Christmas Island: Tai Jin House exploration

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My suspected real life Crazy Dog House on the Cliff allegedly contains a museum these days. For various reasons we’ve never quite manged to get to it. Apparently neither have my parents, but as it turns out the opening hours are really awkward and you need to either be a tourist or taking time off work to go to it within the very short opening hours (Thursday and Friday 10-3).

Christmas Island: nature trail and Albert the robber crab and friends

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It’s been mostly overcast with bouts of rain so the last week has been kind of slack and kind of relaxed. We’ve been three times to two different beaches (though I didn’t take photos of the second beach partially because it was late when we went and I wasn’t sure how good the photos would turn out in that light, and mostly because I was going to be swimming as well, could have given it to my dad though), one loopy nature trail (which was slightly longer than I thought but a decent walk nonetheless, and we didn’t go to the lookout because it was probably too long a hike for the kids) and a few epic Minecraft sessions. I haven’t got as much art done as I was hoping but bits and pieces are getting done. The kids have been watching a LOT of Pokemon, a couple of other movies and reading books borrowed from the library (independently during the day in the case of the bigs; they each have a book on dinosaurs and 8yo has one on space and 6yo has a cookbook in addition to books selected for bedtime stories) as well as playing outside on the play equipment Nanny and Granddad are spoiling them rotten with, and looking at the fish in the pond.

Approxiprimer build notes

Erm…note: these are actually notes for me so I only have to do other similar systems once (hopefully), not a fyn’s guide. If they come in useful for someone else to follow great, no guarantees blah blah blah.

System:

Horize Clevo W110ER from Logical Blue One (on sale at time of writing) AU$919 with 3 year warranty

Specs

• display: 11.6" matte 1366x768
• cpu: Intel Core i5-3380m 2.9Ghz - 3.6Ghz
• ram: 4Gb
• 750Gb hdd
• nVidia GeForce GT650M 2Gb

A little pricier than I was intending but specs for that price made me pretty happy. They are VERY snappy little machines that almost match my mid-2011 iMac for specs, quite light, very solid feeling, and with this weird texture on the lid and under the keyboard that I quite like. The keys are titchy (good size for little fingers, anyone bigger than me might complain, took me a bit of getting used to the placement of the right shift key). I find them slightly clunky not so much in size (expected with the amount of stuff packed in there) but in the opening and shutting. I’m used to MacBooks which feel quite smooth and easy to open and shut (or at least mine did) and “locked” with a button thing on my Powerbook and magnet on my white MacBook. The Clevos appear to rely on hinge tightness to stay shut so opening them is a two-handed job (one hand opens the lid, the other keeps the base down) and they THUNK when you close them. So far the only issue I’m having is that the two that I ordered arrived separately which caused some friction between the recipients. I have yet to have one on my lap when it’s doing something intensive, otherwise it seems to deal with heat quite well.

!schooling 0000H04c - H09 | Jul 8-12

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Right up at the beginning of the week we spent half a day out. Morning was pretty cruisy, and then fell over a bit as we ran late to get to Nanna’s and then slightly later again as the road I usually take was unexpectedly closed and I don’t know my way around the area well enough to reliably navigate around the roadblock (pulled in at a medical centre and utilised the trusty GPS). While I was in the meeting (which ran unexpectedly long) the kids played down by the river and made some new friends, 6yo with a pair of sisters aged 6.5yo and 4.5yo and 8yo with a gaggle of boys who were a few years older but they all played Minecraft so everything was cool (he apparently invited them over for a Minecraft party, I told him their parents would probably not want to drive out so far). Back at the grandparents’ they didn’t want to leave immediately so we waited out rush hour and Pop let them play with his walkie talkies for a bit.

!schooling Jul 1-5

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Had to temporarily drop theAbysmal dates as I got completely and utterly lost. Stupid Gregorian calendar and it’s shifting days ;) I’ll try to pick it up again next week.

Week before this one we trialled out the new weekly schedule. It went pretty well I think, and 6yo in particular has been enjoying checking it each day to find out what we’re up to that day, and to see what’s coming up. The new boxes have been working out quite well too, though after I’d sorted the books into the boxes I realised that there are only maths, English and science books (or more accurately 8yo has a science book, the other two don’t). I’m waiting on the two laptops to get here so I can set them up and I think the last two days will be Khan Academy (expanding and consolidating existing skills as well as learning new ones or just exploring random subject areas), Reading Eggs/Maths Seeds (mostly consolidation, only 4yo is really learning anything new from them) and general art shenanigans. I’m having a very hard time squeezing other languages in there, we’re still doing a very confusing and random mix of Lojban and Malay with no logic whatsoever behind it.

!schooling 0000G10n - 0000G15n | Jun 17-21

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And just as you’re enjoying the nice blissful month of no weekly posts from fyn, we’re starting again! Anyway we’re about midyear so this is part catch-up and part vague plan for the rest of the year.

We had one week of staggered flu (nothing too serious, just lots of sleeping, lethargy and general blarginess) followed by a week of gastro (again not too serious in the grand scheme, the kids were a bit lethargic but not listless, the biggest issue was the washing machine choosing to break down immediately before the gastro hit and it was out of action for a couple of weeks), followed by a short week (thanks to a public holiday) of me taking it easy because I was exhausted from the previous two, followed by a week of JJ catching a really bad flu and then a week of me catching a much milder version of that flu which technically only lasted a day, I just chose to take the rest of the week easy. We did have a few bouts of okay or mostly okay in that period fortunately.

!schooling 0000E25c - F02n | 6-10 May

This weekly stuff is tiring. Seriously who reads this anyway? May just start hiding them as I still kind of need to write them. Anyway.

Bit of a slow week this week as the kids all caught a cold and I spent a couple of days heroically fending it off.

The kids wanted me to teach them how to draw. Actually what they really wanted was for me to magically confer kickass drawing skills onto them. I told them they would need to practise a lot as most of drawing was getting your eyes, brain and hand to cooperate and the remainder was your imagination. I put out a few items on the table including a Duplo block which I deliberately angled towards them. They don’t like drawing things on angles, everything has to be STRAIGHT. Even 8yo who currently has slightly better spatial perception drew it straight, even though he drew all three corners that he could see (in a straight line rather than having the middle one come down slightly as it did in perspective). Almost forgot about maths bookwork. 8yo is at a stage in Dragonbox where it’s stopped pretending it’s a game and has presented him with actual maths, with cute graphics like it’s marker on nicely textured paper. 6yo is struggling with Dragonbox so opted for her book and is progressing extremely slowly with it (getting bored easily and I think it’s s getting a bit hard for her).

!schooling 0000E18c - E22n | Apr 30 - May 3

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Our garlic bulb has grown quite large but is now looking a bit limp and sad. Got the kids to draw it again (still have to find where 8yo put his first diagram). 8yo’s writing is improving a lot. Got him to work out the perimeter and area (both of just the floor and the entire building) of a building he was making in Minecraft.

!schooling 0000E11c - E15n | Apr 23-26

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Monday: sick. Fortunately there was JJ to help with maths. JJ was making noises about wanting to do modular arithmetic. When I passed the kids were doing basic arithmetic on the whiteboard. JJ wasn’t quite sure who was where and thought 8yo knew how to carry 10s. I said we were working on carrying 10s, he hadn’t quite got it yet but could so multiple digit addition and subtraction in his head as long as the numbers were under 10.

!schooling 0000E04c - E08n | Apr 15-19

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Been a bit of a lazy week this week.

6yo made a (very) short story book with illustrations and a shape book to help 4yo learn his shapes. Bigs did their 10-12yo maths books and were either horribly distracted, not in the mood or they are starting to find the work harder as both only managed to get through one section before the endless fidgeting and recalcitration set in. As I watched 8yo prowling up and down the house while he worked out multiplication problems in his head I thought perhaps it was a good thing that he wasn’t going to school at this stage as he’d drive a teacher batty with his shark-like need to be always moving.