(no subject)

I was thinking I needed something longer than a facebook status update, but shorter than a blog post.

But then it occurred to me that there's no real minimum length on blog/lj posts, so:

In Larry Niven's compilation N-Space, he includes a story outline and notes for a story he never wrote because he happened on the idea that became Ringworld instead. Anyway, these notes were for a final story to end his Known Space universe by introducing a gigantic game-changing conspiracy that basically demanded everything then come crashing down in one gigantic war. Basically, it was a way to go out with a bang.

I never saw the Star Trek movie that came out this past summer in theaters, but received it on DVD for my birthday a few weeks ago, and just finished watching it. It feels very similar, especially with the musical cues of the TOS music in the closing credits.

Katherine update

Since I seem to have livejournal open again, let me see if I can actually make two posts in a day.

So Katherine is now on the verge of being six. She is also on the verge of reading - she can read simple books to herself at I'd guess about the rate of 5-10 words per minute. She's generally right now able to read extremely slowly books labeled as "2" in the "I Can Read" line, and books labeled as "1" comfortably. (And has been observed to pick up the books on her own)

She's making her own books occasionally by drawing on several pieces of paper, writing stories (using her own invented, phonetic spelling) to go along with them, and asking us to staple the pages together. I should scan in a book she made a few weeks ago and put it up somewhere.

I should know how tall she is right now, but don't. I must remember to measure her when she gets home from my parents' house on Friday. I think she's just under 4' 2" (~ 125 cm.) but am not at all sure.

She's reasonably comfortable with the household computers, and has been able to sit at the family desktop and log into her username for just over a year. Recently, I installed a talk daemon and we've used that once or twice to chat at each other, though never when I wasn't somewhere else in the house. Typing is still a few years off at least.

We got a Wii for Christmas, and I worry a bit at how she tells me that she's scared of games that are too tough for her and refuses to play them, but I think it may be mostly that she doesn't want to play games she's not good at in front of me. For example, this morning I came in and discovered her playing BIT.TRIP.BEAT which is much, much too hard for any six year old. I think my presence flusters her; I'll have to see what I can do to make her more comfortable playing with me.