personal
drorzel | November 12, 2011"Seriously, Daddy, I'm awake for like one hour a day, and you're going to spend it taking my picture?"
"You're going to post this on the Internet, aren't you?"
"Then again... If I play this right, I can use this technology to TAKE OVER THE WORLD!"
(Those two shots are taken with my cell phone, while he was propped up on my knees after his afternoon feeding. For reference, here's a picture of SteelyKid propped up on my knees in more or less the same manner:
(Oh my God, she's huge!)
drorzel | November 11, 2011Actually, The Pip came home last night, but the whole process was too hectic to take any decent pictures, let alone blog about it. We got some quiet time this afternoon, though, when SteelyKid had been packed off to day care, which let me take some good shots of The Pip chillin' in his crib:
This is the same porta-crib, by the way, that big sister SteelyKid posed in last week, so you can fairly directly compare the two. And, of course, Appa is there as a reference.
It's probably an illusion, given that he doesn't exactly have complete control of his movements, but he certainly gave the…
drorzel | November 9, 2011How awesome is The Pip? So awesome he glows:
OK, that's really just a phototherapy light because he's a little jaundiced (SteelyKid had the same thing when she was just born, though I don't remember the light being brought to the room with her). It makes him look like he glows in the dark, though. Possibly because he acquired superpowers through unwise experiments with comic-book radiation.
All is basically well, here. Both SteelyKid and The Pip have thoroughly charmed all the nurses at the hospital-- her through cute chatter and general bounciness, him through eating like a champ and…
drorzel | November 7, 2011As of 4:35 this morning, Chateau Steelypips has a new member (though not yet resident, for a couple more days):
This photo, with the traditional sky-bison for scale is our new baby boy, David Nepveu Orzel, henceforth to be referred to on the blog as "The Pip." Because "SteelyKid and The Pip" sounds like a crime-fighting duo to be reckoned with, it fits with the old domain-name scheme, and it's obviously a nickname, unlike the two other contenders, both of which were based on real-ish names suggested by SteelyKid ("Porter," short for "Transporter," which was SteelyKid's first suggestion of a…
sa smith | November 7, 2011We get little earthquakes all the time in OK. This is my usual reaction:
Department mates running into the hallway: OMFG WHAT WAS THAT???
Me: Wat?
Department mates: HOLY CRAP THAT WAS AN EARTHQUAKE!!
Me: ... I didnt feel anything... ... ... Thats what she said.
But this Saturday we had the strongest quake in OK history:
Magnitude 5.6 - OKLAHOMA
2011 November 06 03:53:10 UTC
This was my reaction this time:
Me in bed watching TV
*earthquake*
Me closing my eyes and holding my breath until its over, silently hoping it is an earthquake and not something worse.
Arnie making a bee-line for the…
drorzel | November 5, 2011I sent in the page proofs for How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog this week, and by way of celebration, I went out and helped boost the economy by buying some consumer electronics:
Yes, I now have an iPad. Just one with wi-fi, not the 3G version, because we already send Verizon enough money, and if I need instant access to my email absolutely anywhere, I've got an Android phone. But I like shiny things, and this is pretty darn shiny (even if I'm hampered by it needing an immediate software update that's taking six hours).
Anyway, I have a few ideas about what to put on this, and SteelyKid…
drorzel | November 3, 2011This weekend, we did a little more furniture-moving to prepare for the imminent arrival of FutureSibling!, which included moving SteelyKid's black chair upstairs into her room, and putting the portable crib back in front of the fireplace in the living room. Unsurprisingly, she wanted to get in it; surprisingly, she allowed me to take a picture of her lying down in it:
(Not the best shot, but she didn't hold still for long. Check out the spiffy Halloween shirt, too...)
For reference, here is more or less the same pose, 161 weeks ago. Good Lord, she's gotten huge.
drorzel | October 27, 2011A couple of cell-phone pictures from last weekend, on an early-evening run to one of the local playgrounds. The sun was pretty well down when SteelyKid decided she wanted to climb on the giant rope climbing structure they have. she's gone on this before, but it's never lasted long, so we figured, why not?
(It's blurry because of the low light-- I brightened it massively in GIMP.)
She's gotten considerably bolder and more agile since the last time she went on this. And it got even better:
That's right, at one point she was over my head. And about five feet away horizontally, with a network…
pharyngula | October 23, 2011John Wilkins is an unemployed philosopher right now, so he's looking for donations to tide him over. Give him a little assistance if you can, especially since he's threatening to have a god take him to heaven if we don't cough up. Let's not give a damned agnostic an excuse to wobble over the correct answer on that one.
Don't leave any comments over there, though! He fears and hates the Horde, 'cause he ain't got one.
(Also on FtB)
drorzel | October 20, 2011SteelyKid was in an exceptionally happy mood the other night, and so I not only got the silly face shot from the previous post, but also this more traditional Toddler Blogging picture, with Appa, no less:
All together now: Awwwwwww....
Appa, you may or may not recall, has served as our standard length reference for our weekly series of SteelyKid photos. Only not so much with the weekly, for the last little while, and not so much with Appa for a longer while...
We got this one, though, and oh my God, she's gigantic. This, for reference, is the very first Appa-for-scale picture, from 2008. We…
drorzel | October 20, 2011I've been too busy to really work on the DonorsChoose fundraiser this year, but it's worth taking a little time to mention this opportunity: Starting today and running through Saturday midnight, the DonorsChoose board will match donations to the Science Bloggers for Students fundraiser. thus, a $5 donation becomes $10, $10 becomes $20, and, well, you know how to multiply by two.
So, since you're quick with arithmetic, why not throw a couple of bucks to DonorsChoose, to help the next generation learn to do addition and multiplication, and eventually multivariable calculus? Such as, say, this…
drorzel | October 15, 2011Because it's been a while since I posted a cute toddler picture, and because SteelyKid actually let me shoot some pictures of her yesterday for the first time in a while. Here she is, playing with Legos:
Of course, building giant towers is only half the fun of playing with Legos:
What goes up, must come down...
drorzel | October 8, 2011This is primarily of note to a handful of family members, but it's the end of an era at Chateau Steelypips:
Well, two eras, I suppose, for the two items of furniture. The dresser dates from around 2002, and was bought when I first moved to Schenectady, so Kate would have a place for her clothes. I don't recall if it was before or after we were married-- I think before, but I'm not sure. It moved to Renssalaer and then Niskayuna with us, where it's been sitting in our spare bedroom.
The really noteworthy item, though, is the brown chair. My parents got two of these back in the early 1980's,…
pharyngula | October 7, 2011Too late! My talk is all over.
There is one writeup already, there were people in the audience with cameras so something will appear on youtube soon, and the convention had professional videographers present, so maybe you'll see it sometime soon. Or you could invite me out to whereever you are to give it again.
(Also on FtB)
kbonham | October 6, 2011Monday's announcement for the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine should have been a happy occasion for my lab. On the one hand, it was given for early discoveries in the field of innate immunity - my field! On the other hand, it was given to a scientist that many* feel is undeserving of the honor, while at the same time sullying the legacy of my scientific great-grandfather.
Let me explain.
The Context
In the late 1980's, immunologists were riding high. Much of the experimental attention in previous decades had focused on T-cells and B-cells, the drivers of "adaptive immunity," and it…
pharyngula | October 3, 2011Seriously, half the time I don't know where I am. I got a call last night from this madman, Scooter of KPFT, asking if I'd be available to do a radio show in Houston on Thursday, and I said, "Thursday? I'm not going to be in Texas this week, am I?" and he says, "Yes, you are" and I go "Huh? Whuh? I thought that was later this month!" But yes, he's right, a hard-partying wildman of a radio DJ knows better where I'm going than I do.
This week, it's time for the Texas Freethought Convention!
I'll be there, I promise. I had my plane reservations and everything. Well, everything except my talk,…
drorzel | September 29, 2011The JCC, where SteelyKid goes to preschool, is closed for Rosh Hashanah, so she's off at Grandma and Grandpa's for the weekend. They start doing a little more religious instruction at the preschool level, so we got to hear about Jewish theology, SteelyKid style:
It's the birthday of the world, so I'm going to Grandma and Grandpa's tomorrow. The world's going to be closed, because it's the birthday of the world!
With big wide eyes for the last sentence, to drive home the importance of the world's birthday. And later, when I said the words "Rosh Hashanah,"
Yeah! Rosh Hashanah! God created the…
pharyngula | September 29, 2011It's all about geeky mathy sciencey love, the finest kind of them all. And of course Fourier transforms are fantastically beautiful!
(Also on FtB)
pharyngula | September 18, 2011And now I've found it.
IHTOASMTIATCOTYHABYWABOL.
Don't get me started on smilies.
(Also on FtB)
drorzel | September 17, 2011Those of you who follow me on Twitter/ Facebook have been getting the occasional snippet of cute dialogue from SteelyKid over there. This one's a little too long for breaking into 140-character blocks, so while I wait for her to come downstairs so we can make pancakes, a cute SteelyKid story:
We play a surprising number of games whose goal is to convince her that I'm an imbecile, one of which is me "misremembering" the lyrics of songs like "The Wheels on the Bus." One day last week, we had the following exchange (more or less) in the car:
Me: So, the wheels on the bus go up and down, right?…