Catalina Island

Published by Catherine on August 7th, 2011 in Family. No Responses.

This post should be filed under travel advisory posts. One of the social activities that Scott’s firm was doing was a day trip to Catalina Island. It was the only one that you could bring kids to, so at the beginning of the summer we signed up to go. Just a few days before the trip we found out that it would require a 3-hour yacht trip there and back. We questioned our sanity, but decided to go for it.

All in all it was a fun day. Everyone was tired, but the kids were excited to go on a huge boat and behaved really well on board. We only had a couple of hours on Catalina Island, so we really just walked around a bit, ate our lunch at a playground and then let the kids play on the beach for a while. No one got sea sick either, so that was a plus. And I bought salt water taffy from the same candy shop I did on our honeymoon, which was semi-romantic, and good salt water taffy is really hard to come by.

However, I decided a quick day trip is not really the way to enjoy Catalina. So the rest of this post is for those planning on going to Catalina sometime. Scott and I have actually been twice. The first time it was a stop on the cruise we took for our honeymoon. We didn’t know about planning activities ahead of time, plus who really wants to go snorkeling or kayaking in December anyway. So, we just walked around the island and shopped and bought a milkshake and some salt water taffy. After that we were bored, so we went back to the cruise ship early to umm, play board games.

So after this second quick trip to Catalina, we decided that to really enjoy Catalina, you have to stay a couple of days. It could be a really relaxing getaway vacation if you could do a couple of activities each day mixed in with some lounging at the beach, some eating out, and some touristy shopping. Also, it’s not really the place to take little kids. Our kids had fun, but most of the activities are more for adults in that they require swimming or hiking or are boring for kids like shopping.

Summer begins

Published by Catherine on August 3rd, 2011 in Family. No Responses.

Way back in May, which seems like forever ago, Scott finished up finals and we headed out to California. The drive is sooo long. And we had quite a bit of snow coming over the Rockies, which made it a little scary and even longer.

I think May mainly consisted of us getting used to our summer schedule. The girls had recently stopped taking naps, and so were frequently grouchy during the evenings. I went through some weird feeling sick a lot thing, where I was thinking I needed to eat more protein or something, so that was making me grouchy too. All in all it was a lot of fun but a lot of work to keep us all well fed and entertained.

We did enjoy visiting some local zoos and parks, and Andrew got to go on a father’s and son’s camp-out with Scott and Grandpa Cromar. Living in an unfurnished apartment got better once I borrowed some of Scott’s old toys from his parents. We’ve been playing with marble works all summer! I always wanted that toy as a kid. Other than that, the kids and I just had to keep busy, and so we generally left the house by 10am and stayed out until it was time to come home and make dinner…exhausting, but so much fun!

Easter 2011

Published by Catherine on July 28th, 2011 in Family. No Responses.

So, I’m going to do a little blog catch up, since there are some things that I think are really worthwhile to put on here. Also, I just learned that picassa makes photo collages really easily, so you should be seeing more of those on here instead of a long string of photos. That way you can look at them more in detail if you want, or you can just scroll past the collage and get to the post.

Easter is one of my favorite holidays. Even as a kid it was a nice laid-back holiday where we all had fun together and no one got stressed out about anything, as tends to happen with the busier holidays. I really like the opportunity to enjoy spring and remember the atonement and resurrection as well. It really is such a time for rebirth and renewal.

The kids had a blast this year. We did multiple Easter egg hunts and ended up with way too much candy (even though I tried to recycle it from one hunt to the next). But seriously, who knew Easter egg hunts with little kids would be so hilarious! Ever year I have more fun watching them look right at an egg and not see it. We also do little gifts, which are really just the stuff I need to buy them anyway, but save up so I can hide it from them. Like, a couple of years ago, Scott was really sick of squeezing the water out of tuna, so I bought a little thing you press into the can to make it easier to get the liquid out and hid that for Andrew to find. Anyway, here’s a funny, but longish video of them hunting for their loot.

National Doughnut Day 2011

Published by Scott on June 3rd, 2011 in Other. No Responses.

Another year, another fabulous National Doughnut Day. National Doughnut Day is celebrated on the first Friday of June each year. It is one of my favorite days of the year because it is the one day of the year that I get to eat doughnuts for every meal, guilt free! Doughnuts are the best!

PSA: LED-Backlighting Can Cause Migraine Headaches

Published by Scott on May 4th, 2011 in Other. 7 Responses.

A little over two-years ago I began experience infrequent, but regular migraine headaches. Before this time, I had only experienced three or four migraine headaches in my whole life. They began a few months before I started law school, and they were happening about every two weeks.

I started reading some literature on migraines, and learned that for some people, the headaches are “triggered” by some stimulus to which the person is sensitive. I was at a loss however, as I could not correlate the onset of my headaches with any particular stimulus. I saw a doctor, who seemed convinced that the headaches were stress-induced (first-year of law school, growing family, etc.). I disagreed, however, and continued to investigate.

One day, I suddenly came to the realization that the headaches began around the time I purchased a new laptop computer for school. I had never had any problems using any computer before, so it never occurred to me that the purchase of the computer might be related to the headaches. After some googling, I found this thread on forum.tabletpcreview.com, and a related thread on Lenovo’s forums, where others were reporting migraine headaches related to the LED-backlighting on the Lenovo X200 Tablet. Like most laptops sold today, my laptop, a Lenovo X200 Tablet, had an LED-backlit display. It seemed that I had found a good candidate for the cause of my headaches.

After some further investigation, this is what I have found:

LED-backlights in most laptops do not generate constant light, rather, they flicker (flash on and off, like a strobe light) at a high frequency for most brightness levels.
The flickering of the LED-backlight seems to serve two functions: (1) it saves power, and (2) it is used to control the brightness of the display.
There are a couple of relevant characteristics to the flickering: (1) the speed at which the LEDs are turned on and off (frequency), and (2) the amount of time that the LEDs are off, versus the amount of time that they are on, during each cycle (pulse-width).
The brightness of the display is adjusted by changing (or modulating) the pulse-width, i.e., the LEDs are turned off for more of the time than they are turned on. This makes the display look dimmer.
It would be possible to drive the LED-backlight with circuitry that does not flicker the light, but rather make the LEDs always on. This is not typically used, however, because the circuitry is either more expensive, or less precise.
The flicker of the screen can be verified by viewing the laptop display through the LCD viewfinder of a digital camera. Because the frequency of the camera is not in sync with the frequency of the LED-backlight of the display, the display will appear to flicker through the camera.
The Lenovo X200 Tablet uses an Intel integrated video chip, and by default the drivers for the display flickers the backlight at any brightness level lower than the maximum, and even if the brightness is at the maximum, if the laptop is operating on battery power, then the display is flickered (as a power-saving measure). However, if the laptop is plugged in to AC power, and the brightness is set to the maximum, then the LEDs are not flickered, but on constantly. Also, there is a setting in the Intel driver software to disable the flickering for the maximum brightness setting when on battery power (though it is obscure: in older driver versions, you had to turn off “Intel(R) Display Power Saving Technology”, in newer version you have to change the battery power plan settings to “Maximum Performance”).
Different manufacturers use different frequencies for their LED-backlighting. Someone reported on the tabletpcreview.com thread that the X200 frequency is 90Hz (which is very low), while Fujitsu uses 500Hz.

It is not clear what aspect of the flickering induces migraines. It is, no doubt, different for each person that experiences this phenomenon. It’s not really surprising either, since it is well documented that some people have migraine sensitivity to flickering lights, such as florescent lights. (Note that previous display technology used florescent backlighting, at frequencies around 100Hz, however, a florescent light does not turn off almost instantly like an LED, and so the flickering is a little less significant.) Some people have had sensitivity to older florescent-backlit displays too, especially if they operated at lower frequencies. These people are in for a world of hurt as incandescent bulbs are outlawed in many parts of the world, and CFLs or LED lights are the only thing available.

At any rate, upon learning all of this, I set the display brightness of my laptop to the highest level (and I keep it there always!), and adjusted the driver settings so that even if I am using the laptop on battery power, the display is not flickered. Since that time (almost a year and a half ago), I have not experienced any more migraine headaches. My migraines were clearly linked to the flickering of the LED-backlight in my laptop, and I was not even aware of the flickering. The flickering did not act as a traditional “trigger” (in other words, it did not immediately induce a migraine), but over the course of a couple of weeks of use would give me a migraine. Everyone is unique; some people who are sensitive to the flickering get migraines within less than an hour of using the display.

Hopefully this dump of information will be useful to someone else who has experienced similar issues. It is bound to become a bigger issue as all manufacturers are moving over to LED-backlighting for all displays. Pretty soon all computer displays, all TVs, and all light bulbs, are going to be using this technology. It is possible that I am only sensitive to my current display because it operates at a relatively low frequency. This is hard to investigate though, because the data about the frequencies at which these backlights operate is very hard to come by. It is never disclosed by the laptop manufacturers. I hope that this will change in the future, for the sake of all the potential migraine sufferers out there.