This past weekend we headed out to the Heureka Science Center about a 20 minute train ride North of Helsinki. There are a ton of interactive, hands-on exhibits which I took photos of but this wheelchair exhibit was the most interesting.

The concept is simple. The quadrants of the circle light up randomly, one at a time and you have to roll at least two wheels over the quadrant before the next quadrant lights up. There is music playing in the background so if you take too long, the music begins to slow down, letting others in the room know you’re not doing too well.

It’s a very effective exhibit because kids immediately know what to do and it teaches you very quickly the limitations of moving a wheelchair around in a tight space.

I hope my kids have a better appreciation of those in wheelchairs next time we ride the train or bus!

One of my favorite presentations from this past week’s Web 2.0 Expo is now online. John Maeda, a designer & interactive artist, is now at the Rhode Island School of Design after spending time at the MIT Media Lab.

Dan Theurer, one of the original evangelists of the Yahoo Developer Network, gave a talk (which I unfortunately did not attend) about lessons learned from building YDN. His slides are well worth a glance for anyone interested in building a developer community around their APIs.

In an ironic twist of fate, 56,000 lunch boxes distributed by California’s Department of Public Health with the logo Eat Fruits & Vegetables and be Active were found to contain high levels of lead paint. Yes, these were manufactured in China.

A full recall is underway.

What’s 23 x 33? Here’s a visual way to solve the problem.

Draw 2 lines and then 3 lines to represent 23 and cross them with 3 lines followed by another 3 lines for 33 as in the drawing above. Add up the number of intersections in each corner of the square as if they were columns.

A=6 for the hundreds or 600

C=9 + B=6 is 15 for the tens column or 150

D=9

Add 600+150+9=759.

This new method of addition is all the rage in Japanese who have imported it from India as a new way to teach young children how to break down complex problems into smaller, solvable problems.

Julia had her last day of pre-school last week. Here’s a photo of her with one of her teachers, “Miss Michelle.”

Tyler is at grade level in all areas. He is well behaved and well like by others. He is a hard worker. He only needs improvement in working quietly at his seat. He talks a lot and is very interested in what others are doing. He needs to take his time with his handwriting and make sure the letters are on the lines.

Somehow, we had a feeling there would be something in there about his talking everyone’s ears off. He is full of ideas and it’s almost like if he can’t get them out, he’ll explode. Today he informed me that he had invented a new numerical unit. You know how they have million, billion, and trillion; thanks to Tyler we now have killion. "This number is so large that by the time you count to it, you’re dead."

Noted.

Over on the work blog I’ve posted about switching jobs to work at Yahoo. I’ll be starting next week so I’m spending this week clearing the decks and getting ready. Tyler’s bummed because I will not be able to walk him to school anymore and it’s been the time of day when we get to talk about things mano-a-mano. Today, I took some pictures of what we see each day during our 10 minute walk.

Tyler’s never been one to dread the classroom and despite having had only one month off for Summer because of his two months at Japanese public school (shhh, he still doesn’t know that the rest of his friends had three months off), he was eager to get back to see his friends and crack the books.

This year Tyler is going into the 1st Grade and knowing parents have told me that this is a big step. The first few weeks are ok as they just review what they did last year. This shouldn’t be too taxing as they spend 26 weeks covering the alphabet taking an entire week to explore and savor each letter. After the review, the whip comes down and things get serious. It gets darker in the mornings and the days seem longer – the kids get tired and they have homework that actually challenges them. All this makes them cranky and even a bit sarcastic.

We’ll see if this happens to young Tyler. I just can’t imagine a sarcastic Tyler, he’s still so wide-eyed and genuinely inquisitive. We’re going into the Labor Day Weekend and over breakfast he asked, “What does labor mean?” to which I replied that it meant “to work” and then I knew what was coming next.

“Daddy, why do you have a day off work on “to work” day?”