Someone - I think aurelia? - mentioned this thing from Thinkgeek [link] and now my kids are running around the house pretending to be video game heroes and cowboys.

Hee. My nephew's favorite was the 8-bit hero, which on a 6'-4" kid is kinda hilarious.

Six more inches by nightfall, and then the cold sets in. High of minus 12 tomorrow. Oy.

I have to work tomorrow and I'm having trouble deciding if I should drive or slog to the train. I'm pretty sure they stopped salting the roads sometime yesterday, which I understand, but it does make for some serious slop. My concern with going to the train is that I can only put on so many layers of socks and with the Raynaud's my toes get cold quickly. I can wrap up enough to keep the rest of me warm enough.

Holiday decor is coming down. I'm reshuffling the boxes and setting aside a few things to donate. So far I've gone from five cardboard boxes to one box and two plastic tubs. I still have another box and a half to deal with. Might pick up another tub for all the ornaments.

We're going out to Tim's dad's house in a little bit to take down his Christmas decorations (or as much of them as we can get down before it starts snowing here). I feel like the holiday season will NEVER end.

Birmingham schools cancelled school for Monday. On Friday night. They're supposed to have the temp drop 40° overnight tonight, rain turning to snow and not get above freezing again until Weds.

Good thing my brother has a nice big and still empty basement that the kids can actually do laps on their bikes in. Given the roads getting out of their neighborhood, they won't be driving anywhere.

It's pretty still right now. D is shoveling, so we can get to the store. That's where the soup fixings live right now.

It's generally no more than two or three minutes of video before it asks a question for you to answer, and then goes over the answer.

That's something I liked about the Dino 101 course, that they had all the lecture material broken up into easy to manage chunks. The China course is good here too, with a lot of segments only 2-3 minutes long, though I'd like more assessment questions (usually there's just one or two multiple choice deals). And it uses Harvard's own collection of artefacts and such like. The Intro to Computer Science course, conversely, looks like it's just recordings of actual lectures delivered at Harvard to a room full of students. (Good lectures, with lots of use of problems and multimedia, but still 50 minutes at a time.)

I did a course though Coursera on how to teach online, and I was really not happy with it -- it was one of the worst examples of Death by Powerpoint that I've ever seen.

I remember you mentioning that at the time, which is breathtaking in its way, that they should both tell and show that they don't really get their own topic. I feel fortunate so far, the Dino and China courses have been high quality. I've been particularly impressed with the insights in the China course. These professors know their stuff.

That Chinese history course sounds super interesting, maybe I can get myself together enough to take it when it starts again...

If you're interested, I'd recommend jumping in now. Module 2 has just started. You'll have access to all of Module 1 as well whenever you want to go back over it. The entire course of nine modules takes something like 15 months, so it might take a while for the whole thing to start up again.

I can't stop watching the bulldog puppycam.

The history of architecture course was filmed lectures, but fascinating. There's not a lot of hands-on you can do with buildings.

I really hope someone is gathering up the homeless today. I'd also really like the snow to stop now so I can clean my car off before the temps bottom out. The climate change deniers are having quite the party commenting on every news story on this "polar vortex". IOW, don't read the comments.

I'm thinking of re-arranging my bedroom today. I wonder if that (like my recent need to constantly be eating) is some sort of instinct to help stay warm.

In other accomplishments of today, I changed the lightbulb in my bedroom and put up hooks for curtain tie-backs. Soon, I will make biscuits for dinner!