Jeff vs The Tree

When I was about 10 years old, we moved to a 5 acre wooded lot in the country. It was an all electric house which made it expensive to heat. We built a couple of solar wood dryers, bought a woodstove and a couple of chainsaws, and started harvesting firewood. The things I learned over the following 10 years helped prevent a serious injury today. I was about 8 feet up a ladder, cutting down a 6 or 8 inch limb about 10 feet over my head. Everything was going fine until the free end of the branch hit the trampoline and rolled towards me instead of away. Proper ladder placement, the knowledge that trees are unpredictable, and some good luck kept me from getting seriously hurt. I ended up with a couple of scratches and some swelling, not too bad. I am going to go get some ice. Later.

Atboretum

Today was our first group letterboxing adventure. 6 families came to try and find the letter box hidden in the U of I Arboretum. We found one but not sure it was the one we were looking for. The sun was shining and much fun was had by all. Find an excuse and get yourself outside. Later.

Voice search

We ran to the store the other morning to get some donuts. While we were there my son asked me what maltodextrin is. I told him we didn't really have time for me to be typing that into the phone to find out. I was hungry and wanted to get home and eat the donuts. My son suggested I just ask the phone instead of trying to type it in. I didn't have very high expectations but agreed to try. I pressed and held the search button until the microphone icon came on. Then I spoke the word "maltodextrin" and waited. Almost as soon as I stopped talking a definition appeared on the screen along with a link to the wikipedia page. Voice reognition has come a long way. I was going to use it to make this post, but it only does about 8 words at a time. That was annoying so I typed it instead. Later.

Letterboxing

This summer we are going to try letter-boxing with our homeschool group. It has been too hard to wait for the first outing so we decided to try geocaching to pass the time. Combining the droids gps with Google's navigator makes this a lot of fun. Since we are walking it uses satellite images instead of a map. It is really cool. As an introduction to geocaching we are participating in a contest with the local park district. Fun and a chance to win $50. Looking forward to lots of adventure this summer. Later.

Spring fever hits hard at our house. I took the picture at Prairie Gardens. Almost all of the plants outside were covered in ice to protect them from the frost. While there we bought strawberries, a blueberry bush, & some flowers. Everything has been planted, now we just have to wait to buy more stuff. Hopefully there won't be any ice next time.

Tonight I got to show off a fun app on the phone. When we got home from watching the new Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie I turned on the gps & opened Google Sky Map. It shows all the constellations and can help you find any visible planets. It was too cloudy to see Saturn, but this is going to be a great tool for use with the telescope this year. Good night.

On Wednesday the 23rd I went to the Verizon store and got my first smartphone, the Droid X. After a few days of fooling around with it I have really come to like it. It always takes a couple of days to get a new phone to the point where you like it. You have to get all the fun things to the place you want them, get the backgrounds set right, and to find just the right ringtone. It is ready to go now though.

One of the reasons I chose this phone was because of the 8 megapixel camera. I homeschool my two children and we spend lots of time out and about. I like taking pictures of the things we are doing so I can send them to my wife while she is at work. My last camera, a Voyager, took fair pictures, but I wanted something better. Then we learned about letterboxing and geocaching, and there will be no better tool for those activities than the Droid X. I will always have it with me so we will be ready to go. Then I thought maybe I should blog about the fun things we do.

With that idea in mind I set up this mobile blog. After today, all the entries will be made with the Droid X. I am excited about being able to document the things we do in this way. I am looking forward to a fun summer full of adventures and recording them for all to read about.