### Lunch with the Johnsons

Today I downloaded some time-lapse photography software and I feel like I just got a new toy for Christmas!

One of my first test runs was a time lapse sequence of our lunch today. Today's menu: Bagels and lox.

That was sad when JJ got up from the table and it looked like Erin would finish the meal alone. No explanation. No context. Maybe JJ heard a gunshot outside. Maybe he just left for work without saying a word. Maybe he said, "I can't take it anymore with the health food!!! I'm outta here" Maybe there was a roach invasion. But it looked like he just went to get some water. This time lapse photo thing is going to give me a heart attack.
fayebean said…
Oh!! It feels like I am right there with you guys, but I am sitting on the couch watching tv, and I keep turning around to see what you guys are doing, that would explain your position changes every few seconds.
JohnJohn said…
I did, indeed, just go get some water and I took the dishes to the sink. Can't leave anything out for too long or the ants will get it. Sorry for the heart attack. So how do heart attacks work for a ghost? Do you die and then come right back to li...um...death?

Hey Faye! You know, it's strange, but we totally felt like you were over on the couch while we were making the video!
mama mia said…
man, that must be what they use for a nanny-cam?
mquinn said…
Check me out. I'm remixing your timelapse.

### On the Height of J.J. Barea

Dallas Mavericks point guard J.J. Barea standing between two very tall people (from: Picassa user photoasisphoto).

Congrats to the Dallas Mavericks, who beat the Miami Heat tonight in game six to win the NBA championship.

Okay, with that out of the way, just how tall is the busy-footed Maverick point guard J.J. Barea? He's listed as 6-foot on NBA.com, but no one, not even the sports casters, believes that he can possibly be that tall. He looks like a super-fast Hobbit out there. But could that just be relative scaling, with him standing next to a bunch of extremely tall people? People on Yahoo! Answers think so---I know because I've been Google searching "J.J. Barea Height" for the past 15 minutes.

So I decided to find a photo and settle the issue once and for all.

I then used the basketball as my metric. Wikipedia states that an NBA basketball is 29.5 inches in circumfe…

### Finding Blissful Clarity by Tuning Out

It's been a minute since I've posted here. My last post was back in April, so it has actually been something like 193,000 minutes, but I like how the kids say "it's been a minute," so I'll stick with that.
As I've said before, I use this space to work out the truths in my life. Writing is a valuable way of taking the non-linear jumble of thoughts in my head and linearizing them by putting them down on the page. In short, writing helps me figure things out. However, logical thinking is not the only way of knowing the world. Another way is to recognize, listen to, and trust one's emotions. Yes, emotions are important for figuring things out.
Back in April, when I last posted here, my emotions were largely characterized by fear, sadness, anger, frustration, confusion and despair. I say largely, because this is what I was feeling on large scales; the world outside of my immediate influence. On smaller scales, where my wife, children and friends reside, I…

### The Force is strong with this one...

Last night we were reviewing multiplication tables with Owen. The family fired off doublets of numbers and Owen confidently multiplied away. In the middle of the review Owen stopped and said, "I noticed something. 2 times 2 is 4. If you subtract 1 it's 3. That's equal to taking 2 and adding 1, and then taking 2 and subtracting 1, and multiplying. So 1 times 3 is 2 times 2 minus 1."

I have to admit, that I didn't quite get it at first. I asked him to repeat with another number and he did with six: "6 times 6 is 36. 36 minus 1 is 35. That's the same as 6-1 times 6+1, which is 35."

Ummmmm....wait. Huh? Lemme see...oh. OH! WOW! Owen figured out

x^2 - 1 = (x - 1) (x +1)

So $6 \times 8 = 7 \times 7 - 1 = (7-1) (7+1) = 48$. That's actually pretty handy!

You can see it in the image above. Look at the elements perpendicular to the diagonal. There's 48 bracketing 49, 35 bracketing 36, etc... After a bit more thought we…