Too much kids computing

Oh dear. Jake (10) was sitting next to me playing a game on my notebook. He stood up and said to me…

B.R.B.

… and headed off to briefly return. For those not in the know – brb is Be Righ Back.

Toy Recall – HOLY CRAP

I just had my dad call me to tell me about this toy recall.

The toy (Bindeez Craft Beads) won the Australian Toy of the year award! Now they find that

“The colourful beads contain the same chemical as the illicit drug GHB, otherwise known as ‘fantasy’ [...] the product actually contains 1,4-butanediol [...] When metabolised, 1,4-butanediol converts into GHB.”

My (almost) 9 year old daughter loves playing with these things!!!

Sometimes as a parent I have the absolute sh*t scared out of me.

I will be packing these up to be returned as soon as I get home!

My Dad, by Lucy (age nearly 9)

I say nearly 9 as she doesn’t like people saying she is 8.

I was cleaning up the lounge room and came across this and had to share it.

My Dad is called Alan Hargreaves. He works at Sun Microsoft Systems. He gets to go to other countries for work around the world. He gets me lots of souvenirs. He often stays in his office at my house. He is special and he loves me.

My dad likes playing Second Life on his laptop and being with my mum and playing with me. He also likes doing his work.

What can one say to that!

I love my kids!

Lucy’s modelling competition

The voting closes on Friday. It looks like only those folks with Australian IP addresses can access the site. If you think that it was a good picture of her, please vote. For details see my previous blog entry. You can vote once per day per model per email address. All votes gratefully accepted.

Lucy in a modelling competition

My daughter Lucy, who turned eight on Saturday, has a photo up in a modelling competition. We are being encouraged to have folks vote for her. I would really appreciate anyone who thinks she’s had a good photo taken to do so by going clicking on her photo and voting (and encouraging friends to). Voting requires an Email address (they send out a thank you email and a couple of links when you vote). Pramod, she’s wearing the outfit that you haggled for me for on my last day in Bangalore.

Note I’ve used the image as the link as while I have not received my copies, I have purchased copyrights to the photo shoot. If you can’t see the image, you can click here. There appears to be a problem with accessibility of the site from outside Australia, I’m following this up with the website.

The terms and conditions of the competition state that if AKC believes that anyone voting is bypassing the normal system of vote casting by continously changing their IP address, AKC reserves the right to disqualify that contestant. Please be sure to ask your friends and support crew not to do this as, ultimately, it will disadvantage your chances.

The terms and conditions of the competition are available here. The important ones relating to voting are:

• 5.
  Participants of this site may only use programs such as Netscape® Navigator®, Netscape®Communicator®, Safari and Microsoft®Internet Explorer® (or equivalent web browsers) in trying to win the prize. Use of any other software not designed for browsing the World Wide Web is expressly prohibited. No electronic devices or software programs may be used to falsify winnings from this site. In the event that use of non-approved client software is detected, we reserve the right to invalidate any prize or claims to the prize. In the event such fraudulent attempts to claim a prize is uncovered, such individuals will be subject to prosecution.
• 6.
  Aussie-Kids.Com reserves the right to permanently disqualify from this promotion any person it believes has intentionally violated these rules or otherwise tampered with this promotion. Any attempt by any person to deliberately damage this Website or undermine legitimate operation of the poll constitutes a violation of criminal and civil laws and, should such an attempt or attempts be made, we reserve the right to seek damages from any such person or persons to the fullest extent permitted by the law.
• 9.
  Voting is enabled via a simple polling method installed, activated and monitored by our webserver.
  It permits only one vote from an individual computer within a 24 hour period for any contestant entered in the “STRIKE-A-POSE” Photogenic Quest.
  It does not permit multiple voting due to the restrictions enabled through our software which identifies the IP address of the person (computer) voting.
  Aussie-Kids.Com is not responsible for any software malfunction that may occur during voting.
  Aussie-Kids.Com is not responsible if voting is not possible due to the networking of some computers in government bodies/departments or business houses and will not enter into any discussions or explanations as to this fact before, during or after the voting period.

Halloween

OK, Halloween is not as big a thing in Australia as it is in the US. That being said, for the last few years we have had kids come around trick or treating, and our kids have gone around too and generally had a pretty good time.

This year, Lyn (my wife) decided to “do up the house” for halloween. I’ve got a series of about 66 photos (most of which she took) on Flickr.

A sample of which appears here.

Technorati Tags:
Halloween

The things kids say

Lyn went to wake up Lucy to get her ready for school today. As she walked up to her bed, she opened her eyes and happily said,

Happy my allowance day.

Merry Christmas Everyone

Well it’s Christmas Eve out here and it’s about 40 degrees Celsius!

Every year we go back to the town I grew up in and the kids participate in a tradition that has grown up since we were kids. We do a Saint Lucia procession with all of the kids visiting each house and singing to people. Over the years people have started to contribute lollies for the kids to have an after procession party.

This year, my boy (Jacob) got to be Santa and carry the sack into which the lollies were put.

About half way through, he started complaining that the sack was getting too heavy to carry! You should have seen his hair when he took the suit off when we had finished!

Anyway, best wishes from us here “down-under”.

Customer Complaint to the Tooth Fairy

My wife called my earlier today to tell me of what Lucy dictated to write on her blackboard before she went to school this morning. The background is that she has been putting her tooth under her pillow for the last 3 days and we didn’t know.

I think this is not good enough. You should have gotten my tooth last night. Please get my tooth tonight and make sure you get it. It will be in the tooth box and I want to see it gone tonight. I hope you give me $6 now. Lucy xoxo

I suspect Lucy has been overhearing too much in the way of customer complaints.

The tooth fairy will visit tonight.

Technorati Tag: Kids,

Visiting Koolang Observatory

Over the weekend, I helped a friend of my wife to move house. I ended up driving a three tonne truck about 250km all up.

She’s moved to this lovely locality called Bucketty. About an hours drive from where I live on the Central Coast.

The really cool thing about it is that her landlord runs the Koolang Observatory, which is less than a minutes walk from her house. Last night we were the guest of this gentlemanat a night show and the kids came along too.

Koolang Observatory was designed and built with two purposes in mind – to make science, especially astronomy, more accessible to the general public; and to be a resource for those involved in teaching astronomy to children of all ages – K to 12.

We saw some wonderful views of eta-carina, canopis and a globular cluster (whose name currently escapes me) through the 20″ Newtonian Reflector. We saw Tempel-1 the night before the impact (which just occurred) on a 10″.

What was really outstanding was the timing of things looking at Jupiter. It started that we could only see two moons. While we were looking we had a third come out from behind the giant and a few minutes later a fourth came out of it’s shadow.

All up the kids had a great time, as did Lyn and I.

If you’re within a few hours of the area, I’d certainly encourage you to book and visit.

Technorati Tag: astronomy