TechyDad, Author at TechyDad

Doctor Who Excitement Building

November 15, 2013 TechyDad Doctor Who

The Doctor Who 50th anniversary special is a mere days away. First, the TV trailer was released. This showed us some wonderful scenes with David Tennant’s 10th Doctor alongside Matt Smith’s 11th Doctor. It looks as though the two Doctors are going to have a bit of a friendly yet antagonistic relationship. While one scene shows then sitting down, crossing their legs, and crossing their arms at the exact same pace (as if of one mind), other scenes show Ten and Eleven try to one up each other’s sonic screwdriver. Then there’s the scene where Tennant notices that Smith "redecorated" the TARDIS – just before exclaiming (in that unique Tennant Matt Smith and David Tennant manner – "I don’t like it."

If this got me jumping with joy, though, the next preview got me climbing the walls with anticipation. While the 50th anniversary special is called "The Day of the Doctor", this preview is titled "The Night of the Doctor."

This prequel features the return of Peter McGann as the 8th Doctor. Peter previously played the Doctor in a 1996 movie. Fans have speculated for awhile about how McGann’s 8th Doctor transitioned into Eccleston’s war-scarred 9th Doctor. Now we know part of the story and I have a feeling we’ll know the rest by November 23rd.

My boys have been feverishly catching up but seeing as how they are currently 17 episodes from the most recent episode, I doubt they’ll make it in time. Of course, I’ll record the special to show to them when they catch up. I did, however, show them the trailer and will show them the prequel as well. They loved seeing the two Doctors together. I can’t wait for them to be all caught up so we can watch new Doctor Who episodes together as they air.

An Open Letter About Asperger’s Syndrome

November 13, 2013 TechyDad Aspergers, Autism

This was originally written as an e-mail to some relatives of mine who cast doubt on NHL’s diagnosis of Asperger’s given how "well behaved" he acted and how much "Internet research" they did concerning Asperger’s Syndrome. (Of course, if Internet research made someone an expert in a field, I’d be an expert in just about everything by now.)

As of this writing, I’m still wavering on whether I should send the e-mail or not, but I did decide to post a version of it here. I’ve edited it to remove some personal references, but the overall tone remains the same.

If you encounter a relative who thinks they know more about Autism than you do and who "knows" that the doctor who spent hours on the diagnosis is wrong because "he/she seems so normal" to them, feel free to either send them the link to this blog post or to use this as the starting point for your own letter.

Hi,

I know you mean well when you say things like "NHL acts too well to have Asperger’s", but it just winds up as insulting. I wanted to clear up a few points.

First of all, we didn’t just decide one day that NHL had Asperger’s Syndrome. We had a detailed diagnosis done by a qualified doctor who spent hours observing and testing him. There is no doubt that NHL has Asperger’s Syndrome.

Secondly, we live with him every day. We see behaviors and actions that others just don’t see. For example, NHL stims when he’s overwhelmed. (Stimming = self-stimulation and can take the form of flapping arms, clapping, spinning around, picking fingernails, or other actions that help calm the person down.) NHLs stimming of choice right now is slapping himself. He’ll get overwhelmed and will start slapping his chest or knees with his hands. He rarely does this in public, but will do it often when at home if he’s stressed. (For example, if his homework assignment is tough and getting him upset.)

NHL will also melt down if things don’t go according to the plan he had in mind or if he is anxious about events. All too often, I’ve had to drag NHL out of a store while he screamed bloody murder because keeping him in the situation will only lead to a bigger melt down. When the situation is too stressful for him, he needs to be removed from it to help him calm down. He won’t "just get used to it." It will just spiral more and more out of control.

I think one of the main problems is one of perception. Some people still view Asperger’s as some horribly stigmatizing illness which will make the person suffering from it unable to function properly in society. This couldn’t be further from the truth. People with Asperger’s Syndrome typically have social issues, but they also can be extremely intelligent – as NHL certainly is. They can learn to adapt to neurotypical society. (Side note: Please get in the habit of using the word "neurotypical" instead of "normal.") NHL is getting help with adapting not just from B and me, but from his teachers and other school staff. He’s also learning how to be an advocate for himself and how speak out when people don’t treat him right.

NHL won’t ever be fully neurotypical and will find himself in situations from time to time that he just can’t deal with, but even then he’ll have methods on-hand that he can use to minimize the damage (so to speak). An adult Aspie friend of mine pointed out that she’s mastered "delayed meltdowns." She can feel like she can’t take any more on the inside and look perfectly fine on the outside. Then, when she gets the first chance, she can go off on her own and cry/scream/etc until she feels better.

Many people with Asperger’s go on to be very well known in their fields. Some even become rich and/or famous. Daryl Hannah and Dan Aykroyd have Asperger’s Syndrome and yet that hasn’t stopped them from having successful acting careers.

It’s not a matter of "growing out of it" or "being cured of it." It’s a matter of "emulation." Aspies’ brains tend to think in IF-THEN formats. IF this happens THEN this should happen. IF someone says this to me THEN I should do that. This happens to be very useful when dealing with computers (probably one reason why tons of people in the computer industry are Aspies), but this is awful for dealing with social situations.

Social situations are filled with shades of grey where tiny nuances determine whether a response is completely appropriate or horribly offensive. Aspies are really bad at interpreting these nuances, but they can build rules in their heads over time that help them deal with those social situations. Like how a computer can "emulate" another computer.

Unfortunately, just like the computer emulation analogy, an Aspie emulating neurotypical social behavior will find this slower than a "native neurotypical" and more mentally taxing. They won’t be able to socialize for as long without breaks and unexpected social situations can throw them for a loop. For example, I’m great at business meetings because I know the social expectations and reactions needed. Put me in a party situation, though, and I’ll quickly get overwhelmed and will try to find the nearest exit.

Just as an aside, saying that someone has Asperger’s isn’t an insult to anyone. Adults with Asperger’s aren’t criticizing their parents for "not doing enough" or for "being bad parents." The days of Asperger’s being blamed on "refrigerator mothers" is long over, thank goodness. While we don’t know exactly what causes it, our best guess is that it is mostly a matter of genetics. You wouldn’t blame parents for "giving" their child Asperger’s Syndrome any more than you’d blame them for giving their child juvenile diabetes.

On a personal note, I recognize that I’m not actually diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. However, while reading book after book on Asperger’s Syndrome to figure out what was going on with NHL, I quickly found the descriptions all too familiar. It was like those books weren’t just written about NHL: they were written about me also.

I’ve long thought of myself as "different" from other people. I’ve blamed bullying for "stunting my social growth", but if it was just that then I should have "caught up" by now. After all, it has been twenty years since I graduated high school. However, while I’ve gotten better, I still have moments where I just get overwhelmed, or locked into something. Sometimes, I can recognize what is happening, but all too often I just can’t control it.

I could go for a diagnosis. I know adults who have. However, money is tight and a diagnosis wouldn’t be cheap. Even if I got one, it wouldn’t help NHL at all. So, until money is no object, I’ll remain an "undiagnosed Aspie", but will use my experiences to help my son.

(Side note: Though this online Asperger’s Syndrome test isn’t conclusive, it is pretty interesting. If you get a 32 or above, you likely have Asperger’s. I got a 36. When B took it for comparison purposes, she got a 10.)

We know that NHL is going to be a success at anything he puts his mind to. The key is giving him the help and support he needs so that he can get up to speed socially as well. There is no shame in saying he has Asperger’s Syndrome. Nobody is going to hold it over his head, deny him a job, or lock him in a rubber room because of it. It doesn’t reflect poorly on me, my wife, my parents, her parents, or anyone else that NHL and I have Asperger’s. It’s just a fact of life that you deal with.

Like I told NHL one day when he spotted a child in a supermarket who only had one hand: "Everyone in life has challenges, but not everyone’s challenges are readily apparent. That boy’s challenge is that he has one hand. You can see that by looking at him. Our challenge isn’t physically visible, though, so people might not see/know what our challenge is."

As a final point, I didn’t mean anything that I wrote to come across as mean-spirited so please don’t take it as that. The fact of the matter is that I just communicate better via written word than via spoken word. All of the words are there in my head forming perfect arguments as to why things are the way they are. Unfortunately, they tend to get jumbled when they spill out of my mouth. Many of the words get lost and the ones that make it out don’t have the impact that they had in my head. Furthermore, interacting with counter-arguments on the fly is a "social situation emulation" that I find particularly taxing.

With writing, however, I can phrase my argument carefully. I can type out the words, go back and edit a few more in (in case they got lost on the way over), rearrange some paragraphs to better illustrate my point, and more. I can carefully craft my argument before anyone even gets to see it. When counter-points are made (in a written reply), it doesn’t matter if my "emulation" is running slow. I can counter the counter-argument at my own speed without the individual standing there, growing impatient as to why I haven’t answered yet.

Of course, there is no way that I could fit everything about Asperger’s Syndrome in one letter just as there is no way I could fit every single reason why NHL is an Aspie or every last instance where NHL’s Aspie nature was readily apparent. Furthermore, dealing with other people with Asperger’s Syndrome is no guarantee of being able to spot an Aspie. There’s a saying in the Autism community: If you’ve met one person with Autism/Asperger’s Syndrome, you’ve met one person with Autism/Asperger’s Syndrome. Sure, many with Asperger’s will share similar general traits, but the specifics and which traits are present vary from person to person. Just like every neurotypical person is different from every other neurotypical person.

NOTE: The image above is a combination of an Autism Awareness ribbon icon created by Melesse which comes from Wikimedia Commons and "Paper,Write,Pen" created by aungkarns which comes from OpenClipArt.org.

A Cure For Comment Spam Ills

November 11, 2013 TechyDad Blogging, Spam

If you run a blog that allows people to comment on posts, it is inevitable. You will get comment spammers stopping by. They will post in hopes that their comments will provide links to their websites peddling "medicinal products", adult content, and other items that you probably would rather not have on your website. The links – these spammers hope – will mean that their sites will gain a better Google ranking and lure more people to their websites.

Side note to explain "Google ranking" in case you don’t know: Google ranks sites based, in part, on how many links there are to them. The sheer number isn’t the only method, however. Sites who themselves have a better Google ranking lend more weight to the sites they link to. For example, if CNN were to link to my blog, I’d get a much bigger Google-boost than if some spam site nobody ever heard about linked to me. The spammers hope that the comment spam links from the blogs they "visit" will help boost their Google ranking.

It would be bad enough if spammers went around leaving garbage comments to increase their Google ranking, but spammers don’t stop there. They employ networks of compromised computers ("spambots") to do their bidding. Using this tactic, they can post dozens of their spam comments from different IP addresses, getting around IP address blocks.

Thankfully, there are an array of tools that you can use to thwart spammers. I’ve used a few of these in the past to varying effects. Akismet helped block nearly all spam comments, though a few did still slip through. NoSpamNX helped block a bunch more. Unfortunately, while the spam comments (for the most part) didn’t appear on my site, they were still in my database. I could delete them but there was still server load to think of.

All of those spammers sending all of that data to my database might not cause my to unwittingly boost their Google rating, but they could slow down my server. For some reason, my blog seemed wildly popular with the spammers. It seemed that I was getting almost a hundred spam comments a day. And then it got worse.

On November 5th, I received 252 spam comments. TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY TWO! The next day, the total quickly rose up and threatened to top even this.

Something had to be done.

Jenn (aka KissMyKitty) recommended Captcha by BestWebSoft. I was leery since I hate whenever sites use captchas. This plugin, however, doesn’t give you garbled text that you need to decipher and re-type, though. Instead, it gives you a simple math problem such as: One + 3 = _____ If you type in "4", your comment will move on to Akismet and my other anti-spam measures. If you are a spam-bot and don’t understand math like this, your comment won’t even be saved into the database.

Good idea in theory, but how will it hold up in practice? Take a look at this graph:

(Click on the graph for a bigger version.)

That huge drop in spam comments was right after I installed Captcha. Spam comments initially were so non-existent that I figured something was wrong with my comment form. One test comment later, though, and I knew that it was just Captcha confounding the bots. Yes, some spammers did manage to get by, but at a greatly reduced rate. Instead of dealing with a flood of comment spammers, I now only see a trickle coming in. In the four days since I installed the plugin, I had only 8 spam comments with my biggest spam day since installing it at 6 comments. My pre-Captcha low was 39.

Given that Captcha is so effective against spambots, so easy for real human posters, and free to boot, it’s definitely going into my Must Have anti-spam toolkit.

NOTE: The "no spam" image above was partially created out of "no sign" by skotan which is available from OpenClipArt.org.

Common Core Math vs. Old School Math

November 8, 2013 TechyDad School

A couple of nights ago, NHL came home and began to do his homework. As he did his math work, he began to get agitated. Soon, he was in full-blown panic mode. He was doing decimal division and didn’t know how to do it. The method that they were being taught was confusing to him.

The problem that he was given was 1.62 / 0.27. First, I’ll use the Common Core method that NHL was given as illustrated by this photo:

$math-example$

Do you understand how to do this now? No? Well don’t worry. Neither did I. After a day of thinking about it, I finally figured it out. You draw a picture showing tenth segments totaling 1.6. Next, you separate these out into groupings of 4 tenths segments (0.4). Finally, you count the number of groups and you get your answer (4).

Going back to the original problem (1.62 / 0.27), you’d draw a picture like this:

(Where each line represents one hundredth.)

Next, you would separate these out into groupings of 27 hundredths.

Finally, you would count the number of groups and get the answer: 6.

I find two problems with this method. First of all, you aren’t learning to actually work with the numbers. You aren’t figuring out how to actually divide one number into another number. Secondly, this quickly breaks down as you get to larger numbers. If this problem involved the number 1.621, would you force the kids to draw 1,621 thousandths lines? Would dividing 16.215 mean needing to draw over 16,000 lines? At what point does the child learn to actually work with the numbers?

Now, let’s compare this to how I learned to do decimal math (“Old School Math”).

First step is to write out the problem like so:

Next, multiply the top and bottom by 100 to get rid of those pesky decimal places. (100/100 = 1 so you aren’t changing the number.)

Now, you can break up 27 into numbers that, when multiplied together make 27. 1*27 wouldn’t be any help, but 3*9 would be. You can also go one step further and break up the 9 into 3*3. So now you have:

Now just divide the 162 by each of the threes. The first one gives you:

The second gives you:

And finally, you come up with the answer: 6.

This method is much more scalable – you don’t need to write out a thousand lines to represent a number – and actually makes the student deal with the numbers.

When I showed this method to NHL, he understood it immediately and was able to solve the problem quickly. Sadly, thanks to New York State’s implementation of Common Core, the teacher isn’t allowed to change her methods to suit the children. Neither are the kids allowed to use alternative methods to solve problems. If NHL is given 1.62/0.27 on a test and he solves it via the “Old School” method, he will be marked wrong. Even if he gets the right answer, he will be told he’s wrong because he didn’t use the Common Core Approved method.

This course of action will just teach students to think INSIDE the box and that deviating from the set path is the wrong thing to do – instead of something that might result in a fantastic discovery. Common Core Math will wind up turning many students off of math. As a math geek, that makes me very sad. I worry about NHL and his peers and their future education.

The Post-Halloween Crafting Blues

November 6, 2013 TechyDad Crafting

Halloween has come and gone and while my kids are still happy with their candy gains, I find myself a bit sad. For the past few months, I had been planning my fez and bow tie crafting projects. I researched options, printed out patterns, bought materials, and spent time cutting, sewing, and hot gluing the pieces into place. I even had to make some judgment calls when my available supplies didn’t match what was called for. (Why must bow tie clips be so hard to find in local stores?!!) In the end, I had a very nice fez and bow tie set. They are – to quote Matt Smith’s Doctor – cool.

However, now that they are done, I’m unsure of what to do next. I have enough material for another fez and at least one more bow tie. My boys have expressed a desire for their own fezzes and JSL wants a series of bow ties for his stuffed animals. (I wasn’t willing to buy him two $35 bow ties for his stuffed animals, but I’m willing to sew a few for him.)

Beyond repeating these projects, though, I’d like to try something new. Perhaps I’ll make my boys some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles hats. Or maybe I’ll seek out some TARDIS pillow or blanket instructions. I might even try making an Adipose.

I’m not sure what, but I’m on the hunt so any suggestions would be appreciated. My main limitation is that any sewing projects need to be able to be completed via hand stitching as I don’t have a sewing machine. (I’ll admit to having drooled over them, and I would love to get one, but I’m not sure where we’d put it.)

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