technonaturalist

As he approaches 5, the 4yo has been much less…well…4. While still prone to bouts of 4 year old raging tantrums, he is much easier to reason with and manage because he listens sometimes.

The attitudes of the bigs hae shifted dramatically from towards the end of last year where I have no idea what was going on (but the stress I was feeling at the time wouldn’t have helped) but I was fully prepared to pick up enrolment forms from the primary school down the road.

It’s moving at a frightening pace for me as I’m used to doing everything with excruciating slowness. I love bsurfaces. It is quite literally the thing that had me giving Blender a go again at that point (previously my Blender attempts were for a couple of weeks once or twice a year, end of last year was a last ditch “this thing is cool so why not let’s try it again” and that’s when I got it).

[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]

9yo seems to finally be over his writing hurdle. Yesterday he reported that writing seems to be a lot easier, and as a result he hasn’t actively resisted/refused doing bookwork when I’ve put out the call to come and do it. Maybe he’s also realised that if he just comes and does the two pages he can go back to what he was doing quicker than if he tries to ignore me, then has a tantrum and argues about it, then does it with all of us in a cranky mood and then isn’t in the mood to do whatever it was he had been doing beforehand because the world is obviously dead set against him having any fun whatsoever. He still needs to work on some letter formation and is occasionally writing some things backwards but it seems to be coming a lot easier to him now which is great. I’ve told him it will get easier as it goes into muscle memory and his writing will slowly get neater the more he practises.

• block the other person’s weapon (even if it is a fan) with your weapon (which may also be a fan), not with your hand. Especially if the other person’s fan has metal ribs
• when lion dance training after taking such an injury, don’t lift the head when you have to hold the mouth shut
• when walking through door frames, make sure you fit through the doorframe. Do not get distracted by small dogs attempting to run outside, and definitely do not clock the alleged “funny” bone on the doorframe to the point where you lose all feeling in your hand for a little while (preceded and followed by HOLEY SHEET THAT HURTS), especially if it’s the arm with the hand that doesn’t have aforementioned wrist injury on it

Not that this has ever happened to me, definitely not in the last week, because who would be so dumb.

Or rather hang around the periphery of and watch.

I saw this on the front page of deviantART (hey the front page is good for something after all ;) when I went to log in:

[missing image]

Lightning La Buff Bust by mattj324

In my usual fashion after dropping in to leave a boring “wow” type comment, I went through the rest of the person’s gallery and then watched them.

8 hour freaking speed sculpt. I’d seriously be happy if I got something anywhere approaching that in a month (but more likely more considering the speed at which I work). I can run the usual excuses about how I generally don’t get 8hr sittings for anything (okay sleep but I’m generally lying down then) but it gets to a point where I wonder if the people I watch are prodigious or whether that’s a normal amount of time and I’m just exceedingly, agonisingly slow (my usual thought).

[9yo is playing one of the board games on Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag and is winning]

me: Careful, he may have something up his sleeve.
9yo: They’re pretty tight sleeves.
me: That’s coz they’re modelled on.
9yo: I know that!

This work by ryivhnn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

Just like that, he is in the last of the single digits.

He has three friends he considers besties (and occasionally categorises them according to favoured activities with those particular people), and finds it easy to play with other kids he has never seen before and may never see again (I suppose we can be less dramatic, we don’t live in the biggest city in the world). He does some rather scarily accurate trollfaces (do an image search, it’s not too traumatising unless you don’t like caricature). He still loves playing footy and following it (but prefers tv to going to games because that way he can wander off and play and then come back in to see how things are going). He likes to run, and run, and run. And build things with Lego. And play PS3 and PC games that declare us obviously bad parents who don’t care about their kids (because they’re MA15+ games). His favourite games are Minecraft and StarCraft. He likes playing Robot Turtle with function frogs (which is a bit above what his sister is capable of and way above what his brother is currently capable of. He wants to learn how to program and design and build robots to “help make the world a better place” and plan towns/cities so that humans can live with what they want and need without completely destroying the homes of other animals.

[7yo comes running inside, I tell her it’s bathtime]

7yo: But we found a grasshopper or a locust outside!
me: How do you know it’s a grasshopper or locust?
7yo: Because it looks like one!
me: Why don’t you look up pictures on the internet and see if you can tell the difference.

[We go to 7yo’s room, she grabs a small paintbrush]

me: …what are you doing?
7yo [holding up paintbrush]: Scientists have discovered it’s all in the power of touch! And they used a paintbrush!

15yo: Nothing is faster than a Lamborghini!
8yo: Except maybe a faster Lamborghini!

This work by ryivhnn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

More Lightwave and Blender comparison

I was having a bad day yesterday and irritated because I couldn’t figure out Blender stuff quickly (on the bright side, thanks to Lightwave I at least have an idea of what I’m looking up) and told JJ that Blender was frustrating me and it was tempting to jump back into Lightwave but I didn’t want to give up yet because Blender had some stuff that Lightwave didn’t have like lattice deformation.