gwcoffey.com

Archived Post

This post is archived from my Posterous blog, which shut down in 2012. Some posts have been edited slightly to fix typographical errors, correctly represent the gender of some individuals, and remove unnecessarily-gendered language. You can view the full archive here.

I bought a Makey Makey for my girls and I to play with. At one point, the girls wired up a series of aluminum-foil-based touch pads taped to the floor. Each pad was connected to a different input (with a different colored wire). I wrote a little HTML page that responded to the input by showing/hiding matching colored bars.

When we first set it up we had the blue-wired touchpad mixed up with the green one. When Sophia tapped the blue, the green bar appeared. That’s when this exchange took place, without a hint of sarcasm:

SOPHIA: Uh oh! The colors are mixed up.

ME: Oops.

SOPHIA: I can switch the wires.

ME: It’s ok. I can fix it in software.

And then I realized I just used the phrase “I can fix it in software” legitimately with my kids. It was fun.