Relaxed Parents

Nabeel Hyatt (who was kind enough to leave a comment here the other day) quoted the Chief Creative Officer at EA Games yesterday:
Bing Gordon (chief creative officer at EA) where Bing said something that has stayed with me: “virtual worlds will be a rite of passage for every teenager”.
(An aside - funny how the CCO [...]

Filed under: spirituality | Tagged: social networks, teens, video games, virtual worlds | 4 Comments »

We spent the weekend building up baby-sitting brownie points by looking after the nine month old and four and a half year old daughters of good friends of ours.  We stayed over at their place so dudelet had his first proper sleep-over (”He chats a lot doesn’t he?” - the four year at about 9pm, [...]

Filed under: parenting | Tagged: fun, sleepovers | 6 Comments »

Well, with our toddler’s sleep, anyway. I mentioned yet more recent studies on the effect of too much television and calls to ration children’s access to TV a couple of posts ago. That sort of report makes us twitchy - we know that when we’re tired or when he’s being difficult, letting [...]

Filed under: parenting, sleep issues, sleeping, toddlers | Tagged: sleep, television, TV | 15 Comments »

Patti Smith’s commitment to her art and her political views has always inspired me and this interview shows why she still continues to (not sure about the current album of covers in its own right, mind you).
And on [2004 album] Trampin’, there’s this song called “Radio Baghdad”. It’s from the point of view of a [...]

Filed under: Music | Tagged: inspiration, Patti Smith | 3 Comments »

Those of you accustomed to thinking of Gaia as the holistic, green theory of planetary interdependence created by James Lovelock are in for a shock.
Gaia Online is one of a range of social networking sites aimed at children and teenagers and the business model is intriguing if you’re a parent - draw your kids into [...]

Filed under: marketing, parenting, teenagers | Tagged: Gaia, MySpace, social networking | 5 Comments »

Today, we went shopping with dudelet for a new duvet.  He’s been constantly throwing it off him, getting it wrapped round his feet and generally giving us a lot of disturbed nights.  Basically, it was designed for a cot and is way too small for a bed.
He was…sufficiently well-behaved considering that he generally treats department [...]

Filed under: parenting | Tagged: duvets, stickers | 14 Comments »

I’m in mourning.  Yesterday, I took two steps out of the office, slipped my sunglasses out of the shirt pocket they’d resided in for perhaps ten minutes and flipped them open.
A lens fell out. It broke into about eight piece on the paving stone at my feet.  I picked them up and dropped them and [...]

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Powerbook, shallowness, sunglass | 12 Comments »

…what a brilliant idea. Great writing and horrible content elsewhere, mind. But that’s just my bleeding heart liberal prejudice for all things Republican, reptillian and otherwise.
Edit: Or it would be if the site wasn’t down (Edit edited: site is now back up!). Summary - a 5×3 to-do list with three entries and [...]

Filed under: random | Tagged: Republican Party Reptiles, time management, to do lists | 4 Comments »

What can we gather about a country’s government’s attitudes to the sanctity of human life from the way it frames and enforces its laws?
I’m in the middle of Lawrence Lessig’s (a man who single-handedly justifies the existence of lawyers as a race) “Free Culture“, more of which later. But given the appalling tragedy unfolding [...]

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: gun control, Lawrence Lessig, Virginia Tech | 13 Comments »

“Kung fu cuisine”. Snapped outside a bar in Whitechapel a hundred yards or so from the haunts of Jack the Ripper.
Now pub food can be dangerous but this is ridiculous.

Filed under: random, toddler | Tagged: food, photo | 3 Comments »