Jim’s Brain Online

Posted by Jim at April 11th, 2005

We have a lot of children’s books. I don’t mean this is a general sort of way as in “we’ve got more children’s books than we ever expected to have.” That’s true of most parents.

I mean it in the sense that “my Mom is a librarian and was a teacher for something like 20 years and needed to clear out a lot of books when my parents moved.” She gets a lot of free books, deliberately buys good books, and managed to accumulate a lot of books she wanted to get rid of.

I also ended up bringing home a bunch of my own childhood favorites as well. Thus, we’ve got a lot of Richard Scarry books. I hadn’t thought about Lowly Worm, Sargent Murphy, Huckle Cat or Sam and Dudley (the great detectives) in years.

That being said, I’m not even talking about one of those books in this post. I’m just saying we’ve got a lot of children’s books and that you can expect more reference to them in the future. I may even actually review some. In this case I’m just going to make people aware of one I read tonight as a bedtime story *.

“Everyone Poops” was originally published in Japan and translated into English. It’s a book that shows various people and animals with their dung.

I am not kidding.

This book is no doubt exceptionally useful for those children who intend to track whales and rhinos by their dung. Other children will find it interesting as well–unless of course they are among the few children not fascinated with bodily functions.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

* Note: I did not choose this book as a bedtime story. The kids chose it.

Posted by Jim at April 7th, 2005

Kristen and I have been rather indecisive about the area above the window. Bearing in mind that it’s not likely to get much water on it, it doesn’t really need tile. We could have just painted it like the rest of the room and considered it done. On the other hand, there’s something to be said for just putting in tile.

As you can see, we finally came to a decision on that issue tonight.

Posted by Jim at April 6th, 2005

Sick of bathroom pictures yet? The good news is that this should be over soon. Almost all of the grout is in. Kristen will finish the rest tomorrow. After that we’ll wait about 24 hours and we’ll be able to at least take baths.

Kristen looks over the new hardware for controlling the water.

Posted by Jim at April 5th, 2005

The tile is in, but the grout isn’t yet. If you look really closely, you might be able to see the little plastic spacers that keep the tiles a consistent distance apart.

That’s my mom measuring and marking a tile before cutting it. She’s a teacher/librarian and this is what she’s doing on her spring break. Hopefully she’ll get to do something that’s actually fun at some point.

Posted by Jim at April 4th, 2005

Again, the bathtub. Now with concrete, and, also with a showerhead some 6 inches higher than it used to be. Now the shower won’t be level with my head.

Posted by Jim at April 3rd, 2005

Last night we stayed up till 1 a.m. and ripped out the walls of the bathroom. Here are the results:

Kristen helping clean up the bathroom.

The observant among you will notice that it’s not possible to take a bath in our house at the moment.

So don’t mind us. We’re just stinky.

Posted by Jim at April 2nd, 2005

The bathroom before we messed with it.

The bathroom in the process of being gutted down to the studs.

Some Unasked for Advice:
Make friends with plumbers, carpenters and builders. One short phone call may stop you from doing exceptionally stupid things during renovations.

Posted by Jim at April 1st, 2005

As someone with an interest in usability/HCI, I often read OK/Cancel, a webcomic devoted to making jokes about computer usability. That means the webcomic has one of the smallest potential audiences imaginable, but it is funny… at least if you’re interested in that kind of thing.

It being April Fools day, they’ve come up with one of the least usable websites you could hope to find. I love it. My only disappointment was best put by one of their commenters “What? No flash intro?”

A particularly wonderful touch is that certain (but not all) information is placed based on size of your screen. Thus, if your screen is the right size, the copyright information will actually cover part of the comic.

Visit before they take it down.