Fly

June 23, 2012 by Adam in Sam

Sam put together a video of the progress of his game.  It's looking increasingly like something you can actually play.

click here

Choir

May 24, 2012 by Adam in Sam

Sam's in his second year of choir at Roosevelt.  He's hoping to continue on next year, and I find he's become more musical than I am.  He knows quite a range of tunes and it always humming something around the house.

We scrounged a black outfit for him, getting him into my too-tight black shoes and a pair of my black pants that fit.  He did pretty well, though he was quite eager to get the shoes off by the end of the show.

Earthquakes

May 15, 2012 by Adam in Sam

Sam had a science thing last night.

That's about all I knew about it, but I took him there after dinner and it turns out he was going to do a presentation about earthquakes along with the rest of the class.  They set up displays and models in the gym and various interviewers would come by and grill him about what he knew.  Theoretically he was doing it with two other people, but they didn't show up and so he was forced to do it all himself.

He did great.  I evesdropped on his explanations, which were accurate and interesting.  His teacher came by and asked how he was doing all on his own.  Later he admitted to me that the presentation was kind of fun.  I think he enjoyed being so capable.

Fly

April 23, 2012 by Adam in Sam

Sam's been working on a Java based game for the last few weeks.  I've been providing technical support, but all the art, typing, game ideas, and some programming is all his.  He's incredibly excited about how things are turning out.  As his programming teacher, he's coming along quite nicely.  I no longer have to detail out all the curly braces and variable cases.  He's to the point where he'll say "I want the animation frame to go back to the first when you're not pushing buttons."  He'll add in all the logic and I'll supply the one line to make it happen.

I'm quite proud of the boy.

The Cheese

February 24, 2012 by Adam in Sam

Sam's done a pretty good job catching up with all of his school work.  He often seems to get a little behind due to illness, and at midterms there are surprises that mean everyone has to scramble to catch up.  Unfortunately Sam can get somewhat despondent along the way.

Fortunately we're all caught up, and working away at the end of the term projects.  For his biology class he's studying decomposition based on my recommendation.  We've made a poster of cheese, each treated differently, and are taking nightly pictures of their decomposition.  The one in water is turning to mush, the salted one is strangely pulling water out of the cheese, the control cheese looks slightly dry, and the one in dirt is sprouting mold all over the place.

Sam also hates writing about personal things, and he unfortunately has an assignment where he's required to do so.  The examples in class involved things like overcoming anorexia, dyslexia, or the death of a family member.  Sam was complaining that nothing terrible happens to him.  I suggested making up a story about a dyslexic sister who died of anorexia, but he wasn't buying it.