You know, I wish I’d learn these lessons: Things You Really Need to Learn ~ Stephen’s Web ~ by Stephen Downes. Some I do well, but there are a lot of these that I do poorly. I’ve always been better at head knowledge than heart knowledge.
(via Parent Hacks)
This is a really useful idea: when your child puts on a piece of clothing that’s outgrown (and they refuse to take it off for disposal), mark outgrown clothes with a safety pin | Parent Hacks. Next time that item goes through the wash, you know that it’s outgrown and it can quietly disappear rather than discovering again that it is outgrown the next time they wear it. The comments are worth reading too for additional ideas.
Oct 28
I’ve been having fun playing with the face tagging feature in the latest version of Picasa.
I don’t find a lot of entertainment in staring at my own face, but it’s fun to see both how little and how much the kids’ faces have changed over the years. It’s like having an automatically generated personalized album. An automatically generated album is about the only way the kids are going to have personal photo albums. Scrapbooking is not really my thing, nor is it Jaimie’s. It’s all I can do to remember to take pictures of the kids on a semi-regular basis.
The kids often need obscure words defined for their french homework. I’ve had difficulty finding a good online dictionary, but somehow turned up a good one tonight: LE DICTIONNAIRE – Dictionnaire français en ligne gratuit.
If I’m in a fey mood this Halloween, I think I’ll dress up like Arthur Dent when I take the kids trick-or-treating and see if they’re old enough to be embarrassed to death by their dear old dad: 10 Geeky (And Cheap) Halloween Costumes | GeekDad | Wired.com. I’m thinking that I’ll wear a bathrobe and the biggest and most vividly colored towel I can find. Now to see if I feel up to doing it that evening.
Arthur Dent (image: BBC)
It’s been the subject of countless cartoons and columns, but I find myself stuck repeating the same phrases to my kids over and over again, especially when we’re getting ready to head out the door. “Did you wash your face?” “Did you brush your teeth?” I like the idea of these: Routine cards to help kids organize their schedule. Unfortunately the site that’s hosting them seems to be down right now. Maybe if I print out one of these, I can cut my questions down to “Did you do everything on the routine poster?”
Sep 23
Jaimie mentioned this a few days ago: Left 4 Teletubbies. It’s a Left 4 Dead mod that lets you kill Teletubbies. few years back I would have loved to have this mod, but I would have had to play it when Evan wasn’t around. We’ve just reactivated TV for the winter, so I haven’t decided what horrrible example of kids’ programming is this year’s target of wrath.
Zen Habits has a post saying Education Needs to Be Turned on Its Head. I agree with a lot of the points in this post. We thought about homeschooling / unschooling our kids, but we felt that they would miss out on the social aspects of regular school.
Once they hit junior high, we’ll take another look at alternative schooling. By then they’ll be old enough to participate in a wider variety of activities which should provide them with a wider circle of social interaction. By that age, they should have formed valid opinions of what works for them. It’ll be interesting to see what happens.
This is a great tip: Get a tackle box for storing hair doo-dads! Ask Unclutterer: Organizing hair styling doo-dads | Unclutterer. Even at this stage my dear daughter has taken over a good chunk of our bathroom shelving with her hair stuff and finding matching barrettes can be a royal pain. Getting everything packaged up neatly sounds great – now to see how it works in practice.
This looks like a fun project: Change Computer Part Colors Easily and Inexpensively – Mods – Lifehacker. I know someone who deals in used computers so I might buy a couple cheap keyboards off of him to try this out before using it on my main keyboard.
If it works nicely, I bet the kids would really like to have this for their computer when I get one up and running for them again. So far the computer they trashed the worst involved a tower full of Oreos and milk. The last one to die wasn’t their fault – the CPU fried and I just haven’t had the budget to replace the system yet.
Hardware video-decoder cartridge for the Nintendo DS looks like it would be a very useful gadget. We’re planning to get the kids each a DS for our drive out to Alberta later this year, so something that lets each kids watch their own movies or selection of YouTube clips would be a real sanity saver. I’m not sure if this is the best gadget for this task, but it’s a good place to start looking.
May 25
Evan seems to be showing an interest in electronic projects lately. If he stays interested, I may look into getting him a Snap Circuits set. I’m not sure where you would buy these in Canada, but it looks like a lot of fun as a way of learning more about electronics. I remember being driven nuts by trying to get some of these types of things to work, but it was an amazing feeling when I finally got all my connections right and things lit up.
(via Five Amazing ’80’s Geek Toys and Their Modern Equivalents | GeekDad | Wired.com)
May 13
Parent Hacks has a recipe for Homemade, edible lip gloss. I think my daughter and her friends would have a blast with this. This would make a great rainy day / birthday party activity.
Apr 26
I’ve been reading the Essential X-Men to the kids (mostly to the boys) for the last few weeks. It’s a lot of fun. I like reading old superhero comics because there’s no way I can be over the top while reading them. I can do terrible Russian and Irish accents and as long as I make sure that SMASH! and BANG! is good and loud and the action keeps flowing the boys are entertained. Evan’s already read the book over a couple of times (he keeps falling asleep while reading it), but he still comes and listens to tonight’s exciting adventure! Hopefully I can find more collections like this one.
I don’t like the “deep” plot arcs – I find them a bit silly and they lack in action. My favorite stories are the ones where a villain shows up at the beginning of the issue, beats on the X-Men for a bit, gets beat by them, and then the metaplot advances a few steps. Trite but fun.
I wonder if I’d be up to trying to run a Mutants and Masterminds campaign for the kids? The biggest obstacle right now is that Alec wants to participate in everything but he can’t read yet. Maybe in a year or so?
Apr 19
My kids have been watching X-Men Evolution on Youtube for the last few days. They’ve been having fun with the superhero adventures. I’ve have to see if I can find them more old shows to watch when we’re done with these. Cyclops seems really annoying in all the version of X-Men I’ve seen so far.
Mar 26
BOX4BLOX is a tool for organizing Legos. I am very tempted to get one of these to sort out our kids’ Lego collection.
Mar 21
Pasqualle had her second dance performance tonight. It went well and she had fun.
Daily Cup of Tech had a really good idea for How To Get a 2 Year Old To Wake Up When You Want. The same basic plan but with a coffee pot instead of a lamp can be used for a 30 year old. 
I managed to record Callie’s first dance performance. Next time I’ll try to get closer.