Airports, Airports, Airports! Phillipines and Da Nang

We are always in airports!  This is my favorite sign in any airport as of this month:

Using context clues: Airport Customs, waiting in a big line Big line; I thought that Wang-Wang might be the Filipino word(Tagalog is what us non-Filipinos call it I've learned) for "push to the front and if anyone you cut off, act surprised as if you had no idea there were other people in line."

I was incorrect.

Apparently it means no corruption or bribery and if I understand the use of a "no-zone" it means that there is an area where the mentioned behavior is allowed.

Manila was wonderful, the people were beyond friendly and to make everything super easy, everyone spoke English.  We were in Manila to interview at ISM and see David Collett, my friend since I was 6.  I had been to the old ISM campus to record with their orchestra (yes I did travel with my orchestra to join forces with other high school nerds and make a CD, I'm quite proud of it too).  The new ISM campus is in a beautiful part of town that reminded me of the Plaza area of Kansas City.  It would be a very easy and great place to live.

As you sit down on South China Airways you can hear the soft sound of instrumental Chinese music.  After you take off, you get to hear a movie, any movie, even a few at the same time!

You may remember these from 1993 or before as the hollow rubber tubes that piped the audio from the arm-rest to your ear.  Back in the days that these cost $1.50 on Delta, David (Wrensen) and I would tilt up the arm-rest and press our ears up against it to watch the movies.  The movies were only 40-60% blocked by the seat in front if we were lucky!  That may not make sense to those of you who have only been on the fancy planes that have a tiny TV just for you.  We used to watch movies on a screen that rolled down loud enough to wake you up for the start of the movie if you were in the first two rows.  The projector had three large bulbs - red, blue, green, and if the projector was old enough, it would be washed out.  It was better than Christmas in those days to be on Singapore Airlines even for just a two hour flight.  SingAir was the first place I encountered the in-seat TV and the remote to play games.  It was heaven!

To finish what I was starting to talk about; our flight had many open seats who must have previously been occupied by people who had forgotten their hearing aids, they had turned the volume up to 11.  The cacophony of action movies was agitating as it wafted machine gun blast by angry yells over the seats to my ears.


Then a few weeks later we went to Danang!

First we had Halloween at school on the 25th.  This costume was awesome.

So, Danang, we spent a few days there at the start of our October break.  We had driven through last year on the way to Hoi An.  Last year means last school year to us, it was in 2013.  There are grand plans to make Danang an international hub of fancy resorts, for now it is still on the low-key side.  There are a few big projects going in right now, my favorite being the bridges.  

One big 'ol dragon bridge and in the background one of the suspension bridges that I love, this one had the wires spread like a triangle rather than all in line.

 We stayed a bit out of the city on the peninsula and our hotel seemed like the end of the road.  It was a lovely, quiet villa with all the funny twists that you get in Vietnam.

 We had a two story, two bedroom villa with our own little pool.  Storm season had brought the prices down a little, and tossed sand into all of the ocean front villas.  It rained a lot, but we had plenty of peace and quiet to relax.  The only other guests were a family with two kids who go to our school so we got to say "Hi" every breakfast.

 Danang has great seafood and a bunch of restaurants like this line the ocean front.  Those are buckets full of live lobster, crab, shrimp and anything with a shell.










That little guy was making a run crawl slow slide for freedom.











Biggest lobster I'd ever seen and then bigger again, but they were 1.75mil VND about 80 bucks, so I ordered everything else instead.

Don't know what these were, but click on the picture to enlarge one scary looking face!

 I had no idea what these were, so I Googled all different types of descriptions of it.  I still have no idea what these were, some kind of fish that looked like squid and was on a lot of plates.

You can also see the little sting-rays on the bottom left.

A KG of snout otter clams and four of the biggest prawns I've ever seen.  Size of a chicken leg and thigh.  I also had some really good clams, baseball sized ones.

A delicious crab as well.  I had to take home half the clams and shrimp though.












The Cham museum in Danang was very interesting.  It showed the spread of religion and stone temples from India through to Vietnam and China.  Along with all of the old stone carvings, there was a 'virtual museum' - a series of info panels that showed the similar sites to the Cham's temples such as Angkor Wat.  I may not be traveling with my mother anymore, but I just can't skip a good museum, especially if it has anything to do with a temple.
Other than that, there isn't much to do in Danang but relax.
Janet and I were a bit anxious at first.  We were of the mindset that if we were paying for a plane ticket and hotel, we should be doing stuff, things that are fantastic and making the most of every minute.  We learned to nap, stay up all night to watch Sunday Football (12:00 AM Monday, 3:15 and 7:45 AM are the game times so I miss them every week). float in the ocean, order room service and nap again.  We are getting good at relaxing.

Funny things that happened on this trip that are to be expected in Vietnam:
Mid massage, Janet got part of her hair braided by another lady who was working there, but just hanging out in the spa, bored, wanted to do a partial braid on a stranger.

Half of the times we ordered room service they wanted to bring us the menu.  After they would arrive, we would read our order off the menu and they had no problem taking our order face-to-face, but not on the phone.

In-villa kitchen.  Pots? Pans? Plate? Nope. 2 knives, 3 chopsticks, a fork, and two big serving bowls were available.  I made the mistake of bringing in fresh seafood before checking out the kitchen, so when I asked for a pot I was told "No, we will cook one time, next time you pay."  Not sure why they  bothered to have a kitchen unless people often travel with a suitcase full of kitchen supplies.

Checking in at the airport?  Don't assume that the airport code that was typed in for your ticket was also applied to your bag. You may ask:  "What, why wouldn't it auto-fill both pieces of data and check that they are the same?"   I'd reply  "Well, that may make sense, but there is no place for that at the Noi Bai airport!"
We caught the error and talked to the ground crew in Hanoi, so after our bags still went to Saigon (we had notified them of the error about 10 minutes after checking in, but it was too late apparently) theywere sent back up to Danang.  So we are at 50-50 for bags arriving in or from Vietnam.

Pajama uniforms.  I don't know what else to call it.  All of the restaurant staff were in matching white outfits.  Only odd thing was, they were half-flannel pajama style - half "t-shirt with a tux" type fancy and cotton and were pilling (those little rolled up balls of cotton that come off of old clothes).  We were in a nice hotel that certainly could have done something different.  Here though, it goes with the "silk-pajamas are an all day every day" style.

This summer's traveling

This post will be updated as we make our way back to Hanoi so it won't be finished for a while.

     Our flights this summer were based on what was the cheapest, not the most convenient.  This led to a 12 hour layover in Narita (Japan) and a 10 hour layover in LA before arriving in Redmond, Oregon.  This was awful.  The leg of the flight that was on JAL was fine, the American Airlines flight to LA was not.  The US airlines have not caught up with the minor comforts on many of the Asian based airlines.  It was a noticeable difference between the two carriers, but flying isn't fun either way.
      Flying into our lovely little airport of Redmond, OR is often quite a bit more expensive that to fly into Portland and ask one of our mothers to drive 3.5 hrs to get us.  It was cheaper this time with the new American Eagle direct flight to LA.  However, we will be flying out of Redmond for every flight to Oregon in the future, even if it costs more.
      For our 8 AM flight, we arrived at 6 AM like the good little travelers we are.  10 minutes later we were checked in without an additional charge for 2 bags being a few pounds over 50.  The agent told us not to worry about it.  (I think at 50lbs we are supposed to pay an extra $75 or something, and I've paid this on other airlines in the past, even with a 53lb bag).  We had 1 person in front of us in line at security, so that took an entire 5 minutes.  Then the TSA wanted to open our checked luggage, the agent found me, borrowed my keys for the locks and returned them a few minutes later.  This is much more pleasant than when they chop the locks off, and Hanoi has a bit of a reputation for prowling through unlocked bags.
     We are in LA now, just a quick terminal switch on a bus and we are waiting to board the flight to Narita.  We did not have to re-check anything or swap over to the Tom Bradly International terminal where we would have done TSA security checks...LA style.  Half of the headaches of traveling are getting checked in and through security.  Redmond made these a non-issue.  But I'm getting ready to be back in Asia, there are already about 50 people lined up to board our flight and there hasn't been a single boarding call.  The day of relaxed and easy travel is over, and the fun of being pushed while waiting for a closed door to open begins.

      We landed in Tokyo with the familiar "you're back in Asia" chorus of unclicking seatbelts as the wheels touch the tarmac.  American airlines lived up to my low expectations with two meals that gracefully toed the line between airline food and a half attempted snack.  I do forsee a good dinner on our JAL leg in an hour.  AAir did improve on their drink service, bringing us water or other drinks a few times rather than the 1 time last month.  We only had 2 hours in Narita but just had a great meal at normal airport prices.  I haven't been into Japan in a long time, I really would love to spend a vacation here, maybe even utilize the 3 phrases I remember from 2 years of Japanese class.

    We are looking forward to being in Hanoi, being home in a sense.  Update to come tonight in about 7 hours.

      Home at last.  We found one downside to the short layovers, we didn't have enough time to walk around and our lower legs were a bit sore. I still preferred them to the extra long breaks.

Jeff

Raspberry Pi

    So if you follow me on twitter, @jeffreywrensen or are friends with me on facebook, you've seen some pictures of a pile of computer parts and a comment with a few !!! at the end.  Those are my new Raspberry Pi computers, and this is a post of why I felt the need to add 2 more computers to a household that is currently at a 5:2 ratio of computers to people.  Actually, this is more of a guide of what I did.  Why did I need more computers?  I want to do my best to stay up with Tech especially when it is aimed at education.  I won't be teaching Scratch with a Pi, we'll still be using laptops, but the Pi's purpose is to teach programming in low-income areas.

    I got into Linux with the help of @urkomasse at the VinTech conference in January.  He also runs a great blog here.  You can set up a Pi using Windows, and there are many good guides, and many confusing ones.  I felt more comfortable setting things up since I had experience with Linux and using the Terminal (generally the same Bash commands as Mac).

   I found out about the Raspberry Pi shortly after, probably through twitter and decided that I wanted to play with them.  Last week I ordered two along with (I am linking everything to Amazon.com since it took me a while to decide what to buy and if it would work well) a DLink USB port, two mini wireless keyboard-mouse remotes, a 1.5 TB External HDD, a mini wifi adapter, 2 8GB SD cards and a few extra thumb drives.
 




    The bomb speaker and the keyboards both charge through USB so there are no batteries involved.  Is the sound wonderful?  Nope, but it is small and easy and unless I'm watching a Pink Floyd concert, it is an adequate speaker.







  The DLink was the hardest thing to verify before I bought it.  The reason I chose it was that it plugs into the wall and provides plenty of power through all of it's ports.  It powers the Pi and could power the external HDD.  Stupidly I got an HDD that also needs to be plugged into the wall.  There are a lot of USB 3.0 drives out there, but the Pi needs 2.0, and I also wanted more than a terabyte but I didn't want to spend too much.

   The mini keyboards feel a bit cheap, and it feels like I'm texting, but they have worked beautifully.  The only issue I've run into is the mini wifi adapter.  I've followed a guide that involves rewriting a .conf file to have it interact with the wifi.  It didn't work.  I haven't done a lot of trouble shooting with it though as I've had my fill of computer trouble shooting for this week.  I've simply used the Ethernet (cat5) cable plugged directly into the Pi for web access.

  So two Pies.  One I've set up as a media center, and the other is to play with and practice programming.  Setting up the SD cards (where all the information to run the OS is) was a bit confusing at first.  There are a lot of options, and the one I chose was called, appropriately: Noob.  Using the 'Start-up disk creator' I was able to make the SD card a start-up disk and install the .img from the unzipped folder on the disk.  This was all done in Ubuntu.  There are guides to set these up using Windows or Mac, but you would need to download a start-up disk creator program.  In Ubuntu it was quite easy.  I slid the SD card in, had the keyboard's usb receiver in and my RCA cable running from the Pi to an old CRT TV.  I took the micro (not mini) USB cable from my Verizon phone and plugged the USB A end into the Dlink and....

   Nothing.
I assumed it was the SD card, so I re-formatted it and tried again.

   Nothing.
I took off the RCA cable and tried running it through the HDMI cable into my mom's new TV. (I'll update about that at the end of this post).

   It worked!
   In Raspbian, the default video out is over the HDMI.  The instructions are to hit 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 to switch the output so that you can use the RCA cable.
Be sure to have the Ethernet cable plugged in, Raspbian (the OS) will want to run some updates.  A few minutes later I had Midori (the web browser) running perfectly.  I then shutdown the computer - using the terminal and had to quickly unplug it as well.  You are supposed to just unplug the Pi, but I still like to run the shutdown command.  The Pi will restart without the -r command since it is supposed to be turned on and off by being plugged in or unplugged.  I had done my reading and found that "diskutil list" didn't work on my laptop, and was ready to use hd, and start mounting the drive from the command line.  Instead, when Raspbian started up, the external drive was accessible through the GUI!  Watching videos however, was not going to happen.

 I tested this with the External HDD, but will leave a USB stick in it to save any work.

   Here are some shots of the screen while it is updating and fully installing Raspbian.

 

  In the command line you can run omxplayer (file name) after using cd to get into the folder that contains the video file.  This didn't work, and I think that I was typing in the file names wrong, it was 2:30 AM and I wasn't about to keep trying.  I also didn't want to bother doing this to watch videos.  VLC is my preferred player, but the Pi is not strong enough to run VLC.  This wasn't the purpose of this Pi anyways.
    With Raspbian installed, Scratch and a program to teach Python are on the desktop.  I'm half way through Learn Python The Hard Way  and will be playing with the Raspian program in the future.  So at this point I had one Pi running without wifi, but everything else was easier than expected.


   Putting together a media center was my next project.  I found that XBMC was the most popular one, but I was hesitant.  I wasn't interested in any of the software that gets live TV or displaying any metadata of the movies or TV shows that I was watching.  I just wanted to watch the videos that were on my external HDD.  I started at this page and tried to install Xbian as I liked the information that I read about it.  I downloaded the .7zip file, extracted the .img and ran Ubuntu's Start-up disk creator... and it failed, so I tried the .gz - instant failure as well.

   At this point I decided to try Raspbmc.  Downloaded the .7zip, got the .imp and wrote it to the SD card, perfect!  I would recommend the Raspbmc flavor of XBMC.  First though, make sure your Pi is plugged into your modem/router I was a few seconds late on this and the start-up dialogue tipped me off to my error as it repeatedly tried to find an internet connection.  As soon as I plugged it in, it started to install and update and do everything else it needed to automatically.  15 minutes later I was looking at a cool grey and red screen with a list of options - video, music and so on across the middle of the screen.  What i did not want to do was mount the hard drive and be stuck organizing my folders and re-naming files for XBMC to read them and download metadata and blah blah blah.  I clicked on the Video tab and had access to every folder and file on the HDD in a very nice GUI.  I simply clicked on the video file that I wanted to play - and it played!  Raspbmc also had easy to access settings menus to choose which video/audio output you wanted and had a few things that could be adjusted.

   I had no sound, and found that the default was HDMI sound rather than the 3.5mm jack (head phone or 1/8 inch jack)  I had this running into the audio RCAs in the back of the TV.  No audio could be heard.  I remembered my previous headache with the HDMI vs RCA of the first Pi and figured that it was probably the TV and not the Pi.  I plugged in my tiny bomb speaker and got great audio so I was right to blame the TV which is going to be recycled in a day or two anyways. So I'm finished!

   I will pursue wifi on the 1st Pi that is just for programming and fun.  For the media center one, I will use my laptop to manage torrents (I'm not a criminal mastermind, I'm mostly downloading shows that air for free in the US, but don't air in Hanoi like Modern Family and The Daily Show - which streams for free, but is really slow in Hanoi).  I'll just have to transfer these to the external HDD before I watch them using Raspbmc.  Is this the fastest way?  No, but I don't want to install a torrent client on the Pi or use the other programs that can run with Raspbmc like putty or the other software that is used to procure new video.  It runs quickly, is easy to navigate my HDD without: "XBMC will scan all of your media and create a personalized library complete with boxcovers, descriptions, and fanart. There are playlist and slideshow functions, a weather forecast feature and many audio visualizations. Once installed, your computer will become a fully functional multimedia jukebox." So I'm a happy camper.  Unlike Raspbian, XBMC requires that you shut down from within the GUI.  This is to keep all of the libraries in order.  I've not set these up, but I still use the shutdown button and pull the power cord as soon as the screen goes black.  Otherwise it reboots immediately.

   Here is a short video of Raspbmc starting up and playing Citizen Kane.  Two things that I learned that I cannot do while recording with a mini iPad; plug in a microUSB cable properly and remember to turn the keyboard on.  Either way, the video shows how fast it starts up and that you need not set up anything within XBMC, it is just a solid way to watch videos.

     I was interested in building an owncloud server, but didn't want to buy a third Pi and another HDD right now.  I'm also very happy with Dropbox.  I'm sure I'll find a project for the 1st Pi aside from web browsing, Scratch and Python.



    I also helped my mom chose an HDTV - they have wifi on all of them now, but I'm not interested in the junk that streams.  They also do not have VGA inputs anymore - at least not on the models I looked at.  So with a DVI-HDMI converter, I connected my old Dell that I used for video editing to the TV.  The computer is still quite speedy and has plenty of storage space.  It was however set to Raid0.  Installing Lubuntu, Xubuntu and Kubuntu failed.  I finally went back to good 'ol Ubuntu 12.04... and the grub would not install.  After a few tries, I used the start up ctrl-i interface to set both of the hard drives so no longer be Raid drives.  15 minutes later Ubuntu was running and the wifi was letting us stream Hulu.  I did run into an audio issue which was purely stupid.  I played with the system settings trying to get audio over the HDMI before I realized that the computer doesn't actually have HDMI and the DVI output wasn't pushing sound.  A nice little set of speakers later and it was perfect and everything was set up in ktorrent to be easy for my mom and she learned how to torrent.
    I also set up her old virus ridden XP computer in Ubuntu which she will use for streaming shows as well.  I love that Ubuntu can take an old, slow computer that is headed to the trash and revive it into a video center!

Here is Janet running everything from a wireless keyboard and watching Beauty and the Geek.

--Jeff

What I'm Reading

Here are some of the books that I have read recently for my professional reading and one book that I'm personally reading.  My philosophy is to try to alternate professional/personal reading choices as a way to stay balanced.  Otherwise, my reading list tends to pile up and then I spend an entire weekend downloading books onto the Ipad. I may have, cough, cough, done just that this past weekend.

Larry Ferlazzo's-English Language Learners: Teaching Strategies that Work- this book was fairly typical as far as teaching tips for English language learners go.  Nothing new to me but it was a good reminder for me on how to refine my teaching practice even more.  The tips centered around high school students and some of the tips could be used in the elementary setting.  I have already used one of his tips and that was to add more choice in the classroom.  It has been working pretty well.  There have been benefits for me, as well as for the children.

I have joined/started another book club here.  Previously, I had started one with two other teachers from our school.  There was a lack of enthusiasm for the books that were chosen (on my part because we were limited to books other teachers had left behind in Vietnam and no one had a Kindle) and we had conflicting  schedules.  Needless to say, the club only lasted three months.  The new book club has parents, colleagues, and people I haven't met yet in it.  This is our May selection-The Light Between Oceans: A Novel.  I have only read the prologue and I am very intrigued.

Scratch

    Computer programming-something we all benefit from, but don't understand.  I'm slowly learning Python and have my eyes set on Google Scripts in the future.  Now how do I introduce this kids so that they have a better understanding of the computers that are all around them? Scratch.
    This is old news to most people who are on the tech side of a school, but I wanted to share my approach this year in teaching Scratch.  I have only had the opportunity to teach Scratch as an after-school activity.  I will be introducing it to my 5th grade class during our teacher-run ICT time.  This will be interesting as 1/3rd of the class is in my after-school activity and will be far ahead of everyone else.  I've given myself a differentiation challenge.
    Lesson 1: I introduced the program.  A few kids had seen it the year before but had no real grasp of anything beyond simple animation that relied solely on costume changes.  So, we played games and kids explored the interface.
    Lessons 2-4: I introduced a few of the basic commands at the start of each lesson and then let the kids experiment. They were running into a lot of problems and not knowing where to look for solutions.  On top of this, everyone was working on their own project.
    Lesson 5: I changed direction and we worked as a group.  First, I wrote this tag game. I left a few simple bugs in it, ones that dealt with the order of commands or a few small missing blocks.  I gave the class 3 things to fix and sent them off to work together.  With some guidance, all the bugs were solved and this is the improved version that two of the girls came up with.
  Here are the bugs I left in a very basic tag game:
1. The sprites could move during the introduction countdown.
2. If the second sprite did not move, it could not be tagged.
3. When the game was over, it did not reset automatically.

   As you can see, these were fixed. The students gained a better understanding of both the details that are needed for a good project and how to read through their code and find issues.

This post by @jeffreywrensen

The Perils of Walking

    It was a calm spring night.  We went for a walk.  We walked.  All of a sudden there was a rope across the sidewalk and Janet bit the dust.  Why was the rope up?  We are full of theories, but no answers.  Janet got this:

You are right, it looks like her first of many Teardrop tattoos.  If you know Janet, she has a penchant for killing. (Kidding)  If you know Janet, you know that this is no surprise (the falling and subsequent bleeding).  Watch your step!

Hoi An

    The last place we went over Tet was Hoi An.  It is famous for its tailors and its lantern festival.  We arrived at night and the river side streets were packed with people.  Once we finally made it to our hotel and checked in we were back out to the streets.  It was bright and fun as we made our way over a fancy bridge and into the main part of the city.  While browsing at clothes Janet found a jacket she liked and 20 minutes later we had a price agreed upon and she was measured, we agreed to come back the next night and pick it up and we were back off down the street.  All at 9:30 at night.

The footbridge at night.

Jon trying on a jacket and if you're thinking what I'm thinking... yes it goes with the shoes.

The lanterns were every where and different as we walked along.

     It is the year of the snake and that was the theme of most of the lanterns.  There were some non-snake designs, but I've mostly left those pictures out.

 Doesn't seem like an animal that many people would be scared of from this little guy's expression.

 










A few of the other designs.

The watermelons were my favorite.












    There was one with sphere that housed a group of figures that rotated.  I had some fun with my endless shutter feature (and left off 30 other pictures).

There was another river that wrapped around the back of our hotel.  The hotel had a boat that brought us around into the downtown area of Hoi An.

 Hotel jetty.

 I really love the eyes on the boats.

There were many, many of these boats transporting motorbikes everywhere.












    Hoi An has a lot of nice old merchant's houses for tourists to stroll into for a small fee.  What surprised me was that these weren't just for tourists.  The families still lived in the house.  They weren't importing / exporting goods, which was the history of all the houses, but they still needed a place to live.  In both of the houses there was a small room with a curtain over the door and some people watching TV inside.

 These wise men were everywhere.

The houses had narrow stairs so moving a bed up stairs would be difficult.  These are trap doors that have a nice looking pulley hanging from the ceiling.  Pop 'em open and haul up that 54" HD TV!  I want one of these when I eventually have a 2 story house.

Jon needed a suitcase that was a little bigger to bring some clothes home.  He ended up with this neon gem, but it was still pretty early in the day.  We carted an empty bag around Hoi An for a few hours looking like some crazy people.

This is the famous Japanese bridge, it had side rooms on the far side with little alters in them. There were some nice carvings on the inside as well.

 There are a number of pagodas around town as well.

 These spiral incense burners were awesome and everywhere.

 I never figured out the pattern, but this guy was moving lit incense around the whole time.

There were flower designs on all the beds both nights.

This place was delicious and a lot of the food was cooked right behind us.

 I still prefer my tailor in Hanoi, but this one was pretty good as well.
I like that I can now use phrases like that, it makes me feel very fancy.

   Hoi An was a great place to stay for a few days.