Vicarious Thoughts

This is today’s photo; the tip of an Acanthus Flower, with added cobwebs, viewed through my office window.

The leaves of the Acanthus, or Bear’s Britches as it is colloquially known (I’m guessing it’s an English thing), my Classics teacher taught us, was the plant which the leaf is shown on the Corinthian column. The glossy leaves are quite statement-worthy in the right setting.

Bother!
My computer crashed tonight and since all I had left to do was write this post, I opted to try using my phone instead. Unfortunately, I was cutting it close to midnight, as I am wont to do and though I got it written, I didn’t get it saved before my session got trashed by Vodafone’s daily data rollover. Doh!
So I’ve rewritten this post and uploaded today’s photo, which was taken on my phone, but I can’t easily insert it in the post tonight.

My daughter gave me this Hebe flower and said it was like a “Purple Christmas Tree” (seeing as she’s a bit obsessed with Christmas still). I really like the vibrancy of the purple.

Update: Couldn’t find the publish button in my mobile version of the WP Admin area so gave up for the night.

Was planning on getting some shots of the night sky. However, clouds and marauding insects knocked that idea on it’s head. Speaking of which, anyone got a great product or remedy for taking the sting out of insect bites?

Very tired and have neglected to put the camera to good use today.
This is one of the things I’ve been doing this evening.

Not bad considering it was well over 2 days worth of podcasts to listen to two days ago.

I rather like how the lcd matrix is captured by the camera.

Looks like I’ve been semi-subconsciously been planning to make another attempt at Project 365 which is also item number 72 on my 101 in 1001 list.
So here’s today’s photo:

The Everlasting Daisy reminds me of staying with my grandmother who grew them and harvest them and mount them on floral wire for craftwork. If you’ve never encountered them before, each petal feels like crisp thin plastic and this contrasts with the fluffy centre of the flower.

Spent today catching up on on a backlog of podcasts. I’ve been trying to find a decent podcast manager in Ubuntu. I found a great application that works for me in Windows called Feedreader (which incidentally is also my preferred RSS feed reader for Windows), and am currently using Rhythmbox in Ubuntu. It’s not as good but is so much better than Songbird which drove me insane with it’s continual attempt to download all files in each podcast’s rssfeed. Rhythmbox does seem a little hit and miss in auto downloading the latest podcasts and I’m not entirely trusting it just yet but I’m willing to persevere until a better alternative is brought to my attention, or Rhythmbox itself gets an upgrade in the podcast department.
Whilst catching up on podcasts, I’ve been working through the resources we’ll use in our first year of homeschooling this year. Still coming up with a way to keep everything organised and it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the mountains of books currently taking over my office.

And now a last minute photo for today.

Another scintillating view from my office. This is the shelf closest to where I sit at my desk. Scarily despite the duplication I do often use all these dictionaries and thesauri though I did weed out a reference book that I wasn’t getting any use of recently. I grew up with the same edition of Roget’s Thesaurus as is shown and think everyone with vocabulary memory problems NEEDS to have one on hand. The Ladybird clothespeg is from a bouquet of flowers I received from husband. The paperweight is a gift from my grandmother-in-law and I love the flower design that was created within.

I’m feeling a little rattled at 2010 having arrived already. I don’t have all my goals for the year jelled yet, though I have some pretty good ideas as to the direction some parts of my life are headed, which is a good start I figure. So while I’m working on all that – have a photo.

This is a tiny portion of my desk.
The flowers (hydrangeas) were picked and brought to me by my daughter yesterday, and are in a milk jug which is part of a wedding gift from my Grandmother – mainly because the vase I would have used has gone walkabout.
The mouse is one that works and I haven’t seen an upgrade for it as left-hand friendly mice with side buttons let alone at a reasonable price are pretty far and few between. Ultimately, I’d love to have a wireless mouse and I’m sure the perfect mouse will fall in my lap when it’s needed.
The mousepad is a gift from my Dad and is pretty cool. It’s a mouse rug and my one is a digital replica of a Tehran Qum flower rug. It’s really comfortable, is a great mousing surface and what makes it pretty cool is the image on it isn’t printed on but each individual coloured thread is glued to the base to form the overall design.

What is a Geoboard?
Well, to paraphrase the Wikipedia entry, A Geoboard is a tool often used to explore basic concepts in geometry such as perimeter, area or the characteristics of triangles and other shapes. It’s generally a board with nails partly driven in, and students are encouraged to place rubber bands around the nails to model various geometric concepts or to solve other mathematical puzzles.
Bit of trivia from the same entry: Geoboards were invented and popularised by Egyptian mathematician Caleb Gattegno in the 1950s.

Different Types of Geoboards

Materials
The end result will be a 9×9 nail board that’s pretty utilitarian and it didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it would.

I’ve mentioned brand names and the stores I purchased them from in the hope this helps someone in New Zealand.

How to make this Geoboard

1. Taking the sheet of graph paper, fold it along two perpendicular sides along one the strong lines so you end up with a square folded corner. Then take the square corner made, place it over one of the front surface corners of the wooden plaque and tape it in place. The end result is the top surface of the plaque is covered in graph paper so that the strong lines of the graph paper line up with all the edges and the graph paper doesn’t move around (though if it’s not taut it isn’t a problem).

2. You’re aiming for a 9 nail by 9 nail square and this is achieved by placing nails 2cm apart from each other and having a 2cm border around the outer edge of the plaque. It’s easiest to start hammering nails in from the center outwards and moving from left-to-right if the hammer is in your right hand. I made “concentric” squares starting from the nail in the centre, spinning the board as I finished nailing each side of the current square. Also, it’s worthwhile mentioning that standing to hammer results in straighter nails.
I gauged the height of the nail based on hammering the first two in and then eyeballing them with a third nail held against the side of the board touching the table, and then slowly hammering them further in til they were firmly placed but not poking through the bottom of the plaque. Despite my concern that I would do so anyway, it didn’t happen and I feel confident in saying if I didn’t screw that up – you certainly won’t! :)

3. Remove the tape holding down the graph paper and ease it up the nails and then rip it off. There’ll be a few fragments of graph paper left.

4. Voilà – your Geoboard is complete! Get out the rubberbands and have at it :)

There are a ton of activities, ideas and lesson plans available on the web so I won’t be elaborating on how to fully utilise your new Geoboard.

I have a circular plaque ready for making a Circular Geoboard which should be an interesting adventure. And for an extra challenge I could be convinced to make an Isometric Geoboard.

Thanks to Mama Jenn via The Crafty Crow for the inspiration to make my own version. :)
And if neither my version, or Mama Jenn‘s, suits your needs – there are plenty of tutorials on making Geoboards out there. Not to mention pre-made plastic Geoboards generally seem quite inexpensive.

I listen to quite a number of podcasts each week. I thought I’d highlight a few that I really enjoy:

For Kids (and kids at heart :):

Not a lot tonight because I’m tired, have other work to do, and still unsure about presenting the following two items alongside a bunch of home education stuff.