tomorrow [Nov 2] from 7:00 AM to 9:00 AM. Drivers will be provided with $1.84 a gallon gasoline “to dramatically show voters what life was like before President Obama imposed onerous restrictions on domestic oil and gas exploration that resulted in soaring gas prices,” according to NAEOF spokesman Joe DeSantis.

Cheap gas? Newt Gingrich? All down the street from me at the very station I last filled up. How could I not stop by?

So I did. The result was pretty much what you'd expect: a line of cars, police directing traffic at gas station that's wicked crowded on the best of days, signs up bashing Obama and a guy in a giant gas can outfit. I didn't see Newt or anyone else really talking. I skipped getting gas (the price wasn't for premium gas, which we use), but I did get some photos:

As political maneuvers go, I'm impressed at the originality of the idea. Why spend more money on TV commercials (that I skip with my DVR, thank you very much) when you can just make your point in a way I can really appreciate: cheap gas.

The fact that they picked Arlington, a ridiculously pro Obama town (and just a few hundred feet away from the Obama reelection center) was either brilliantly inspired, or a serious miscalculation. Probably the former.

As for the notion that our gas prices are high because "Obama imposed onerous restrictions on domestic oil and gas exploration" -- I'm not buying it. And neither is Politifact. Not to mention, the $1.84 price was an anomaly at the time, not business as usual:

Still, props for getting creative. Next time, though, it would be cool if we could do creative and truthful.