This year's going to be pretty busy with settling into the new home, but I have a few projects.
- Finish the ring casting I nearly finished before the move. That's a priority.
- Resurrect my aluminium foundry. In particular, it's our bronze wedding anniversary, so Sarah's going to design a pattern for a sundial, which I will cast in Aluminium bronze, a nice alloy that I can make myself from my scrap aluminium and bits of old plumbing...
- Continue with minor stuff on Ugarit, but as a milestone, build the distributed storage backend, which will rock.
- Work on my wearable computer project. No specific milestone for this, as it's currently a long drawn out research/prototyping phase as I sort out many details.
Wish me luck... I usually suffer from "all my weekends getting eaten up", but as my New Year's Resolution has been to spend at least one day every two weeks doing something fun with my children, I'm going to be booking weekend days in my calendar in advance through the year for that and my own projects. Before they get filled up!
Sometimes I do find myself wondering what would have happened if Alaric hadn't given up the syntherziser and focused on just programming or had taken it back up instead of metal work - as it is he is talking about maybe getting one for the music room when we have more money/one comes up on Freecycle.
Well a few days ago a friend posted a link on my face book saying doesn't this guy look alot like Al. And I got a glimpse of that other world - well if Alaric was Australian and had stolen Phil Collins voice but still liked all the types of music he does and had me make the videos (in this parallel world I'd have done my back-up career and ended up as an animator/special effects bod).
The guy is called Goyte and it is very surreal for me to watch this - its a spot the difference puzzel! Watch this video
As it is I feel very tempted to make a parody of a bits of this guys songs including my little Wiggly Pets sitting in tripods holding passport photos of Alaric out in front of them. What this video to see what I'm talking about.
Alaric has had a bad back for months - he thought he'd initially just strained it but it has gone on and on - from home he was reacting I thought it might be a slip disc as I had similar problems when I had one.
He finially went to the Drs with it again - this is after having been surviving for months on pain killers he was prescribed to help him sleep through the pain. hopefully it is just a slip disc or pulled muscle - they are sending him to physio but it may also be a type of arthritis so he is booked in for an x-ray.
Mean while he will continue wondering about in a back brace so he can actually drive etc... My main fear with this is that it will weaken his core muscles but in an effort to get his back better he has been doing core muscle exercises daily anyway. Fingers crossed as a house hold with to duff backs is not a good thing!
Mary's doing well. Her blood sugar was a bit low at first, due to some combination of medication Sarah was on before the birth (Metformin, to control gestational diabetes, which acts to reduce blood sugar levels) and a delay in Sarah's breast milk coming through properly, but she got over that fine and was pronounced fit to discharge. She and Sarah are still in the hospital for now, though, as Sarah's quite anemic and gets short of breath very quickly, and she was showing some signs of infection; but they put her on antibiotics, and the infection symptoms are fading away. She's on iron supplements, and is getting stronger every day.
I've been spending most of every day with them, helping Sarah with looking after herself and Mary, and keeping them company. I get to hold Mary lots, which has been particularly fun as she's started being more awake and alert; she spent a lot of time sleeping for the first couple of days, but now she opens her eyes and looks around, turning her head towards voices. Today she took to lifting her head up, although her neck is still quite weak so she can only do this if you're holding her upright to begin with; she now unsteadily holds her head up so she can look around more. The right thing to do to help her brain develop at this stage is to talk to her, so that's what I've been doing... telling her about the pets at home and that sort of thing. I've also been having a go at talking to her in Lojban, as I'd quite like to raise her as Lojban/English bilingual, in order to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis once and for all. I need to to a bit more research on suitable Lojban baby talk, but so far it's been {ko .iu gleki} ("be happy, darling"), {lo vi mamta be do} ("Mummy's here!"), {mi patfu do .iu} ("It's Daddy!"), {.uu .uinaidai} ("Aw, you're sad"), {.uipei} ("Are you happy?"), {.uidai} ("You're happy!"), {fi'i la meris} ("Welcome, Mary"), and so on.
Alaric, Electronics, Metalworking, Scheme | alaric | 
Thu 26th Jan 2012 5:09 pm | 
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