CBD Research

Years ago, Katie was trying to come up with recommendations to help fix T's sleep schedule as well as deal with her anxiety and chronic pain, and was enthusiastic about a "CBD" sleep gummie. She was confident that it was better than other OTC sleep aids. I did some research because I was interested to find out if there had been any investigation of whether CBD was safe for kids. But what was funny was that the gummies that Katie thought were safe for kids because they were "non-prescription" in fact simply had a bunch of melatonin.

Here is a fairly stuffy report on CBD by the Mayo Clinic that just covers the basics without a lot of additional info: https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/consumer-health/expert-answers/is-cbd-safe-and-effective/faq-20446700

Not sure if this site is MSM or a cleverly disguised alternate health promoter. The big takeaway from this site are a list of things it seems to be good at treating, and mention that any treatment mechanism is not actuallly known: https://www.verywellhealth.com/cbd-oil-benefits-uses-side-effects-4174562

This article claims to be a roundup of "evidenced-backed" health effects and also side effects: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/cbd-oil-benefits?c=206704570355

This "Harvard" article promises to explain "what we know and what we don't." But it's from 2018 back before legalization. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/cannabidiol-cbd-what-we-know-and-what-we-dont-2018082414476

A compelling lead line from this NYT (i.e. paywalled) articles asks "Does it help?": https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/16/style/self-care/cbd-oil-benefits.html

Can I contribute to a 401k and an IRA?

Short answer: No because my 401k contributions are high enough that it wipes out any headroom for tax-deductable IRA contributions. Slightly longer answer but you can still do Roth (pfft!). Some links:

This is a basic regurgitation of the rules, which admittedly are complex enough to require a review. https://www.personalcapital.com/blog/retirement-planning/can-contribute-401k-ira/

This article explains a little bit better what's hinted in the first article, namely that you can contribute to a traditional IRA up to the limit, just won't get the tax deduction, and that you have more personal freedom to chose the investments with IRAs. Also give some examples that point out when being in a lower tax bracket helps on either end.https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/07/401(k)_ira.asp

HSA forms

This horribly formatted link is to an explainer page by an HSA-specialized bank for what all the tax forms are that are associated with HSAs. Accessed via a google search when I was working on the 2020 taxes.

Low-dose naltrexone

LDN is an alternative medicine idea for chronic inflamation. We tried it, it didn't seem to have an effect. Looks great on paper though. Here are a couple of links from typing what is low dose latrexone into Google:

A high-level explainer. From "The LDN Research Trust" so a bit biased: https://ldnresearchtrust.org/what-is-low-dose-naltrexone-ldn

A paper published on the NIH website, so somebody respectable seems to have taken a look into it (discaimer: no real clinical tests done yet): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3962576/

Inflatable Pools

Some links from a research on large inflatable pools:

A nice pictorial summary of some different inflatable pool products "for adults": https://www.pinterest.com/pin/464011567839765743/

The main thing I learned was to search for brand H2OGO on eBay. Interestingly this search no longer produces links for the big deep rectangular one that we got; everything is back to normal now and inflatable pools are for kids again: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=h2ogo+pool&_sacat=0&rt=nc&LH_PrefLoc=1

It seems that Amazon no longer sells the big hexagon pool that was available in 2020 either: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=h2ogo+hexagon+family+pool&crid=1IHGRFU4F6Y6O&sprefix=h2o+go+hexagon%2Caps%2C183

Online education

Looking for alternatives to in-person school for a kid (gee I wonder why), there were some nice options but they all required some self-motivation to use which sadly was not present. These are some of my favorites of the ones recommended to me:

Elephango, a membership service that looks really friendly, broad, and deep. Pricey though. https://elephango.com/

Codemonkey, a great top-down approach to teaching coding basics and mindsets and then languages. Requires a student who doesn't have to be dragged through learning things though. https://www.codemonkey.com/

Khan Academy, a lot of peoples' go-to for math, they do organize their curiculum very well but barely seem to have more than a few examples for each subject. They do have other subjets also, but mostly everyone cares about the math. One video per lesson so if you don't get it and you aren't capable of looking up alternative lessons on a topic yourself you're stuck. http://www.khanacademy.org/

Python-docx

The amount that I have learned about they python-docx library could fill a book. Fortunately all of that information is still online where I originally found it. For the purposes of closing tabs, here are some selected lessons and links:

In word tables, to set cell sizes and other cell properties it isn't really set up to do it like a person would and set properties by row or column. Most properties are set at the individual cell number, but it's a computer, make it iterate through all the cells in a row and column to get the desired look. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43051462/python-docx-how-to-set-cell-width-in-tables

Here's the online python-docx docs page about tables. Doesn't fully illuminate the ideosyncracies, mostly a general explainer on how docx is xml and what tables look like in this particular xml. Apparently there are only two table-wide properties, because everything else is cell properties. The table-wide properties are alignment and fixed-width vs auto-width columns: https://python-docx.readthedocs.io/en/latest/dev/analysis/features/table/table-props.html

WFIRST Primer

A great article by Doug Messier explaining how WFIRST will work: http://parabolicarc.com/2020/05/06/a-tale-of-two-telescopes-wfirst-and-hubble/

Minus Sign/En Dash

Partly due to my timesheet program not accepting a dash as a minus sign, I ended up researching all kinds of interesting information about minus signs, em-dashes, and typography in gherneral.

This page does a wonderful job explaining the differences between the different minus signs and their names, and even shows what they look like in regular print. https://jakubmarian.com/hyphen-minus-en-dash-and-em-dash-difference-and-usage-in-english/

A great discussion about this that includes not only the coding perspective but an answer that shows it from a typesetting perspecitve. Surprsingly, the different dashes have different heights! https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/68674/what-s-the-right-character-for-a-minus-sign

Laptop shuts down when sleep is selected

Investigating the issue of my work laptop sometimes rebooting when I try to use Sleep for travelling it. This is because Windows took the "Hybernate" option away, however I learned that it is possible to manually call the hyberbnate function from a CMD window using "shutdown /h". The rebooting while sleeping seems most likely to be due to damage to the laptop's motherboard.

This is an article titled with the exact problem that I was trying to solve. It had pretty much the same solutions as a lot of other related pages, which were to fiddle with power settings most of which I couldn't touch due to the group policy settings on my laptop: https://www.guidingtech.com/fix-windows-10-shuts-down-instead-sleep-hibernating/

I was unable to get around the group policies to try to turn off "fast startup". Here are a few searches that I tried on the topic. The hints, while unsuccessful, were interesting and I'd like to learn more:

turn off fast startup from command prompt: https://www.bing.com/search?q=turn+off+fast+startup+from+command+prompt&qs=AS&pq=turn+off+fast+startup+from+c&sk=AS1&sc=2-28&cvid=7C0CE2BE4176472982CB018F0BAC4ACA&FORM=QBRE&sp=2&ghc=1

powercfg -h off unable to perform operationhttps://www.bing.com/search?q=powercfg+-h+off+unable+to+perform+operation&cvid=de3e7676a2b54113b4fc6159bdf1b712&FORM=ANAB01&PC=U531

December diversions

Misc links from rabbit holes run down in December 2020:

In the list of things everybody seemed to know about something I liked except me, George Harrison's (long running) affair with Ringo Starr's wife. Of course the full story once learned just seems sad, people lost in a maelstrom out of their control:
https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/when-george-harrison-had-an-affair-with-ringos-wife-maureen.html/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maureen_Starkey_Tigrett
https://startsat60.com/media/lifestyle/entertainment/pattie-boyd-george-harrison-affair-ringo-starrs-wife-maureen

"Curves not Combat Boots" an interestingly different approach to women's workout fashion: https://curvesncombatboots.com/products/

Info about some of the Myazaki movies that Nina was bingeing on once we got HBOMax:

The Secret World of Arrietty, which is based on The Borrowers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrietty

Arrietty's IMDB page. Supposedly the english language version had stuff added to mask over the typically sad Japanese ending. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1568921/

Electron first stage recovery was a really interesting thing that happened in November.

The usual fact-laden article from NSF. The tininess of the payload and rocket diameter can be seen in the integration photo: https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2020/11/rocket-lab-attempt-first-stage-recovery/

Also Launcher One finally made orbit too:

https://twitter.com/ChrisG_NSF/status/1350818131787309056

Kahoot

For distance learning, the teachers at N's school thought that Kahoot would work for fun quizzes. It's an odd idea; somebody has to project the quiz questions to a group that's all presumably in a room together and everybody has to have their own phone to participate. Add in Zoom and having only iPads on our end and the only way to make it work was to have one iPad for the Zoom and one for answering the questions.

https://kahoot.com/study/

It is interesting that kahoot quizzes can be created by anybody for free, and the system for scoring all the answers seems fairly easy to use.

https://kahoot.com/schools/how-it-works/

Python hints for gain comparison script

Sources for fixing my bad coding for making the data graphs:

Directly setting the tick labels in matplotlib. Haven't gone here yet but this is apparently not a simple tweak although there is a formula for getting it right: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11244514/modify-tick-label-text

The .plot() method for matplotlib and how it so nicely allows for multiple lines on the same plot: https://matplotlib.org/api/_as_gen/matplotlib.pyplot.plot.html

Extracting a column from a 2D list. 3 methods: 1) list conprehension, 2) just use numpy 3) zip https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30062429/python-how-to-get-every-first-element-in-2-dimensional-list/30062458

Initializing a list for my x axis values, explained for babies: https://www.science-emergence.com/Articles/How-to-create-a-list-of-numbers-in-python-/

Doing multiplication and division between elements of three arrays: Just use numpy. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10271484/how-to-perform-element-wise-multiplication-of-two-lists

January 2020 Diversions

Fun:

"I turn an AC compressor into a working engine" it looks like he's using spark plugs? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxqyfB83tSo

This infographic video of the the Glomar Explorer operation looks insanely stupid with the sound off, but it seems like it does contain facts so I can't keep from looking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SttYTYYLuk

Here is a nice HTML color code picker!
https://htmlcolorcodes.com/https://htmlcolorcodes.com/

WOW! This research into stress turning hair grey is amazingly conclusive! And now I know that it's too late for me.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51208972