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September 2024 Reading

Not much reading again this month. I gave up on The Aleppo Codex because I didn't have the brainpower to follow all of the names and dates. The premise is interesting, but I can't dedicate reading time to something so intense during the school year. Maybe I'll revisit it during winter break.

I did finish two books.

The Monster in the Hollows - Andrew Peterson

This is the third book in the Wingfeather series that I've been reading aloud to my middle two girls. In this installation, it seems the Wingfeathers have finally found haven in the Green Hollows, but the entire family needs to adjust to the new culture. This is made doubly difficult given the challenges they've overcome and the scars they bear as a result. It asks everyone - including the reader - to consider their own monsters.

The Cartographers - Peng Shepherd

This was on a recommended book list when I searched "mystery" in the Libby app through our library. The premise was interesting and I was happy with the mystery that evolved. Then, it turned into a flashback series for the main plot and had a lot of holes in the end...I was left with a lot of questions about why some things happened one way, but similar situations later had different rules applied. I ended up being disappointed.

These were my 23rd and 24th book of the year since January. I'm probably not going to make my goal of 40, and I've made peace with that. Until next time...

It Finally Feels Autumnish

I'm not sure "autumnish" is a word, or if it is a word, if it is spelled correctly, but I do what I want here.

After an absurdly hot first three-quarters of September, we're finally enjoying the southwest Michigan start of autumn we moved here to enjoy. The days are warm and the nights are cool. Rain comes and goes each week and there is still a lot of life around us, but just with less gusto. Things are winding down both cultivated and grown as well as the life all around us.

We kicked off the weekend with a fantastic apple crisp made with seconds (ie, not good enough for the expensive bin) from the local apple stand. The couple who run the farm know their stuff and recommend apples based on what you want to do with them. Snacker that isn't too and brings some sour? Cortland. Jonathan apples for the kids becuase they pack that sugar punch the kids just go bonkers for. If you enjoy a crisp every now and then, throw in some cranberries (you can find whole cranberries in stores this time of year) and leave a comment later.

Saturday was split between harvesting our honey from the hives and getting the new batch of chickens acquainted with the old ladies. We modified our coop so the new chicks have some outdoor space where the OG hens can see them and get used to some new chickens in the flock. They'll stay separated for a few weeks until the new ones are ready to join the main group.

We landed on about 130 pounds of packaged honey this fall. This is our family's crop, so we don't really package it for selling like we do our spring crop. That said, we can't eat 120 pounds of honey ourselves. We'll keep about 70 which includes enough for us to use all year, some to trade with family for maple syrup in March, and some for gifts for neighbors, collegues, and the various other people we interact with on the regular.

The last thing on our list is to finish breaking down this year's garden. All of the stakes and plant supports are out - it's time to mow down all the growth and cover it with tarps so the carbon can get absorbed back into the ground for next year's garden. We're going all-in on a production cut flower system to go with the produce and honey on the farm, so we'll spend the winter planning out the expansion and all the infrastructure that will come along.

The season's change is encouraging. We've worked hard and taken advantage of our growing season and now, with the main part behind us, we can enjoy a few more chores knowing that we did good work and can take a rest.

Put the coffee back on and grab a sweater because it's time to finally slow down a little.

Things To Do

We had our first rainy day in several weeks today. As such, our kids were a little on the bored side and needed some help from me on what they could do.

Some of my ideas were:

They ended up jumping on the trampoline in the rain.

August 2024 Reading

August was the final month of summer break, so I managed to sneak a couple books in before school started up.

North! Or Be Eaten - Andrew Peterson

Book two in the Wingfeather Saga, I read this aloud over several weeks to the middle girls before bed. The Wingfeather family is on the run from the Fangs and have to make their way through Dugtown, which is full of more danger than just Fangs. This is a more bleak novel, but has glimmers of hope shining light into the darkness. It's a great read for all levels.

The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Le Guin

A story contrasting two opposing societies separated by space and ideology. Shevek is caught in the middle, trying to sort out how the two can reconcile. There is a hint of advanced technology in the book, which is why I picked it up, but the theory behind the technology plays a bigger role than the device itself.

World War Z - Max Brooks

I'm not a fan of zombie culture at all. I find that I get really depressed (mostly because the content is depressing) and the lack of hope is more of a distraction than a plot point characters have to overcome. Brooks does a good job of balancing the crisis moments with glimpses of hope. Rather than focusing on the pandemic, the book does a good job of blending government, media, and societal conflict into the narrative giving a global perspective of the human species and not just a core group of survivors like most others in the genre. Because the book is an "oral history," there isn't a real protagonist to follow. There are a lot of different locations and names, some of which return at different points, but you don't notice right away because of how much it jumps around.

This is my second time through this book and I picked it up mainly because I caught the tail end of the movie on TV one night. (The movie was not good.)

Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Mount Rainier Sasquatch Massacre - Max Brooks

I picked this up after a re-read of World War Z on a whim. The reporting/oral history was done well in WWZ, but this was a little too hard of a try. The detail in the main character's journal was way too high and far too specific to be absorbed. Brooks still weaved in research and other commentary through character interviews, but I think it would have been a more enjoyable read for me if it had just been in a novel format. There wasn't quite enough development for several characters and they ended up just being bodies for the climax.

Starting the Web Programming Class

This year, I started a new web programming course for high school students. We're focusing on the web because it's where my experience is and because we can do most of it on Chromebooks, which is what students are already eqipped with.

I had high hopes of spending two weeks (ha!) on the basics of the technology of the Internet. We started with vocab like "protocol," "client," and "server" before have some brief discussions about headers in requests and responses. I'm not doing any server-side work in this course, so we're not diving too deep into that protocol other than that there is a protocol dictating these interactions.

We moved into HTML pretty quickly and I'm starting to develop some protocols for distributing and collecting source code. I haven't introduced any version control, so I needed a way to have students download all source files effeciently. I ended up creating a repo with the following structure:

text . └── web-programming/ ├── html/ │ ├── exam/ │ │ ├── requirements.md │ │ └── index.html │ ├── ex01/ │ │ ├── introduction.md │ │ └── template.html │ ├── ex02 │ └── ... └── css/ ├── exam ├── ex01 └── ...

Each exercise is built to focus on a core concept. I have a markdown document with some reading and then the scope and instructions for the assignment. Sometimes, the assignment template has some of the HTML (or whatever) already written and students are editing. Other times, it is just blank boilerplate for an html document that they begin on their own.

I end up creating a .zip archive of each exercise that the students download through Google Classroom. Students complete the exercise and then submit their finished HTML to the Google Classroom assignment.

I looked into using Github Classroom to assign templates for students, but the template repos have to be standalone. In other words, I can't assign a single directory out of the web-programming root directory - I can only assign html/ex01 if it is its own repo. That means students would have dozens of template repos to manage by the end of the year and I'm not sure I want to do that. I'm also not sure I want to continue uploading and downloading template zips.

We've also downloaded the VS Code PWA to use as a text editor. I'm teaching some productivity tips along the way and I want them in the habit of working with the tools. I'll keep introducing helpful tools alongside the exercises so they've got context for why you'd want to use an editor in the first place. There was a lot of frustration in one of the first assignments (manually typing HTML tags around content) when I showed them the wrap with abbreviation shortcut. We'll continue identifying tasks we do frequently and looking up faster way to accomplish those tasks.

In the long run, I'm hitting a groove. This is a new class for me and for the school, so there is no expectation for what a "successful" sequence looks like. I think I'm going to continue refining the code distribution workflow to make life easier on myself while I prep activities and templates. I think as we build technical skill, we'll move to something a little more automated.

On Local Timelines

I came across a post from Kev Quirk this morning about Mastodon potentially removing the local timeline which linked to a different post by R Scott Jones, who wishes you could post to your local timeline only.

First, I never look at the global timeline. I'm surprised that there is debate about whether or not to include the local timeline in official apps. The entire point of decentralized servers is that you can join communities of interest and not have to see the main feed. If the core Mastodon project got rid of local timelines, I would have to make a hard choice about to interact moving forward.

That said, I hadn't considered local timelines only. I look at the local timeline a lot and generally don't follow people from Fosstodon on my account precisely because of this. I like the idea of being able to post to my local network exclusively and it made me wonder if I'm really in the best instance. I do work with open source projects and I have some toy stuff written of my own, but I'm not so into the nitty gritty that I can even follow a lot of what others on the instance talk about. It doesn't mean I can't learn, but it's definitely not my wheelhouse.

Is it better to silo off those interests? Or are small generalist instances the better approach? My guess is that it's "both/and" rather than "either/or," but it's made me think more about the ways in which we interact in these spaces moving forward.

And please don't nuke the local timeline.

Long Lake

I grew up visiting the central Adirondak Mountains with my family. A family friend had a cabin that we would visit at least once each year for a vacation. We didn't have much money and this was an affordable way to get out of our house on a trip.

My last visit was more than 15 years ago. My wife (before we were married) made a 12 hour Amtrak trip from Indiana to Utica, NY where we picked her up and then drove the last hour and a half to the house. Since then, we moved overseas and back, bought a house, had kids, built a house, and settled into midwest life. This year, my brother took the initiative get our schedules worked out to make a trip back to the house together.

If you've never been to the region, it's the largest publicly protected area in the lower 48, but it is neither a national or a state park. There is private and public land intermixed which means there is a lot of space to both stay and explore.

A green cabin in the woods. A light is on in the large living room window.

The house is just past Long Lake, the nearest town. Long Lake itself is unique because...well...it's really long. It's the closest town to the house and, as a kid, was the last landmark before we made it to "The Mountains." We didn't spend much time there on this trip but I enjoyed driving through with our kids and then making one grocery run back to the small store right on the shore. Most towns along the way are small, but they maintain their own distinctive vibe. I'm a particular fan of Long Lake's because they have great mugs and an even better logo.

A diner style mug made of white ceramic. The words "Long Lake" are printed in rounded font with two bears walking together above the text.

The house is on a smaller lake just up the road: Lake Eaton. We spent time in the canoe and on the paddle boat, enjoying the silky smooth water and listening to loon calls echoing off of Owl's Head Mountain to the southeast. We took several hikes up local mountains and even completed the Tupper Lake Hiking Triad with the older girls. It was a proud dad moment when we made it to the summit of that last peak.

A dock, cabin, and fire taken from a canoe. A woman in a green raincoat is standing on the dock talking to kids near a kayak. Two men are sitting near a small camp fire on shore.

Three children on the summit of a mountain in the Adirondack Mountains. This was not our last hike.

This house has a very special place in my heart. This trip was punctuated by the probabilty that it was our last trip to this particular house. We're not in close contact with the owners any more...this trip worked out because of a funeral gathering back in New York earlier in the year and my brother floated the idea. While I love this house and the Adirondacks in general, it helped my wife and I solidify our resolve to take our kids to new places as much as we can. We took our first family camping trip back in 2017 to Wilderness State Park and then a big adventure to Cumberland Island National Seashore in 2023. We're looking forward to our next adventures.

July 2024 Reading

More books read this month, which felt good. I'm a little bit closer to being back on track to finishing my goal of 40 this year.

Dune: Messiah - Frank Herbert

This was a difficult book. Much more of the story was internal - characters thinking about time and its effects on their own particular plot. I felt confused frequently and wondered how everything came together. The end was satisfying with the resolution making sense, though a lot was relegated to characters just talking about what happened to others who were mostly absent for the last third of the book.

Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software - Nadia Eghbal

This was a great look at open source from a philosophical and practical perspective. I appreciated the distinctions made between the product - the code - and the people behind the code. I got it thinking that it would be a book I could use in a new course I'm teaching this year, but I don't think it really applies. Maybe some snippets here and there, but this is much more focused on libraries rather than products.

The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

I picked this up not really knowing what to expect. This was an incredibly dark and horrifying look at the extreme ends of patterns which are clearly visible today.

As always, I log books as I finish on LibraryThing.

Goals Check In

We're about halfway through 2024 and I haven't blogged in a while, so here's a simple check in on the goals I set at the start of the year, particularly the ones that are still in progress:

Halfway through and I'm feeling pretty good.

June 2024 Reading

I actually read some books this month. School finished a couple of weeks ago and I was able to devote more leisure time to finishing some books. All three were repeats this month, but they're some old favorites.

Dune - Frank Herbert

I went to see Dune Part 2 in May and that prompted me to re-read the book. It's not my favorite brand of science fiction, particularly the prescience stuff that really ramps up at the end. I found it hard to understand some of the prose describing Paul's spice dreams. The ending was also much more abrupt than I remember it being. I started Dune: Messiah right after finishing and I'm curious to see if a part three of the movie series gets made and how they tie the stories togther.

Out of the Silent Planet - C.S. Lewis

This is an old favorite and either my second or third time through the book in the last ten years. This time I listened to it while we drove from Michigan to New York. The audiobook is only a few hours long, so it's very accessible. The imagery of exploring another planet is fascinating and the interactions between the human characters, the Malachandrans, and the Eldils are always thought-provoking.

On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness - Andrew Peterson

This is also my second time through this book, but this time it's as a read-aloud with my third daughter. She is generally aware of the story, but asked me to read it out loud each night before bed. This is another wonderful adventure and redemption story (over the course of four books) that challenges some of the traditional strutures of fantasy stories.

May 2024 Reading

I didn't finish any books in May. Shame on me.

I'm in the middle of a couple of books, but reading is slow, mainly because we're up later during the long days and I go to bed that much more tired in the evenings. School ends tomorrow so my reading time will expand significantly and I can make more progress toward my reading goal.

The Last Word, 23-24

In the past, I had written notes of encouragement to each student. They'd taken different forms from handwritten to printed slips to small conversations. This year, I decided to decide on a theme that would apply to my classes. This year's recommendation:

Set boundaries for yourself.

Frankly it stems from phone use, but it goes into many more aspects. There is value in hard work, and learning is hard work. There is dignity in working at things that are difficult instead of trying to take an easy road out. There is growth that can only happen when you work through a situation or problem.

I want to encourage my students to set boundaries for next year - limits they won't cross while they're in school. For some, it might be putting a phone in a backpack or locker. For others, it may be not opening an AI tool to get a quick answer. Or it's choosing not to engage in conflict.

Whatever the situation, having a boundary or a commitment to act in a particular way is an asset. Hopefully, some of them will put that to practice next year.

Fifteen Years

We celebrated our 15th anniversary this weekend. The kids got to stay with their grandparents for two nights so Lindsey and I could have a quiet weekend together. We got to take our bikes to Chicago and ride the Lakefront Trail along the shore of Lake Michigan. It starts down near 71th St south of the city and follows Lake Shore Drive for 19 miles.

Lindsey riding along the Lakefront Trail.

The ride north had a beautiful sunny sky and a nice tailwind. We made a quick pit stop at Navy Pier and then made our way to a couple miles past Lincoln Park. We ended up turning around and stopping at the Oak Street Beach to rest our legs.

Us wearing sunglasses. Buildings are behind us.

Rain ended up moving in (we thought it would wait until later in the day) and had to race from Millennium Park - where we had some fantastic food truck tacos for lunch - toward 67th street where we parked. We managed to make it to a small beach pavillion with a roof as a heavy thunderstorm moved in and absolutely dumped rain.

Waiting out the rain under a roof.

In all, we rode about 31 miles today.

After getting home, I ran back out for some take out Thai food while she made homemade ice cream for dessert. We both agreed that this might need to be an annual trip.

AI Citations

I made a post on my Mastodon account which struck a chord and kind of went big (for me, anyways). It had to do with new resources coming out on how to cite AI-created materials in an attempt to teach students how to at least own up to when they use an AI to do something.

The specific use case would be for students who go to ChatGPT (or similar) and use the prompt either directly or to paraphrase what it spits out. This is the opposite of how citations work and we're doing a disservice if we don't teach students that fundamental truth.

ChatGPT and most other chat-based LLMs are built on siphoned material from the internet and then remixed into something that sounds plausible when you ask it a question. There is no new knowledge. There is no thought into what it says.

It can't give citations because it doesn't know where the information came from. ChatGPT and other chat-AI systems do not care about origin and only see the Internet as content to consume. This has already kind of come up for me. In an attempt to try and make their writing look "more researched," students have started prompting it to include citations in responses. This often backfires because the articles listed are either closed publications we don't have access to or just plain don't exist. Most seem to be in a weird middle ground where the article could have the quote, but doesn't.

And yes, all of these things have actually happened to me.

It's also very telling that When OpenAI has been asked to cite their training data, they wouldn't even do that. And now we want our students to cite those guys.

Citations are specifically designed to point and the actual person and say, "Look - look at what they did. It helped me form my ideas and this part is from them." Citations build upon knowledge and create new knowledge as a result. You cannot cite an AI because it is not the creator of the idea. It is in fact a plaigarism machine and cannot be used as an authoratative, citable source.

Now, it was brought up that there are necessary distinctions between LLM-based generative text AI and things like machine learning and computer vision systems which can make differences. I'm particularly interested in the research going into machine learning models to help predict cancers. The main difference between this application and ChatGPT is that it is assisting researches from known data sources which can be verified via other means. The data sets are known and the models are built to perform a specific task. The human element is also critical. When doctors are using machine vision to spot early cancers, they're actively involved in the process and verify before moving forward.

The task of ChatGPT and other chat systems is to give plausible sounding answers - no requirement that the answers are accurate. Learning how to search, evaluate, and the use information has only gotten harder as students are exposed to computers earlier and earlier in their lifetimes. Many only experience a computer (I'm including phones and tablets in this category) as an entertainment system and they've never had to develop the skills to find and present information. Google is making it harder with their addition of "AI Overviews" on their search page that I will definitely be avoiding, but I have no control over students being exposed to these overviews, so I need to do more teaching.

And that's the job, isn't it? To educate myself on these new systems so I can inform and educate my students. I had some fantastic teachers who taught me the explicit value and the importance of verifying information and then pointing back to it when developing my own ideas. That hasn't changed - we need students to continue to make new knowledge. Who we credit for making the knowledge has just become that much more important.

Spring Mists

This is the time of year when the mist settles into the folds of the back pasture. The sun hasn't come up enough to burn it off and the woods and wetlands are echoing with birdsong. It's a special time of year.

Mist rolls over small hills in a pasture surrounded by old growth oak, mulberry, cottonwood, and willow trees.

First Swarm of 2024

The spring here is about two weeks ahead of schedule. My bees have been building up and I've already split a couple of hives because they were bursting by the end of April. Last night, I figured it was time to get my swarm traps out because the weather has been so good and I didn't want to miss an early swarm or two if I could help it.

I went out with my son and we were prepping a box when he said, "Look at all the bees!" I didn't think much of it because I keep spare equipment in my barn right now and there have been visitors taking leeftover pollen and honey out of old frames.

Then I heard the roar.

This is the third swarm I've actually been present for. It is exhilarating listening to thousands of bees swirl up like a tornado and all congregate in one place. They came down and into the barn through the gable end (which is yet to get siding) and started settling into the empty boxes. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture this time - it all happened so quickly that I didn't have time to go back inside and grab my phone.

A swarm is a natural result of a colony outgrowing their home. The workers will build queen cells to raise a new queen and the old will leave with 50-60% of the colony and find a new home. Bees want a nice, sheltered place to set up the new colony and my empty boxes and frames fit the bill.

I was able to find the queen and get her moved into a swarm box, which was a huge relief because it was much easier to move them into the apiary last night. I have the entrance disk set to keep the queen inside. The goal is to have her start laying eggs and workers start foraging. I'll give them a week or so before transferring the colony into their permanent home.

I was worried I had caught a swarm from one of my own colonies, but on checking, all of my boxes were still full - it didn't look like they'd lost half their populations, at least. So, I think this is a new catch, which will increase the diversity of my own apiary, and that's a good thing for the long-term health of the colonies. Over the last four seasons, I've now caught nine swarms, but this is by far the earliest. My previous earliest was May 18th in 2022, which was also a warm spring.

The Owl is Back

We have a barred owl who summers in the woods near our house. I'm not sure where he goes in the winter, but he was back this morning. His distinct call bounced around outside while I drank my morning tea.

The barred owl is back

He does not know I hear him

His call echoes by

Another marker of the seasons marching forward.

April 2024 Reading

Another month, another set of books read. I finished more in April than I did in March and I'm going to attribute that to spring break at the start of the month.

Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization - Ed Conway

This is a thoroughly researched, in depth look at the substances which make modern life possible. It's full of on-site descriptions of places the public can't go which turn the raw stuff of the earth into the products we buy. It's a little staggering how much of what we rely on day to day depends on just a few minerals coming out of the ground.

The Mountain in the Sea: A Novel - Ray Nayler

The cover art for this book is striking (seriously, go look at it). Set decades into the future, this is a dystopian(ish) view of humans with advanced AI technology trying to understand emergent consciousness in different organisms. One is a culture developing in octopi, the other is a highly advanced android.

Overall, I enjoyed the book which includes a lot of exploration of the idea of consciousness as well as a couple twists I didn't see coming.

Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel - Shelby Van Pelt

I did not mean to read two books featuring octopi in the same month, but things happen, ya know? This is very different from the books I normally read, but I enjoyed it a lot. It explores hurt - and healing - from three different stories in parallel.

Research: Can Teachers Identify AI Writing?

An article came across my timeline this afternoon titled "Do teachers spot AI? Evaluating the detectability of AI-generated texts among student essays" (Fleckenstein, J. et. al, 2024) (open access link). I'm in the middle of a large writing project with students where AI has popped up, so I took time to read through it.

The study is split into two parts, evaluating pre-service teachers' (N=89) abilities to spot AI writing as well as experienced teachers (N=200) ability. Both groups also measured their confidence. From the summary,

Preservice teachers were unable to identify the source of the texts correctly, independent of whether they were student-written or AI-generated and independent of the text quality level. Experienced teachers were unable to correctly identify low-quality texts but more successful when it came to high-quality texts. This is at least partly due to the fact that they assigned most of the low-quality texts to being student-written.

Both groups were more confident when they assume texts to be written by students. This finding indicates a certain level of uncertainty when it comes to identifying AI-generated texts that holds true for both novice and experienced teachers.

I know I've been second-guessing a lot more this year and I would consider myself versed in what AI can (and can't) do reliably. I take a little bit of issue in the implication that this disqualifies teachers from being able to identify non-student writing because this is testing the ability of teachers who have no experience with the source material.

I teach the same set of students for 180 days - at this point in the year, I've seen their writing in many different contexts. It isn't difficult to identify "augmented" writing because I know what their authentic work looks like. I would be interested in seeing studies which place writing in front of experienced teachers labelled as student vs AI but for pupils in their classes rather than a general dataset. The context matters.

That said, I'm 100% on board with some of their recommendations based on the results of the study:

Educators may need to rethink their teaching and assessment strategies in light of the availability of AI-based tools. Whenever possible, instead of focusing on reproduction, educators might emphasize skills that AI cannot easily replicate (e.g., critical thinking, literature review).

They also note that AI detection tooling is still really bad at detecting this kind of stuff, so this can't be technologied away. It's going to take education, forethought, and more teaching students about what is - and isn't - okay when it comes to using these tools. Their summary makes the point much better than I can:

In summary, the finding that teachers cannot differentiate between student-written texts and AI-generated texts underscores the need for a thoughtful and ethical integration of AI in education. It calls for a reevaluation of assessment practices, increased awareness of AI's capabilities and limitations, and a focus on student skills that AI cannot easily replace.

It's worth taking time to read.

I Kind of Miss Search

I've started to miss being able to search my blog. I've got nearly 700 posts over 12 years of writing. When it was running on Wordpress, search came for free because it's all in a database. When I moved to static, I lost that option. I think my categories and tags are pretty good, but if I want to reference something I've already written (or even check if I've already written something) I need to to Google, use the site:blog.ohheybrian.com trick, and then go through results. Not ideal.

I came across webdix a few months ago and this looks like a workable option. I like that it uses SQLite and that it's processed on the server and that I could write some custom functions against the database.

Another option is an official pelican-search plugin which uses Stork to generate a search file that's then indexed and searched with some Javascript. They also have a WASM option, so that might be fun to try out.

I may also be overthinking all of this.