Representing Timothy

Every so often, we as a family need to write an application or a blog or some kind of communiqué as Timothy. Whenever we do this, we are representing Timothy to the world and must be very careful about making sure that representation is accurate.

We've been challenged a few times on the things that we write as Timothy. It generally comes down to "how do you know this?" or "has Timothy said this to you?". These challenges are very useful because they force us to re-assess what we're saying and really check if they represent Timothy. I enjoy every challenge we get because it can be a tough mental exercise, verifying and justifying the content of what we're writing. It also gives us some confidence that we're representing him correctly, because we can justify it.

Here's a few examples:

• "I enjoy photography." How can we verify this? Well, we imagine a hypothetical ordinary man who can verbalise his interests, and what his behaviour would be like if he enjoyed photography. We then observe Timothy and see if his behaviour matches. In the case of photography, we feel it does. On his last outing with a camera, he held the camera up, pointed it at something of interest, and took a photo an average of once every 22 seconds.
• "I enjoy going to McDonalds." Same basic process, but a lot easier to judge. Timothy is happier at McDonalds than when he's not at McDonalds. :)
• "I think McChickens are the best burger." Much trickier for us to verify. Before we could write this we want to observe that, given (almost) any other food choice, he would choose a McChicken. Fact is, he probably wouldn't prefer a McChicken as it doesn't contain a pickle.
• "I want to learn more about photography." This is tricky. What does it look like when someone wants to learn about something? Timothy tends to learn by mimicking and/or exploration. Timothy does not always mimic our behaviour, so when he does it is a good sign he is interested in doing the same thing as you are. When he explores on his own (eg. playing with camera settings, taking photos of objects you never even tried to photograph), you can be fairly sure he is trying to learn.
• "I hate that root beer looks like Coke. I always get tricked by it." Hehe, actual fact. He is not happy when he grabs a glass of root beer, drinks it, and finds out it's not Coke. Coke seems to be the only pop he actually enjoys.
• "I dream of being an artist." Yeesh, tough one. What does Timothy dream of being? Well, we'd probably look at how he tries to see himself. Does he prefer photos where he's holding a camera, or where he's learning to cook, or where he's playing with his niece, or... I don't think we've gathered enough information to know what Timothy dreams of being, and so we can't really write such things.

Anyway, this blog was primarily just to say thankyou to the people who challenge us to be as authentic and true in our representation of Timothy as possible. As you can read above, we are trying our hardest. At times we can slip-up and inject our own views or beliefs, and it is good to have someone there to call us out on that.

P.S. Sometimes we get suggestions to prefix statements with "My family believes..." For example, replacing "I will be happier in my new home" with "My family believes I will be happier in my new house". That kind of prefix doesn't really solve the underlying issue. It's actually easier to verify "Timothy believes he will be happier in the new home" than it is to verify "Timothy understands that his family believes he will be happier in the new home". We can observe Timothy smiling when he enters his new bedroom. We can't observe Timothy understanding our conversations.

Adelaide's (Almost) Talking

For the last few months we've been trying to teach Adelaide to sign using her hands. We've tried words like "Daddy" (make a sign like a rooster on your forehead), "Mummy" (same thing but on your chin), and "Poh Poh" (Grandma in Cantonese, and looks like the rooster is running away). But the easiest word to learn has been "Nai Nai" (which is Milk in Cantonese, and looks like you're milking a cow).

Adelaide is now regularly signing "Nai Nai" with her hands whenever she wants to feed. There's no prompting from us, she just starts signing. We look at her and ask "Do you want Nai Nai?" and she smiles and signs again. Often with both hands, which isn't technically correct, but we give it to her. :)

But in the last few days she's started saying "Nai Nai" aloud herself in combination with the hand signs. Is this her first word? We're not 100% sure, but we'll probably know by the end of the month. She signs for "Nai Nai" so often it's become a bit of a joke at times. If "Nai Nai" is her first word, she's got plenty of opportunity to say it.

And this leads into the funny thing that happened yesterday. Adelaide was rolling around in bed (supposed quiet time while we try to get her to sleep), heaved a sigh and said something like "mamamia". She then made the sign for "Nai Nai", prompting Emily and I to sing...

Mama-mia
Here we go again
Nai nai
How can I resist ya?

Sorry, just had to share that. :)

Body Pains

Last night, I rolled over in bed and left shoulder had a brief 'pop' with a matching burst of pain. Joint weakness and pains aren't unusual for me, but the left shoulder is kind of new. My comment was something like "Argh, my left shoulder just started hurting." to which Emily replied something like "If I had a dime for every time you said 'Argh, my [x] just started hurting"...

This got us thinking. I do say things like that a lot, just because of random joint problems I have. The following is a list of a few common phrases in our house. They apply to pretty much any joint (hip, knee, elbow, shoulder, fingers, wrists) because I've had problems with all of them at some times. I've even woken up to find my fingertips 'popped out' because I'd slept on them. Twice.

• Hmm, I think I just did something to my [x]. It doesn't feel right.
• Hmm, my [x] just started hurting. I think that's new.
• My [x] is playing up again. Can you do [y] for me?
• My [x] feels odd. I'll try not to use it for a bit.
• Heh. I stood up, and something went wrong. I should sit back down.

I used to fear that I won't be able to play with my kids the way I want to. Tow Adelaide around in the snow, carry her on my back, etc. Luckily, my body seems 'resilient'. No matter how often I get these pains, they'll go away with time and stretches.

On any given day I can never be sure of what my body will be able to do. But I can be sure that some day my joints and the planets will be aligned in their proper positions. If only for a little while.

Scanning With A Camera

We recently came across a bunch of old blueprints for the current house. They are too big to be scanned, but I wanted to be able to look at them on the computer. Taking a photo didn't help very much as the images were grey, uneven, and unclear:

The most obvious solution is to play with "levels" or "curves" and make the lines dark and the paper white. This works well when using a flatbed scanner, but I'm using a digital camera in uneven lighting. The paper corners were darker than the centre lines. I could not find a way to adjust the image contrast that wouldn't lose detail or create dark splotches:

It was then I discovered a neat ability of Gimp, and this is presumably available in Photoshop as well. You can follow these steps to brighten different parts of an image differently, and in proportion to how dark it is. Here's the procedure:

1. Create a duplicate "layer" of your image. We're going to use this layer as a "light map", showing which parts of the image are bright and which are dark.
2. Blur this duplicate layer. The amount you blur is up to you, but you basically want to remove all the sharp lines and details. You want the layer just to show where the bright regions of your image are, and where the dark regions are, without details.
3. Set the blurred layer to "Divide" mode. Technically, this is taking the colour of your "original" image and dividing it by your "blurred" light map. Practically, this is taking every pixel of your "original" image and brightening it by looking at the average pixel colour in that area of the image. We have successfully brightened each pixel in proportion to how dark that area was.
4. Finally adjust "levels", "curves", "contrast", "brightness", whatever you want to call it. The normal kinds of adjustments you would do to a scanned document which doesn't have enough contrast.

As you can see, the resulting image is much clearer. It isn't perfect and I'm sure some adjustment of these instructions would fix that. But it's a lot better than what we started with, and is more than sufficient for my purposes.

The next step is to try using similar steps for regular photos where one part is way too dark and another part is way too light. Will see what I come up with. :)

UPDATE: I found this photo of me presenting a workshop on Hornby island. I applied a slight variation of the above technique (I had to desaturate and then adjust the levels in the blurred image to avoid division by zero). The end result brightens everything in the image except the projector screen. This way I don't lose that incredibly important screen text, but can still see that I'm wearing a yellow shirt with green shorts...

What was I thinking?!?

Bedtime Routine

We've been getting into a rhythm with Adelaide at bedtime. The times can vary by up to an hour, but the basic routine is:

• 8:00pm - change from her regular clothes into a sleeper
• 8:00pm to 8:30pm - she's very chatty and enjoys some attention
• 8:30pm to 9:00pm - a bit of feeding to help her get to sleep
• 9:00pm to 10:00pm - she naps while Emily and I play the Wii
• 10:00pm - she wakes up, has another feed, then everyone sleeps until about 1am

Of course this never goes as smoothly as we would want. Tonight, it's past midnight and she's strapped to me because she couldn't seem to fall asleep in her own bed. Emily is exhausted because Adelaide is waking every two hours to feed, so I'm going to write this blog and do some coding.

But whatever happens, Adelaide does know when the bedtime routine is meant to start. A few days ago it was 8:15pm and I was changing Adelaide's diaper. She was happy and still in her regular clothes, so rather than change her into a sleeper I decided to dress her back up. After the first button she was in tears! She got this horrified look on her face and just bawled!

Similar thing again today. Emily and I took her out to see 10pm fireworks, and all is going fine until about 8:45pm. Suddenly Adelaide realises that the sun is going down and she's not in her sleeper. A happy and content baby suddenly turns to tears and sad, sad cries.

I've been told that parents can distinguish between their child's cries. In this case, we definitely can. This crying is not a "I have tummy problems!" scream or a "I'm bored!" protest. It is more like the cry when you realise you left your toddler's favourite teddy bear at the last petrol station. Or when your child is lost in a department store and can't find anyone they know. It's a "They forgot me!" kind of cry. Absolutely adorable, but it also gets you moving quickly. :)

Anyway, I'll get some coding done while Adelaide is still sleeping. I expect her to wake up within the hour for her next feed. Seems like she's not teething as we thought - it's just another growth spurt.