Callum at the Innovation Challenge Finals

Callum didn't win the Australian Innovation Challenge. But given the quality of the entrants it was really an honour for him just to be there.

He did get to chat with Nobel laureate Brian Shwartz for most of an hour - which made the trip down to Canberra completely worthwhile.

Callum and I house sharing

While Evan and Declan have been swanning off to Sri Lanka, Callum and I have had a very nice time together. Callum has been quite happy to leave after me and come home before me, although I've managed to get home a bit earlier than normal most days.

We've cooked together, cleaned together, and even done the washing together! I'd like to think he will make a pretty good flatmate one day.

We've played quite a few board games together, with Callum introducing me to Stratego, and me introducing him to Cathedral.

Yesterday we went to see the new James Bond movie Spectre together, and made rhubarb pie to celebrate our week.

Luckily it is getting towards the end of term, and Callum doesn't have much homework; there have been a lot of  computer games to keep him in a good mood.

His good mood doesn't extend to photos; he wouldn't let me take a picture of him making me a cup of tea.

Vote for Callum

Hopefully everybody who reads this blog already knows this, but you can vote for Callum in the People's Choice awards for the Australian Innovation Challenge.

Vote early and often!

Maths Enrichment

Both Callum and Declan did some maths enrichment this year - a formal program of problems that they worked through to train them in mathematical concepts.

For Callum it was part of his Beyond Visible elective, and he had a great time with each problem, playing with it on his whiteboard, and occasionally talking it through with this grandparents (he did the Gauss problems).

For Declan it was extra - once a fortnight he got to school early on a Friday to work through his set of problems (which were the Euler ones).

It turns out they both did very well, with Callum getting a high distinction and Declan getting a distinction! They were the only distinctions in the whole school, so the Predavec boys were at the top of the list.

Declan didn't enjoy it as much as Callum, which in some ways makes his achievement almost more impressive.

Declan in Sri Lanka

BinIT team on the ramparts at Galle

After winning a merit award at the Nationals, Declan's BinIT! team were eligible to go to Sri Lanka for the Asia Pacific iAwards.  After some refining of their presentation, and their website, this week they've been in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where they had to present BinIT to a team of judges, have high tea at the Australian High Commission, and spend a fair bit of time lounging around the pool. Declan was hugely excited to go, which has been lovely to see.

No doubt there will be further reports of their trip when they get back.

Young ICT Nationals

On Saturday Callum (by virtue of having won the NSW Young ICT challenge), got to compete in the National competition. It was in North Sydney, at the SAS headquarters (they are the sponsors) and had a bunch of kids from around Australia who had won their state or local (in the case of North Queensland) competition.

Sadly Callum didn't take home a prize, but he acquitted himself well and got to meet a bunch of other pretty cool kids.

Acceleration

At the end of last week, the Mosman High principal asked me to have a chat about Callum.

She started off talking about extension maths, what we used to call 4 unit, and checking that he and we were still happy for him to do it. Which of course I confirmed. I wondered at first where she was coming from, but she explained the school was keen to ensure he remains happy and has time to do other things like his programming.

She moved on to offering to accelerate Cal into Year 11 Software Design next year.

So next year Cal will do only the core year 10 subjects, no Year 10 electives, and year 12 maths and year 11 software design. He won't have to do Wednesday afternoon sport, both because of the timetable and so he has some additional time available - we figure Tae Kwon Do twice a week should cover him anyway on that front.

We think it's a great position to be in. Not only will he be engaged, but he will spread the HSC over three years which should remove some of the stress.

Mosman has continued to validate that it was the right choice to send the boys there.

Callum Young Innovator Finalist

The boys are having quite a month and year.

This weekend Callum was announced as one of five finalists in The Australian Innovation Challenge, Young Innovators category. The category is open to people under 21 and the winner gets $5000.

Pax oz

Callum and especially Declan were pretty enamoured of pax Australia. They got a great game of laser tag, free steam codes for a couple of indie games, plus the chance to meet the developers and play alpha versions. 

They got to see lots and lots of really cool costumes, with people cosplaying their favourite game characters. And they got to marvel at the retro games in the retro section. 

Another award!

We've known about this for a couple of weeks now but had to keep it a secret. Declan's Mosman high school programming team won the stem video game challenge. They had the best video game teaching about science technology engineering and maths written by anyone from years 5-8. The competition was Australia wide so they were pretty thrilled.

To collect their prize (a new HP laptop each) they had to go down to Pax Australia, which is one of the world's biggest gaming conventions. 

We all went down to Melbourne yesterday to clap and cheer.

Photography

Declan has always been quite interested in photography; just not interested enough to carry a camera around. So when he took a picture of our trifle from last week, his was much better than mine.

Saturday movie

This week I chose to make the Saturday movie a bit educational; we watched the ABC TV movie Curtin, about John Curtin's time as Prime Minister during the darkest parts of WWII.

Callum found it really interesting, whereas Declan thought it was a bit boring. Even on a second viewing, I really enjoyed it; but I think that is more about their relative interest in history than it is about their age.

Callum did say that he knew how it was going to end, so it wasn't as interesting as it would have been otherwise...

We were all a bit too tired to make dessert, so we had the leftovers from Granny's birthday cake from the night before.

Seven Bridges

We had been talking about doing this walk for years, and we finally managed it this year. The Seven bridges walk goes around Sydney, and crosses seven bridges - Harbour Bridge, Pyrmont Bridge, Anzac Bridge, Iron Cove Bridge, Gladesville Bridge, Tarban Creek Bridge and the Figtree Bridge.

We have done very little walking as practice, so walking 27km (the longest we have ever walked in one day) with little specific training probably wasn't the best idea, but we were really fine until the last 3 km, when conversation dried up and we just focused on getting home.

The boys were great company the whole way, and we all now feel very proud of ourselves (if a little tired).

Into town for a Saturday expedition

Everybody checking the bus timetable in Crows Nest

Hotel in Sydney CBD still the same 99 years later

After the change in bus timetables, we haven't been quite sure what the best way into town is. So on Saturday we went to the Opera House via a bit of shopping at the QVB (not the most direct route). A the QVB we got a new mouse for Declan, and some bike shorts, as he has out grown his old ones.

At the Opera House, we saw Brian Skerry (ocean photographer) talk about all the amazing things he has photographed around the world.

On the walk between (as requested by Callum and Declan who had seen the letter the night before) we took a small detour to see the hotel that my great grandfather had stayed at in 1916 - and written a letter to my grandmother from. 

Spring Cycle

Relaxing at the 2nd rest stop

In what has become a tradition, we did the Spring Cycle today. It is a ride from St Leonard's Park (just around the corner) to Sydney Olympic Park. Some changes to the route meant that this year it was pretty close to 50Km (last year was more like 56km).

Callum and Declan on the train home

It was a great day for riding, no rain (although a couple of spots at the beginning) and not too sunny.

Having learned from previous years, we took our own provisions (the coffee van always runs out by the time we get there) and started at 7 am (which is the earliest time possible). Apart from some annoying spots towards the end while Callum and Declan decided to compete for who could be ahead (tricky when there are 15,000 other people riding), it was a lovely day, and gave us a nice feeling of accomplishment as we did very little all afternoon.

A trifle of trifle

Declan taking a picture of his handiwork.

I'm not quite sure why, but yesterday we decided to make trifle for dessert. After much internet research, and a call to Granny for a recipe (she didn't have one, it was all instinct) we made the most popular one on taste.com.

It was very tasty, although I don't think either Callum or Declan realised quite how much fruit would be involved.

The movie was Ocean's Thirteen - we really need more movie ideas.

Four unit maths

In NSW high schools, Year 12 starts in term 4, as the HSC students have now left and are only doing exams. So Callum has started Year 12 maths this week. He is doing 4 unit maths, which means he now has 16 periods of maths over his two week timetable. It doesn't seem too much of an addition to his current schedule; he is quite happy to find that he now misses careers (which was one period a fortnight) and Personal Development and Health (ditto). His other two extra periods are out of school hours, which isn't too much of a hardship.

He has come home desperate to talk to us about the new maths he is learning (complex numbers and conic sections) so he seems to be enjoying it.

Bike riding

This morning we went for a pleasant ride around Darling Harbour. There was some spring fog around Barangaroo which made for a lovely atmospheric view back towards the city from the Maritime Museum.

Matt Damon retrospective

Inspired by the Martian, we decided it was time to look at some other Matt Damon movies, so this week we started with Good Will Hunting. I had expected that we would all like it, as it is about a maths genius. Unfortunately it is mostly about the tortured adolescence of the maths genius, rather than the maths, so the boys found it a bit boring.

Dessert was macaroons - made without packet assistance this time, which meant that they weren't very well shaped, but still delicious.

Final weekend of the holidays

The last weekend of the holidays was a long weekend. Despite the temptations of going to the beach (it was over 30 most days) we ended up not doing all that much. We went to see The Martian at the movies (with Declan's friend Jac), made cinnamon scrolls (with yeast!) for dessert one night, and played a lot of 500.

We did try a bike ride one morning, since we are doing Cycle Sydney in mid October, and we need to get a tiny bit of practice in first. We discovered that Declan has outgrown all his cycling shorts.

We watched Entrapment, with Sean Connery.