life
Nine
Saturday, 11 January 2014 @ 10:31am
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.
All in the power of touch
Monday, 30 December 2013 @ 7:35pm
[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!
Faster than a Lamborghini!
Thursday, 19 December 2013 @ 1:08pm
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
Humans
Monday, 16 December 2013 @ 8:33am
[8yo is playing Civilisation Revolution on the PS3, I glimpse a city I think is called Berlin but not sure whether it’s his or computer’s]
me [not thinking]: what race are you playing?
8yo [looking at me like I’m an idiot]: …humans.
{I kick pre-caffeinated brain into some form of gear]
me: what CIVILISATION are you playing?
8yo: Oh. Germans.
This work by ryivhnn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
Malking
Wednesday, 11 December 2013 @ 3:59pm
[7yo pats cat sitting on my lap]
7yo: I’m making Moulty moult on you!
me: Moulty? :)
7yo: Malki! But she is malking on you. [realises what she said] Moulting!
This work by ryivhnn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
Glitchy sophos web intelligence probably actual nsa spyware proxy
Wednesday, 11 December 2013 @ 8:43am
After all that experimentation, it was the antivirus after all (one of the first things I turned off to no effect because I’m not sure how the “web intelligence” bit is attached to the main part of the program).
JJ guessed “something” between the http and the transport layers and this makes sense as the “web intelligence” scans incoming file attachments and I think may also be checking websites for malicious scripts (which would probably never get executed because I use NoScript, unless it got injected by a website I use frequently that didn’t have it before).
Christmas shopping like a boss
Sunday, 8 December 2013 @ 11:18am
Makedo
There was a large set at SciTech in the main exhibition on our last trip and 8yo made a wearable R2-D2. It was the first time I’ve seen it in action and I’ve since acquisitioned a few sets of 3 as group presents for friends’ kids.
EcoToys
One of my automatic go-tos at least every Silly Season, if I’m organised enough I’ll occasionally poke in to organise a birthday present as well. Beautiful and quality stuff (a Green Toys tea set that I bought for 7yo a couple of years or so ago got taken outside so they could have tea party with water and then got left outside since is still looking in very good nick, could probably scrub it up and have it looking more or less new) that gets played with constantly because it looks good and doesn’t break when you look at it. Just wish I had more money.
Skype interfering with http on OSX Mavericks
Saturday, 7 December 2013 @ 8:08am
[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]
So turns out our NSA spyware proxy may actually be Skype.
The intermittent http losses had been getting closer and closer together and it eventually got to the point where I lost it twice in a day. I was in the middle of burning Debian CDs (to reinstall the kids laptops, because apparently using the 7.1 cds I have and upgrading is not as good as downloading the 7.2 cds and using them) and quietly simmering about having to do a clean reinstall, when JJ came up with the brilliant idea to kill Skype because apparently Skype uses port 80.
Seven
Saturday, 30 November 2013 @ 1:35pm
[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]
She recently found a birthday buddy. I’m just slow and have been busy, hence the late celebration post.
I got told once (not directly, the person doing the telling was telling it on a forum) that personalities are more or less developed by the age of 7 or something to that effect. If this is the case, then my daughter has my nasty streak which is not something I wanted her to inherit, but fortunately she is a lot nicer than I am most of the time.
OSX Mavericks http problems
Friday, 29 November 2013 @ 10:23am
It started sometime after I upgraded to Mavericks (it was 10.9.something by the time I got around to it, and I really do quite enjoy using it) and before the next update. I would be poking around on the internet and seemingly at random, everything would just stop working.
Everything that wasn’t going over http would work fine (ssh on terminal, im programs, Tor).
I initially assumed there was something wrong with dns so tried using OpenDNS instead of my isp, but that didn’t fix it.