Our son is learning fractions at school. He’s finding them a little challenging, so I’ve been trying to help him. On one hand, my math knowledge still seems to be sufficient at his level. On the other, I don’t remember doing this stuff like he does it at school.
I found a couple links that will hopefully be helpful to him (well, aside from the examples I worked through with him, some artful diagrams with blocks, and loads of patience), so I thought I’d share them –
Adding Fractions is a pretty simple site that uses pizzas to explain how to add fractions. I was really pleased to see that “my” method is the same as this one.
I’m definitely one of those people who find the sound of chewing infuriating. I have moments when it’s tolerable but, for the most part, it drives me crazy. Irrationally so. It turns out, this may be as much of a biological thing, as it is a psychological thing (and yet another thing to add to my list of Things). According to Mike McCrae’s article titled “If You Can’t Stand The Sound of People Chewing, Blame Your Brain” –
The sound of people chewing, slurping, tapping, or humming can drive some people into a rage, and scientists have actually discovered the neurological wiring responsible for this strange condition.
Called misophonia, it describes the unreasonable emotions that well up inside some of us when we hear certain repetitive noises being produced by those around us. People with this condition experience annoyance or even anger at the clacking of a keyboard, the rustling of a chip packet, or the smacking of lips.
Mike McCrae
It doesn’t seem like there’s a cure. Well, there is. People can chew with their mouths closed. Just a thought.
Sadly for those with misophonia, the discovery doesn’t come with an easy fix. It might help the rest of us sympathise, however, and consider chewing with our mouths closed.
There simply wasn’t enough room to have the kind of nuanced conversation the subject requires. It was symbolic of Twitter’s broader problem: It’s almost impossible to have a smart, healthy argument on Twitter because no one has the space needed to share their thoughts.
Anyone remember Friendfeed? Actually, perhaps a more interesting solution could have been Google Wave.
Neither of these options are around any longer, and their successors don’t have the traction or appeal for this sort of use case.
I’ve taken a couple days off this week to decompress after what feels like a pretty intense six months or so at work. Today turned out to be a really nice, warm day (we have rain and cold weather forecast for the rest of the week), so I went for a walk this morning.
This is also great weather to go for a run, so I’m going to resist the urge to sit in front of the TV for the rest of the afternoon, and spend a little more time outdoors instead.
This definitely falls into the This is cool! category. The Gutenberg Blocks Design Library is an awesome plugin that used standard blocks to create a range of useful layouts.
What’s great about this plugin is that it uses blocks that are part of the new WordPress Editor already, and combines them to create a collection of mini-layouts for a variety of use cases. I especially love that this doesn’t require you to add a new level of complexity to the new editor.
Instead, it uses the blocks that are already available, but in prepackaged combinations that address practical needs.
Today is our 13th wedding anniversary, and we both took the day off (I’ve taken the rest of this week off – I feel like I’m due for a breather from work after a busy ±8 months). We did a repeat of our last anniversary, and went for a hike up Givat HaTitora just outside the city.
We started off with breakfast at Peppino (it was terrific), and then made our way to a path that led us up to the top of the hill.
One new attraction is this cheesy bench that apparently links to an Instagram campaign. We couldn’t resist.
The path at the top of the hill offers terrific views of the area, and the remnants of past settlements. I enjoy going up there, and looking around.
We have some cold, rainy weather this week, but today is a beautiful, warm day. It was a really nice day to be outdoors, and I enjoyed the quiet during the hike. Just us, and nature sounds. Some of the time at any rate.
If you’re interested in how the hill has changed in the last year, check out last year’s post:
One of the challenges of being a parent in a time where we can share so much of our lives on social media is deciding how much to share about our kids. I decided to stop sharing much more than tidbits about our kids online a year or two ago. One of the reasons I stepped back was this:
One commenter criticized parents like the essay’s author for having “turned their family’s daily dramas into content.” Another said the woman’s essay surfaces a “nagging – and loaded – question among parents in the age of Instagram. … Are our present social media posts going to mortify our kids in the future?”
Of course part of the challenge is that our friends and family are likely on Facebook, and that’s where they share their lives. They don’t necessarily share publicly (as in the Public sharing option), but Facebook is their social hub.
Sharing our kids’ lives isn’t a modern phenomenon. Parents have been doing it for generations. What’s new is that we can share so much, across such vast distances, and at scale. Far beyond ye olde photo albums with printed photos. As Priya Kumar pointed out –
Unlike the diary entries, photo albums and home videos of yore, blog posts, Instagram photos and YouTube videos reside in platforms owned by corporations and can be made visible to far more people than most parents realize or expect.
I created a private family blog that is only accessible to family and close friends as a way to still share our lives with family and friends, and only with them. It hasn’t attracted much interest, though, and the reason seems to be that it’s not on Facebook, and therefore not part of that social hub.
It’s tempting to just go back to sharing this stuff on Facebook, and rejoin the collective there. The problem with this is that doing that is more likely to be harmful to our kids. And that doesn’t justify the convenience to our friends and family.
So, I reconsidered the value of our family blog. Instead of its primary purpose being a way to share our lives with friends and family in a way that better protects our kids’ privacy, I see it as a great way to document our lives for our kids.
I’d love to see our friends and family interacting with our family blog, but I’m not expecting to see that for the time being. Facebook has too much of a hold over our digital, social interactions (at least in my circles).
WhatsApp is a pretty prominent platform too, but sending a WhatsApp message to a family group isn’t the same as a blog post with photo galleries, a story, links, and maps that I use to document our experiences.
There are definitely more private options available for sharing our personal lives online. I’m partial to blogs but there are adoption drawbacks.
Still, given the choice between fewer visits from Facebook (and other) hold-outs, and committing our children to a degree of publicity they won’t want as they grow up, I’m comfortable adjusting my expectations of how many people will visit our family blog.
I noticed that Gutenberg 5.0 has added a RSS block to the editor. This is probably a bit nerdy, but I was pretty excited to see this addition to the block editor.
My “Interesting stuff” page is an experiment in sharing things I find, well, interesting online. I had to install a separate plugin to add a RSS feed that I created, initially. The new RSS block makes it as easy as it should be to just add a RSS feed to a post or a page.
I like it!
This wasn’t the only addition through Gutenberg 5.0. Here’s the announcement post with details of the new Kindle block, and a great tweak to the Cover block:
