Author: admin

Maths Homework during Lockdown

I’d like to share with you a funny incident this morning with Joni.Joni had this question in his homework, translated below

In a pen there were initially 192 birds, chickens and ducks. For every 10 chickens there were 6 ducks. 92 birds were then removed and now for every 6 chickens there are 4 ducks. How many chickens and how many ducks were removed? So, I set out to help him solve it.

I have to admit I haven’t done ratios since school so it taxed me a bit but then I got there. I decided to work it through with Joni and we arrived at the answers. However, I lost him along the way. The following conversation then took place:

Joni: It doesn’t matter that I don’t understand it I have the answers so I’ll just submit them.

Me: Yes it does because the whole purpose is that you learn maths not just provide the answers.

(conversation continued for a few minutes)

Me: Actually Joni, you cannot simply go ahead and submit the answers. It’s not possible

Joni: Why not?

Me: Because in the time we’ve been discussing it you’ve forgotten the answers.

Joni: (pauses) Oh yeah!

Martin.

When there’s no school and no church

There’s been a country-wide clampdown on all social activity including churches and schools. We are all at home today!

Well, so here we are with some time on our hands. It’s a chance to let our brains breathe a bit and choose what we want to do. The other day Joni asked how the internet worked so I cooked up the most simple html file to demonstrate the very basic way communication takes place over the web.

<!doctype html>

<html>
  <head>
    <title>Jonathan Oscar Frost’s web site</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <p>This is a website about Jonathan Oscar Frost.</p>
    <p>Bye!</p>
    <img src=”joni-horse.jpg” width=”20%”>
  </body>
</html>

If you want to see it click here . By the way, it will come up in a new tab so just click back on the current tab to see the rest of this post.

Joni was decidedly unimpressed by this and so decided to share with me what he has been doing at school. Admittedly, the staff have simply shown the web site to the children and have left them to experiment. This is what Joni came up with. Click on the green flag to activate.

I fear for the future of programming.

The Tribe go to Salta

Or more accurately, La Caldera which is a sweet little Gaucho village about 20 kms north out of Salta city. The Frost household spent six days on holiday, before being joined for our annual conference by the rest of the Latin Link Southern Cone team, plus a couple of hangers on from Peru (it was really lovely to see you guys). It has taken a couple of days to get some photos up here, but we (the royal we, i.e. Martin) have figured it out now. It was a superb time, both on holiday and at the conference. Below is a gallery capturing just a few moments; walking, fishing, birdwatching, lighting fires, sharing a beer, laughing with friends, enjoying the amazing surroundings of the Salta hills, and, probably the highlight for us Frosts, the best afternoon’s horseriding ever. The first task was to go and collect the horses from the middle of the scrub where they live and graze freely, and then we spent three hours trekking up hill, down dale, through a rushing river, and around the most tranquil lake. Truly unforgettable.

This is gallery view, you can see the individual photos in big by clicking on them and following the arrows to go forward and back.