[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!

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

[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!

[7yo scurries back outside leaving me puzzled]

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

[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.

[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!

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).

Josh 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).

Skype is clear (for now, though I'm kind of looking forward to dumping it).

Makedo

There was a large set at SciTech in the main exhibition on our last trip and Tao 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 Ru 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.

eBay

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 Josh came up with the brilliant idea to kill Skype because apparently Skype uses port 80.

I killed Skype and coincidentally just after it shut down http was working normally again.

Josh said everything should work fine now if I fired Skype back up again.

I restarted Skype and coincidentally lost http again.

I finally got basic modelling in Blender.

All I needed was to find where the subdivision tool was hidden.

Early days Blender and Lightwave comparison:

Layout

I prefer having a menu on my right as I use a Cintiq and find it quicker to access stuff I don't know keyboard shortcuts for (or that don't have keyboard shortcuts) if the menu is over to the right.  I can move it in preferences in Lightwave.