Happy Birthday, Mr. Nimoy

We at House Full of Nerds would like to wish Leonard Nimoy, costar of one of our favorite TV series, a very happy 81st birthday! 

Image source: Wikipedia

 

 

 

 

 

My Star Trek fandom originated with the short-lived Saturday morning cartoon, a gateway drug for the live-action series which by then was in syndication. When I was a kid, "Star Trek" was something cool and kind of scary that kids with older siblings and lax bedtimes watched; I had neither, so it wasn't until my teens that I began watching "Star Trek" reruns on the local unaffiliated station, at the time the only alternative to the three major networks and public television.  Several of my friends were big "Star Trek" fans, and I was quickly hooked.

Spock, of course, was my favorite character, with his tendency to raise one eyebrow and pronounce phenomena his crewmates found terrifying as "fascinating" or merely "interesting."  When the Nerd in Chief and I introduced our daughters to Star Trek, they quickly became fans of the half-Vulcan, half-human, especially enjoying his verbal sparring with the chief medical officer.  Watching "Star Trek" episodes on DVD remains a favorite House Full of Nerds activity.

So, happy birthday, Leonard Nimoy!  Live long and prosper! (To which I'm sure Mr. Nimoy would reply, "Gee, I never heard that one before!")

The Coolest Thing in the World - 100 Years of Girls Scouts, Part 1

This is what my Junior Girl Scout uniform looked like, minus the knee socks.  I did have the beret and little tie, though.

When I was in first grade in the early 1970s, I was insanely jealous of my second grade friends.  They could read better, run faster, and knew more Partridge Family songs than I.  However, my jealousy reached its peak once a week, when they wore their Brownie uniforms to school.  I thought the brown dress, orange tie, and beanie represented the height of coolness.  (In my defense, I did know enough about coolness to pick the Jackson 5 over the Osmond Brothers, at least.)

This was the Brownie uniform I coveted, minus the white gloves!  I eventually got one, including the tie, belt, and beanie.  There were also brown knee socks that we sometimes used rubber bands to keep in place.

I was a Brownie and then a Junior Girl Scout for four years (funny to realize I've been a Girl Scout leader for more than twice that time).  I learned to sew and cook, but also to build a fire and identify poison ivy.  Some of my favorite memories include playing in the creek and roasting hot dogs on an overnight; weaving a belt and hiking at Day Camp; and performing at the annual Thinking Day program, in which each troop did a song or dance from a different country while dressed in the style of that country.  Of course, there were several activities in my Junior handbook we never got to do, much to my disappointment, such as... 

For some reason, I thought the Trail Signs were the coolest thing in the world.  In fact, when my younger daughter got to learn them on her first camp-out with her Junior troop, I couldn't help but feel a twinge of jealousy.

My troop never got to make Buddy Burners either, which is probably just as well.  As mentioned in the text above, these tuna can-housed cardboard-paraffin combos are best used with a vagabond stove (an inverted coffee can with vent holes punched in it).  One memorable afternoon, my neighbor and I were playing house with her older sisters.  To make our play more realistic, the middle sister got our her Buddy Burner and set it on the toy stove, which fortunately was outdoors on the patio.  I think we may have planned to boil water or something but as soon as match touched cardboard, the Buddy Burner went up like a torch.  Water wasn't enough to smother the flames, but dirt finally did the trick.  With my friend crying because her stove was ruined and her sisters arguing over how they'd explain the fat streak of black the thick smoke had left on the side of the house, I quietly slipped away.

Who knows - as soon as I got home from the Buddy Burner Incident, I may have holed up with my mom's old Girl Scout handbook.  I loved reading it as a kid (I am a nerd, after all) and was thrilled when my wonderful husband, the Nerd in Chief, brought one home from a thrift store last fall:

Copyright 1947

Unlike my handbook, my mom's was hardcover and compact.  And to a kid in the Seventies, the old-school activities - pasteurizing milk! making a lean-to! frying bacon and eggs on a rock! - were as exotic as the Jetsons' flying car and food capsules. 

I am still fascinated by Morse code and Semaphore signalling, but haven't yet made time to learn either.

Compared to the colored illustrations in my GS handbook, the ones from my mom's seemed retro and cool at the same time.

For some reason, the guidelines for ice safety (above) particularly fascinated me, maybe because I had only ever skated at indoor ice rinks.  All my handbook had to say on the subject was "Skate only on ice that has been tested," but both books describe how to rescue someone who has fallen through the ice, and what to do in the event that you fall through yourself.  The idea that kids would be entrusted with information that could save someone's life rather than reflexively being told to call on an adult to bail them out strongly appeals to me.  And I love that both handbooks encourage activities that seem slightly dangerous by today's standards - after all, encouraging girls to get outdoors and become self-reliant can't be accomplished without a few scrapes and bruises. 

My own time in Girl Scouts ended a year after my family moved from Maryland to Kansas.  At my new school, the girls who became my best friends were in Campfire Girls, so after fifth grade I traded in my badge sash for beads.  Sewing them onto my new Campfire vest was no problem - I'd learned how in Girl Scouts.

A Robotics Competition Even the Tech-Deficient Can Enjoy

Over the weekend, our family enjoyed what has become a House Full of Nerds tradition: attending the regional FIRST Robotics competition.  The two tech-savvy family members, the Nerd in Chief and our younger daughter, began this tradition four years ago, when our older daughter and I were attending an all-day Girl Scouts event.  Even though Hannah's and my nerdiness does not extend to robotics, we found plenty to like about the competition when we all attended the following year, and our family hasn't missed since.

The competition is for high school students; teams are usually formed by schools but sometimes by 4-H or other groups, including homeschoolers. Six weeks before the competition, the task is announced, and each team receives a "Kick-off Kit" of parts; with the help of mentors and sponsors, they design, build, and program a robot.  This year's task, "Rebound Rumble," involved scoring baskets with foam basketballs for 1, 2, or 3 points based on the height of the goal. 

The Bomb Squad robot had a great scooping mechanism which allowed it to shoot baskets almost continually. 

 This is a lot more exciting than it sounds, since groups of three teams form alliances, allowing one member of each alliance to play defense if desired.  One of the robots had a clever scissors lift that could load three balls, then extend to pour them into the highest net, but a bump from an opposing bot was enough to knock it out of scoring position.  Adding to the challenge was a speed bump-type barricade mid-court, punctuated by three ramps that can tip in either direction.  During the final 20 seconds of a match, robots can balance on their alliance's ramp for 10 points apiece. 

So why does a tech-impaired nerd like me enjoy going to a robotics competition?  While the competition itself is quite exciting, I enjoy touring the pit areas during the prelims and seeing the bots up close and personal.  Sure, I can usually only nod my head and hope I don't look too clueless while the kids explain the details of their design, but it's fun seeing how each team approached the task's challenges, especially when you hear it from a high school student, enthusiastic despite his or her lack of sleep for the past six weeks.  Smaller school districts often opt to specialize in one or two aspects of the challenge (defense and balancing, for example) in hopes of being asked to ally with teams from larger schools. 

Two of the values FIRST Robotics emphasize are "Gracious Professionalism" and "Coopertition."  While touring the pits, it's common to see teams offering spare parts to anyone who needs them, and sharing one's technical expertise with newer teams is strongly encouraged; however, it's clear that everyone is out to win - this isn't pony soccer where everyone goes home with a trophy.  No one boos or trash-talks, but cheering is loud and enthusiastic.

Success!  Team Titanium (darker green shirts), Bomb Squad, and Bit By Bit 4H (light green) celebrate another successful round.  They would go on to win the competition.

 
Collecting buttons is always fun...

The Kuh-nig-its (Team 1939) have our favorite mascot - the Killer Rabbit from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."

 

The music played between rounds was nice mix of 70s and 80s classics and stuff my kids like.  I can't remember what was playing when the "mosh pit" above morphed into a conga line...

But for me, the best part is being in an Arena Full of Nerds and watching kids who would have been marginalized when I was in high school compete and have fun where it's cool to be smart.

In Character

One of the best things about living in a house full of nerds is continuing to be surprised by the ways my kids keep themselves amused.  When they were younger, characters or themes from favorite books would seep into their play, with Harry Potter being a perpetual favorite. It's cool when this still happens - any parent who has hoped to stave off the effects of media and middle school in the lives of their children would rejoice to hear their 14-year-old daughter willingly playing the part of Hermione with her 11-year-old sister (Ron) and sister's 10-year-old friend (Harry).  However, my favorite characters my children assume are ones they've invented.

There's the Ancient Math Teacher, aka Mr. Minus, and his two students, Bad Boy, who is not so much bad as stupid, and Good Girl, so genuinely pleasant and concerned when she reminds Mr. Minus to take his Gingko biloba that it's impossible to dismiss her as a suck-up. Good Girl arrives at her tutoring sessions with a huge stack of books, gets all the problems right, and is rewarded with candy; when Bad Boy misses questions he grabs at the candy anyway, causing Mr. Minus to wrap his shaky, elderly arms around the candy dish and pull it away, feebly crying, "No!...No!...No!"
  
Mr. Minus is such a beloved character in our house that my eleven-year-old tried to dress like him for Halloween a couple of years ago.  It might have worked better if I'd let her go to school with gray hair.  As it was, most of her friends thought, with her corduroys, vest, and boys' dress shirt decorated with equations and math symbols, she was going as "a geek."  I suppose they were technically correct, but still.

I was honored a few years ago when the girls began inventing roles for me, the least demanding being The Distracted Mother, which only requires me to keep doing what I'm already doing and murmur, "Mm-hmm," and "That's nice, dear" in response to Little Timmy's increasingly ludicrous (and dangerous) requests.  This usually ends with the arrival of the Teenaged Daughter, who jolts me back into the present: "Moth-errr!  You just let the Little Brat drive the ca-ar!"   I have to admit to occasionally being uncomfortable with how easy it is to play this role.  More challenging is the role of Little Sweetheart's mother, since Little Sweetheart is one of the most thoroughly obnoxious children in existence.  Unfortunately, it's impossible to duplicate her way of talking ("Don't mwock my aaccent, Mwommy!") but we have fun trying.

I can't pinpoint when I started seeing less of Mr. Minus and Little Sweetheart.  Possibly it had something to do with my older daughter's entering middle school, or maybe I can blame it on the Wii that arrived two Christmases ago.  It's probably more realistic to just chalk it up to normal adolescent development.  The girls' characters will still occasionally oblige me with a command performance, but I try not to ask too often and am just grateful that they enjoy being a team of two.  Recently they spent an extended weekend with my parents in Arizona and when they returned, they were addressing each other as "Darling Sister."  Not as exciting as Little Timmy playing with fire, but it's enough.

Old Ink

When the Nerd in Chief brought home these bottles of ink last fall, I thought they were beautiful and couldn't believe they'd only cost him a dollar apiece.

All photos in this post were taken by Dwayne F., of vintagetechobsessions.blogspot.com

 If I felt sorry that no one at House Full of Nerds was likely to use the contents, it was a fleeting thought.   The bottles were the subject of a Vintage Technology Obsessions post, I admired Dwayne's photos of them, and then promptly forgot about them until a week or so after Christmas, when Dwayne asked if I'd like to try writing with something other than the Higgins sepia I'd purchased for one of my Christmas presents to him.  I wrote first with the blue and then the purple; the colors are just a tad more vivid in person than in this scan:

Technically I can't call leaving the "i" out of "antique" a typo.  Was there a pre-typewriter term for "writing mistake not caused by ignorance of spelling"?  My misspelling of "embarrassing," however, is embarrassingly genuine.

The ink itself has what I would call a nice chemical smell; a little bit sweet and not at all offensive to my tastes (of course, I did spend too many hours assembling and painting model airplanes as an adolescent). As a novice dip pen-writer, I much preferred Quink over the water-based Higgins.  Even when I forgot to tap off the excess ink after reloading (seen in the transition to purple), the Quink was fairly forgiving.  I set out to write in Spencerian business script but found it hard to concentrate on letter formation, dip pen use, and ideas, so the first two Qs and the H in Higgins are the way I learned to make them in 1973.

 

When I did a Google image search for Quink bottles resembling these, the best matches were dated the 1940s or 50s.

I cleaned the nib immediately after use, but the next time I wrote with it (also with the Quink - a Spencerian sample for my daughter's Social Studies class), it seemed scratchier than usual.  I'm not sure whether this is the result of the 60- to70-year-old ink's having damaged the cheap nib or (quite possibly) my inexpertise with a dip pen.  Either way, I won't be putting it in my fountain pen! 

Game night!

With school back in session for over a week now, Christmas and New Year's seem like a long time ago.  (In fact, last week I saw EASTER candy on an end-cap at a big box store.)  While the junior nerds were glad to see their friends and teachers again, our family is back to having to work hard to make sure we get enough time together.  One of of our favorite family activities is game night, and over the past year, our favorite game has been Luck of the Draw.

See?  "Artistically Challenged" - that means anyone can play!

Since our art skills range from poor (the Nerd in Chief) to very good (the Littlest Nerd), we were pleased to discover that points are awarded in a wide range of categories, such as "Used Most Graphite," "Art Teacher's Pet," and "Don't Quit Your Day Job." Each card has three possible subjects and a player rolls a die that determines which one everyone must draw.  When one of the subject choices is especially cool, we have been known to try mind control to influence the outcome, with limited success.  The 45-second time limit helps keep things interesting.

A typical round may look like this:

The subject was Walrus, not  Rock and Roll.  Claire and I are the biggest Beatles fans in the family, so I found it ironic that she was the only one who drew an actual walrus.  Then again, she may be the only family member who can draw an actual walrus.

The chips are used to assign each drawing a color so that voting can be done without knowing whose drawing is whose, although the concept of anonymity works best when players are unfamiliar with each other's drawing styles.  Still, even the four of us can occasionally surprise each other, as in this example, when the word was "turkey."

Claire is the only meat-eater in the family, so her association of "turkey" with "E-coli" (close-up below) was unexpected.  Meanwhile, Hannah's reaction (upper right) was no surprise at all.

The Nerd in Chief doesn't always win categories like "Most Unsettling" - just usually.  Most of the time it's intentional on his part, but sometimes it's just the result of his lack of drawing skills:

"Harry Potter"

I was embarrassed  by my pitchfork broom until I saw that Dwayne had given poor Harry  Voldemort's eyes and nostrils.  He hadn't meant to - that's just how he draws.

You can see Dwayne's watermelon allergy reflected in this one:

I'm the one who drew the skull.  I was thinking about my husband's safety, not my indifference towards melon - really!  Sadly, Dwayne (with the Epi-Pen sticking out of his neck) loves watermelon, as do the girls.

Predictably, nerdy pop culture references sneak into many of our drawings.  I was surprised when the word "dragon" didn't elicit the same response from each of us.  I suppose I should have expected a Dungeons & Dragons reference from Dwayne and the adorable little dragon is typical of Claire's doodling.  We're all such fans of Strong Bad on homestar runner, though, that I assumed we'd all draw Trodgor.

Hannah's Trogdor is much better than mine.  Not only is the arm beefier, the wings don't look like they belong to a butterfly that just crawled out of its chrysalis.

Speaking of nerd culture, this one is my favorite.  We're all fans of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (especially the BBC miniseries), but it was still eerie when each person's "whale" drawing revealed that we were all thinking the same thing:

We celebrated with high-fives and Nerd Salutes all around.  A great moment of family unity!

What I Don't Love About Computers

As promised, I've been working on a post about my forays into Spencerian Business Script, a simplified version of the gorgeous, ornate Spencerian penmanship of the second half of the 19th century.  After several false starts, I was satisfied late last night that I finally had my post the way I wanted it but decided to save it for one final read-through when I'd be more awake.

When I got home from a Girl Scout cookie booth this afternoon with my 14-year-old (still in GS at 14 - so cool!), I found that my laptop had frozen up.  One re-start later I discovered that none of the revisions to had saved, despite my having  hit "save" each time I walked away from my draft.  So, instead of trying to reconstruct my would-have-been post, I bring you the following version...

Early last month, for probably the last time, I managed to coerce my daughters into taking a photo with Santa.  This happened at a 19th century historic site where they volunteer during the summer and fall and was accomplished partly by my insisting it would be a good surprise for their dad.  Towards the end of our visit, we stopped in the gift shop, where the girls spotted a bottle of sepia ink and I got the idea of learning enough 19th century penmanship to write a message on the picture frame with a dip pen.  I figured this would make a nice gift for Dwayne, as it combines two of his great loves:  family and vintage technology.

Since I reverted from cursive to printing in seventh grade, I knew this would take some effort on my part, and that was part of the gift as well. My cursive is okay as long as I'm writing slowly and concentrating on forming letters instead of ideas - not really a practical means of note-taking or journal-writing for me.  An online search for "19 century handwriting" led me to www.iampeth.com, where I found an extremely helpful instructional manual for Spencerian Business Script.  I skipped the information about how to sit, hold a pen, and move my arm and dove straight into copying upper-case Ms and Cs.

This was my first experience with a dip pen, and I can't say I enjoyed it.  It seemed I'd either run out of ink in the middle of a stroke or overload the nib, with an unsightly result!

After my first practice session, my wrist and forearm were burning and I was sure I'd aggravated my carpal tunnel beyond repair.  After a couple of days' rest, I was back at it, this time giving a little more thought to how I was sitting and moving my arm, if not holding the pen - I tend to use a "death grip," which unfortunately wasn't discovered until I was in sixth grade and pretty set in my ways.  A few days later, I had some results I thought were suitable for gluing onto the frame:

I tried writing a longer note to Dwayne but my patience with the dip pen had reached its limit.  I was thrilled when, two days after Christmas, he surprised me with a Parker Urban fountain pen (on sale at Office Max - that's how we roll!).  This is my first fountain pen, and I have to say it's much easier trying to write in Spencerian Business Script when I'm not having to worry about overloading the nib or having it run dry mid-stroke.

Transcription:
"This is my attempt at Spencerian [Business] script, which was used in the second half of the 19th century and the very beginning of the 20th, until the advent of the Palmer method.  As you can see, the capital letters, while still quite recognizable, are different from those of the dreaded Zaner-Bloser method, under which I toiled as a child.  There are minor differences in the lower-case letters (Spencerian vs. Z-B) but they are generally so minor that I have ignored them so as to concentrate on the sweeping capitals.  Were I truly committed to the cause of great penmanship, I would practice each day, but how can I with all these Girl Scout cookies yet to sell?  It is one thing to attempt to copy the letters; quite another to practice the principals behind each letter.  Dec. 27, 2011"

It's too early to tell whether I'll do much pencasting in the future, but I've had fun playing around with 19th century handwriting and will probably continue to experiment, especially now that I have a pen I really enjoy.  Besides flowing nicely and being easy to grasp correctly (instead of in the dreaded "death grip"), my Parker includes a nice bonus feature:  unlike my computer, it "saves" automatically.