These are some horrible, horrible jokes: Science Jokes to Brighten Your Monday Morning – Boing Boing. Given that these jokes amuse me, it’s not surprising that my kids’ sense of humor can get so very annoying so quickly. Nothing like a massive overdose of your own medicine. 
Posts Tagged Kids
Planning Shelterbelts
Nov 15
Unfortunately our lot is a little too small to get trees from PFRA, but they still have a lot of useful information for Planning Farm Shelterbelts.
The front of my parents’ riverlot was pretty much as bare as our lot currently is and now their lot looks like a forest. I need to make sure my kids are out there regularly with a hoe and that the ground is kept black.
Speccy Gives You Detailed Information About Your Hardware – System Monitoring – Lifehacker. This looks like the kind of tool I can use. Usually I know what went into a box when it’s new, but a few months down the road and I’ve forgotten small (but vital) details. I’ll have to check out the export functions – it would be handy to have this information as a text file or PDF to be stored offsite.
DIY Bike Trailer
Nov 11
This DIY Bike Trailer: Woodworker at Work | BikeHacks looks great. I’d love to have a trailer for my bike, but I suspect I wouldn’t actually use it a lot. Since my office is in my parent’s yard, I’m over there pretty often hauling the kids over anyway so I haul any bigger items on one of those trips. I’ll chalk this one up to yet another project I’d like to do in the abstract but will never actually get around to doing.
(found via Lifehacker)
EDIT: Doesn’t work. Oxelon says that it converts the files to AAC, but the files cannot be read by the DSI. Looks as though I’ll have to fight with iTunes after all.
We bought Nintendo DSis for the kids for our recent trip to Alberta. One of the things the kids are using them for is for listening to mp3s. Of course simply being able to play an mp3 is way too much to ask, so the audio needs to be converted to aac/mp4 format to play on the DS.
We used iTunes to convert the music the kids wanted and as with most things involving iTunes it was a nightmare. The conversion was surprisingly easy, but then we ended up with tons of duplicate files and of course playlists can’t be easily exported.
I’m hoping that this: Convert audio and video files in 2 clicks with Oxelon Media Converter will work much better for the next time we need audio files on the DSi.
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.
Stone Soup
Oct 9
Stone Soup has been one of my favorite comics for years. The character that makes the strip work for me is Wally. He’s not an exciting person, he works in insurance, has lost the battle of the bulge, and isn’t even worried about balding anymore. He is very compassionate, fairly wise, and a great father to kids, most of whom aren’t even his. I’d love to be as good of a dad as Wally is. Stone Soup, September 25, 2009 — UCLICK GoComics.com.
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?”
Left 4 Teletubbies
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.
Wired’s Geekdad has a list of the Top 10 Eighties Computer Games Worth Playing (Again). Reading this list made me nostalgic. I’ve played every game on this list except for Seven Cities of Gold, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Fool’s Errand.
Starflight’s DRM was terrible – it wiped the game on me before I could get very far. Starflight 2 took forever to save games – I remember running down from my computer, mowing a patch of lawn, then running back in before it had finished saving.
I did have a lot of fun playing these games. I plan on downloading them again to see if my kids enjoy them too. Justin and I spent hours and hours trying to figure out some of these games. I hope my kids have fond memories of gaming when they look back on their misspent youths.
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.
I’ve found Stanza to be a very good ebook reader for our iPod Touch.
Connecting to ebook sites has been fairly painless and once the connection is established downloading books is trivial. The user interface is simple to figure out and easy to remember. The only problem I’ve had is getting it to interpret my pinching gesture for reducing or increasing the font size.
If you like ebooks and have an iPhone or an iPod Touch, Stanza is well worth checking out. It’s almost enough to convince me to get an iPod Touch of my own so that I don’t have to share it with the kids.
I’ve played around with this a little and it’s a fun tool: FotoSketcher Turns Your Photos into Paintings – Featured Windows Download – Lifehacker. What I want to do is find some good photos of the kids and use this to turn them into paintings/drawings. I’m not sure what I’ll do with the results, but it could be fun.
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.
What difference does 0.45-percent make? On a daily basis, none. On a yearly basis, it’s a lot.
I was listening to Scientific American’s rebroadcast of their interview with Dr. Atul Gawande, Atul Gawande Redux. He describes sitting in with one of the doctors whose patients had an extraordinarily high success rate. The doctor broke down the numbers for his patient:
“So when you experiment you’re looking at the difference between a 99.95-per-cent chance of staying well and a 99.5-per-cent chance of staying well. Seems hardly any difference, right? On any given day, you have basically a one-hundred-per-cent chance of being well. But”—he paused and took a step toward me—“it is a big difference.” He chalked out the calculations. “Sum it up over a year, and it is the difference between an eighty-three-per-cent chance of making it through 2004 without getting sick and only a sixteen-per-cent chance.”
Not eating that bag of chips is not likely to make my weight change. Getting exercise does not change my feeling of physical well being. Being patient with my kids isn’t likely to change the way I relate to them. Putting aside an extra $5 doesn’t change my tax bracket. None of this stuff matters.
The tricky thing is that it doesn’t matter except in a 0.45-percent way. 0.45-percent change is easy to lose in the background noise of life, but it adds up. We’re not tuned to notice that we were healthy two days more this year than last year, or that we’re 1% lighter, more energetic, more compassionate, or wealthier.
For me, the thing that works best to keep me going on 0.45-percent improvements is recording that I’ve made that effort. The most difficult thing about 0.45-percent improvements is that because the change is small, I stop believing that it’s there at all.
This story about how Afghanistan’s only pig quarantined in flu fear | Lifestyle | Reuters amused me. I wonder how many city kids in Manitoba have actually seen a pig? Maybe we need one in the Winnipeg Zoo?
Free Realms launches Tuesday
Apr 27
I was surprised to read that Free Realms launches Tuesday – Massively. I’ve been in the Beta a bit and while it’s fun, it’s still rather buggy. I plan to play Free Realms in the days to come, but I think I’ll hold off on getting a subscription (for me or the kids) till I see if they address the bugs.
Why Do I Have a Phone Line?
Apr 21
As Jaimie and I were getting the kids settled for bed, the phone rang. It was yet another pointless call and it put bedtime back at least 30 minutes. Nothing like a ringing phone to wake a drowsy kid.
Why do I have a phone line at home at all?
Reasons to have a phone.
- Everyone else has one!
- What if there’s an emergency?
- Our ISP is flaky, so the phone is a backup connection
- What if someone significant wants to call?
- Coordinating activities.
Reasons not to have a phone
- Most incoming calls are spam / pointless
- It costs $50/month
- It interrupts
Maybe I should turn the ringer way, way down and set up an answering machine. “Hi, we’re not answering the phone right now. Don’t leave a message as we won’t be listening to it. If you want to contact us, send an email.” If we’re expecting a call we can have the phone next to us and if not we’re not likely to miss anything important anyway.
