Gwen (and Luke and Jenn): 2015

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Halloween 2015

Just a quick post as a place to stash some pics.

I had fun this Halloween. I finally decided to finish out at least a first draft of my steampunk outfit, especially since Jenni was wonderful enough to buy me the hat. I also decided to make Gwen a crown that would give her some geek cred.

Let's start with Gwen, since she's the cute one. Every year her preschool trick-or-treats at the board of education. This year she had to tell everybody about how I made her crown, but unfortunately they only got a little bit of it on film:

And here the entire group is singing. At least, I think that's what they're doing:

And finally, just before the two of us headed out for the big night:

Just some pics of being cute:

Here she is making a silly face. Trust me, it's very silly.

And then on to mine:

At home I had my pipe, while at work I had my cane. Any opinions as to the better choice?

And the toys:

I made the goggles last year sometime, but this is the first time I really got to use them. They have a microcontroller in there so I can program them to do any kind of pattern I like, but they're still mostly using example code I found on line. I keep meaning to update them to do some more interesting stuff, but time is short these days...

I made a real live laser gun! It even works when you pull the trigger. This is not a toy! It's significantly more powerful than a laser pointer and can cause eye damage. I made the mistake of letting Gwen try it and she swept it across my eyes accidentally. It hurt.

However, if I was a professor this would be my lecture instrument of choice.

And I also made Gwen a crown. This was a spur-of-the-moment decision and I had only about a week to get it done. It also has a microcontroller in it, but I didn't have time to get it programmed to do anything niftier than ramp some tri-color LEDs in and out. I found every shade of pink I could pull from HTML color tables and had it choose one randomly each time.

The big circle is the micro, the rectangle in the middle is a lithium-polymer battery. The normal-looking clear LEDs cycle color on their own slowly with no help from the micro, all you have to do is put current through them. The little ones right on the ends are supposed to fade as well, but I didn't have time to get them working.
I'm already planning next year's Halloween. Gwen has mentioned she wants to be an astronaut, we'll see if she sticks with it. I have some ideas of my own...

Monday, October 5, 2015

Five years already?

Maybe this blog will go to more of an annual or semi-annual update cycle. Something I can keep up with.

In any case, the child has managed to survive an entire 5 years post-bursting-from-the-womb, even with us as parents. Life has really changed for us in that time. We have a little creature bounding around who's going to grow up to be a magician-engineer-clown-veterinarian, either together or singly, depending on the day. Naps are gone; how we miss those blessed, oh-so-quiet hours...

Movies are played on repeat for days on end. I think I can recite the entirety of the hound and the fox, the nightmare before Christmas, or the book of life. Or any of the dozens of my little pony episodes. And don't even get me started on Dora...

She'll make friends anywhere she goes. I swear, she's completely my mom there, I heard one story of her bringing a new friend she had just met at the playground over to the rest of the group, integrating her with the rest of Gwen's friends.

She's healthy, happy, and very creative. Her art teacher is adamant that if there was ever a child who should be an artist, this is the one. She's also able to make up stories for anything around her. She illustrates them and then the stories change, always going somewhere completely different. I'll be a bit sad when she does begin to write for real, the stories might become fixed down at that point.

So let's stop with Luke being sentimental and go for some pics. We have so many piled up that it's going to be difficult to find which ones to put up. We'll see how it goes.

Let's start with the birthday pictures. Her party's not until the 11th, so everything's been pretty low-key so far. We made cupcakes together yesterday to bring to her class. She helped mix the batter, I cooked the cupcakes and made entirely too many candy eyes. I piped the icing and Gwen got to do the eyes and the hair decorating. Depending on who she's talking to, either the ones with one eye are the babies and they grow eyes as the get older, or the three-eyed ones are the babies and they lose their eyes. I heard both versions within 15 minutes.