August 2025 Reading
Boundary Waters Canoe Area
July 2025 Reading
Summer Blog Slump
Hoo boy the blog hasn't gotten much in it this summer. I think this is becoming a more annual tradition, where it goes dark from May til late August. We're outside a lot and I don't really have much happening in my mind while I take a break from school.
I'll be on a camping trip next week, so there will be a post following that with pictures. Then, I get back into school mode the third week of August and I'm sure that will propmt some writing.
Anyways, I'm still here. This isn't dead. I'll be back...eventually.
Every 5x5 Nonogram
Wabasha, Minnesota
Adding Full Width Images to the Blog
Jo the Dog
Pasture
This world can often be overwhelming.
May 2025 Reading
Artwork #2
Writing and AI
April 2025 Reading
That Time I Was Don Quixote
In a previous lifetime, I worked as a summer camp counselor. One of the things we did to make the morning flag routine fun was to dress up in different themed costumes. Each day had a color theme and all the counselors would put together a goofy costume on that theme and then winners would be picked by the leadership staff.
Another counselor and I, Caleb, realized we could combine our creative powers to come up with more elaborate - and hopefully more impressive - costumes to win points for our team.
I give you, the Don Quixote, and probably one of my favorite pictures ever.
This summer formed several core memories and even though Caleb and I fell out of touch, I still think back to this morning fondly. I'm glad I have such a great picture to remember it by.
My AI-driven Grading Approaches
Anchor Update
Well, I did it. I started working on my fork of Anchor CMS to get it up and running with PHP 8. Honestly, most of the work so far has been updating the build system with new versions of the JS packages used to bundle everything up. I haven't needed to do much with the PHP yet.
Anyways, I can set up a new instance from scratch, create the admin user, and write some posts. I've fixed a few CSS errors and I'm going to start working on updating the Sass files because they have some deprecations since they were first written 10 years ago.
The repo is on Github if you want to take a peek.
Revisiting AnchorCMS
I've been thinking about moving back to a small CMS for the blog. Specifically becuase I would like to be able to just log into something and write rather than using my current static site flow.
AnchorCMS is an old blog app I've opined about in the past and I decided to take on another project and work on a fork. The maintainers shut down the original codebase back in 2020 and it's been sitting since.
The plan right now is trim down the installation flow and tailor it for myself - it'll be updated for PHP 8 and use SQLite for a database to keep my server running with low overhead.
I have no idea what I'm in for because I haven't touched PHP in a minute. We'll see how it goes.
Getting Back Into Art
March 2025 Reading
The Week That Was
February 2025 Reading
A Critical Approach to Teaching AI
First Cardinal
I was at the grocery store early this morning getting head cold care supplies. We'd managed to avoid the worst of this spring bout of sickness so far, but it caught up.
The sun was just peeking over the horizon and I heard a cardinal in the trees. I haven't heard a cardinal in weeks. They're there - they don't migrate - but I hadn't heard one in the morning since the late fall.
There was also a tufted titmouse in the distance. You've probably heard one, too. Hopefully, now you have a name to put with it.
Silent Sunday
All of the kids are quiet in bed. My wife isn't feeling well and I've found myself enjoying the quiet of the house.
I often have to resist the feeling that I should be doing something.
I think the only something that needs doing is taking these quiet moments as they come.
Dad Music
Toward the end of high school and into college, I developed a tase for metal/metalcore music. Super loud, really intense. One difficult part of being a metal fan is that it's kind of isolating unless you really know the other people in the room like it.
As such, I have a playlist on our Amazon music account called "Dad" which has a collection go-to bangers. My wife knows and tolerates this listening, but I don't really play it for my kids. Today, it came out, they think it's dance music.
I played about 20 seconds of "Beyond Repair" by Johnny Booth (be warned, it's intense). It started with nervous laughter and ended with, "that's enough, it's too screamy."
Good times.
Ways of Categorizing Ethical Concerns Relating to Generative AI
January 2025 Reading
AI This Morning
Stoichiometry Blues
This year's stoichiometry test has come and gone with less than thrilling results. We're okay on unit conversions, but when we add that extra step of using the balanced reaction to describe ratios between substances, things fall apart.
This is a tough concept that I struggle to teach well. I don't know if more labs/hands on will help - I added one this year and I didn't see better results. Granted, we had several weather interruptions last week that preceeded the test, but even today, there are still large gaps in understanding that I need to do some digging into to figure out what is going on. My hunch tells me that is a "will" issue instead of "skill" issue for 90% of students.
30 Years in Edtech
Dune Part 2 is the Perfect Adaptation Because of One Key Difference
January Movie Binge
Decision Making in Problem Solving
Grading Web Dev Projects
I've struggled to efficiently grade web dev projects this year. Github Classroom is kind of a pain becuase I need to go to each repo individually and students are struggling with the git workflow. I decided to take that out for now. The next best method is to have them zip project files and then submit the zipped archive that I can extract. It was still a lot of clicking between folders.
Then, I realized (finally) that I can just extract the directories into one parent folder and run Python's built-in HTTP server. It makes clicking around the projects much easier and I can pop open the source tab right in the browser. No more opening and closing files between apps.
I wish I'd thought of this back in September.
Get in touch
Comments are always open. You can get in touch by sending me an email at brian@ohheybrian.com
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