Da Keiki Blog

Speaking of techy and geeky, Mountain View (near San Jose) has the Computer History Museum. It’s close to the freeway, free admission and free parking (ahh, suburbia). We are computer geeks at heart (except Leilani of course), and even though it was Daddy’s idea, Mommy enjoyed it too.

The reason we visited: the Babbage Machine replica. Invented in 1837, 2nd replica built 2008 and works, polynomial sequence calculator with integrated integrated printer (not shown).

Besides the Babbage machine, they had a few displays where Leilani was bored. But then we gave her the camera and we all spent 30 minutes in the room where they just had aisles of old machines with little explanation signs. The parents got to see and learn a lot, and Leilani had a lot of subject matter for her visual exploration.

All remaining photos taken by Leilani, uncropped and unedited, but no clickable hi-res (interestingly, the scale of her pictures doesn’t require hi-res). Disclaimer: 2 of these photos are in this post because somebody else likes them (not Mommy who chose them :-)

<for geeks only>One cube of a Cray 3, 1993, theoretically 15.17 GFLOPS (I think the iMac is still measured in MFLOPS) and the whole system one big Terraflopp (only 1 system ever shipped, 0.3G$). Not full of stars, “just” a bunch of processor boards back-to-back, 16 processors per board, and I think the whole thing had to be submerged in liquid nitrogen to run.</geek>

A bench, not a computer:

A sign, not a computer screen:

The back of a display board, not a computer:

Leilani approached the boy on her own to take his picture. I told her she had to ask his Mommy first, who then thought it was cute and took pictures of Leilani.

Daddy likes this one: Leilani doesn’t just have us pose, she takes interesting candid pictures of us too.

The mandatory foot picture, this time with Leilani’s favorite floor markings :-)

Today was Martin Luther King day – no school. We went to the coyote point park and played at the big playground, and met Leilani’s friends Sydney and Isabella there. Second time we’ve had a Kauai (small island) moment here…

Leilani balancing

She insisted it was a crocodile and played in it’s mouth. She likes strange creatures, crocodiles, spiders, snakes, hyenas, skunks…

Big Slide

Leilani and Sydney love holding hands.

I am so happy that Youtube finally has nice quality! Checking out google videos and vimeo dropped off my to do list again… Check out the video I just added in my last Christmas post too.

Run!!! A cave monster!!! A second ago they were talking about the cute animals in their burrows, then they just screamed and ran for the fun of it…

After Sydney and Isabella left Leilani played about an hour with these magnets. She started building a spider, then some bridges, then a town and then a machine. She pointed out who lived in the buildings in her town, and hoarded almost all of the building implements. Whenever adults came and took stuff away from her buildings I explained that that was part of her town, and earned some very strange looks, that I bravely endured. I did make her share with kids though.

It’s pretty hard to believe, but I’m current with my blog and my email (reading). Now if only my desk or the rest of my office was in that kind of shape…

My Mom took that photo in Austria. The change in weather was so suddenly that the roses froze intact and stayed like this for quite a while.

One more reason to love the Bay Area. The sell Kaeferbohnen at the Rainbow Market!

Leilani took the following three (as you could have guessed…)

Last Sunday we went to hike in the Wildcat Canyon. Leilani napped most of the time and behaved impossible most of the rest. Here she is fairly happy, found a stick that she pretended to be a spider that was chasing us…

Wildcat Canyon tree elf and fairy.

An old photo: Her Birthday dinner at the vegetarian house in San Jose. They have pretty stained glass windows and Leilani is catching rays of light

Riding a turtle at New Years Day at the Academy of Science

2 weeks ago we tried to go on a hike with the San Bruno Mother’s club, but due to too much chaos in our lives – not RSVPd and arrived at the wrong meeting point and late – we failed. We had lots of fun on our own though, and we saw the mom’s club walk by from a distance while we built our sandcastle. They all had strollers, so Leilani probably wouldn’t have enjoyed that hike anyway.

Time flies (that’s why all the Baby Blog posts are so late…)
Andy says: I drew this on the sand, with a driftwood gnomon. I made it at noon and it was accurate for a little while, maybe until the next tide washed it away, like the sands of time…

Hiking on the coastal bluffs in Pacifica

If you look closely, you can see an island on the horizon to the left of us. I don’t think you can see Kaua’i from here, so it must be the Farallones (30 miles – 50 km away).

That’s San Francisco in the far distance, Ruwan’s neighborhood, with Mt. Tamalpais above and beyond.

Leilani loves to climb anything and everything. I think she had more fun on the dirt hill than on the beach itself.

Leilani and I built a strange sandcastle:

Leilani showing off her new yoga skills:

Leilani managed to take 2 pictures with her unique perspective, before she stuck the lens in the sand and got her ear pulled…

Then we went a few miles south to Pilar Point Harbor, at the north end of Half Moon Bay. We walked to the north point where there were tidal flats, and then to El Granada, and back to the harbor where we had dinner at Barbara’s Fish Trap.

Yikes! Cold!

And another sunset…

Someone in El Granada was cutting their Nightblooming Jasmine hedge, and I took some home – the next afternoon I discovered the Jasmine rainbowshadow below:

Jasmine Rainbowshadow, that sounds like the name of a My Little Pony.

A few weeks ago we hiked in Alum Rock Park in San Jose.

There was a nice winter afternoon sun, but it was still cold.

We could not decide if it was spring already…

… or still fall

In any case, Leilani fell asleep soon

and missed all the pretty scenery.

There are pretty sunsets in San Jose too.