Magical Daddy

/ Shane / 1 Comment

When I was a kid, I used to *love* magic tricks. I read books about them, I watched tv programs about them, and I bought all types of things at stores, practicing into the wee hours of the morning. I wouldn’t say I ever got good at them, and certainly never really had the patience to truly master sleight of hand, but it was a hobby I enjoyed. Mostly I performed for my family. “Magic shows” were pretty common in our house, usually with me as the head magician, and either my brother or sister (or both) as my helpers.

For some reason I remembered all of this the other day, and managed to find all of my dime store props. It’s been probably 20 years since I looked at that stuff, but I really did goof around with it quite a bit back then, so I manged to get about 5 tricks I could perform without any practice, and I did a show for Evie and Oliver.

Well, right off the bat I learned that it is very easy to trick a 4 year old. Misdirection, the heart of any good trick, is comically simple. None of these tricks would have fooled an adult for even a second, especially with me performing them (so I thought, until I later performed the tricks for Sara and Uncle Ben, several times!). But with Evie? I was a genius. Tell a little story, a couple of flourishes with the wand, and shout “Magic Daddy!” Indeed, magic was performed.

After I finished blowing Evie’s mind, she insisted on doing all the tricks herself. She claimed that she had watched very carefully and knew how to do them all.

That’s when the fun started.

The first trick she really did get (it was that obvious), and the second one was fool proof, so that one worked as well, even though she didn’t understand how or why. The “mind reading” trick she happened to guess right twice in a row, completely convincing her that she had followed all of the steps correctly, and activated the magic. It was actually kind of heart breaking when she grinned at me and proudly proclaimed, “I have daddy’s magic too!”

Unfortunately, the next two tricks were not quite as simple. She couldn’t figure out how to master the shrinking card and the bank that makes coins appear in your pocket. She was so sure that it wasn’t working because she wasn’t saying the right magic word, or she was hitting the magic wand too many times. As if it was scientific somehow. She hit that bank so many times, she practically beat a hole in it, checking her pockets every few seconds to see if the coin had traveled there yet.

It was absolutely hilarious. I literally fell out of my seat I was laughing so hard. I convinced her that I wasn’t laughing at her, but she just couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working. She saw what I did, and she did that too, so why didn’t the coin magically appear in her pocket?

Then I would get the coin out and say something like, “Oh, no wonder it’s not working, you didn’t look behind your ear!” She said, “OOOOoooohh!” and after that she kept checking her ears as well as her pockets. Then I would trigger the shrinking card when she wasn’t looking and say, “Why don’t you try it one more time?” Oh man. If her magic show would have went on for all eternity, I never would have gotten bored.

Even though the last two tricks weren’t successful, she came away from the whole thing absolutely convinced that she has magic, if for no other reason than because when she was attempting the “nails through the coin” trick, the coin shifted and one of the nails shot back out. “You see? I actually have MORE magic than you, daddy, because I made the nail go flying!” She told me this repeatedly, probably 3 or 4 times.

I kept telling her it was tricks, not really magic, but she definitely didn’t believe me. Maybe she started to by the end, especially after she cried and forced me to reveal that the coin hadn’t really been behind her ear. On one hand, there’s no reason to ruin her sense of wonder about magic. On the other hand, she was really bummed that I could do magic and she couldn’t. I think she looks up to me plenty; I don’t need her to think I have magic powers as well.

All in all though, I don’t think I’ve ever had such a good time with Evie. (Oliver could care less about the whole thing, and pretty soon was just playing with the doll house.) It was an absolute blast. It’s hard not to enjoy doing magic tricks with such an easy, adoring audience. Thank you paper route money spent 20 years ago!

2,000th Comment!

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Thank you to Alexis, who just provided the 2,000th comment on my blog!

This is very exciting to me, you have no idea. I’ve been watching for a month or so, as all the important dates in my life came and went (the year I was born, the year I graduated high school, etc.). And now we’re up to the 21st century! (Yes, I am aware that technically we need to get to 2001 comments for the 21st century.)

So anyway, thanks to everyone who comments on my blog. I love to hear from you! And special thanks to Alexis, for (unwittingly) being my 2000th. To thank her, how about we all go read her blog? Or better yet, we should all go order something adorable from her Etsy shop. I’m partial to the “Arrgh, Kiss Me Booty” onesie and the “I’d Rather Be Nursing” bib, but perhaps you would prefer a customized Pillow Sham (in other words, I don’t think she forces you to get the one with the picture of Jackson, Elliot, and Ayla on it, even if it is pretty awesome).

Quote Monday is poor (but not how you think)

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Evie: “Why can’t we go [to the museum] today, and then go again when mama can go?”
Me: “Well, we are only allowed to see the exhibit one time.”
Evie: “Well…maybe we could all wear disguises!”

::Oliver takes a bite of sriracha::
::Oliver’s mouth falls open and a moan escapes. The top of his head comes off and steam starts shooting out of his ears. He claws at his tongue, trying to remove it from his mouth.::
Oliver, when he finally recovers:  “More spicy!!”

Sara, to me: “Assuming your inner dialog matches your outer dialog, I would assume there was a lot of dialog.”

Evie: “Mother Earth must be poor.”
Me: “Why do you say that?”
Evie: “Because she has trash all over her.”
Me: “And that makes her poor?”
Evie: “Yup. Poor Mother Earth.”

Homemade Yogurt and Granola Parfaits

/ Shane / 5 Comments

The Reason:

When you tell people you’re making yogurt, you sound like some sort of super-hippie. But why not make your own yogurt? It’s *super* easy (as you will see below), and it’s cheaper than buying it (its about 1/2 to 1/3rd the price of buying yogurt). It’s healthy. It encourages you to eat more yogurt, which is a healthy habit. And if you’re making yogurt, you might as well make some homemade granola to go with it.

The Journey:

The craziest thing about making yogurt is how simple it is. It’s mostly just milk!

You can even save some of the yogurt from the previous batch as the culture to start the next batch, though I’ve heard that eventually the strain won’t be strong enough to continue without mixing in some fresh stuff from the store. I can’t verify that.

I will admit that making the yogurt takes a long time, but it’s not really active time. It’s not like you have to do anything during that time. It’s mostly just a matter of keeping it warm.

The granola could have been a post in its own right. Of course it gives a nice crunch to your parfait, but you can use it for anything you might use granola for. Sara eats bowls of it with milk for breakfast.

The Verdict:

It’s great. The kids love it. The thing about yogurt is that it is so versatile. You can mix in honey, vanilla, or jam. You can have it with blueberries, strawberries, or mango. You can use it to substitute for oil in baking. You can decide how much to sweeten it, and after doing this for awhile, you won’t be able to go back to the super-sweet, store-bought variety. What’s not to love?

And that’s to say nothing of the granola, which has a million uses itself, even above and beyond yogurt parfaits. Make it with almonds, make it with dried fruit. Throw whatever you want in there. Yum!

Plus, you sound impressive when you say you make your own yogurt. Nobody has to know how easy it is. That’s between you, me, and the public Internet.

The Recipe:

Yogurt

This recipe is from Stephanie O’Dae’s A Year of Slow Cooking.

  • 8 cups of milk (half-gallon). We generally try for organic whole milk, but I think you could use anything (we have made it with 2% and couldn’t tell the difference).
  • 1/2 cup of plain yogurt (live/active culture).
  • That’s it. Seriously. Just milk and a little yogurt!
  1. Add the milk to the crock pot. Cook on low for 2 1/2 hours.
  2. Turn off the crock pot. Let it sit for 3 hours.
  3. Scoop out 2 cups of the warm(ish) milk from the crock pot, and mix that with the 1/2 cup of “starter” yogurt. Then put the whole thing back into the crock pot and stir.
  4. Cover the crock pot with towels and leave it overnight (at least 8 hours)

Maybe it’s because of the towels, which sort of force you to unwrap the thing like a present on Christmas morning, but it’s always something of a surprise / delight when you  get up to find yogurt in the crock pot! For some reason, it always seems like it’s not going to work. Maybe because it’s so easy…a little TOO easy!

Granola

This recipe is from Mark Bittman, although any recipe for granola is really more of a suggestion than a recipe. So I’ll give you his recipe, but I’d say we make it a little different every time (as intended!).

  • 6 cups rolled oats (not quick-cooking or instant)
  • 2 cups mixed nuts (you can probably use anything, but we usually use chopped walnuts or almonds)
  • 1 cup shredded coconut (optional)
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla
  • 1 /2 to 1 cup honey or maple syrup (we usually do 1/2 cup that is a mix of honey and maple syrup)
  • 1 cup chopped dried fruit (such as raisins or dried cranberries)

We usually don’t actually put in the dried fruit, since we are usually using this in yogurt parfaits. You can always throw dried fruit in when you’re going to eat it, if needed. Also, we find that the coconut really adds something. We’ve tried it with and without, but after not having it and then putting it back in, I don’t think we’ll go back to leaving it out!

  1. Heat the oven to 350°F. Combine everything except the dried fruit. Spread evenly on a rimmed baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes or a little longer, stirring occasionally. The mixture should brown evenly; the browner it gets without burning, the crunchier the granola will be.
  2. Remove the pan from the oven and add the dried fruit (if you want to add dried fruit). Cool on a rack, stirring once in a while until the granola reaches room temperature. Transfer to a sealed container and store in the refrigerator; it will keep indefinitely.

We have also made the Spiced Granola from that page, which is the same as above, with the following additions:

  • Another teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon ground ginger
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground anise (we usually leave this out, mostly because we don’t have any anise)
  • 1/2 teaspoon cardamom
  • 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

My god…it’s brilliant…almost TOO brilliant

/ Shane / 2 Comments

You are probably aware of Google’s efforts to digitize as many books as possible, scanning (literally) tons of print books into their computers. Sometimes there are technical glitches or errors when scanning these books in: print may be smudged or damaged, especially if it is very old. So Google came up with a brilliant yet simple solution to this problem: get people to unwittingly do it for them, for free.

You see, even now, there are some things that are very easy for a person to do, but very difficult for a computer to do. Recognizing distorted text turns out to be one of these things. Google doesn’t want to pay an army of people to read through these books and transcribe them. That would take forever, to say nothing of the cost (although I’m pretty sure Google is more concerned with the time, than the cost). So how do you trick people into doing this for you?

reCaptcha.

You might not know the term, but a “captcha” is one of those things you have to fill out on the Internet to prove you’re not a spambot. You know, look at the image and write the text that you see, something like:

Well, if you’re using Google’s free reCaptcha product on your site (and who wouldn’t? If it’s good enough for Google, it’s good enough for me!), it not only verifies you’re not a robot, but also helps decode a particularly tricky word.

Take the example in the picture above. The first part (Years) decides if you’re a robot or not. The second part (maybe subioik?) is a picture of a word from a paper book which was scanned in, but not understood by the Google computers. If enough people answer the same thing on that captcha, the Google hive mind can assume that that image correctly maps to subioik.

In other words, it might take a computer a million years to run algorithms to figure that out, but Google could accomplish the same in about 30 seconds by harnessing millions of people trying to enter porn sites.

This is such a simple, obvious solution to the “smudged word” problem. It’s so smart it’s almost scary, like encountering an alien intelligence that is so far beyond my capacity. In fact, when I first heard about this, I dismissed it as some kind of crazy conspiracy theory. Not so. Information is available directly from Google.

I don’t see anything wrong with them doing this per say, but it still leaves a funny feeling in my stomach. I feel manipulated somehow. And anybody that ingenious is a little scary. So far they seem to be using their power for good, but what if that changed? I don’t know man…for some reason, this disturbs me greatly.

Link via Sylvain