Lately

[grettaelizabeth]

Here's what's happened lately --

• Elliott and I went to Minnesota for Christmas. Elliott had a bad cold the whole time we were there, which put a damper on things, but we had a good time anyway. My parents got me some Lego sets (at my request) and the excellent book Forbidden Lego, so I've been doing a lot of miniature construction work lately.

Comments

[weetzie724]

hmmm...

[grettaelizabeth]

Hey, there's not a no-meat-in-the-house policy. You can still make meat things for Elliott and eat them yourself if you want. I'm just going to try the veggie thing for a while when I'm cooking.

I assume that's what the hmmm is about?

[weetzie724]

yeah.. i typically feel like im not getting elliott enough protein as is.

but im not a huge meat eater to begin with so its not a huge deal either way

[grettaelizabeth]

I doubt protein is a problem. Eggs and dairy products contain all of the necessary amino acids, and he certainly gets plenty of those.

I took a quick scan of Wikipedia's vegetarian nutrition page and I think we're in the clear - in every potential problem category, there's at least one food that Elliott eats plenty of. Let me know if you spot any holes in my theories.

[jhvilas]

Well...

• Mmmm... forbidden Lego... mmmm.... I assume you're familiar with "Geekdad"? It really should be called Geekparent; I'll let you decide whether to let that slide.
• Would raisins work? :)
• I really don't know why, but I've never gotten attached to B5. I don't dislike it -- just not drawn to it. (And don't get me started on Hanukkah. At least not here.)
• Yay!
• It's been a PITA in the new house, with 80% of my stuff and 80% of Julia's (the owner of the house) in one house. It's been a year; I still have stuff in boxes, and prolly will until I move out.

[grettaelizabeth]

I've heard of Geekdad; I'll have to go and give it another try.

And definitely no moralizing. I'll still be eating meat at work, so I'm not doing it because animals are cute or anything. It's for primarily for simplicity - Jon has a variety of health-related food restrictions that are too complicated to explain here, but are mostly handled by an ovo-pisce-vegetarian diet, and I prefer to cook just one meal for everybody when I'm cooking. And I have to say, it's nice not worrying about meat-contaminated tools and surfaces in the kitchen.

[jhvilas]

Like so many things, I barely looked at Geekdad, in order not to become hooked. I might have been wrong

[rojonoir]

Thanks for having us over - we had a great time! The sleeping bag trick seems to be working better with each iteration.

From the use of past tense, I hope Elliott's feeling better now...

Coding contests

[ext_49052]

Hi Gretta, RE: google blog: wondering if you could tip us off to the coding contests you participated in. Would love to hone my skills.

Re: Coding contests

[grettaelizabeth]

I like the contests on topcoder.com quite a bit. They have scheduled contests in various formats. The SRMs (Single Round Matches) happen every week or two. The coding part is 75 minutes, then there's a 5 minute break, then there's 15 minutes to try to find bugs in other people's code. The next one is on Wednesday 9-Jan at 9PM EST. Check it out.

If the timing doesn't work for you, or you don't care about having live competition, you can also load old contest problems for practice at any time.

Finally, they also have an entirely different kind of coding contests called a Marathon Match, where you get a week or two weeks to code up a solution to a much longer, trickier problem. Usually the scoring criteria are much subtler, too. These are a lot of fun.

Enjoy!

[dissimilus]

Hehe, at last count I had around 10,000 Legos:) That book is awesome. It's on my list.

Any of that start that's getting carted away construction-type materials or bits that would work in a steampunk art project?

[grettaelizabeth]

Do you actually count your legos, or is that just an estimate? MAJOR nerd points for actually counting. :)

There is not a lot of steampunk potential in my Big Pile, I don't think. The most likely items are an old brass floor lamp with a curlicue thing on top, and a disassembled chrome shelf unit. I think the pickings are probably too slim to merit a visit, but if you can't resist you're welcome to come and see. The junk haulers are coming on Friday the 18th so come before then if you're interested.