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drorzel | August 7, 2011Well, you're right. The cutest toddler in the universe turns three today:
Happy birthday, SteelyKid!
pharyngula | August 6, 2011I have more imminent travel plans. I'll be at the World Humanist Conference in Oslo this coming weekend, and then on Monday the 15th I'll be doing this:
Sted: Asylet, Grønland 28 [kart]
Tid: Fra kl. 18 og utover
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Paul Z. Myers er en amerikansk biolog som jobber ved University of Minnesota Morris, og forsker på zebrafisk innen området evolusjonær utviklingsbiologi. Mest kjent er han for sin populære blogg Pharyngula, hvor han blant annet kommer med harsk kritikk mot intelligent design og kreasjonistmiljøet generelt. Kort sagt er han en aktivist innen den amerikanske…
drorzel | August 4, 2011As she never tires of telling us, SteelyKid keeps getting bigger and bigger. How big? She can touch the ceiling!
OK, she has to be on my shoulders to do it, but the distance between her head and the ceiling has gotten really small. She's huge!
the picture above was taken by Kate standing a few steps up on the stairs. For the ground-level effect (more or less), click through below the fold.
She wouldn't allow a picture tonight, which is a shame, because we spent at least half an hour playing the world's most ridiculous game of hide-and-seek. But these, from last night, were too good not to…
drorzel | August 3, 2011Several weeks ago, now, SteelyKid flipped out at bedtime. We had told her that the episode of MythBusters playing on the DVR was the last one for the night, but when it ended, she demanded more. When we said no, she went into a full-on toddler freakout, screaming, crying, kicking the floor. I eventually carried her upstairs, put her on her bed, and waited until she could get herself under control enough to talk in a halfway normal voice.
Once she did, we negotiated a compromise. We wouldn't put MythBusters back on tv, but we would go back downstairs and watch three short videos on my…
pharyngula | August 2, 2011Peter and Annie sent me a present, all the way from Australia — a selection of teas, and this magnificent infuser that I'm now going to be using every morning.
Thanks very much!
drorzel | July 28, 2011Shhh! There's an Artist at work:
That's SteelyKid hard at work on something. I think she was writing my name, though it might've been writing Emmy's name. It's a little tough to tell from the photographs.
Of course, the real purpose of making art is to be able to discuss it:
This led to my new favorite SteelyKid conversation:
SteelyKid: That's a car.
Kate: Is the car going somewhere?
SteelyKid: No. It just stays on the paper.
She went on to explain that the car had been inside the marker, but then she took the top off the marker, and put it on the paper, and the car came out. Which is…
jdupuis | July 28, 2011No, the purpose of this post isn't to reveal the secrets of successful academic leadership. If I had those, believe you me I'd be writing this from my villa on the French Riviera.
However, I am heading off to the Harvard Graduate School of Education's Leadership Institute for Academic Librarians in Boston next week where I hope to be a least a little more enlightened and educated along that path.
Not surprisingly I've been watching the blogosphere these last few months for insightful posts and articles about academic leadership, in particular academic library leadership. I've found a few…
pharyngula | July 27, 2011Tonight at 7pm PST/10pm EST it's time for part 2 of the Ardent Atheist podcast. The first half was played last week; tonight I think it's the part where we discovered that one among us, Suzanne Whang, was rather on the woo side of the spirituality thing, so we all took turns hammering brutally on her. Don't worry, she's tough.
drorzel | July 25, 2011Here is a very significant picture:
"What's significant about that?" you ask. "It's slightly out of focus and oddly framed. Why should I care?"
You should care because of the photographer:
That's right, SteelyKid has a camera now-- we gave her my old Canon A95. She was playing with Kate's smaller point-and-shoot camera (I forget the model) yesterday, and having a little trouble because it's so small her fingers kept getting in the way. The A95 is a little bigger, and while it's on the heavy side, it fits her hand reasonably well. And she took right to using it.
And, because the laws of the…
drorzel | July 25, 2011I've got a ton of stuff to do this morning that will keep me from more substantive blogging, so here's a cute toddler picture:
This is SteelyKid playing with the giant magnet in the MRI exhibit at the Schenectady Museum, trying to see how big a tower she could make out of steel washers and hex nuts (answer: 11 hex nuts before it fell over). She also greatly enjoyed tossing washers at the magnet and seeing them snap to it (I was more interested in tossing them so they got deflected but missed the magnet body, and shot off into the wider room. I doubt the other patrons would've guessed…
drorzel | July 21, 2011SteelyKid's "no pictures" phase continues, meaning that I have to do things like snapping low-light pictures of her after she falls asleep:
I used a really wide aperture lens for this-- waking her up with the flash would be the end of the world-- and had to process the hell out of it to get the colors to look remotely right. I could probably do a little better with more work, but we'll leave it like this as a reminder of how difficult it was to get any pictures for Toddler Blogging
drorzel | July 15, 2011Yesterday's foray into procrastination by mathematical modeling forced me to shift some actual work into the evening hours, which meant that I completely forgot about Toddler Blogging. Which is fine, because lately SteelyKid has been reacting to cameras in approximately the same way as the reclusive celebrity of your choice, so all my pictures of he tend to look like this:
Just after this shot, she heard the shutter sound, turned around, and fled crying. So, you know, I feel like a wonderful person.
anyway, sorry for the delay, but at least it gave me something to post this morning. We're…
pharyngula | July 14, 2011I'm at #TAM! I've been busy all day! I hung out with ZOMGitsCriss! I still haven't finished my talk (also, I'm sandwiched between Jennifer Michael Hecht and Pamela Gay in the schedule, oh cruel fate)! I have to go to a party! Blog, what's that?
See, I've got priorities.
pharyngula | July 12, 2011I'll be talking with Barry Lynn this afternoon at 3pm ET. I guess it's live, and you can even call in (866-582-9933) with questions. I wonder what we'll talk about?
drorzel | July 7, 2011This week's Toddler Blogging is a cell-phone picture in slightly dim light, but it's too cute not to use:
This is particularly noteworthy because the fire truck was bought by Grandma and Grandpa last year, while the fire hat was bought by Grandma and Grandpa before they were grandparents. In 1974 or thereabouts, I would guess, because it was originally mine, when I was little.
And that's really all I've got today, as I'm still tired from travel.
pharyngula | July 4, 2011Hey, gang! You may have seen a few hints that there will be some changes around here, semi-imminently. Any interruptions in service should be brief to non-existent, but I have some concerns that if the blog goes a-wandering or falls under new management, there will be some drop-off in traffic…and some drop-off in my revenues, which wouldn't break me — I have a day job! — but might negatively impact my payments on the secret nuclear submarine and my remote island lair. I talked to a few people this past weekend about merchandising, you know, succumbing to capitalism and peddling branded…
drorzel | July 3, 2011Between the holiday weekend and finally getting to concentrate on book edits, there hasn't been much time for blogging recently. So here's another SteelyKid-at-the-Bronx-Zoo picture for filler:
As I said when I posted this to google+, this practically demands a caption. Unfortunately, I haven't come up with anything better than "...same thing we do every night, Pinky: Try to take over the ZOO!" But I'm sure somebody reading this can do better in the comments. (Please keep in mind, though, that this is my daughter we're talking about. Anything excessively crass is subject to summary deletion.)
pharyngula | July 2, 2011I said I would replicate this photo with my daughter, and we tried.
Unfortunately, I've gotten older and hairier, and she doesn't wear frilly pink dresses anymore, but otherwise, she's exactly the same as she was 18 or 19 years ago.
pharyngula | July 1, 2011I've been neglectful because these rascals at Convergence have been keeping me occupied, but here's another podcast to tide you over while I'm distracted.
drorzel | June 30, 2011SteelyKid's away at Grammy and Grampy's this week, so I can't take a Toddler Blogging photo for this week. I do, however, have this random artsy shot from last Saturday's trip to the Bronx Zoo:
This is from the Children's Zoo section. She's going up the stairs to the upper platform, where there's a twisty slide inside a fake tree trunk. As you can tell, this is Serious Business.
And there's your cute toddler fix for the week. Enjoy.