Kids’ books reading lists for parents

Wired’s GeekDad blog recently posted a really great list of book every geek should read to their kids before they’re 10.  I’ve read a lot, but not all, of those books and now I’m looking forward to reading them with my daughter.  Since I kinda wish that list were in a checklist format, I’ve gone ahead and typed it up here:

  1. The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
  2. The Wind In The Willows by Kenneth Grahame
  3. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamileo
  4. The Junie B. Jones series by Barbara Park
  5. Where the Sidewalk Ends, A Light in the Attic, Falling Up by Shel Silverstein
  6. The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
  7. The Princess Bride by William Goldman
  8. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
  9. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
  10. Coraline by Neil Gaiman
  11. Half Magic by Edward Eager
  12. Arabel’s Raven
  13. Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson
  14. The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett
  15. The Borrowers by Mary Norton
  16. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
  17. The 13-1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers
  18. The Cartoon History of the Universe
  19. Danny Dunn series by Raymond Abrashkin and Jay Williams
  20. Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
  21. The Adventures of Harold and the Purple Crayon
  22. The Mad Scientists Club by Bertrand R. Brinley
  23. The Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan
  24. Savvy by Ingrid Law
  25. The Shredderman series by Wendelin Van Draanen
  26. The Narnia series by C.S. Lewis
  27. The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo
  28. The Far Flung Adventures series by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell
  29. The Mouse and His Child by Russel Hoban
  30. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien
  31. The Penderwicks series by Jeanne Birdsall
  32. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
  33. The Toys Go Out series by Emily Jenkins
  34. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin
  35. The Search for Wondla by Tony DiTerlizzi
  36. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
  37. The House With a Clock In Its Walls by John Bellairs
  38. Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume
  39. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
  40. The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
  41. The Silver Crown by Robert C. O’Brien
  42. Holes by Louis Sachar
  43. The Big Orange Splot by Daniel Pinkwater
  44. Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder
  45. Stuart Little by E.B. White
  46. The Railway Children by E. Nesbit
  47. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg
  48. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
  49. Septimus Heap series by Angie Sage
  50. The Mysterious Benedict Society series by Trenton Lee Stewart
  51. A Whole Nother Story by Dr. Cuthbert Soup
  52. The House of Dies Drear by Virginia Hamilton
  53. The Lorax by Dr. Seuss
  54. Tikki Tikki Tembo by Arlene Mosel
  55. Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne
  56. The Little Bear Treasury by Else Holmelund Minarik
  57. A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’Engle
  58. Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss
  59. The Amelia Bedelia books by Peggy Parish
  60. In The Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
  61. Curious George books by H.A. Rey
  62. Frog and Toad are Friends by Arnold Lobel
  63. Owl at Home by Arnold Lobel
  64. Henry and Mudge by Cynthia Rylant
  65. The Clifford the Big Red Dog books by Normal Bridwell
  66. The Arthur series by Marc Brown
  67. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

Dammit.  Just as I finished typing this I noticed someone in the comments had already done so.  Oh well.

I guess I might as well add some of the other books mentioned by the commenters:

  • Paperbag Princess by Robert N. Munsch
  • The Mouse and the Motorcycle
  • Story of Babar by Brunhoff
  • Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Buam
  • Secret Garden
  • The Swiss family Robinson
  • Island of the Blue Dolphins
  • Tripods trilogy by John Christopher
  • Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carol
  • Chronicles of Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander
  • The Tripod series (The White Mountains, The City of Gold and Lead, The Pool of Fire) by John Christopher
  • The Fablehaven series by Brandon Mull
  • Watership Down
  • Artemis Fowl series

Stories about Girls part 1, part 2

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/03/67-books-for-kids/?pid=1185&viewall=true

Another Drawing Robot!!!

I’ve added another link to the really huge list of drawing robots for a Facebook Wall Robot.

Posts in the DrawBot Adventure Series
← Excellent DrawBot Slides
  1. Wanna make a DrawBot?
  2. DrawBot Resources and Links: Updated 2012/04/19
  3. DrawBot, the Adventure Begins
  4. DrawBots for the slow learner
  5. DrawBot - Parts Ordered!!!
  6. DrawBot - The Breakdown
  7. DrawBot - Parts Shipped!!!
  8. DrawBot - What would you draw?
  9. DrawBot - The Plan!
  10. DrawBot - The Hacks
  11. DrawBot - Giant Unicorn?
  12. DrawBot - The Delivery?
  13. DrawBot - The Delivery, Part II
  14. DrawBot – The Delivery, Part III
  15. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part I
  16. DrawBot – The Software, Part I (and an existential conversation)
  17. DrawBot – The Delivery, Part IV
  18. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part II
  19. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part III
  20. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part IV
  21. DrawBot – Design Considerations
  22. DrawBot – Halp!!! No - seriously, a little help?
  23. DrawBot – The Face Palm
  24. DrawBot – The Delivery, Part V
  25. DrawBot – The Silver Lining of Failure
  26. DrawBot – The Delivery, Part VI
  27. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part V
  28. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part VI
  29. DrawBot – Printed Parts
  30. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part VII
  31. DrawBot – The Operation, Part I
  32. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part VIII
  33. DrawBot – The Breakdown, Part II
  34. DrawBot – Printing!
  35. DrawBot – Printing, Part II
  36. DrawBot – Why are you crying?
  37. DrawBot – Calibration
  38. DrawBot – Pen Selection
  39. DrawBot – How to Recover from a Stalled Print!
  40. DrawBot – Drawing Success(ish)!!!
  41. DrawBot – Pen Selection, Part II
  42. DrawBot – Onwards and Upwards!
  43. DrawBot – Another Successful(ish) Drawing!, and an Update
  44. Restarting a Stalled DrawBot Drawing
  45. TSP FTW!
  46. Speedier DrawBot Drawings
  47. Two new DrawBot links! And an update!
  48. Excellent DrawBot Slides
  49. Another Drawing Robot!!!

Windows and Tabs

My FireFox tabs were getting out of control.  I had about 50 tabs all stacked up and I couldn’t really quite keep them all straight.

Why so many?  I had about a dozen tabs for things like Gmail, Twitter, a few random sites/blog posts I’d been meaning to read/scan, two YouTube videos I wanted to watch, and a few things I wanted to blog here.  Another dozen tabs were devoted to things related to a business/blog/website – images I wanted to use in posts, post drafts, etc.  And, about two dozen consisted of awesome stuff in Thingiverse and around the web I wanted to blog over at MakerBot.

For someone who gets easily1 distracted like myself, having so many tabs across so many different topics makes it very easy for me to get sidetracked.  It occurred to me that I could just open up a few FireFox windows and drag and drop my mess of tabs into three broad categories.  I opened up two additional windows, which makes one for MakerBot blog post drafts, business/blog post drafts, and a third for miscellaneous stuff. 2

So far I’ve been able to clear out a bunch of tabs – which feels great.  One interesting and satisfying side effect is that when you close the last tab in a FireFox window, the window closes!

  1. Ohh!  Shiny! [↩]
  2. Like this post! [↩]

Excellent DrawBot Slides

Dan Royer just posted his slides and notes from a recent talk at his local hackerspace.  What I particularly like about these slides is that they simply and clearly lay out the math required to operate a DrawBot as well as some potentially practical implications and applications for a well designed DrawBot system.

Posts in the DrawBot Adventure Series
← Two new DrawBot links! And an update!Another Drawing Robot!!! →
  1. Wanna make a DrawBot?
  2. DrawBot Resources and Links: Updated 2012/04/19
  3. DrawBot, the Adventure Begins
  4. DrawBots for the slow learner
  5. DrawBot - Parts Ordered!!!
  6. DrawBot - The Breakdown
  7. DrawBot - Parts Shipped!!!
  8. DrawBot - What would you draw?
  9. DrawBot - The Plan!
  10. DrawBot - The Hacks
  11. DrawBot - Giant Unicorn?
  12. DrawBot - The Delivery?
  13. DrawBot - The Delivery, Part II
  14. DrawBot – The Delivery, Part III
  15. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part I
  16. DrawBot – The Software, Part I (and an existential conversation)
  17. DrawBot – The Delivery, Part IV
  18. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part II
  19. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part III
  20. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part IV
  21. DrawBot – Design Considerations
  22. DrawBot – Halp!!! No - seriously, a little help?
  23. DrawBot – The Face Palm
  24. DrawBot – The Delivery, Part V
  25. DrawBot – The Silver Lining of Failure
  26. DrawBot – The Delivery, Part VI
  27. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part V
  28. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part VI
  29. DrawBot – Printed Parts
  30. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part VII
  31. DrawBot – The Operation, Part I
  32. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part VIII
  33. DrawBot – The Breakdown, Part II
  34. DrawBot – Printing!
  35. DrawBot – Printing, Part II
  36. DrawBot – Why are you crying?
  37. DrawBot – Calibration
  38. DrawBot – Pen Selection
  39. DrawBot – How to Recover from a Stalled Print!
  40. DrawBot – Drawing Success(ish)!!!
  41. DrawBot – Pen Selection, Part II
  42. DrawBot – Onwards and Upwards!
  43. DrawBot – Another Successful(ish) Drawing!, and an Update
  44. Restarting a Stalled DrawBot Drawing
  45. TSP FTW!
  46. Speedier DrawBot Drawings
  47. Two new DrawBot links! And an update!
  48. Excellent DrawBot Slides
  49. Another Drawing Robot!!!

 

Two new DrawBot links! And an update!

Thanks to Dan Royer, I’ve added two new links to my really huge list of DrawBots.  That brings the total to 28 drawing robots! 1  That’s a really incredible number of people who have shared documentation for their hard work.  Six months ago I wouldn’t have guessed there were more than a dozen such projects on the ‘net.  Clearly, the six-month-younger version of me is a fool.  Thank god I know better, eh?

So, Dan appears to be using an Arduino + Adafruit motor shield, much like I’m using, but he’s running custom Gcode software with a Java GUI.  It looks like Dan was wrestling with the problem of how to maximize drawing speed without causing his ‘bot to hang over the serial connection.  If he gets some decent speed out of his setup, I’m definitely going to give that a shot.

Unfortunately, I haven’t done much in the way of robotic drawings lately.  After experimenting with TSP drawings and finding out they would take an excruciatingly long time I set my drawbot aside for a little while.  Fortunately, Sandy’s been on the case and has worked out a new firmware version that might prove to be twice as fast as the one I’m currently using.

Posts in the DrawBot Adventure Series
← Speedier DrawBot DrawingsExcellent DrawBot Slides →
  1. Wanna make a DrawBot?
  2. DrawBot Resources and Links: Updated 2012/04/19
  3. DrawBot, the Adventure Begins
  4. DrawBots for the slow learner
  5. DrawBot - Parts Ordered!!!
  6. DrawBot - The Breakdown
  7. DrawBot - Parts Shipped!!!
  8. DrawBot - What would you draw?
  9. DrawBot - The Plan!
  10. DrawBot - The Hacks
  11. DrawBot - Giant Unicorn?
  12. DrawBot - The Delivery?
  13. DrawBot - The Delivery, Part II
  14. DrawBot – The Delivery, Part III
  15. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part I
  16. DrawBot – The Software, Part I (and an existential conversation)
  17. DrawBot – The Delivery, Part IV
  18. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part II
  19. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part III
  20. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part IV
  21. DrawBot – Design Considerations
  22. DrawBot – Halp!!! No - seriously, a little help?
  23. DrawBot – The Face Palm
  24. DrawBot – The Delivery, Part V
  25. DrawBot – The Silver Lining of Failure
  26. DrawBot – The Delivery, Part VI
  27. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part V
  28. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part VI
  29. DrawBot – Printed Parts
  30. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part VII
  31. DrawBot – The Operation, Part I
  32. DrawBot – The Assembly, Part VIII
  33. DrawBot – The Breakdown, Part II
  34. DrawBot – Printing!
  35. DrawBot – Printing, Part II
  36. DrawBot – Why are you crying?
  37. DrawBot – Calibration
  38. DrawBot – Pen Selection
  39. DrawBot – How to Recover from a Stalled Print!
  40. DrawBot – Drawing Success(ish)!!!
  41. DrawBot – Pen Selection, Part II
  42. DrawBot – Onwards and Upwards!
  43. DrawBot – Another Successful(ish) Drawing!, and an Update
  44. Restarting a Stalled DrawBot Drawing
  45. TSP FTW!
  46. Speedier DrawBot Drawings
  47. Two new DrawBot links! And an update!
  48. Excellent DrawBot Slides
  49. Another Drawing Robot!!!
  1. <queue thunder and lightning> 28! 28 drawing robots!  Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! [↩]

Yup, just three

My daughter asked me the other day about Indiana Jones.  She must have seen an ad or something.  I told her it was a series of movies about an archeologist adventurer.  She asked how many.  I said that no matter what anyone said, there were only three of them.  And none of them had anything to do with aliens.

Funny dream the other night

In the dream I had a few GREAT ideas, so, naturally, I wrote them down.  When I have ideas in a dream and write them down, I find that about 75% of the time the ideas don’t make any sense in the full light of day.

I’ve heard that keeping a dream log helps with lucid dreaming.  I’ve also heard that jotting down ideas helps one keep new ideas flowing.  I’m in the habit of carrying a pen and small pad of paper at just about all times.  Most outgoing e-mails from my phone consist of little notes to myself – half-baked ideas and whatnot.

This particular incident the other night was an amusing combination of the two – jotting down dreams and jotting down ideas.

Except, I jotted down my great ideas in my notebook in my dream.  When I woke up I had no recollection of the ideas themselves, just that they were good enough to have written down.

Well, I thought it was funny anyhow.  :)

Not what I expected at all

I’ve never had to use crutches before.  I had always thought using crutches would be kind of like a super power – being able to swing forward and out.  I thought it might feel like being a money-man or perhaps a short giraffe.

For anyone who is wondering, it’s not like that at all.  It’s a lot more like being hobbled.

Nothing personal

Actually, maybe it is.

I just went through my Facebook account and unfriended about a dozen people.

But, not because we’re not friends – it’s because we are.  If we’re friends and you and I talk outside Facebook, there’s no need for Facebook, and I have now unfriended you.