Bear in mind that this covers 180 degrees, so keep that in “perspective” as you scroll left-to-right.  As usual, click the picture to see full-size.

Caught this on the door of Resilience Tattoo Company in a local Altoona plaza after a great Chinese Dinner at Great China.

In case you were like me and thought blizzard was something you got at Dairy Queen or happend in wintertime, here is more information: http://wearecentralpa.com/wtaj-news-fulltext?nxd_id=236806

Anyway, I found this to be quite comical…

Here is a scene from chemistry class.

First, we made charcoal by heating hardwood without oxygen.  This produces a lot of smoke, but in the end, all that’s left in the test tube is charcoal sticks.

Second, we ground the charcoal to a powder, and added a some potassium nitrate and sulphur.

Here is a spoonful of the fresh made black powder

Upon touching a hot coal to it, it ignited and combusted with a lot of smoke!

Quite bright!  This is a neat photograph (taken with Droid X)

(Proper safety precautions were taken during this class, including fire prevention and eye protection.  Do not repeat without appropriate knowledge and safety precautions in place)

Nearly all of the photographs we take are with the Motorola Droid X.  Provided you have sufficient light, the quality is very acceptable.

Here is one of the latest activities recorded:

There is a little group of cabins there called Harmans Cabins — see http://www.wvlogcabins.com/

Here are a few pictures…

Ever shop based on hunger, rather than diciplined restocking?

Ever want to have an inventory of groceries at your house, so you don’t have to run to the store for everything?

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Our objective is to keep consistent inventory levels of common products around the house, so we never run out of things that we should have on hand.  To that end, I’ve been adding some basic household inventory tracking data to the Home School software.  It has (or will have) the following features:

• Areas — places that you store products (freezer, basement shelves, kitchen, bathroom, etc…)
• Items — each “thing” that you want to keep in a given area (flour, sugar, toothpaste, etc)
• Units — lbs, each, bottle, roll, case, etc…
• Min Quantity — minimum amount to have on hand
• Max Quantity — max quantity to have on hand
• Check every [] days — how often should this item be checked?

From that data, you will be able to pull the following information out of the system:

• All items and current inventory levels
• Graphs of inventory levels over time
• Which items (sorted by area) need checked now
• What needs refilled (eg, the container of sugar in the kitchen, from the big bags in the basement)
• What needs purchased (40 eggs, 24 rolls of TP, 10 lbs of sugar)

You will be able to pop on, print out a list of items that need inventoried, and hand it to the kids with a pencil and clipboard to go about filling out how much there actually is.  Excellent math practice, especially if you deal in raw units like oz, lbs, quarts, etc… — the students will have to add/multiply/convert the units that are on the items they are counting.

For Example, you could specify that you want 4 bottles of dish soap around, or 96 ounces of dish soap around.  The difference is that they will need to multiply 24 oz per bottle * 3 bottles on hand = 72 ounces — time to buy another bottle.

Here are some early screen shots:

Eli took his new tripod, on a bitter cold day, and set it up on the “top tier” of cleared ground, capturing about 270 degrees of the scene.

Again, we used Hugin to stitch it together.

(click image to see full size version)

The cameramen at work…

And lastly, here is the recorded “activity” in the new Home School software.

Naturally, the topic of Log and portfolio came up needing solved.

Having been home educated as a child, I recall the massive effort it took to remain organized enough to be able to assemble a really good portfolio at the end of the year.  Also, the log book needed to be throughly kept to provide record of education activities.

Here is a brief list of items that need improved:

1. Portfolios typically are assembled at the end of the year, which requires a lot of effort.
2. There is only one copy of a portfolio.
3. They are a bit kludgy, having a mix of all sorts of media (photos, papers, art, etc…)
4. They are not searchable
5. They are not sortable
6. They are not printable
7. They are not email-able
8. They are not backup-able
9. They typically show only the “best” work, by virtue of what they are (depends on the assembler)
10. They are separate from the log of the actual activities
11. Etc…

Well, after a lot of here and there, I decided we needed a database.  So my wife and I designed a database that would handle a number of aspects:

1. Multiple Students
2. Subjects as required by law
3. Projects that are a part of schooling
4. Activities and Events
5. Dates
6. Summaries
7. Descriptions
8. Scanned documents
9. Photographs
10. PDF files

The ultimate goal is to be able to send off for a printed book with the above content, and turn that into the school district.

I thought that a web interface would be appropriate.  So here is where I am at after a couple days of tinkering around…

If anyone expresses interest in seeing more of this, post a comment.

Thanks!