Category: learndorphins

Learn to Drive Syllabus – Suburbia and Beyond

2022-07-112022-07-11 wt8p 1 comment

Part 1: here. Part 2: here. Suburban practice: 30-45mph streets Goals: Be able to drive to (and park at) Trader Joe’s then Metropolitan Market and get back home. Continue building good habits, two-way communication with parental unit in right seat Scanning and naming things to keep an eye on (e.g., pedestrians looking like they may cross, lights about to change, […]

Learn to Drive Syllabus: Neighborhood

2022-06-212022-07-11 wt8p

(A belated followup to Part 1. Part 3 is here.) Neighborhood Practice: 25mph streets Goals: Back out of and pull into our driveway. Complete point-to-point drives in a gentle environment, build good habits – speed control, scanning, and learning to recognize potential issues. Two-way communication with parental unit in right seat. For example, when I say stop, you need to […]

CWA Basic: Sessions 1 – 3

2021-01-252021-01-25 wt8p

The basic class — which I really wish existed when I took CW Academy – serves as a bridge between beginner and intermediate. Its focus is on Instant Character Recognition (ICR), the ability to hear letters (initially) and words (later) as one unit without any additional steps. The bulk of the official syllabus — which you should glance through as […]

Learning to Drive Syllabus, Parking Lot

2021-01-152022-07-11 wt8p

I will be teaching my adult children how to drive and found it helpful to cobble together a syllabus of activities. This will be in multiple phases, starting with … a parking lot. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here. Parking Lot: Goals: Use and feel of steering inputs, mirrors and other controls. Car gauges and lights. Learn how […]

Online classes

2011-11-23 wt8p 6 comments

This fall, Stanford has been offering free online classes this fall in three subject areas of computing: Artificial Intelligence, Databases, and Machine Learning. It’s different from MIT’s excellent OpenCourseWare series in that Stanford is offering a course you can play along with while MIT is providing the materials for self-study. For two of the courses, two tracks were offered: “basic,” in […]

Snap, Crackle and Pop

2011-02-12 wt8p 5 comments

As I’ve aged, evidence of my lost cat-like stealth comes in the form of various snapping, crackling and popping noises I make when I walk. They’re freakish sounds, though I have no pain associated with it. In fact, it actually feels good when I stretch at night. The most common popping noises people have are associated with knuckle cracking. (… […]

Dolphin Kick

2011-02-07 wt8p

When I first heard someone mention the term dolphin kick, I thought it was a reference to the 1980s Patrick Duffy show, Man from Atlantis. The BBC says the dolphin kick “replaces a standard underwater leg kick with a whipping motion that minimizes water resistance.”[1] It’s a little easier to make sense of this if you watch the video. Suffice […]

Seat belt fines

2011-01-14 wt8p 3 comments

During a long bike ride yesterday, I noticed several road signs calling attention to a fine of $101 for driving without a seat belt. I’d noticed these signs before, but while traveling at the glacial pace my winter legs permitted, I read them a lot more than once 😉 Upon passing of House Bill 1460, Washington’s mandatory seat belt law […]