I homeschooled my daughters for a few years. During the second or third year of homeschooling, my mother's Alzhiemer's got to the point where she spent her evenings at the apartment where I lived with my wife and daughters.
Eventually my mother started spending the night on our couch while her five-bedroom house sat empty. Our living room became her bedroom. At the time I was also writing a novel called Sasha and Samantha Save the World. When I finished the novel I realized that I needed to automate some of the homeschool processes.
I created a website called friendoflearning.com where I could sign in and set up my daughters' assignments. When each of my daughters logged in, she could click on an assignment for a worksheet and the worksheet would be generated and show up on her screen. After she did the worksheet and submitted it, it would be scored and show her what was wrong. I would also get an email at work showing the score so that I could see what and how they were doing. The database also saved each worksheet, but I never got around to writing the code for viewing saved worksheets or showing scoring trends.
This saved us a lot of time in the evening when we sat down together for the homeschooling.
Eventually we moved to my mother's house, and she went to a nursing home for a while. But the cost of her care exceeded her income at one nursing home, so my sister and I sent her to another one and the same thing happened. I had lost my job and had trouble finding a new one, so my mother came back to live with my wife and kids and myself in my mother's house, and taking care of her became my full-time job. That was in October of 2015. Taking care of my mother is still my full-time job today (August of 2021).
My daughters and I used the homeschooling website for a while longer, but the homeschooling wound down and I didn't want to keep paying the $35 per month to Amazon Web Services, so I closed it down.
I've thought about bringing it back, but one wrinkle was that the version of PHP I wrote it in was 5.x, but when I set up another server online the current version was 7.x. In between those two versions they changed some rules about initializing variables.
The web program that I had written had over 20,000 lines in a total of over 170 files. There were a lot of variables that had to be initialized according to the new rules.
I set up a server on my laptop to get the code fixed, but I only got through the simpler math worksheets and the text worksheets. I started on map worksheets when I ran out of gas.
The interface wasn't pretty, as you can see from the screenshots below. I was thinking about making it look more like my main website, markwooding.com, but I stalled before I got that far.
After I posted a list of ebooks on sale a few weeks ago, someone suggested a book club. Today I realized that after getting the homeschool website back online, I could add a book club interface that would be exactly what I want. The locals.com interface is suboptimal, but if I write it myself and something isn't right, I can change it.
So the task I want to finish tomorrow is to have the map worksheets functional on the version of the web app running on my laptop. I'll assign myself a new piece to finish each day, and I'll work toward getting the website back online, then adding a book discussion functionality, which could also be useful for people homeschooling their kids.
If anyone is interested, the three websites I have online now are:
http://markwooding.com
http://seekwisdompracticekindness.org
http://magicalworldofpoetry.com/
Dr. Drew interviewed Scott Adams recently, and Scott Adams mentioned the absurdity that Republicans went to overthrow the government on Jan 6, but they neglected to bring their guns. On the first or second anniversary of the event, that alleged oversight made the narrative appear absurd to me, so I made a "video" that was supposed to be audio from January 6, captured on a video camera from which the lens cap had not been removed. I'm posting it again just because.
While I was waiting on hold to talk with a human at the IRS, I decided to put some food out for the dogs. I set the full bag of dog food on a chair, and walked away to get the bowls. When I turned around I saw the bag slowly tipping over, spilling much of its contents onto the floor. Fortunately I had help cleaning it up.
The main task for today is to begin revising McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader. It may take a couple of weeks, possibly more. I still have to work at Publix, and next week I start a new job in the memory care unit of a rehab/nursing home facility, and I'll also be working at Publix at least one night.
After that I'll take a look at the double-slit experiment, and see if there is an interpretation that is consistent with my theory of wave physics.
Also, I came across the attached meme, which I had created two or three years (or so) ago. I thought I'd include it because I still like it.
I recently proposed a theory of matter and energy called Wave Physics. In this theory, the only things in the universe are energy and the universal membrane, which is the medium through which all energy is transfered and stored.
Tonight I realized that according to this theory, everyone and everything in the universe are connected to each other at all times. Things that would be impossible according to the standard model of particle physics, are very possible in the universe of wave physics. Psychic transmissions and the power of prayer are physically possible and make sense if the universe works in any way like the theory I proposed.
If you've ever heard the phone ring and felt sure who it was before answering it, and were proven correct, this makes sense in wave physics, but not with particle physics. If you've ever looked intently at someone, and had that person quickly turn and look directly at you (I have), that phenomenon makes sense if all of us are parts of the same vast, ...
I was only scheduled to work three days this week, so I decided to work on a theory I'd been playing around with for fun over the last few years. I'd never been a big fan of the standard model of particle physics, so a few years ago, just for fun, I thought about exploring some alternate ideas, with zero training and zero experiments.
This week I wrapped up a few loose ends, and posted it to a community I created called Wave Physics. Originally I had called it Alternative Physics, but I changed my mind, so the link still has alternativephysics in it, but the community name is Wave Physics. I'd love for people to pay $5.00 a month to tell me how wrong I am.
https://alternativephysics.locals.com/
I also posted it on my personal website:
