In this game concept, children will play individually wearing headphones and speaking into a high-quality microphone. We will feed microphone signal into the headphones along with the computer audio so they can hear themselves. Each child will complete multiple rounds depending on their interest and skill. In each round, the child will hear a simple musical phrase one or more times. Then they will imitate what they heard by speaking or singing the music along with the computer. They might say “la la” or “do re mi” for piano notes, or “ratatat boom” for drums; whatever they use will be fine.

We will record the sounds they make and assign points by the accuracy of their timing and possibly their pitch. After several rounds, we'll automatically combine their recordings into a performance in which they hear themselves sing multiple parts. I think they'll love this and will want to record yet more phrases. The most interested and talented children might be invited to create their own riffs to overlay the multiple parts.

Later in the day, perhaps at lunch time, we could play the full virtual choir singing an entire piece. If we really go crazy we could include an animated display of the children singing their parts. I think it might be particularly effective to start with one small child doing a simple melody and gradually adding more children and parts.

I fantasize that I can handle the recording, time alignment, pitch matching, and multitrack playback but I really need help with the music.

We need a polyphonic round with many simple phrases that combine into a performance that is greater than the sum of its parts. Ideally the phrases could go together in multiple ways. More than Row Row Row but not too hard. Any ideas?

Note this isn't yet ready for production; it will move to the tarheelreader.org after the testing is done. I can't guarrantee that anything you create with this testing version will make it into the final version.

New features include:

• Much more capable search. Now you can search for Reviewed books about Animals that are suited for Everybody. The search settings are sticky so they will persist through your session.
• Switch access to all books; not just the Favorites page. Try using right and left arrow (or any of the access keys) on the Find page.
• Support for tablets and phones such as the iPad and iPhone with a streamlined touch-enabled interface.
• Download books in ePub format for direct import into iBooks and other eReaders.
• Now you can create and share Collections of books.
• Create books from your own photos at Flickr. Enter the email address you use at Flickr in the editor's image search box to show your own pictures. This will allow you to snap pictures with your smart phone using the Flickr app and immediately use them in a book.
• Support for many more languages in the user interface. Help us translate the interface into your language.

Maze Day is for visually impaired and blind students in grades K-12, their parents and teachers. Your students will enjoy fun and educational computer applications developed especially for them. UNC students will learn how well their accessible applications work with real users. And everyone will have a good time!

We plan to have a wide variety of accessible fun, educational, and exercise activities. We will be especially featuring a new collection of games hosted on our web site and accessible from any computer connected to the internet.

Lunch will be provided. Free!

To register, fill out the form below or email Missy Wood wood@cs.unc.edu or Diane Brauner dianebrauner@embarqmail.com. Also, please have parents fill out the photo consent form (English or Spanish). We will only include your children in photographs of the event with your permission.

We have limited funding for travel grants for groups who could not otherwise attend. Email Missy Wood wood@cs.unc.edu for more information.

After running the dehumidifier from the previous post for about 15 months I decided it was time to come up with a more sustainable solution. The dehumidifier did the job, but I could hear it running (a lot) and I knew that it wasn't going to last forever.

The Advanced Energy Report showed that carefully sealing the crawl space and venting about 50 CFM of conditioned air into it would deal with the humidity problems once and for all. My friend Herman's new house was built that way, and Brian had his converted with good results. After toying with the idea of doing the work myself, I realized that it was much too much for me and decided to find professionals for the job.

I contracted with Brad Dehring of Crawlspace Doctor to do the work after getting three proposals. I'm very pleased with their work. Here is a brief description of the job.

1. They removed the old damp, moldy insulation from the floor joists.
2. They cleaned mold from the wood and pipes and got up all the bits of rock and junk from the floor.
3. They sealed every hole, gap, and crack in the house floor, sill plate and foundation walls.
4. They had a plumber come in to temporarily remove the water heater so they could put plastic and insulation below and behind it.
5. They covered the concrete block walls with 10 mil plastic with a 3 inch gap for termite inspection; every seam is taped.
6. They covered the plastic on the walls with 2-inch foam insulation with foil on the surface. They neatly cut around every pipe and wire that passes through the walls.
7. They taped all the edges, joints, and fastener heads with aluminum tape.
8. They covered the floor with 10 mil plastic taping it to the plastic from the walls.
9. They installed a special purpose 50 CFM crawl space vent on the HVAC plenum near the center of the crawl space; it lets air flow out when the system is running but not back in.
10. They replaced the access door with an insulated and weather stripped wooden door.
11. They cleaned up completely; the space is cleaner than it ever has been.
12. They fixed several small unrelated problems.

I was wise to get professionals to do the job. They had two or three young guys who knew what they were doing here for six days. Crawling around under there for one day would have killed me!

It's been two weeks since they completed the job and the dew point under the house is staying between 57 and 59 degrees. This is the same, within my measurement accuracy, as the dew point inside the house; perhaps they are coupled. Or maybe it will drop lower as the wood and concrete blocks gradually dry out. In any case, it is already low enough to prevent condensation and mold.

I hope this is the last installment in my crawl space humidity series but I will update this post if I see significant changes.

I'm pretty sure I saw someone doing something that enabled them to force multiple browsers to refresh but when I went looking I couldn't find it. So, I decided it would be fun to try to write my own.

I inserted a script tag into the footer of my pages to load this javascript from remoteCommand.js.

And I added the following php code to my theme directory.

Now I keep a file command.js in the directory and update it as necessary. My Makefile for testing copies the theme files over to the server using rsync and then copies the command.js to /usr/tmp/command.js on the server. The php script notices the change and responds to requests from any browsers I have open on the testing site. They eval the javascript and force a reload or whatever else I needed to have happen.

I haven't seriously tested with it yet but I think this will allow me to have the iPad and iPod propped up on my desk (with autolock disabled), IE* running in a VM, and Firefox running on my desktop all reload each time I hit F7 to build in Sublime Text 2.

This approach is not scalable using Apache and php. Each connected browser is tying up a thread running that loop. Tornado would be a scalable solution but this was easy to hack out quickly and will meet my needs.

One question that immediately came to mind was could I assume users would have Javascript enabled? A bit of searching on the web gave the estimate that 2% of US users have Javascript disabled but some people claim that number may be inflated by bots and such. If only I could sample our users I would have the number I really wanted.

I began to think about instrumenting the site to collect some statistics when I looked at the php code for rendering book pages. Incredibly, I had already encoded the information I needed into image URLs! I have no recollection of doing it but years ago when I wrote the code I added the query parameter ?noscript=1 to the images when they are loaded by a browser with Javascript turned off. I salute past me for the amazing foresight!

Some simple analysis of my Apache log files using zcat, grep, awk, sort, uniq, and wc in pipelines tells me that over the 9-week period from 18 September 2011 to 20 November 2011, 337 unique IP addresses read 67,532 book pages with Javascript disabled. During that period a total of 1,842,915 book pages were read so about 3.7% of the total had Javascript disabled. My other stats indicate about 27,000 books were read per week so they must have averaged about 7.6 pages per book.

To confirm this analysis I used Info Sniper to lookup a small sample of the IP addresses; they look like schools and homes, not bots. I also examined the user agents; again they looked reasonable for browsers includeing various versions of IE, Safari, and Firefox.

The bottom line is we've got to continue supporting readers with Javascript disabled. During a typical week almost 1000 books are read without Javascript. I don't want to shut out those children.

1. When importing virtual machines into VirtualBox they change the MAC address of the simulated Ethernet connection. In my case this resulted in a non-working network. The simple fix (in the Ubuntu Feisty guest) is to edit the /etc/iftab to replace the MAC address with the correct one.
2. Using the remote display requires installing the extension pack.
3. Tunnel the remote display with ssh -L3389:localhost:3389 host

I'm working by weight using a cheap digital kitchen scale. When I use ounces (oz) below, I mean weight. One fluid ounce of water weighs one ounce but this is not true for other substances. You'll also need an accurate thermometer; I use a Thermopen.

I fortify the milk with additional milk solids by adding Nido Instant Whole Milk. You can usually find Nido in the "Hispanic" section of grocery stores. Don't buy the Infant formula, you want the normal dry milk. They just changed the name to Fortificada. Other people use various brands of dry milk; anything should work as long as it tastes/smells good. Nido is great.

For vanilla flavored yogurt I use:

• 68.9 oz (1/2 fluid gallon) of milk. I use 1% Mapleview milk but any should work.
• 4.5 oz of Nido.
• 5.5 oz of sugar.
• 1 oz of vanilla extract.

I've made lemon by substituting lemon extract for the vanilla.

If you want to make more or less, simply scale the amounts above.

I mix the milk, Nido, and sugar with a stick blender in a 2 quart glass measuring cup. I heat the mixture uncovered in my microwave at full power for intervals of 5, 5, and 4 minutes; stirring after each. Of course, the time depends on your microwave power. Heating the mixture to 180F allows the milk proteins to relax and it kills any microorganisms that might compete with the yogurt culture.

Next I cool the mixture to 115F. Sometimes I just let it slowly cool. Other times I rush things using a bath of ice water in a larger bowl. I don't see any difference in the results.

Next I add the vanilla and yogurt culture (what the technical articles call the innoculum). I bought my initial batch from New England Cheesemaking. I have used both their Y5 "Sweet" culture and the Y1 Bulgarian. I prefer the Y1 for its tarter flavor.

Most articles on the web suggest using store bought yogurt as the starter; that didn't work well for me. I think a good starter is worth the few dollars you pay for it. I only needed one packet because I froze 1/2 ounce portions of the first batch in an ice tray and then transferred them to containers to keep in the freezer. When I'm ready to make yogurt I get out a cube and mix it with a small portion of the cooled milk mixture and add that back to remainder. I recently got near the end of the first batch of 12 cubes so I froze 12 more.

With the starter mixed in I measure 6.5 ounce portions into 8 ounce Ziplock brand plastic containers. I lid them and put them into a 105 degree oven. If your oven does not support settings this low, you'll find a wide variety of alternatives on the web for keeping the yogurt warm.

I leave the yogurt to ferment for 6 to 8 hours. Do not disturb them during this time; I ruined a batch by checking on them too much. When it is ready the yogurt should be firmly set. You can gently test a container by tilting it slightly. The longer you let it ferment the tarter the yogurt will become.

After it is set I move the containers to the refrigerator. The next morning they are ready to eat. They usually have about 1/2 teaspoon of whey on top.

If you stir this yogurt it will become much thinner because you are breaking the matrix that holds it together. Commercial yogurt usually has a stabilizer added to make it hold up to stirring.

This recipe makes 12 servings and we eat them all in a week. I estimate each serving is about 160 calories.

Maze Day is for visually impaired and blind students in grades K-12, their parents and teachers. Your students will enjoy fun and educational computer applications developed especially for them. UNC students will learn how well their accessible applications work with real users. And everyone will have a good time!

We plan to have a wide variety of accessible fun, educational, and exercise activities. We will be especially featuring a new collection of games hosted on our web site and accessible from any computer connected to the internet.

Lunch will be provided. Free!

Maze Day Registration is closed.

To register, fill out the form below or email Diane Brauner dianebrauner@embarqmail.com or Missy Wood wood@cs.unc.edu. Also, please have parents fill out the photo consent form (English or Spanish). We will only include your children in photographs of the event with your permission.

We have limited funding for travel grants for groups who could not otherwise attend. Email Missy Wood wood@cs.unc.edu for more information.