Devcamp

I spent this weekend at Datacom's developer 'unconference' as an invited, non-developer. This meant I had to do a session about DBA stuff but also got to attend quite a few other interesting sessions.

It was held in a very nice fishing lodge in Turangi. The food was particularly good with a selection of 4 different meat dishes each night including salmon.



We are heading back to town now, hopefully to make it in time for Mothers day diner at Kristine and Hamish's place.

It was good to have a weekend away but I missed Zak and Emma's soccer games and Emma was awarded Player of the Day for her role as Goalie.

BB.

(Unconference - hecklers are expected, nay, required and are expected to contribute equally with the presenter. This helps a lot, you only need to prepare about 15 minutes of stuff for an hour long session).

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

LED Doofer

Dad an I made a doofer that has ten red LEDS. They flash one by one, they start from right to left. They speed along as fast as lighting.

It took heaps of soldering, I did most of it but Dad made some mistakes so he did the rest. He also burnt his own fingers. I am going to bring it to my cousin's house when I go this holiday.

by Emma.

[The design for this came from here. The mistakes in the implementation were entirely mine. That Emma was soldering with her left hand was also my fault. Things got better after she switched back to her right. The burn was inconsequential - I only said Ow! Dad.]

Calla

Calla is our cat,

She is like a mat.

She sit's in a sunny spot,

Right next to the flower pot.

She gives me a glare,

If I sit on her chair.

By Emma

Blinky Bug and Traffic lights

I made a Blinky Bug with Dad. It is a silver spider with red LED eyes. When you tap the antennae the Blinky Bug blinks.

We made it with a battery, two LEDs, some guitar strings, pipe cleaners and fuzzy balls for the body. We taped the battery, the LEDs and the guitar strings together and glued on the body and legs.

We also made traffic lights. It took a lot of planning and rebuilding. In the end we brought a rotary switch because it turns on one light at a time. We used specific colors for the wires that match the LEDs. A lot of soldering was involved and I burnt Dads finger with soldering iron. Dad drilled holds in a box for my traffic lights and rotary switch.

Try, try and try the Tryathlon

Hello there everybody!

Today I did the Weet-Bix Tryathlon and I am extremely tired.

At the Tryathlon I put my bike and gear in the transition area and waited for my age group to be called out. When it was I lined up in the boys line and then ran into the swim it was quite shallow you could walk the whole way. When we all got out we jogged to the transition area and got our shoes, shirt and helmet on and hopped on our bikes and rode off. I overtook lots of people because of my fast road bike. We stopped at the transition, dropped our bikes and helmets and went for two laps around the running area it was tough. At the end I was right behind my friend Josh.

Zak

Memories of a holiday

I was off work from 24 December until 10 January. It seemed like a long time at the time but it seems like an even longer time ago now. It was a really good break and I didn't get any work calls at all! Going back to work was more than a bit of a shock to the system...

Christmas day was very busy. The general tone of the day was set by a breakfast of waffles with ice-cream and chocolate sauce... It was great to see everyone.

We didn't do a lot during the break. A couple of days at the beach and a couple of rides.

Work was completely nuts from the first day. We are very busy at the moment and I have some interesting projects going.

Last week Cathy took the kids camping while I was working. I was supposed to catch up with them after work on Friday. The weather man had been saying that Friday night was going to be ugly. We'd just had a really bad storm the weekend before with lots of flooding and slips and they were predicting this one to be similar. So, Cathy and the kids came home on Friday and we went back out for Saturday and Sunday nights. The campground was pretty soggy but we still had a couple of great beach days.

Em and Zak are back at school now so everything is back to normal. Normal is different though as Zak is now at intermediate school (years 7 and 8 are at a separate school for some reason). His new school is miles away from here and none of his mates are in his class. He isn't happy about that but he has no trouble making friends so I don't see it being a problem for long. Emma is with most of the same kids as last year.

So, that's the exciting bits for this part of the year. There is more planned for later...

BB.

School

Hello, I have started my next two years at intermediate school.

About half of my friends are going to Ponsonby with me and the other half are going to Kowhai.

The canteen food is disgusting though most of my friends like it (lucky for them the hot chocolates are only $1) and there is nothing much to do at lunch so we usually play tag.

Classes started on Monday and I take the bus to school most days. I have the art teacher as my form teacher so that means lots of paper supplies to draw on. She is quite nice but I probably won't get to use the paper.

My favorite subject is social sciences we are learning about Rome.

From Zak