kahunaburger

… Disney, please don’t screw this one up, otherwise you are going to erase one my cherished childhood memories (image link below brings you to a trailer).

My main router (Netgear’s FVS338) has a feature that allows for the reservation of IP addresses, which means that even if a device is configured to use DHCP, it will get the same ip address every time it asks for a “dynamic” address. I use that feature to group similar devices and make sure that I know at which address they will reside. Earlier today I ran into a situation where 2 devices claimed the same IP address (because of operator error) and one of them did not work correctly. Things are fixed now, but I do need to stop adding more stuff: almost 20 devices seems to be a bit over the top for a single person household (and there are some missing from that list) …

This is a 6-y/o checking her email on her iPod Touch in the bedroom …

Checking Email I

Checking Email II

Whenever I see Christina, she hands me a bag with some baked goods. This is good and bad at the same time. Good, because I can feel like I’m back in Europe for a little while. And bad, because I have a tendency to devour everything she gave me within a very short amount of time. If you want to feel like I do, go give Christina a call …

Bread! BREAD!

PS: That loaf on the left was half gone minutes after I took the photo …

Pia went to a 9-week skiing class and enjoyed it a lot. A few weeks ago when I picked her up from class, I took my camera with me and snapped a few shots. She did not know that I brought the camera and she did not know where I was when I waited for her class to end. On the last run I caught her coming down the mountain. From the distance I snapped this before she realized who was taking photos of her:

Micro Smile I

Then she discovers who’s taking photos of her and I get the tiniest micro smile (that only a parent can detect), because she does not want to show her excitement in front of the other kids. So cute:

Micro Smile II

Holy cow! That’s one monster of a Flash Application (3d and live streaming included): http://www.ificandream.com/.

on vimeo: http://www.vimeo.com/9194146 (it’s for Tostitos “Frito Lay Dips”)

Those who ever created Flash content will appreciate it even more.

All lonely in front of the computer? Need some company? How about ten minutes of chirping birdies trying to eat all the seeds that I accidentally spilled while filling the bird feeder (I usually don’t feed them on top of wet snow)? Enjoy! And wait a little while, there will be lots of birds … I promise.

… “Stay away from companies who spent a long time designing their error pages!”

I’m on a never-ending quest to cook something interesting, simple and quick for Pia and I whenever she’s here with me.

Recently I stumbled across Martha Stewart’s “Dinner Tonight” series and I have to admit that there are a lot of kid-friendly and good recipes on the site. I even signed up for their once-a-weekday email that sends you suggestions and we have cooked quite a lot of them already.

Just two days ago we had company (including two more kids) and I opted for the Mini Meatloafs (pictured to the right), because they sounded yummy and very kid-friendly.

I ran out of Cheddar and used grated Asagio instead, which was a very good idea, because it gave the meat some extra flavor.

One of Pia’s Christmas presents was LeapFrog’s “Tag” Reading System.

The Reading System consists of two components: 1) The “Tag” reader/pen and 2) one or more special books that can be used with the reader. The kit I ordered came with Dr. Seuss’ classic “The Cat in the Hat”. At the same time I ordered a few more books to keep her interested.

After installing the batteries, we had to connect the pen via USB cable to a PC and download the book contents to the pen’s Flash memory. According to the manufacturer, the pen can hold up to 10 books at the same time. Besides the USB connector, the pen also has an on/off switch, volume controls and a headphone socket.

Pen in hand, book in front of you and you can get started. I’m still not sure how the technology actually works, but the pen seems to “read” encoded information using infrared light. That information is invisible to the human eye. Point the pen at any word in a book and it will slowly pronounce that word for you. Dragging the pen across a sentence will slowly read word after word.
Pia read through all her books that way, really picked up some new words and was able to recognize them in other (non-LeapFrog) books.

Besides reading at your own pace, the device offers a number of other modes. One of them just reads the whole book to you (almost like listening to an audio book) and it seems to be Pia’s least interesting option, because instead she would rather have me read the book to her. What she does like is the “games mode”, where each book offers several different games. For “The Cat in the Hat”, for example, she has to find as many drawings of the hat as quickly as possible.

All this is also tied into a rewards system. Read a complete book, find more than 10 hats and other actions unlock rewards that are associated with a book. The pen will notify the kid when a new reward has been unlocked and suggests to connect the pen to the computer to find out what the reward is. Sometimes it’s add-on material (printable bookmarks, coloring pages, etc.) and sometimes it is an interactive (Flash) game that she can play on the PC.

To round it all off, parents also get a detailed view at how a child is using the system. The LeapFrog website has a “Learning Path” section that provides that information. The pen seems to keep track of every action a child has taken since the last time it was connected to the PC. That information is uploaded to LeapFrog’s website, analyzed and presented in a number of different ways to parents. On the front page of “Learning Path” I saw this today:

You can drill down a lot more and find very detailed information about your kids progress (or non-progress). I have no idea how sound that information is from an academically point of view, but it appears as if they (LeapFrog) did spend some time on the system. Granted the same information can be used for very targeted advertising, but I’m ok with that under those circumstances.

The Pia Score on the “Tag” Reading System: A

I had a bit of an anniversary yesterday: kahunaburger received post 1000. The screenshot above shows the Wordpress Dashboard, which confirms that I crossed that milestone. Given that I started in June 2002 that makes an average of 11 entries per month. Or one every three days. Pretty lazy …

Just when you thought you’ve seen everything, another gadget shows up.

Pictured on the right is Withings’ Body Scale. As the name suggests, this thing is a scale. As the name also suggests, it connects wirelessly to your home network and uploads your current weight to a number of different web sites. That allows you to perfectly track and analyze your weight.

It’s also smart enough to distinguish between multiple users in your home. Besides weight it also calculates your BMI.

It’s 2010 and there are still developers out there who don’t know which characters are allowed in an email address. The “+” sign IS a valid character! And I use it! Regularly!
Whenever I have to sign up for something, I usually use my gmail address. Gmail is nice enough to route an email like username+something@gmail.com to the same inbox as username@gmail.com. This allows you to “tag” emails and figure out who sent them. If I were to signup for myspace with tobias+myspace@gmail.com and myspace decides to sell my email address for some ad-campaign, I could easily find that out.
However there are tons of places (facebook pictured above) that do not know that “+” is allowed … argh!

“I Love You, Man” is actually pretty funny except for the sappy ending.