Fraser's News

Brief Hiatus

2011-08-15T10:31:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

Won't be posting while my sister and family are here visiting. Will resume (with storys of wongventures) once they have returned home.

Day one of our full house has gone nice and smooth though. Kids all get along well.

Mainau - Part 2

2011-08-12T01:17:00.000-07:00

Giant floral sculptures continued along the island as you can see here with these enormous ducks. I enjoy a good huge duck when I can find one. As you can see from the crowd, this location seems to be particularly popular with buses full of pensioners.

We started to walk a tour around the island which took us past a wide variety of garden types. I quite liked the "weinberg" which was a nice little vineyard on a hill. I thought the little tower and path had a sort of storybook quality to it.

This little building is the post office for the island. Since there are no residents on Mainau, I think it is just there now for the novelty of having a postmark from there. It was a funny little building though and certainly a lot of people were taking photos of it along with me.

Here are Mum and Liam posing alongside busts of the founders/original patrons of the island. I think it is unusual to have a statue that is wearing glasses. I even take mine off for photographs (vanity and fear of flash reflections.)

Last photo for today is the large rose garden that was immediately next to the post office. Quite big and there seemed to be some sort of private event taking place. It was a fancy reception of some kind, but did not quite look fancy enough for a wedding. I would venture a guess that this is a popular place to have weddings since there is quite good photo opportunities all over the place.

Mainau - Part 1

2011-08-11T02:00:00.000-07:00

Back in June, when the sun was still shining here and my mother was over for a visit, we went down to Lake Constance and visited the island of Mainau.

Mainau is a little place on the lake that is devoted to extravagant gardens and a big butterfly sanctuary. The perfect place for a mum-trip (with good weather) Also, lots of nice pram friendly walking paths.

After parking on the mainland we bought our tickets to the park and walked across the two short bridges it takes to get to the island. Since the weather was pretty good, there were quite a lot of people and buses of tour groups were arriving pretty steadily.

One of the first things you see when reaching the island is a 10 foot tall flower sculpture in the shape of the islands mascot/logo. At least, there is a cartoon version of this on all of their marketing materials. It was pretty impressive to see it in giant flower form, although part of me thought it looked a bit like an over-friendly triffid.

Like most parks with water, there were many ducks. Liam the animal lover found some right away and had to make every effort to get as close as possible to them. I think in his mind all animals deep down want to be hugged by him. We are always having to explain that animals mostly just want to be left alone and maybe do some snacking. Quite a lot like me actually.

The next impressive floral display was a huge peacock. This was about 15 feet across at the back and you can see I struggled to get the whole image in frame. Does this count as topiary? I am not sure if that applies only to hedges or if floral sculptures also fit the category. At any rate, it was a nice big flowery bird.

And right next to the flowery peacock was a nice shady bench and pool with a peacock fountain. I am a big fan of fountains in general and I can't really say why. It looks like it's somehow genetic though since Liam also enjoys them. There is something that is just fun about a nice water display.

More to come in the next post! It's a big park.

Henrik's progress

2011-08-10T02:32:00.000-07:00

Henrik is of course developing a little more slowly that a normal kid would and has weekly sessions of physiotherapy to help build up his muscles. He is now 15 months old and still can not sit up on his own, crawl or really even drag himself along.

He can however roll like a champion. Especially since we returned from holiday, we have noticed that he is pretty much a rolling speed demon. Last week I had to install all the baby gates at stair locations to ensure we don't have him rolling himself right to the emergency room. Funny enough, the therapist says there does not seem to be too great a reason that should not be dragging himself (robben auf Deutsch) or even crawling, he is just too lazy to do so when he is having a good time with all the rolling.

Among his favorite toys is this trapeze thing, that he likes to drag all over the room.

But here is Claudia doing some sitting up exercises with him. When you help him get there, he can sit up with both arms propping him up. Claudia tells me that last week he also held himself up with only one arm while using the other to play with a toy, but I have not managed to see that in person yet.

He can even maintain this keeling position, all ready to crawl if the lazy bones would just get to it....

I am sure that at some point Henrik will realize that added mobility can open up whole new realms of fun, but its slow going and all we can do is encourage him. You can't force a baby to do your bidding, otherwise he would already be bringing me snacks as I recline on the couch.

Here is a final video of some Henrik moves. Not his best rolling, but it gives an idea of his technique and there are some smiles in there, which are always a pleasure.

The new king of inline

2011-08-09T00:40:00.000-07:00

One of Liam's big birthday wishes this year was to get rollerblades. I am not sure what turned him on to the idea, but he had been talking about inline skates for months before his birthday. Funny enough, we had offered to get him some for his birthday the year before and again at Christmas, but he was not interested. One morning whatever magic switch that lives in Liam's brain flipped and he then knew that skating was the route to happiness.

So, we got him a nice pair of blades that will expand for the next couple of years as he grows and all of the appropriate safety gear. Of course he had to try on everything right away to make sure it was as awesome as the fantasy.

Clearly he was a pretty proud guy. Sadly, the day he got them was pouring rain and we could not take them out for a spin. Our house is not nearly big enough for indoor roller blading, so he had to be content with standing and smiling at them for a little while.

The weather did clear up later in the week and the ground dried out enough to go for our first lesson. At the end of our street is a tiny dead end road that is flat and empty. It is pretty newly paved so its also nice and smooth to roll along.

For the first outing, I taught him how to stand and roll along, and we just did some laps back and forth on the road with me holding his hand. I was pretty satisfied with his progress, and by the end of the session, he would hold my hand for one direction and then go on his own for the other. Very adventurous for Liam. Of course there were quite a few spills, but he did not get discouraged and was right back on his feet after every fall. The safety gear was quickly broken in.

After about an hour, his ankles got tired and we called it a day. He did keep at it though, and now he is scooting around the neighbourhood with his friends that can also skate. He has told me that he wants to play hockey, so when he is stable on his skates, I think I will get him a bigger stick and we can give that a try.

Wrapping up the vacation

2011-08-05T01:54:00.000-07:00

Well, I think I have covered our holiday pretty thoroughly now... So I will wrap it up with some final images of the island that I liked.

All in all it was a very nice vacation and I would certainly go back to the north sea for a future holiday.

Garden Shark

2011-08-04T05:28:00.000-07:00

Walking along a nice residential street, Liam yelled out suddenly that he saw a shark. I thought he was just talking a lot of his usual nonsense, but he then pointed this out to me.

A rather interesting display...

Garden decorations are pretty popular here, I think the garden gnome is of German origin. You can usually see some pretty spectacularly tacky displays of gnomes, castles, windmills and whole farming scenes. I think I could devote an entire blog to horrible garden displays in and around the Stuttgart area.

I have never seen a shark before though. I think if this was my yard, and I had already decided to go the shark-route I would spice it up with some bloody gnome limbs, or maybe a head peeking out of the mouth. Now that I think of it, I think it would be an excellent prank to sneak into this yard at night and add a head or arm into the sharks mouth.

The Borkum Feuerschiff

2011-08-03T01:24:00.000-07:00

On a not so nice weather day, we thought Liam would enjoy going to have a look at the "fire ship." This is a decommissioned fire dept rescue ship that now serves as a museum. There are some exhibits showing the environment and wildlife of the island along with some rooms showing how the boat used to operate.

Liam likes all forms of transport. Trains are still the absolute favorite, but boats are pretty high up the list as well. The fact that it was a FIRE ship just raised the level of awesome in his eyes. He was especially interested to point out the anchor to me.

Of course, it would not be a great visit if he was not allowed to get behind the wheel of the boat. At some point of the trip he had already advised us he planned a career driving the ferry. He has since returned to the main career path of future train driver, but I think he got to live a bit of his fantasy here. I think he looks quite nautical.

Borkum - Segway Scooters

2011-08-02T02:20:00.000-07:00

One day in Borkum, we were walking down to the beach, when we were suddenly passed by a trio of segway drivers. I had actually never seen a segway in person before that moment, and even as a lifelong geek I have to say they looked pretty lame. They were not particularly fast and I really dont know why I would choose a segway over a bicycle... A bike seems to be better in every possible way and if I am too lazy to pedal, an e-bike would be cooler than this thing.

I took this picture of them as they drove by and I thought it made a nice image of old vs new. I also like the look of incredulity that the old folks on the bench are giving the scooter drivers.

OK, so I think they would be lame as something to own and use regularly, I will say that they would probably fun to have a ride on. For one of the first times every, this was a piece of technology that seemed to interest Claudia more than me. She found them "fun" enough looking to investigate them. In addition to being ubernerdy, they are expensive. On the island, the rental of one was running around 30 euro an hour. They don't look nearly that much fun.

Borkum Vacation - New Light House

2011-08-01T00:46:00.000-07:00

A very prominent feature of the island is the new light house. It stands directly in the middle of the town and still functions. I think the marine traffic use the even newer, radio lighthouse and GPS more for navigation, but there is something particularly nice about a regular lighthouse.

Since visitors are allowed to walk to the top, we had to do this. Unfortunately the weather was pretty grey and crappy on the day we went up. This photo of the lighthouse exterior is from two days earlier when it was much nicer out.

Of course going up a lighthouse means lots and lots of winding stairs. Claudia and Henrik went to look in some more pram friendly shops while Liam and I braved the steps. I was asked quite a few times if it was much farther to the top. It was not really that many in my opinion, but Liam is a lazy bones.

At the top of the winding staircase, there is a ladder to navigate to get to the final top level of the lighthouse. By now, Liam was pretty tired of climbing, but also excited to get a look outside.

Here you can see the lovely grey cloudy sky that was present at the time. This is the view back in the direction of our apartment and the radio lighthouse. We could not see far enough to get a look ant neighbouring islands due to the fog, but we could see all of Borkum relatively well.

Another look at the town. Population 5000 residents, and about 200,000 vacationers per year.

The beach huts looked like toys to me from up there.

A lot of the time at the top of the lighthouse was spent searching for Claudia and Henrik. Liam really wanted to see what they would look like "as tiny people" but try as we did, we could not locate them.

Borkum Vacation - Wattenmeer (The Mud Flats)

2011-07-29T02:57:00.000-07:00

The Island of Borkum is located on the "Wadden Sea" which as wikipedia has informed me is an intertidal zone in the south eastern part of the north sea. There are extensive mud flats between the island and the mainland (watt) and Wattwandern (Mud hiking) is a popular recreational activity.

We singed up with a tour to take in some of the nature and see what the mud had to offer. It was not the most beautiful day, but not pouring rain either. It was cool and windy, so we were dressed for the possibility of rain, but in shorts as well to enjoy walking on the sea bed.

The area we did the hike on is underwater at high tide, so you have to schedule the excursion for the appropriate time of day. There is also some quite dangerous zones of quicksand and sudden drop offs, to it is best to have an experienced guide lead you.

Here is the start of the walk. It is pretty clear where the mud flat begins...

Here are some photos of Claudia and the kids at the start of the tour. We are not cold or wet yet, so there are plenty of smiles.

We would walk along the flat and every few minutes the guide would give us some facts and show us some feature. Usually we were all gathered in a circle around the object of discussion. Here we had just been told all about mussels, which we gathered up, had a look at and then replaced on the mud to watch quickly burrow back into the sand. It was pretty interesting how quickly they dug their way in. I never thought of shellfish as being quick before.

A little farther along, we saw this fellow. Liam thought he was a pretty neat little friend. Not cuddly enough to want to bring him home with us though. Mr Pinchy.

It was a fun experience and I would recommend it to anyone finding themselves up on the coast. Bring a rain/windproof jacket though, definitely an essential piece of kit. Here is a last pick of the mudwalkers just before returning to the warm dry comfort of our apartment for lunch.

Comments Turned on.... For now

2011-07-28T08:47:00.001-07:00

I have re-opened comments by anyone for the moment. If it becomes a spam managing exercise I will turn them back off.

I welcome and enjoy any comments to posts you may have.

Borkum Holiday - Seal Watching

2011-07-28T01:56:00.000-07:00

One day when the weather was sunny and nice (although a little cool and windy,) We decided to go on a seal watching walk. This was something for just Liam and I as Henrik was not a big fan of being out in the strong winds. Liam on the other hand had been talking about seals non stop for days already.

The walk started from the town centre, which is just a few steps from the north beach. A crowd started to gather around the tour leader. What looked like a small group at first ended up with about 40 people by the time all had arrived.

The leader of the tour was a local fellow who was also a national park guide. We had already done a tour of the mud flats (Wattenmeer) with him and thought he was very good. He gave some amusing stories about the history of the island and told us a lot about the animals that we would see.

As you can see, Liam was pretty wound up with the prospect of seeing some real live seals. I had my fingers crossed at this point that he would not be disappointed. I knew in his mind he was going to be jumping in the middle of a big group of seals and then hugging and patting them. I was trying to get him to understand we would be looking at them from a distance and they were wild animals.

After a long long walk, we finally came to the beach of seals. There was a little fence marking the line that we could not cross, giving the seals their own private beach. We could see lots of them lounging about, with this group being the closest and easiest to photograph. Liam also thought the seagull was pretty exciting.

Then, Liam made an exciting discovery and raced over to check something out...

A baby seal was sleeping on the beach just an arms length from the fence. This became the highlight of the trip and was all Liam could talk about for a long long time. He was a pretty cute Seal, but clearly very sleepy.

He did wake up with a big yawn, which was also super cure of course.

Followed by a nice look at his little seal face. It was a great effort to keep Liam from jumping the fence and bringing him home with us. He was pretty sure that the seal would like to live in our bathtub, where we could feed him many fish apparently.

After some moments, the seal grew bored with us and rolled over for some more nap.

All in all a fine seal walk that lived up to expectations. Aside from not getting a new pet, I think Liam was very satisfied with the seal experience.

Borkum Holiday - The Beach

2011-07-26T01:48:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about the place we rented is that it was on the last street of the island before the beach. In fact, the beach was about 50m from our door, something we took advantage of right away since the sun was shining.

The North Sea is pretty well known for these striped baskets/tents that are set up all over every beach. The area is often very windy, so you need a nice sheltered base established to enjoy some nice quiet beach time.

Although it was only 22 degrees on the first day, it felt a lot warmer and the beaches were pretty full of folks in swimwear. Liam had never been to a big beach before and he was pretty excited with the whole idea of it. He really did not care about the water at all and just wanted to run around the sand for the longest time. Eventually he discovered the joy of digging holes near the waterline and watching waves come fill them in. That was a real party.

In this picture you can see the dune covered with shrubbery. That is all that separated our house from the beach. One road and one hill with some shrubs. Can't ask for a better location really...

Another attraction of the beach was this trampoline area. A large fenced in area with 4x5 grid of trampolines for kids to go crazy. Liam really wanted to do this, but then he suddenly forgot all about it in favour of playing in the sand and water. It was funny that he never came back to the idea of trampolining, but that can always be a future activity for another trip I suppose.

The beach near us was the "south" beach, which was the smaller of the two on the island, despite the fact it was about 2km long. The north side of the island had the large beach, which was easily 3x the size of the smaller one. It took up the entire north coast of the island. It was also divided into massive zones. The bathing zone, the windsurfing zone, the dog friendly zone and kite flying zone. There was also the naked suntanning zone, but we did not check that part out.

Below is a panorama of the bathing zone.

Back on our tiny beach, here is a nice image of the radio lighthouse. Liam and I both really liked the look of this.

Finally, here is a rare photo of me. Captured on the promenade overlooking the north beach. Liam is sporting his Peter Puck hat, a current favorite that I approve of.

Borkum Vacation - The Accomodation

2011-07-25T02:14:00.000-07:00

One of the more difficult challenges to the North Sea vacation was finding a nice, available place to rent. We had waited fairly late in the planning and found that many many of the places that looked nice were not available in the time we wanted.

The apartment we finally rented was actually one of the first we found, but had put to the side as being perhaps a tiny bit more expensive than we wanted. It was not crazy or anything, but we thought we could shop around and find a deal. A couple of things became apparent;

1) in a place as tiny as Borkum, all places cost the same per square metre
2) During peak holiday season, almost everything is booked.

I think in the end we were lucky that the place we decided on was still available two days later when we were done comparison shopping.

As previously shared, here is the outside view of the house. it is a bigger house, with 6 holiday apartments, three downstairs and three upstairs, all with their own entrance. we had the upper floor one on the left.

The walkway was very nice with some flowery shrubs. who doesn't love a shrub?

Then a stair climb up the back brought us to the entrance to our place. A long set of stairs in back of the house.

Inside a short walk down the hall took us to the livingroom and dining/kitchen. The whole place was about 64 sqm, which was plenty large enough for our needs. We were happily surprised with how nice the place was. Spotlessly clean and decorated with lots of nautical theme. There was almost no surface without some sort of lighthouse, beach or sea motif on it. There was a flatscreen tv, stereo and DVD player as well for the inevitable rainy periods of the north.

Bedrooms were a good size, It looks a little cramped in this photo, but that is a product of my poor photography skills more than anything else. It was larger than our bedroom at home, but we do have a tiny one in our own house. At home we gave the big rooms to the kids

.The boys were room mates for the week, with Liam getting a huge bed for himself and Henrik having a baby bed down at the foot of Liam's. It was also comfortable and cozy.

So, that covers the accommodation on the island. Like I said, we were 100% satisfied with the place both from the inside of the flat as well as its location (50m from a beach.) If we decide to go back to Borkum on another vacation, I would absolutely consider renting the same place again.

The trip to Borkum

2011-07-22T00:53:00.000-07:00

Last week we had this year's family vacation. We went to the North Sea island of Borkum this year. My first trip to the north of Germany. We decided on Borkum after a discovery on google maps that the coast was a reasonable 6 hour drive. This was closer than we thought it would be and decided to give this destination a chance.

I did not take any photos of the drive there, but I can sum it up with "bland." Between our town and Emden where the ferry is located, it is pretty much uninterrupted highway driving. Just a long flat road with trees along the sides for six hours. No exciting scenery, and it was a pretty boring drive. Once we arrived at the ferry, the party started. Liam had been looking forward to riding on a boat with the car for a while and he was pretty satisfied with the look of the harbour. We pulled into the queue and waited for loading on the boat.

The boys were very very good for the car ride there. We had left Entringen at 5am to make our ferry and they had slept for a good portion of the journey. They have both always been very good car travellers, and there were no complaints. Here you see after 6+ hours, they still look jolly as we wait on the ferry.

After getting loaded on the ferry, we went upstairs and found a nice spot on the deck. It was a nice sunny day, so sitting out on the boat was a pleasure. Henrik is in the mighty "ERGOBABY" carrier and having a fun time and this is one of the few moments that Liam was sitting still. He was running all over the boat in a frenzy of excitement.

With typical German efficiency, the ferry horn blew right on time and we pulled away from the gates and headed out on the 2.5 hour boat ride to the island.

At first the ride was nice, and we enjoyed looking at the giant boats in the harbour and the many many windmills along the coast. After a while it became quite windy and cool and we went below to the cafe to ride the rest of the way.

Off the ferry and a 6km drive along the island took us to our holiday apartment. Next update I will venture inside there. On the whole, the trip there went perfectly, no problems related to kids, cars, traffic or other potential hazards.

Futuromelon

2011-07-21T00:10:00.000-07:00

I was recently in the grocery (Kaufland) and I saw this in the produce section. I am not sure if this is just a Germanization of an existing fruit, or the real name of a melon.

In any case I thought it was an amusing name and all I could think about all day was melons from the future, sent back to our time for summer enjoyment. Either that or perhaps they are melons that will send you into the future by consuming them, or perhaps eating this melon allows you to see into the future.

I will test the latter theory by eating an entire melon and then playing the lottery. If things go well, I will be able to afford many many more melons.

Why even bother with presents?

2011-07-20T00:42:00.000-07:00

I think its a pretty well known fact that little kids end up playing with the packaging more than the gifts inside. \

This is absolutely true with Henrik as well. Here I made a rather long film of him enjoying some paper that wrapped a nice birthday gift. I no longer recall what the gift was and I am pretty sure that Henrik did not play with it as much as this piece of paper.

This love of paper extends well beyond gift wrap. On the rare occasions that we find ourselves in a restaurant, we can keep Henrik happy and quiet by giving him a menu to amuse himself. At our own meals, a placemat will keep him busy through most meals. If he finds his way to Claudia's purse and gets his hands on a package of tissues, it is party time.

If you can stick through the relatively long film, you will also be treated to seeing some of Henrik's sweet rolling moves.

Cool Baby

2011-07-19T00:43:00.000-07:00

back from vacation now, with many many many photos to get through. I still need to have a look at them and get organized. In the meantime, check out Henrik with sunglasses on.

They are Liam's sunglasses,but we put them on Henrik for a laugh. For me anyway that was accomplished.

Still on vacation

2011-07-15T01:16:00.000-07:00

OK, I know it is a cheap out to post updates like this in advance, but look at this happy fellow and think of him enjoying a similar couch at the north sea.

I am sure that I look much more tired than this right now.

On Vacation

2011-07-13T01:15:00.000-07:00

Just because I am on vacation does not mean the site has to be empty. Here is a smiling Henrik

Off on Vacation

2011-07-12T01:08:00.000-07:00

We are off to the North Sea island of Borkum for the week. Back on Tuesday the 19th, hopefully with some nice holiday photos.

New School Bag

2011-07-11T00:58:00.000-07:00

Liam will start school in September and he got some school preparation gifts already for his birthday. All German kids have the same style of special school bag (Schulranzen) which is apparently ergonomic and perfect and german engineered blah blah blah every kid has one.

Anyhow, like most things, you can get any style/graphic on it you can imagine, from plain solid colours to licensed versions from Star Wars, Bugs Bunny or whatever. We wanted to get one that Liam would be fine with for a few years, nothing that was a fickle trend for him now.

Interestingly, Liam wanted one with a map of the world on it, so we went ahead with that one. Here is the proud schoolboy modelling it for us.

Henrik's Birthday - Part 2

2011-07-08T00:09:00.000-07:00

The other big part of the birthday was of course gifts. There was a nice group of packages waiting for the birthday boy on the big day.

Like every one year old, Henrik really had no idea what was going on. He did notice the boxes when we put him on the floor near them, but naturally he treated them like any other strange object in his domain. He poked one or two then rolled off to do something else.

What he needed was a helper to unwrap the gifts. Lucky for him, big brother Liam is an expert gift unwrapper.

Among the gifts, the one that sparked the most initial interest was the spinning top. Naturally Henrik could not operate it on his own, but he was very interested in it while in operation. He particularly liked to knock it over and then yell at it. The novelty of this toy lasted quite a while and we did a lot of spinning that morning.

Of course, the toy that probably gave the most pleasure to Henrik on this occasion was the wrapping paper. This is also a universal truth that babies love wrapping paper. I think he would have happily rolled around the floor shaking it and waving it around.

Basically every gift occasion ends up with Henrik playing mostly with paper and empty boxes.

Extra Post.... hands on with new webOS devices HP Veer, Pre3 and Touchpad

2011-07-07T02:14:00.000-07:00

So I just came back from the webOS hands on in my office and I remain as big a fan of the products as ever. I got to touch and play with the HP Veer, Pre3 and Touchpad. My brief impressions of each:

HP Veer:

Build quality is very good, better than I was expecting. It feels slightly firmer than the Pre2 as a slider and there is almost no "wiggle" between the two parts of the phone. It is small. absurdly small. I have childlike tiny hands and I still found the thing to be tiny. The keyboard is surprisingly easy to type on given that it is so very tiny, I was just using thumb tips and it went quite ok. I can not imaging doing any long text entry on it, but for a couple of words/URLs it would be fine.

the screen is small enough that I found it difficult to navigate with touch gestures. I was trying out the maps application and I found pinching in and out to zoom to be a little awkward. Readability was fine for things like email and calendar and the tinyness of the phone really would make it great to carry around in pocket. I could even see applications like the GPS exercise mapping app jogstats being better on this device as its so easy to carry around. Using it as a mobile hotspot would also be pretty sweet.

Performance was fast and I found scrolling and navigation with the device to be very responsive, night and day compared with my Pixi Plus. Overall, I would say its an interesting phone for someone who values portability and is not a heavy user. Claudia would probably like it.

I did not take a photo of it myself, but here is an image from the web.

HP Pre3:

Next up I tried the Pre3.

I have to say I have been very interested in this phone since I first saw previews of it back in Feb and I remain frustrated that there have still been no announcements for availability or pricing. Even though I work at the company, no one could give me a hint of info.

The Pre3 is so much the phone for me.... it was awesome. It met all my expectations and I am convinced that I will be getting one of these as close to launch day as possible. Please HP, give me a good discount...

Build quality was amazing. Zero wiggle on the slider mechanism and it felt super tight through the whole range of motion. The phone is just a little larger than the Pre2, but it is exactly the right amount. It was comfortable to hold, both open and closed and felt great. It is fairly much the same size and shape as an iPhone, but more rounded. Here is a blurry photo of me holding it.

The keyboard is just enough bigger than the Pre2's to feel comfortable to type longer texts and I would have no problem composing a long email on this device. I was also very pleased that the sharp edged lip around the keyboard that was on the Pre and Pre2 was gone and there was no discomfort in holding the phone.

The operating system was super fast and responsive. There were not too many apps loaded on the phone, so I was only able to play around with the stock webOS ones. Not much different than the current crop of standard phone apps, but they all ran great.

Surfing on the browser was super fast and responsive and the screen size was great. Not the best website example below due to all the white space, but hey, there was a queue waiting to have a turn on the phone.

I can't stress enough how much I liked this phone and I fully intend to have one soon. Come on HP, release this.

HP Touchpad:

This one is the "big sexy" that HP is talking about these days. The Touchpad tablet device. I was a little nervous to try this out as I had read mostly lukewarm reviews for it so far. complaints about lagginess and slow response is a recurring theme in the write ups I have read from engadget, slashgear, BGR, etc... but I wanted to see for myself.

The tablet looks nice, very much like an iPhone 3Gs blown up to 10 inches. the black plastic curved back felt good in the hand and it was a lot heavier than I was expecting. The screen looked nice and I thought the responsiveness was good. If I have a complaint, it would be that the sensitivity on the sensor to change screen orientation was too high and I found that it changed from portrait to landscape with the slightest tilt. I locked the orientation so I could play around with it and I think that is something I would feel is needed to do in everyday use.

Tablets for me represent a sort of question mark as to where they would fit in my daily routine. I have a laptop and I have a smartphone, why would I need something in the middle? I have played around with the iPad and now the touchpad and I have to say I still feel this way. It was pretty neat and fun to use, but for me was essentially a more portable web browser and email checker. Given that the cost of them is around 500 euro, I still don't see the need for one in my life. It is a fun toy, but felt like a toy.

Henrik's Birthday - Part 1

2011-07-07T00:13:00.000-07:00

Henrik reached a major milestone recently and celebrated his first birthday. It has been a year full of ups and downs and Henrik has been a tremendous joy to us over the past year. I think you can sum up his personality pretty much by saying "happy." As most of my pictures of him show, he is a super jolly baby, laughing and smiling most of the day.

So, the celebration of his first year with us involved a lovely cake made by Claudia.

Of course, not having any teeth yet limited Henrik's enjoyment of this, so he went with fruit puree instead. I think its clear that he enjoys it every bit as much as we enjoyed the cake.

Another important aspect of baby birthdays is that Claudia likes nothing better than dressing up babies like sailors. She did it with Liam, and now Henrik as well. You can see from the smile that he does not mind in the least.

So, a wonderful year with a super baby, lets hope the next year will cover exciting new developments like teeth, sitting, standing, pre-school... lots and lots of adventures on the way.

Next post I will cover Henrik and his gifts.

Liam's First Fame

2011-07-06T00:33:00.001-07:00

Over here, there is a dedicated children's TV channel called Kinderkanal, which covers all of Liam's TV needs of an evening. One of the features that they have around dinnertime is called the tree house.

A feature on the show is for kids to send in artwork and then it is shown on the program. Liam of course wanted to do this for quite a long time and after a lot of thought, he chose something to draw and sent it in to the program.

After about 3 months, we had a telephone call one morning

from the tv station. They told us that Liam's drawing would appear on the show! To make things even better, Liam's drawing was not one that was just shown in the gallery, but was the one that the host had flown down on a little star and then he talked about it. It was pinned up on the big tree and then the host described it and talked about "Liam from Ammerbuch"

Liam had drawn a jungle scene, with a Giraffe, Antelope and Lion. You can see his signature in the lower left of the artwork.

We did not tell Liam in advance that the TV station had called us, we just made sure that he was watching the show when it came on. When they said his name and showed his picture he got more than a little excited to say the least.

The show also sent Liam a DVD of a cartoon about a zebra and his friends (Zigby) that Liam quite likes. He has now had his first taste of fame.

Bee horror

2011-07-05T00:06:00.000-07:00

Recently Liam was introduced to the terror of bees lurking in tall grass. The warm weather has brought sandal season to Entringen. Liam and his friends were out playing around in the lovely fields of clover and tall grass around our house when he managed to step on a bee. The bee naturally reacted poorly to this and gave him a nice big sting.

After a lot of noise and hopping, Liam struggled his way to the couch for treatment. His whole foot went red and balloon like and he developed some pretty ugly blisters on it. Luckily his friend's dad is a doctor and too a look at the balloon foot to reassure us there was nothing to worry about. Some cream was applied and the mega foot wrapped up.

Here is a look at the big ugly blisters, they went all the way around the toe like a lovely blister-ring. I think my photo also does not do justice to the red puffiness of the foot. It looked quite huge.

Return to the Blog

2011-07-04T06:33:00.000-07:00

After about a half year of no posts, I am going to try to get back into this Blog at the request of my adoring fans. Starting out slow, here is a nice photo of the Boys.

I just like the way they are looking at each other. I think one of the great pleasures that Liam has given me is his attitude towards Henrik. He has never shown the slightest jealousy for the new guy in the house and if anything is almost too loving and has to be held back a bit from him at times.

Henrik is clearly a fan of his big brother as well. Actually, Henrik is such an easy going jolly guy he is pretty much a fan of everything.

I dont know if I will return to my prolific levels of blogging of the past, but I will make an effort to get some regular posts up here again.

I do take requests if anyone wants to see anything in particular on here.

Business Trips are not glamorous

2011-01-10T04:25:00.001-08:00

Sometimes for my job I have to take a business trip. They are less and less frequent thankfully and I often opt out when I can. However, when I do go somewhere, it is usually to a place that sounds nice. Paris, Barcelona, etc. I know my wife has a totally different image in her head as to what a work trip is like.

I was fairly recently in Barcelona for a week, which sounds quite nice. Here are the realities.

1) the office is not IN Barcelona, it is in Sant Cugat. Which is a fair bit outside. Here are a few comparisons. Its like saying you are in Stuttgart when you are really in Böblingen. Or you are in Toronto when you are really in Brampton or even that you are in New York but are really in New Jersey.

2) flying many short connecting flights in economy on the cheapest possible airline ticket is not nice.

3) in Barcelona I stay at the hotel which is walking distance to work. about a 15 min walk in an industrial zone. I am not knocking the hotel, it is clean and relatively comofortable, but this is FAR from luxury:

My room is firmly decorated with Spain’s glorious history in mind:

and I would be remiss if I did not mention that the hotel is across the street from a power plant, offering delightful views… Picturesque Barcelona at its finest.

So, each morning, I wake up at the normal time, stroll over to the HP site, which is quite nice. But really just a typical factory site with some palm trees in front of the entrance.

It also seems that when in Spain, my head is even more massive than in germany. Look at the size of this melon in my skillful self portrait. When I am there, I am just staying someplace not as nice as my own home, and going to an office very similar to the one I see every day. There is nothing exciting or glamorous about business trips.

Happy New Year – random old photos

2011-01-03T04:45:00.001-08:00

Well, 2011 is here and I once again will try to do better with my posting… pre Christmas was busy and full of sick people, including myself.

I would also be lying if i did not admit I played a bunch of xbox and world of warcraft instead of updating the blog, but hey, its MY free time. you will take what you get and like it.

Here are some photos from our trip to Baiersbronn, where we went for cake at what was apparently one of the “50 best restaurants in the world.” Baiersbronn has more Michelin stars per capita than anywhere else on earth apparently. It was very good cake and the place was pretty posh.

Here is the fancy display full of cakes. As it is in the black forest, there was really no other choice for me than Black Forest Cake.Here is a nice looking slice of cake.Liam had a cheesecake, since he does not like black forest. You can also see some bits of Claudia here as I am far too lazy to crop the photo properly right now. MMMMMM cake.

Quick Post

2010-12-09T07:18:00.001-08:00

I am in a bad mood regarding work this week. So here is a funny photo to cheer me up. Double Kermit Party.

The board Game convention

2010-12-03T01:33:00.001-08:00

Well, that time of year rolled around again and a couple of weekends ago I headed off to the annual board game trade show. This year was a milestone in that I brought the rest of the family with me. There are a few shows on at the same time, this year with Babyworld, the model train and car show, board games, and home show all at once. I thought there should be something for everyone to enjoy here.

Of course, managing a hyper Liam made me have far few photos this time around.

We walked by the annual balloon animal section of the place and Liam quite liked it, but was not as thrilled as I am with balloon animals. This year the theme was China, so there were a lot of dragons and pandas.

Overall, the balloon display was not as impressive as in previous years. I thought that the huge scale of the animals was impressive, but the balloon creatures themselves did not wow me like prior years. Nothing as creative or funny as last years balloon chicken cooking on a ballon BBQ anyway.

Trip to Rittersport fabrikverkauf

2010-11-30T03:36:00.001-08:00

I had some colleagues visiting from Barcelona and India for the last couple of weeks, and since Friday was the last Day in Germany for them, we thought it would be nice to do something different for lunch.

Just down the road (18km) from my office is the factory/HQ of Rittersport Chocolate. You may have seen them in the shops, I think they are in most countries now. They are large square bars, with 16 little squares in each. There are lot of flavours to choose from.

So, we made the quick drive over to have a look. Sadly we could not do a factory tour since they need to be arranged in advance, but we did go for lunch in their very nice cafe. Afterwards we looked briefly at the “history of chocolate” display thing and passed on the chocolate museum out of time concerns.

Here is the factory as you can see it was a rather snowy and grey day. Photo quality is not ideal for any of these as they are all taken with my phone instead of a nicer camera.

The main reason to go of course was to head to the store. soooo much chocolate.

In addition to lots and lots of chocolate, they had gift things like shirts, footballs, hats, etc. We all brought back a good helping of chocolate to enjoy. Here is my Indian colleague with lots of “minis” to feed her department. I know that today in Bangalore there are a lot of happy office workers full of chocolate.

It was pretty great, I feel silly that I have lived here for 10 years and never made the 10 min drive over there. I will be making many more visits to stock up on chocolate now. so much for health and fitness.

The Fun of German Supermarkets.

2010-11-24T02:38:00.001-08:00

Something I always enjoy in countries other than the one I grew up in is experiencing the pleasure of the supermarket. Food that is a little different from what I am used to is great to see, and on occasion try. I am a fairly adventurous eater with only a couple of things I won’t try or I know I don’t like.

My quick list of foods I won’t eat at all are:

1) Curry

2) insects

3) anything with “blood” in the name

Otherwise it is pretty much fair game.

I was in our local supermarket a while ago and I came across this fantastic item on sale! The translation is not hard, but just in case, it says “3% cheaper! 1/2 a pig in two bags”

And that is exactly what you get. Half a pig in two huge bags. Pork in itself is absolutely not strange to me, but the presentation and the sign made me laugh….

I keep hoping that next week will be half a cow in four bags.

Space Hulk – Part 2

2010-11-19T04:24:00.000-08:00

Liam of course was bugging me about the game since he saw the little munchkins, and we had planned to play after he was in bed, but the excitement was too much for him. After about 10 min in bed, he strolled back down to have a look and whined until we let him sit and watch us play a little. I offered Ryan either side to play in this mission and he chose the aliens. I did let him know that I thought the game favoured the marine side fairly heavily and this being the introductory mission, was likely to be even more unbalanced, but he did not mind at all and went for it.

Oh, here is an example of a painted marine model. When I eventually do it, they will almost certainly look nothing like this. My skills are weak.I had read through the rules pretty thoroughly, but the first game is always a little slower as we get the hang of the game and its many mechanics, but it was not too bad. Ryan figured out the tactics of the aliens pretty quick and I think would have done much better if it was not for the ridiculous success I had rolling dice. Seriously, it was absurd the number of 6s I rolled against him.

I like this image because it looks like Liam is winning. It also looks like he is having a beer with his uncle. I promise its mine.

So, the goal of the Marines was to get the one guy with a flame thrower to a specific room and then set it on fire. I managed to do this without getting destroyed by Ryan and his alien forces. In what most people would say was a poor tactical move, I did fire the flamethrower into the room when my sergeant was still standing there, melting him to gooey slag heap. The mission objectives were reached though, so I am sure he was happy to make the sacrifice in the name of keeping Ryan’s Alien menace at bay.

Space Hulk is mine at last….

2010-11-18T04:52:00.001-08:00

So, I game I wanted to get for many years is called Space Hulk. This was around since the 1990s or so and was from Games Workshop, makers of some of my past favorite board games, such as Talisman. Anyway, this one was long out of print only to be reissued in 2009 by GW. Sadly it was well out of my price range, so I began trolling EBAY trying to pick it up on the cheap. After about 6 months or so of bidding, losing and frustration, I managed to get a copy that was missing 2 pieces for about 30 Euro. I thought that was fine as I would be able to replace the missing bits with some other GW models if I wanted to.

This is a game with a hefty number of bits. Here is what it would look like fresh out of a new box. However as mine was used, all the bits were punched out, the aliens assembled and a few of them even painted to a reasonable standard.

The premise of the game is essentially the same as the film “Aliens.” Heavily armed and armoured Space Marines are off to defend the universe from evil aliens called Genestealers. Each session of play is a “mission” defined by the rulebook which sets out objectives for the players controlling each of the sides. The board is modular and is built as defined by each mission.

The Marines are slow but very powerful, with big guns, cannons and flame throwers, and the aliens are fragile, but overpowering at hand to hand and very very fast. Also, the Marines are limited to 5-10 models and the alien player has unlimited reinforcements. The basic tactic is for the Marine player to try and keep a lot of space between him and the aliens to pick them off with guns, whereas the Genestealer player is trying to rush in and bite your face off.

I knew this was a game that was not really for Claudia, what with the guns and aliens and face biting. Liam is destined to love this, but it is a little beyond him now. The natural choice of opponent then would be Ryan. Claudia and Doris were planning to go out to see a show last weekend, so I invited Ryan over for some gaming. I set up the board for the first mission and placed the required gaming fuel (mmmm beer) on each side of the table. Everything was ready for the exciting first great space battle.

More to follow in part 2.

Henrik's New Hobby

2010-11-16T04:22:00.000-08:00

Henrik recently figured out how to do the wonderful activity of blowing raspberries. He does it all the time for long stretches. I find it very amusing and enjoy this thppppppppbbbb noise as much as he cares to do it.

Here is about a solid minute of raspberries:

Henrik is awesome. It is even funnier when he does this with a mouth full of food.

New Special Flavour Chips

2010-11-12T05:08:00.000-08:00

As anyone who knows me can confirm, I am a sucker for "limited edition" flavours of things. As soon as I see something strange on the grocery shelf(usually Chips), I have it in the shopping cart. In the past, this has led me to enjoy taste sensations such as:

Africa flavoured Chips

Turkey and Gravy Chips

Spicy Raclette Chips

Pepsi with Green Tea

Coke with Lemon

Beer flavoured Chips

Gum flavoured pop (worst ever)

and many many more that I don't even recall now.

This one caught my eye right away. Huett'n style chips, featuring a smiling Dirndl girl playing the accordion. I asked Claudia to translate Huett'n for me and she just said "you know, Huett'n" and laughed at them. I think its a reference to the mountain huts/inns that are all around the Allgau and Austria.

The chips themselves were really good. I would say the taste of Huett'n style is pretty much like the chips were cooked in a mild onion soup. Not overpowering at all, just a hint of onion and then maybe a sort of soup broth taste to them. I would absolutely eat these again.

Sensapolis part 3

2010-11-09T03:49:00.001-08:00

The next big attraction area is a giant space ship full of fun stuff. There are 3 decks of fun with games, learning, and slides and stuff for the wee astronauts. All of those tubes on the exterior of the ship are tunnels and slides.

The space ship main attraction is a big video game, where the players ride sort of space cycles and shoot at a big screen with a laser gun. The cycles for the bigger kids, move around with the video, but there are a couple of stationary ones as well for the smaller, less coordinated players like Liam.

eedless to say, he loved this. The game itself is very repetitive, first with some asteroids to shoot, followed by space pirates. The players are competing to get the most points by shooting the targets. As the smallest player, Liam did not quite get the hang of it, but he had super fun and played it a few times.

Elsewhere in the ship were some suspended animation/hibernation cabinets, which seemed to serve no other purpose other than tossing your kid in there for a photo. Now if they locked or really put the kid to sleep, I can see many many child care applications. There was some music inside though and Liam thought it was a blast running in and out of there.There was also a deck of the spaceship full of science and learning type exhibits about space and the planets, but it was a little too wordy-learny for Liam. He just wanted to run around and play. Reasonably so I must say. There was a shooting gallery that he enjoyed as well, where you were supposed to be fighting off boarding aliens or something, however Liam is a terrible shot and he got bored fast with that. I did not get a photo of it.

What was Henrik doing this whole time? napping and smiling of course. Claudia and I took turns going to play with Liam and minding the happy napper. There was also a nice obstacle course sort of climbing thing. You had to climb up pretty large towers, to an enclosed set of paths up in the roof to navigate. I liked this too.

That wraps up the trip to Sensapolis. I would absolutely head back there for a fun way to spend a rotten weather day.

if the Xbox Kinect works this way, I would get one right away.

2010-11-08T07:22:00.000-08:00

Thanks PennyArcade

Sensapolis - part 2

2010-11-04T04:52:00.000-07:00

OK, the next part of Sensapolis to be enjoyed was the castle.

This was smack right in the middle of the place. It was basically broken up into a bunch of themed rooms with stuff for the kids to mess around with, like most of the place. I thought it may be a little dull compared to the other action spots, but Liam really liked it.

Of course, he had to start off with a grand entrance and pose in front of the gates before storming in to take over the place. I think he looks pretty heroic here.

Then Liam got to live out his knight fantasy a little bit. There were a couple of sets of doors that let him look like a knight without all the effort of putting on armor.

Right next door was the ball room, and Liam had to try out the fabulous giant shoes.

Then after all the hard work of ruling a kingdom, the new royal settled down in his comfy chair to look out over the serfs. Me and Claudia.

The castle was a big hit with Liam. Despite the lack of action, he really liked running through all the different rooms and checking it all out.

I'm back.. and Sensapolis part 1

2010-11-03T07:24:00.000-07:00

So, I know it has been a long while since I have updated the site. But I have been very very busy with work and home and generally everything for a couple of months. I will try to get things rolling again now that November is here and my work schedule is theoretically improved.

One of the fun things we did this summer on a rainy day was go to the indoor fun park Sensapolis which is right by my office.

Essentially it is a massive warehouse full of activities for kids to do. The first image is a nice wide shot of the place from one direction.

Liam went nuts in here and I don't blame him. I have to say this was one of the most fun places to take a kid that I have gone to. The first thing we did was go to the area full of foam balls. Basically a room full of balls, with a scaffold five stories high surrounding it. From the scaffold, there is an air cannon every few feet that you can use to shoot balls at other folks. Liam would have stayed there all day. I will not lie, I had a great time trying to shoot other fathers in the head when they were not looking.

Right next to the ball zone is a climbing wall with a bunch of different routes for different skill levels. Liam was too small for this, but I could see Claudia's eyes lighting up as something she would like to do. Sadly she did not bring appropriate footwear or clothing for climbing, but I could tell that this is a part of the place that she will be taking advantage of the next time we visit.

There are also a whole lot of slides in this place. Some of them are up to three stories tall and will launch your child in a variety of speeds. Liam was a bit afraid of the re

ally fast ones, but he had a good time on this giant slide.

For the customers wanting extra speed, you could take a big felt carpet to ride down, something that reduced friction better than street clothes. I tried one or two that felt like I left my lunch up near the top.

More to follow in the next posts. Don't worry Dave, it will not be two months in between them any more.

A couple more Henrik photos...

2010-09-02T05:01:00.000-07:00

Posting directly from Picasa seems to cut off at 4 photos. no idea why.

This is the typical Henrik look. He likes sit in his little chair and just check us out. He will look very solemn for a long time then all of a sudden decide its time to do something.
In this case, it is to burst into a little giggle to remind me that he is still the happiest guy around.

Some Henrik Photos

2010-09-02T04:58:00.000-07:00

I know that I have not had an update for a while, but all I can do is beg mercy. Work has been extra time consuming these days as I started a new job at HP and in typical huge corporate fashion, my old job has not yet been filled. So.... I have to cover both as well as I can until the replacement is found and hired.

So, here are some nice photos of the ever growing Henrik to amuse you. He has now doubled in mass since he was born and is growing like a good boy. I particularly like this expression as I think he looks kind of startled.

Of course, afterwards, he was mad at me. I dont remember what I did to bring on this big emotional rollercoaster.
A short while later, you can see he is even bigger and still in good spririts.
In this photo I think he looks like he is singing.

Soap Box Derby part 2

2010-08-10T04:54:00.000-07:00

Here is one of the more high tech cars racing down the street, they got up to a pretty good speed going along there.

The end of the course was arranged with hay bales to catch any errant racers. I saw a few of them crash in here as apparently breaking technology in these cars was not one of the key features.

Here is a crash in action. As far as I saw, there were no injuries through the day and the event seemed to be a big success. I had fun anyway.

Soap Box Derby

2010-08-10T04:50:00.000-07:00

Recently our street was closed for a soap box derby racing day. I had no idea that such things still went on, but as the day approached, it was clear that they still have quite a good following. Our neighbourhood is on quite a long hill, so it is an ideal location for this sort of thing.

Liam and Emil of course had to check out the proceedings and get up as close as possible to the cars. I am sure they would have loved to drive one, but that was not about to happen.

Here are some of the cars with their crews. There were all sorts of constructions, from the fancier end of things where they looked quite high tech, to the lower end where the cars did look like they were held together with duct tape.
The start of each race was gravity driven. no pushing or other help given to the cars as they got rolling.
Full commentary provided by these two fellows on the back of a hay wagon.

Arrrrghhh

2010-08-06T06:33:00.000-07:00

Avast Dave. Here is a post.

More of Liams Birthday

2010-07-28T07:41:00.000-07:00

This is becomming the longest time ever to get all the photos up. So, the birthday folks enjoyed some lovely cake.

In the middle of the cake eating, someone yelled that it was time for a pirate dance, all the kids got up and danced all around the room. I thought this was pretty awesome.

Then Claudia started the treasure hunt. the kids first had to make some pirate hats from newspapers.

Then each had a scrap of a map that they all put together to give a clue for the treasure hunt.

The treasure hunt took them through the house, playing games until they found the treasure at teh end, which had some treats for the kids.

More Birthday action

2010-07-20T05:29:00.000-07:00

OK, Work is a crazy amount of stuff right now, so there has been almost no time for blogging.
Here are some more photos from the "Pirate Party" including gift opening, the Captain Sharky cake and the spontaneous Porate dance that took place in the midst of eating it.

Liam's Birthday - Part 1

2010-07-13T01:10:00.000-07:00

I am pretty slow with the web page these days I know, I am just getting around to photos from Liam's Birthday now. The big boy turned five back on June 14. He of course awoke nice and early and went down to open up his gifts. It was a largely pirate themed year. His big gifts from Mum and Dad you can see were the treasure chest and a Lego Pirate ship.

The next big gift from was a real "grown up" tent. This was from Aunt Doris and Uncle Bernhard. He had a little kiddie tent that he had enjoyed for a long time, but it was at the end of its useful life. Many holes were showing up in the floor of the old tent, and the new one can be used for real camping one day....

From Oma and Opa, there were a bunch of gifts, a Knight wall-clock and this Captain Sharky Telescope were the clear favorites on the day though. The telescop got quite a lot of use once Liam learned the trick of focusing it.

There were of course lots more gifts from the family, books, toys and music, but I did not get everything photographed, as I spent much of the morning assembling the various pieces of other toys. I think that is the main role of parents on birthdays and Christmas, putting together tiny bits.

Finishing off the Medieval Fest

2010-07-05T00:00:00.001-07:00

So to close out the series on “Ritterspiele” I will show some of the other fin things that were going on at the fest.

First of all, we had to have a good lunch. As with every single outdoor activity in Germany, there were a variety of booths selling food. I asked Liam what he was in the mood for, and he decided on a sausage. We picked this booth from the many at hand.

Liam went for the “Ritterwurst” which was a big red sausage wrapped in bread. It was neat, they put the bread dough on the sausage and baked it all together into a nice self contained hot dog. Most of the food was called Ritter-something…

I went for the “Ritter bowl” which was a bowl made of bread, then some chunks of meat, vegetables and a sauce all thrown together. It was similar to a kebab, but not quite the same.The booth next to ours was cooking an entire pig in an olde tyme oven. This also looked quite good, but I was satisfied with my bread bowl.

After lunch we had a walk around to look at the other attractions. Right near our food booth was a falconing demonstration. Liam did enjoy the birds, but it did not last all that long.

There were some games for kids of course, and Liam was too much of a chicken to try this one out. The kid had to run really fast, and hit the target with the halbard, then keep running by fast enough so that the weight did not swing around and smack them in the head. What ended up being the highlight of the whole fest for Liam was the carpentry exhibit. At this stall, the carpenter let him put on a a leather apron and work on some wood. He sat here and carved wood for at least half an hour. I think he would have stayed all day had I let him. Opa would be proud of his wood working skills.

Horb Medieval fest

2010-06-29T02:08:00.001-07:00

The next event on the agenda was yet another race and yet more fire. Similar to Ye Olde Hydrogene Balloone Pop, this time the knights rode with flaming spears and knocked over some poor guy holding a shield. The shield was covered in something flammable which burst into flames on impact.

I thought this event seemed a little brutal. It showed the brave honor of too knights as they each raced to see who could first knock down and ignite an unarmed, unmounted opponent. Truly a test of bravery.

After this one, we finally got some actual jousting, the knights did a proper fight, riding at each other with lances, which shattered on impact in a very fun and impressive manner. Liam liked this a lot.

After knocking one another down, the Black Knight and the White Knight continued the fight on foot.

Here is a little film of a joust.

After all these events, of course the good guys won, but there was a final attack by the baddies. The only way to stop them was to finally use the catapult to great effect. This was another highlight for Liam.

And that wrapped up the tournament. It was all in all a very fun time and I think I would take Liam again if he wanted to check it out.

More of the Medieval Festival

2010-06-25T01:09:00.001-07:00

Now that the characters had all been introduced, there was some blah blah story that Liam was completely uninterested in. Then, at last, the knights started smashing each other.

The First event was pretty great. The knights each took a flaming spear, and then had to charge down a balloon filled with flammable gas. The first one to hit his target won the round. I really felt like I had been transported back in time to the days of latex balloons filled with hydrogen of yore.

It did look really good though. I also made a little film so you can see the fireball.

Oh, I forgot to mention, the evil Black Knight arrived to make trouble and generally be evil. Look at his evil….

Next up was another race-type joust, this time, the knights had to charge in with lances and hit the targets. First one to hit it won this round. This event was notable because the Black Knight won it by cheating. He started before the herald blew the horn. This was met with much booing from the crowd.

Next there was some unmounted combat. Three good guys in white against three baddies in black. They traded wins until the goodies came through with their last man and managed to get a victory.

That will do for today, One more update of knights should wrap up the games. Stay tuned.

Horb Medieval Games

2010-06-21T00:39:00.001-07:00

This past weekend I took Liam over to Horb am Neckar (about 30 min away) for their annual medieval games and festival. He has been into knights for a while now and I thought he would have a good time here.

The centerpiece of the festival is the big knights jousting show. We had a nice spot with a good view of the action, and the show started first with a parade of the heralds carrying all the knight flags. While this started out OK, it did take a little too long and Liam jept asking me when the knights were coming.

After this procession, some knights wheeled out a catapult. This was parked in a corner of the area and brought a lot of questions from Liam. When would they shoot it, who would shoot it, would hey hit bad guys with it, was it safe…. lots of speculation.

There was a whole story to go along with the show, the evil empress wants the treasure of the good knights which was the prize in the tournament blah blah blah. Anyway, here are the baddies.

After some narrative (which Liam was not interested in,) we finally saw the entrance of the good knights.

Now Liam was finally getting excited. These knights very much lived up to his expectations. The white knight was of course the hero and Liam right away knew that this was a guy who was supposed to win.

More tomorrow.

Improved bike film

2010-06-17T01:18:00.000-07:00

We went for another bike practice session and this time I brought the good camera.

Here is Liam motoring around in all his glory. I think he is getting much better with each ride, but that is the whole point isn't it.

A little film.

2010-06-15T07:13:00.000-07:00

This one is just for The Doris.

Liam is saying what a knight would say to his squire. For some reason The Doris found this particularly funny and had Liam saying it over and over the last time she was visiting.

The Super biker

2010-06-09T00:34:00.000-07:00

After quite a few false starts and failed outings, Liam is finally able to ride his bike.

Until now, he had only managed to do it when I was holding on to the special bar attached to the back of the bike for teaching.

Last weekend though we took him first to the park, then over to the school grounds for some practice. As long as it is wide open level ground, he is doing quite well.

I made this tremendously poor quality film of him using my phone.

enjoy.

A Visit from the Joneses

2010-06-02T09:02:00.001-07:00

Last week Ryan and Doris stopped by for a nice visit. Ryan was off on a week long business trip, so it was a good chance for them to stop by. This was there first face to face meeting of Henrik the new guy. I guess it was there first meeting at all since infant gurgling over the phone does not really count so well.

Of course, Liam had to jump in and dominate them as much as he could and he knows that a visit from uncle Ryan mainly mean another chance to improve on his wrestling skills.

But after a vigorous wrestle fest, Ryan got to enjoy the more quite activities of juice and books. I think that is a Petersson and Findus book there. Always a treat to read those guys.

The Doris seemed quite impressed with the cuteness of her new nephew. She spent a lot of time with the little man perched on her lap, shoulder, or wherever else he felt like relaxing. Henrik still spends the bulk of his day either sleeping or eating, so here is a rare moment of him being alert and active. He is probably just wondering why no one is feeding him.Amidst all this action, Liam of course likes to assert himself as the big brother and make sure he gets some time to hold his little brother in a nest of cushions. Liam is very much into the big brother role and if anything we have to be extra careful that he is not giving Henrik too much affection (Liam is still more powerful than he may think.) The visit was rounded up with a BBQ with no photos followed by watching Bayern Munich lose to Inter Milan in the Champions league final. A nice visit and we look forward to the next one

Kindergarten Fest

2010-05-26T06:50:00.001-07:00

Liam just had the yearly kindergarten fest a couple of weeks ago. This is much like the many other fests, but as it is for a kindergarten, there is no beer. More coffee and cake.

The kids always put on a play of some kind, and this year it was a play about “Petersson and Findus” which is a popular children’s story from Sweden. The main characters are Petersson the farmer and his cat Findus. Liam’s role in the play was as one of the farmer’s “crazy chickens”

They lived in this lovely henhouse:

At a key moment in the narrative, the crazy chickens all run out of the house.

And then, as chickens often do… they perform the crazy chicken dance. Here are highlights of Liam’s moves.

Then naturally, the police come, round up all those chickens and take them away.

My child is a natural showman.

Ammerbuch Fire dept day

2010-05-21T07:52:00.001-07:00

The village I live in is called Entringen, which is a pretty small place of around 4000 people. As is the case for many small places, we are grouped together with a few other villages to be considered one larger town for many municipal services and functions. There are five villages that are grouped together to make up Ammerbuch, and we share things like a mayor, Police, and of course, Fire Dept.

The Ammerbuch FD purchased an exciting new fire truck this year and it was time for the annual open house and festival to show it off.

Germans are mad on “fests” and there seems to be one going on every week from April-October. There is always a superficial reason, like a fire/police/hospital hosting, or maybe some cultural club of some kind like a brass band, but all the fests seem to have the same basic elements:

Booths with sausages and snacks
Beer

Basically, they serve as a nice reason to get a whole bunch of people out of the house and in a common place to hang out with snacks. Generally a good thing. Our Ammerbuch fest was typical, a big food and beer area, then booths around the outside from the fire dept, red cross etc describing themselves and their role in the community.

Since Liam is still a big Fire Truck fan, we had to go and check it out. We looked at the schedule and planned our arrival to watch the mock-accident. I correctly assumed Liam would enjoy watching smashed up cars get cut apart by firemen.

There was quite a large crowd there by the time we arrived, so Liam got some help from his giant Uncle Bernhard to see over the heads of everyone.

As interesting as the whole accident was, the highlight for all the little people was that all the trucks were parked and open for them to run in and out of as they pleased. Liam liked the new fire truck best of all since it was the biggest.

The glare off the windshield makes it a little hard to see him in there, so I went around the side for a better shot on the next fire truck he climbed in.

All in all a nice way to enjoy an afternoon. I did wonder a couple of times what would happen if there was a fire someplace during this fest. All the firemen, ambulance workers and their equipment was pretty tied up in the crowd.

Back to Posting

2010-05-19T04:02:00.001-07:00

Wow, that was a fairly long hiatus, but there has been plenty going on.

As many of you reading this will have already heard from us in the past weeks, We learned in the days after Henrik’s birth that he was born with Down Syndrome. While this is certainly not the news we were hoping to hear about our new child, it does not in any way diminish our happiness and excitement about the new member of the family.

The doctors and nurses at hospital were great with us in how the news was delivered a well as pointing us towards the resources for parents of a handicapped child. Germany has quite good support infrastructure and is very much in favour of integrating kids with Henrik’s condition to the regular education system.

So aside from some extra therapies and doctors appointments, we will be raising him just like any other child. Indeed, the first couple of years with a DS baby are not particularly different from those with a healthy child.

The first big tests came just a couple of days after his birth, as around half of all DS babies have a heart flaw that requires immediate surgery. We were very fortunate that Henrik was in the 50% that are good and healthy. In fact, he is otherwise the picture of health. Heart, lungs, liver, kidney, brain, all checked out as perfect. Another characteristic of DS kids is low muscle tone and strength, but again, Henrik is absolutely normal in this department. He can feed fine and is even lifting his head on his own after just three weeks! He is powerful.

We are hoping that we will continue to get only good news regarding his physical development and his handicap will be a mild one. There will be some challenges ahead, but that is something we will adjust to over time.

Now… some photos.

Got some stuff going on...

2010-04-29T09:19:00.000-07:00

Another apology to my vast audience over the lack of updates.

got some stuff going on here.

Here is the new Anderson, who arrived on Monday April 26. Welcome Henrik Thomas to the family.

Month End

2010-04-06T04:50:00.001-07:00

I am very busy with month end/month start party time at work.

here is a nice picture, discuss amongst yourselves

The Super Radio

2010-04-01T04:07:00.001-07:00

One of the best things in the new car is the VW wonder Radio.

First, I would need to step into the car, here is a look at the inside.

A slightly more frontal look at the dashboard. The wonder radio is the big screen right in the centre.

When you turn on the radio, first comes a nice friendly welcome. This generates good feelings about all the fun about to come your way. After this start up screen, the radio pops up with all touch controls. The station you are on is in the centre of the display, and all the presets and menu options are accessed with touch controls. Its pretty cool. The hardware buttons along each side do the following:

Radio – switches to the normal radio mode.
Media – switches to media input from an external source.
Phone – activates the integrated hands free phone if you have it (we don’t) or mutes the radio so you can use your non-integrated phone.
TIM – the Radio automagically saves traffic reports as they are broadcast. If you press this button, you can go back and re-listen to any of the saved traffic reports. This feature is amazing.
TP – When enabled, this will make radio broadcasts with a special “TP flag” override any external media (Mp3, dvd, etc) that you may be using to have the radio instead. Things like traffic reports or emergency broadcasts would be tagged this way so you could still get urgent news while listening to DVDs for example.

Setup – configure the radio.

Aside from the awesomeness of having a touch screen to choose all the stations and such, the key to its amazingness for me is that this car came with the “media in”option. I can directly connect my iPod into the car’s media system. I did have to buy a cable, but it was well worth that tiny expense. Once connected, the iPod is receiving a battery charge as well as the link to the radio. It all gets tucked away out of site in the centre arm rest.

Once plugged in, the iPod resumes playing whatever you last had on. In my case, the Radio play of the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy which I received for my birthday (thanks!)What I think is especially great is that you have access to the complete menu structure of the iPod, it is not so simple as to just make you play what was already playing. I can use it just like I was directly accessing the iPod normally. Play lists, artist, podcasts, it is all there.

Although there are more reasons to enjoy the new car than the radio, the radio is a particularly awesome feature that I really like. Good one Volkswagen.

Airport BSOD

2010-03-29T03:52:00.001-07:00

I forgot to post this image ages ago when I took it.

In Frankfurt Airport, the famous Microsoft Windows Blue Screen of Death on the arrivals board.

I Finally Saw Avatar - Good, but it's no Star Wars

2010-03-23T03:13:00.000-07:00

I finally saw Avatar yesterday and it was alright.

The tech and special effects we just beyond anything else I had seen before, and the story was OK for what it was. Lots of comparisons are being of course made to Star Wars, a film I think is still better than Avatar, at least for me...

I think where this movie was a miss for me was with the characters it created. When I saw the original Star Wars in the theatre it was a near religious experience. I came out of there wanting to BE Luke Skywalker.

Avatar created a world that really impressive and beautiful and I could feel a part of me wishing I could go there and experience the world. However, I would want to do it on my own and never as one of the characters from the film. I did not relate to, nor want to be any of the Avatar heroes or villains.

The greatness in Star Wars was in having these Iconic Characters and personalities that touched the audience in a personal way. Sure the world was amazing, but what really made it transcend the setting and (frankly not great) story was that it gave people a fantasy they could dream of living in. I don't how many hours in the playground I spent as Luke, Han or even Vader, but I have yet to hear one kid in my neighbourhood yelling out "LOOK AT ME, I'M JAKE SCULLY!"

German Warning sign..

2010-03-19T05:17:00.000-07:00

I took the train in to work this morning and I walked by a construction site. I thought this warning sign was quite German in its tremendously un-subtle way of advising people to stay out.
The screaming mouth is my favorite part.

Car News – A Volkswagen Caddy for the Andersons

2010-03-18T04:17:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago, tragedy struck yet again in the form of an icy uncleared road while Claudia was going to pick up Liam from kindergarten. Sadly, in the war between our blue car and the concrete wall, our car did not come out on top.

Claudia was totally unharmed, just annoyed, but our beloved BMW compact sustained damages far in excess of its value. Luckily we still had the 2nd car to keep us mobile, but we did not want to trust a 16 year old 230 thousand km vehicle as our only source of transport. Also, the inspection is coming up in June and it is very likely that big car does not pass this time.

So, the car search was on with big time pressure. Claudia wanted to be involved in the decision, but with 8 months of pregnancy decreasing her mobility somewhat, we needed to look fast.

I heavily favoured a German car, both from a quality point of view and a political one. This brought down the range of choices a lot and we were at first considering another BMW, but the fact is that newer models are more expensive than I am willing to pay and we did not really want to buy a 6 year old car.

After research, pricing comparison, and quite some car lot viewings, we settled on a Volkswagen Caddy. This is an interesting vehicle which started out as a commercial truck model that was adapted to life as a family vehicle.

The first Caddy was the Polo (Rabbit) pick up truck:A cab was added to the truck bed to make the first odd looking vehicle. This was actually pretty successful, so the next version introduced a family concept with seats and windows, but still keeping a pretty freaky look to the overall package. In the most recent revision, the VW Polo (rabbit) shared parts have been replaced with VW Golf versions and the overall shape refined a bit more.

That is basically it. It is a little 1.9 litre diesel engine, lots of space for 2 kids + 2 adults and all our stuff. It is as close to a mini-van I could stomach, and its relative odd style is somewhat appealing.

The one we bought is not quite one year old and had only 7500km on it, so it will now be the newest car I have ever owned. Here is what it looks like again.

We will only go and pick up the new Anderson-mobile next week, so I will be sure to share some more photos when it is brought home to Entringen.

Liam’s New Room – Finishing touches

2010-03-15T01:16:00.001-07:00

With the room all painted, we just had to put the finishing touches on the details. After thinking about the many interests of Liam, we decided on some dinosaurs for the wall. Claudia found some nice dinosaur shapes and then made stencils that I could use for a nice parade.

Liam chose the order of the dinosaurs marching around his walls…I have done this a few times now. Liam’s baby room had a nice border of teddy bear heads, in both our old flat and the house, and the new baby room will get bear heads again. So I have the technique pretty much down on this.

With all the painting done, I moved the freshly built furniture in and we attached the curtains (which Claudia had spent the last week sewing.) Thankfully the room was a big hit with Liam, especially the exciting Hochbett that gave him a whole new area to play. Under the bed has already been a fort, pirate ship, dragon cave, bear cave, firehouse, and garage. That was all on the first day. It was a lot of work, but I think the room looks pretty great, very satisfied with the results and now I am moving on to the baby room as the next project on the list.

Liam's New Room - Part 4

2010-03-12T00:36:00.000-08:00

So, this is the last piece of furniture to be built.

Not many posts this week, things have been very busy with the dramatics of early March.

Liam's New room - Part 3

2010-03-05T04:40:00.001-08:00

I enjoyed the last time lapse film so much I have done another, this time building the more complex dresser...

Liam's New Room - Part 2

2010-03-04T03:13:00.000-08:00

Now that the room is all painted, the building of the furniture can begin. I did his bed on Monday night and I thought it would be fun to do a nice time lapse film of it. I think it turned out rather well and I may need do more of these.

Liam had a big interest in the whole bed building, so he is popping up all through the process.

Update to the Office

2010-03-03T03:09:00.000-08:00

So the office is now complete, all the devices connected and books on the shelves. Here is how it looks. You can see my little computer niche in the corner there.

Click on the image for an enlargement.

Mike P will notice my dancing Domo-kun alarm clock on the shelf over the computer. I still love Domo-kun soooo much. Perhaps I will need to make a film of his sweet sweet moves.

Liam”s New Room – Part 1

2010-03-02T02:18:00.001-08:00

As baby time comes ever nearer, the house preparations continue. I recently showed the building of the office downstairs, now I have moved on to the conversion of the old office to Liam’s new room. With the old office furniture all moved out, I could start on the next phase of the plan. they repainting of the room.

Liam has long told us that green is his “best” colour, and he really wanted a green bedroom.

First step was to fill in all the cracks in the wall. Our house is still only a couple of years old and is still settling, making some cracks show up over time. I filled all these in as best I can to have a nice looking wall to paint.

Once I had all the cracks and holed filled in, I did the taping and covering of all the areas I did not want to get painted. Removed all the outlet covers and light switches, and generally wrapped up the room in all the spots I wanted to keep clear of green mess.

For the next step, I used a brush to do all the fiddly bits in the corners and edges, as well as around all the outlets. The first taste of green on the walls. It is very bright and minty looking.

Finally, the big work of filling in all the large areas with the roller. This took me most of the afternoon, and by the time the paint was dry and I could clean up, it was well into the evening. Then it was a matter of replacing all the switches, pulling down all the masking tape and plastic, and cleaning up any other mess I had made.

I know that I am not a particularly skilled labourer, so pretty much every job takes me twice as long as someone who really knows what they are doing. I think the results are OK though, it looks not too bad and Liam is happy with it.

Here is the reverse angle, looking back into the room.

Gold!

2010-03-01T00:13:00.001-08:00

Well, I can finally get some sleep now…

Oh, and I also won the bet with my Swedish team mate/work colleague and he has to wear my Team Canada hockey sweater all day in the office.

Thanks XKCD

2010-02-22T04:07:00.001-08:00

Sometimes I love this web comic. Below is the link to the original along with the comic I have blatantly stolen to amuse myself. Pure comedy gold.

XKCD comic.

Some quick Photoshop Action

2010-02-16T00:22:00.001-08:00

My sister just made a winter visit down the road to Niagara Falls. She sent me some nice photos of the trip and I was particularly taken with this one.

I thought this looked pretty great, but given the weather of Canada in Feb, it is a little grey and dark. So, I thought I would have a quick go at it in Photoshop to see what I could do with it. I wanted to brighten it up and give it some wintery contrast.

What I did was this:

ran the auto tone and auto colour tools.
used the smart sharpen filter.
adjusted curves to brighten up image.
changed levels to increase blue level for a more icy feel.
selectively used the burn tool to bring out some of the details for more contrast.

What do you think? did I go to far? I thought maybe I oversharpened and it is a little grainy now, but I think I like the overall look of the image.

The Big Office Project

2010-02-15T08:42:00.001-08:00

So, I was off for half of last week to build and fill up our new office furniture.

In the next few months, our house will need to be transformed to accommodate the addition to the family. Basically the following has to happen:

Move office from first floor to basement
Move Liam from his room to old office (paint and furnish)
Paint and reassemble baby room.

So phase 1 started a long time ago with the design process. Claudia and I took all the needed measurements, then decided what needed to go into the future office. It was to be a home for our many many books and computers as well as the primary work space in the home.

It will also function as the secondary guest room in case we need another bed, in the form of a pullout couch,futon.

As I continue to hate Ikea, we decided to look elsewhere for furnishings. After some search, we settled on a German shop, Moebelum. Many shelves were purchased, and Claudia’s Brother Bernhard was drafted to help me with the project.

First we did the computer corner. This will be my principal home in the office.

Next up, a cupboard and some shelves next to the desk. The cupboard will hold my formidable board game collection and the shelves will be all of my books.

Next up, more bookshelves to the right of the desk. Here you see Bernhard in action.

Then we add even more shelves, including a big one to hold our old TV. This is keeping the long run in mind when we will almost certainly have some TV scheduling conflicts with the two little boys in the house. We men can all watch hockey upstairs and send mummy off to the basement to watch desperate housewives or whatever chick show she is in to. Ok, we all know that is not how it will happen…

At this point, Liam came home and decided to bring in a crane to help. I thought he would lament the loss of the big empty room he sometimes played in, but he seems to like the new office so far.

Next up was Claudia’s dream desk. A great big L desk. Of course the clowns at the shop first forgot to send the hardware needed to join the L, and I had to drive the loooong way back to pick it up.

Here is how the join works. There are three little clamps on the underside.

The finished desk.

Finally, clean up. Also Liam took this moment to grab my level and make sure all the shelves were OK. He went to all the ones he could reach and yelled out if they were straight or not. Lucky for me they all were.

anonymous comments turned off.

2010-02-12T07:39:00.001-08:00

Sorry, sick of deleting Spam comments.

no mor anonymous ones, you have to have a userid.

No posts this week as I have been building office furniture for the last days. I will have an update with much shelving soon.

Still a computer geek

2010-02-05T02:15:00.000-08:00

Even as a fully grown up person, edging ever closer to 40, I still have a great love of video games. I don't even question this, I would still rather spend my recreational time gaming above so many other activities...

This year for Christmas, my gaming needs were addressed with this gift from my mother:

I was already a firm fan of Rock Band and I have been a Beatles fan for many years. This was a particularly good pick as the music selection is more accessible to Claudia should she want to play with me. She is not a fan of many of the more modern songs in Rock Band (regular) that I tend to enjoy, like the Pixies.

Liam also loves this rock band, but for him the entire game is about playing "Yellow Submarine" over and over again. Liam also liked Beatles music from a very small age, but for some yet to be explained reason, he always referred to them as "car wash"

I think he may have first heard them in the car on a trip to the car wash, but I can't be sure. He may have just randomly selected that name.

TRAGEDY STRIKES

2010-02-02T02:24:00.001-08:00

I was shocked and sad to hear that the Joneses had a break in to their flat over the weekend while they were up in Germany visiting us. Getting robbed sucks, but I think the important thing to remember is that it is just stuff. No one was hurt and you can always get more stuff.

Apparently the police have advised that there is a problem with “Georgian gangs” conducting burglaries. This of course led me to the best source of information that exists, Google.

By typing in to Google “Georgia Gangs” the first image that popped up was unfortunately this one:

Which is apparently a still shot from a film about English School girls, one of whom is named Georgia. As much as I would like to think that an apartment could be burgled by a group of schoolchildren, I think this was likely not the gang I was looking for.

I refined my search to “Georgian Gangs Geneva Robbery” and came to this article:

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/index/Georgian_gangs_behind_rise_in_Geneva_burglaries.html?cid=685424

Apparently there is an organized crime presence in Europe and it has recently come to Geneva. the article states;

“ Georgian criminal gangs are chiefly responsible for the large rise in burglaries in French-speaking Switzerland over the past year, the Geneva police have confirmed.”

Apparently burglaries were up 20% in Geneva last year, that is pretty shocking.

Another Google search on “Georgian Robbers” gave me this nice photo of Dick Turpin, who really has nothing to do with either, but again I like to think of robbers escaping on horseback over the hills.

I also had a look at the Wikipedia entry on Georgia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_%28country%29 and it had zero mention of Georgian mafia gangs. I am going to go out on a limb and say the robbers probably looked more like this:

You can clearly tell he is a baddie as I think it’s pretty universally known that baddies have masks, striped turtlenecks, crowbars, moustaches and smoke. Also, he is yelling in Georgian and has a sack of Loot.

I have to say, I am filled with a tremendous dislike for all things Georgian and the entire nation of Georgia at the moment. A few bad eggs have now ruined an entire country for me as I decide to paint them all with the same brush. DO YOU HEAR ME GEORGIA! I DON’T LIKE YOU NOW!

Well, that all being said, I am very sympathetic to the poor Joneses brush with EVIL GEORGIANS and I hope that the Police catch and punish the robbers in the most Swiss way possible, perhaps force feeding of cheese fondue while wearing decorative cowbells and having alpine horns blasted at them by traditionally dressed mountainfolk. Oh, and also endlessly reading “Heidi”

If it is possible to think that any good has come of this situation, I think we can all agree that it has given me the idea for my new TV series “Swiss Justice”

So…. The iPad…..

2010-01-28T04:09:00.001-08:00

Well, I am quite a tech loving guy, and like most of my kind I keep one eye on Apple whenever they are sending out their reality warping events promoting the latest giant bump in their product portfolio.

Yesterday was finally the announcement of the worst kept secret in the industry, the iPad. I don’t know if I would call myself an Apple fanboy, since I have never owned a Mac computer. There have been many occasions where I would have liked to, but have gone the way of windows for one reason or another. I am an iPod guy, and have owned a few since the first gen of the iPod mini up through my current Nano.

Also, I have wanted an iPhone for a while, but absolutely refuse to consider it as long as T-com is the only provider. I have deep personal feelings about T-com and will not be allowing them to have any of my money. If the iPhone moves to another provider… it will be on my radar. But that is another story.

I watched “the Steve” do his thing yesterday, and as usual he was very compelling. As I watched the announcement and demo, I thought it looked pretty great. But I have learned that the presentation style of The Steve really does distort opinions of the products, so I had to think about what he showed before I allowed myself to like or dislike this new product.

After much consideration, I would say the iTab is a good, but not revolutionary product. To me, it is basically a super size iPod touch. Perhaps a netbook replacement, but i don’t even know if that is the case. What I like on the iTab

Screen looks very nice.
the iPhone OS was already pretty easy and fun to use.
the Kindle reading application looks well implemented.
Pricing was far better than I thought it would be.
Ability to store and display PDF files is great.
It looks like something from the future.
10 hour battery life? sounds too good to be true.
Wireless access plans (for US at least) is reasonably priced.

What I don’t Like on the iTab

No Camera/videoconferencing.
Any widescreen media (films) will have LOTS of black bars and bezel.
OS does not support multitasking, not that big a deal, but on a “netbook killer” it should be there.
Too many adaptors needed for everyday connections. You need an adaptor for USB? come on…
No Flash in web browser. This is a must if it is a real web appliance.

Will I buy one? very very unlikely. It would be an amusing toy, but I think all in all I would rather have an iPhone with a few modifications to the OS, or even an iPod touch with a couple more features.

Not much going on...

2010-01-27T05:28:00.000-08:00

I have really failed to take any new photos since Christmas, and I really did not take all that many over the break. Such a shame when I find myself with nothing to say.

The Playmobil Castle….

2010-01-22T03:09:00.001-08:00

Liam’s big gift this year was a Playmobil knights castle. I cannot stress BIG enough. this thing is giant.

I wish I had taken some photos of the building process, as it was a nightmare of tiny parts. It took me over 2 hours to get the whole thing together, and it was long after Liam was asleep.

Here is the thing in all its beastly glory… Basically every place there is a different colour of plastic, there was at least 2 pieces or more. The walls and towers had many segments, and all of them needed tiny plastic fasteners inserted with a special tool. It was very fiddly and slow, but the instructions were clear and nothing was missing. They are one up on Ikea in that department.

Here is the view a little Playmobil munchkin may have riding through the front gates.Liam was of course overjoyed to see it all put together and ready to play on Christmas morning. He was so excited to get it the night before and a little disappointed that papa was not a faster builder. He wanted it to pop out of the box ready to play. Just look at the size of the thing next to Liam. We had to clear out a big space in his room to house this beast. The Ritterburg has seen extensive play since that first day, and Liam of course makes everyone join in the fun. Of course, Liam always gets first (and second) choice of which knights to use. In keeping with a feudal themed toy, we poor peasants are left with the scraps once royalty has had its way.

Christmas gift time – Liam

2010-01-18T04:18:00.001-08:00

A very memorable moment on Christmas eve was when we all came home from the church, and brought Liam into the living room. We had sneaked all the gift down while he was getting ready to go a little earlier, so for him, they had magically appeared while we were out.

He stood there and looked at the tree and gifts and was totally speechless, something that we thought was impossible for the little chatterbox.

Here is a selection of Liam opening a few of his many man gifts. The Knight’s castle was his big gift this year and I will feature it in a future post of assembly nightmares.

Christmas Tales

2010-01-13T04:24:00.001-08:00

Christmas is of course long gone now, but this will not stop me from posting my Christmas photos. As usual, our house was all decorate up for the holidays, with a few new features this year.

First we have the paper crafted advent train. This came from a book that was a gift from Aunt Doris to Liam. The idea was that every day in December, you read another page in the story and assembled the next part of the display. Of course the reality is that it was way to delicate for Liam and Claudia did the entire project under his supervision. It did turn out very nice though.Next up, we have the winter display made of course by decorator Claudia. She took her domed cake plate, put down some powdered sugar snow, then added our little wooden Santa that we bought at a market some years ago. Of course the missing piece of that puzzle was the deer, which she bought at the hardware store in town. For some reason, they also sell some little toy animals there. Of course the centerpiece of every Christmas display is the tree. We had a nice one this year, although a touch on the short side. Liam would not get out of the way so he struck some slick poses instead while I was trying to get a photo. They worst thing with this year’s tree was that I seemed to be allergic to it. 10 min in the room and I had uncontrollable itchy eyes. I was not sorry to see it taken down last week.

My Latest Project - Home Media Network

2010-01-13T03:00:00.000-08:00

So one of the things that has been keeping me very busy is setting up my home media network. This is something I wanted to do for a long time, and certainly something I had envisioned using my Xbox for. I actually don't play very many games on my Xbox, but use it extensively as a media server. I had been limited to the Xbox HD, memory cards, or other fiddly things to get my media on there though.

Over the Christmas break, I assembled the various hardware I have been slowly accumulating over time/holidays/birthdays and got everything together and running.

The files for my video, music, and photos now reside on my NAS (network attached storage) which is just a hard drive with a network card in it basically. This is then attached to my nice new (Christmas) router, making all files available to devices connected to the router.

So, I acquire new media via normal sources, iTunes, digital Cameras, etc.. and these are routed inwards via my old desktop to the NAS, which stores them all. Then I pull out the media I want to use via the Xbox in the living room, my iPod, or any computer that is on the network. It basically looks like this:

It is all up and running as of yesterday and so far everything works perfectly.

The next phase would be to enable web access to the NAS, at which point I will be able to use the NAS from any computer with an internet connection (and my address and password of course.)

I could even go so far as to stream audio and video files directly to an iPhone or iPod touch, neither of which I currently own. I am sure that audio would stream to them no problem, but I am curious to see what happens when I stream a video file to an iPhone that is not already in the correct H.264/MPEG-4 video format.

According to the manufacturer, the NAS will “render content properly for display on the smaller screen…” I am still not sure if this just means that the video resolution is downsampled, or if it is somehow reformatted. I would be quite impressed if the NAS could actually re-code and stream an H.263 file to an iPhone… I may need to enlist a tester with said hardware on that project.

Finally…

2010-01-12T02:55:00.001-08:00

OK, i finally got around to unloading my photos and I can start to make some posts again. I have to say there has been quite a bit going on these days.

I will start off with the usual family Christmas group photo. This year we were missing the Joneses, who were off in the USA visiting Ryan’s family, and you can see Franz is still recovering from his surgery there.

This will be the last photo of ours with just one little troublemaker in it. Claudia’s belly is not so visible here, but the next little munchkin will be joining us in future Christmas photos. Oh, and if Claudia has her way, this is also the last Christmas photo with this couch. She is desperate for a new bigger one.

Liam’s Photography

2010-01-05T07:03:00.001-08:00

Last year (i think) Liam’s wonderful Aunt Shona gave him the gift of a kids digital camera. I threw a largish memory card in it and let him off into his little world to have some fun.

Since so many of the photos he took with the camera were really random, I kind of forgot about it and stopped checking up on them, but a week or two ago, he complained that he needed some new batteries. I took that opportunity to see what he had been up to. Surprisingly, there were 800 pictures on the camera.

some themes recurred:

Liams room
The living room
Mummy and Papa’s feet.

Here are a couple of the better ones he took.

Night Before Christmas

2009-12-24T01:44:00.001-08:00

To say Liam likes Christmas is like saying fish are fond of water. He has been Christmas crazy for weeks now. Having many exciting phases of singing, dancing around, and wearing a santa hat everywhere he goes. We had a few arguments already when he wanted to wear the Santa hat to kindergarten in the last week of November.

The latest mania is that he watched the classic 1964 Rudolph the Red nosed Reindeer animagic (puppet) show and he latched on to the Flying Lion who is king of the island of misfit toys, Moonracer. He has been callling himself Moonracer for a week now, and flying around the house roaring. We have to address him as Moonracer or Liam-Moonracer if we want an answer. It started off funny, but Claudia and I have both heard about enough from Moonracer. Oh, he also has a crown made of gold pipecleaners that he wears around the house.

Liam is also very active in his Christmas art. There are drawings of santa with reindeer and his sleigh all over the house. He normally glues some cotton to the page for the beard. Below is the most recent drawing and I love the maniacal looking Santa. I think he looks like a crazy in a red top hat, but hey, that is just my interpretation.

I did mention that Liam wears the Santa hat a lot. really a lot. It had come to the point where we could only get it off him after he was asleep. Here is a typical image of Mr.Christmas in the evening.Well, Germany has the big day of gifts and fun on the 24th, so this evening the Christkind will be paying the wee man a visit. I hope that the post-Christmas come-down will be OK for him and we can get back to some normal routine.

Firemen

2009-12-17T06:42:00.001-08:00

Recently, Liam invited over the next door neighbour Annika for some play time. After some brief noisy action, we were informed that Annika needed to wear Liam’s fireman costume.

It looks like she was not allowed to wear the coveted hat though. That is only for chief Liam.

Entringen Christmas Market

2009-12-15T03:52:00.001-08:00

It is the market season once again, probably the best time of year in Germany. Most of the big markets are a little too packed for me to have the energy to navigate this year with a hyper 4 year old and a tired pregnant wife, so we are visiting far less that usual.

So far, we have only gone to our village market. Entringen, population around 3000 of course still needs to have booths. Entringen has pretty much the same booths each year and this time was no exception. Some crafts, and lots of food ones run by the local clubs. I enjoyed a yummy gluhwein made by Liam’s former daycare group.

Liam had a waffle with powdered sugar from the sports club kids. He likes his winter outfit and is eagerly awaiting some snow. He really wants to make snow men and a snow fort as soon as possible. Of course, he also wants his own reindeer to pull him and his friends to kindergarten on a sleigh.

Giving up on Subtlety…

2009-12-11T05:23:00.001-08:00

I think that by the time they were making these posters, they were all out of clever, nice ways to ask people to shut up.

Space – Celebrations are great and even better when held in common spaces away from work areas.
Space - Avoid gatherings & group chatter in the open office. Please use common spaces or e-Clubs.

First, I think that there has been no official definition for a “common area” I can only assume they mean meeting rooms and coffee corners. Although there is no indication that these are actually common areas, I guess it must be them.

I would also love to know what an e-Club is. This remains a mystery.

Sometimes things need to be explained carefully

2009-12-10T06:49:00.001-08:00

In case my colleagues and I did not fully understand the subtle message behind the “VOLUME” series of posters, we are gently reminded with these delicately worded works of art.

Noise – Be considerate of others working in your area
Noise – Please ask colleagues to modify their behaviour if they are creating nuisance noise

I interpret these two in the following sequential way:

Noise – shut up big mouth.
Noise – Don’t be afraid to tell bigmouth to shut up.

I particularly like the expression “modify behaviour.” I think the definition of “nuisance” noise is also open to wild interpretation. I know for a fact if all the noise stopped that I consider a nuisance, it would result in more than a few deaths as so many would be holding their breath.

MORE MOTIVATION!

2009-12-08T06:17:00.001-08:00

Well, Here are the next two motivational posters in the series “how to behave”

Volume – Sitting down and using a headset while on the phone is quieter.
Volume – Walking and talking can be disturbing to others.

Now, perhaps I am being picky, but surely those are things I should not need a 1.5 metre high poster to remind me of? they seem to be in the realm of what I would call “the obvious.” I am pretty sure that everyone in my office could come to these conclusions entirely on their own. But since these posters exist, they must imply that management perceives these two activities to be a problem in the office.

I would have to say that if these are a problem it is not because people don’t understand the concept of volume, but more that they are choosing to ignore the concept of volume. I would suggest the following to be more appropriate:

Volume – Don’t be a noisy jerk.
Volume – No one wants to hear you.

I can absolutely throw stones as far as this topic goes since I am probably the quietest guy in the entire building. I shun human contact and get about two phone calls a year. I communicate almost entirely via email and IM with colleagues.

I also think the guy in the first poster looks really angry. Second poster walker-talker at least looks like he is enjoying his work.

Friendly reminders from the company

2009-12-04T03:33:00.001-08:00

In recent days, the office has started to put up some interesting posters all over the place. They are supposed to be reminders of how to behave in our environment. By that I mean of course our office environment, which is:

Open concept
Shared desks (sit wherever is free)

I will go ahead and say that the move to this office system was not popular with everyone, myself included. I preferred having my own, fixed desk. It is not as bad as I thought it would be, but if I have to choose, it would be for having my own desk.

I thought I could share some of the office propaganda in the next posts while I accumulate some topics to talk about on the site.

When we arrive in the office, of course the first thing you have to do is find a place to sit. Thank goodness I have been guided in how to do so by these posters:

“CHOOOSE – Select a workspace to match your needs. Use meeting or team areas for collaboration”

“CHOOSE – Choose the type of workspace you need… Lively, collaborative, common, or quiet”

I thought these were a bit amusing , thinking that I start each day knowing what my daily style will be. Of course, not a single one of the options cater to those who would like to choose “isolated from humanity by thick concrete sound proof walls.” That would be my ideal setting.

I would say the true way that most of my colleagues actually choose their workspace is:

those arriving before 8:30 take all window spots.
those arriving after 8:30 take whatever is left.
preference is given to a seat as far away as possible from “noisy people”

Without naming names, there are absolutely specific noisy people that are well known to all and avoided like the plague. I think I am a preferred neighbour since I am a very quite office worker. I strive to be as not-noticeable as possible so people don’t bother me with their problems. I never talk on the phone, preferring email or messenger, so really my cube is normally like a nice little vacuum zone.

OK, without generalizing too much. “noisy people” = “the French”

Soooo many Windows….

2009-12-01T06:58:00.001-08:00

OK, I know i have not posted too much lately, but all I can say is that it is out of pure lazyness. I have not taken a whole lot of photos and my computers have been in a bit of an mess recently.

I have for the past years been managing all my photos, music and posts from my work computer, mainly since it is way newer and better than my 10 year old desktop at home. I keep all of my data on an external HDD, and then run the management software on the laptop. I used iTunes for music, Picasa for photos, and Firefox for browsing and blogging.

All this changed recently when the office decided to give me a nice new PC. I was delighted to unexpectedly get a new laptop a couple of weeks ago, and due to the office’s “self serve” IT, i had to set the whole thing up on my own. I am a reasonably technically proficient guy, so that is ok, but it was time consuming. However, I only set up work applications on the work laptop, so I lost access to my music and photos, which put a slow down on the blog posts.

It also forced me to add yet another windows to my everyday use. My work is currently using Vista as the official OS, something I had hoped to totally bypass. So at the moment, I have XP on my home desktop, Vista on my work laptop and Windows 7 on my home laptop. The home desktop is used almost exclusively by Claudia for teaching these days, but as the household tech support, I need to be on there pretty regularly.

I thought it would be a good moment to briefly reflect on all the windows I am using.

XP is the one that has been in front of me daily for quite a few years now. I thought it was a pretty good system, but now after living in the new windows worlds, I can see how clunky and unfriendly many aspects of it were. I still like that it is stable and I am used to it, but I have to say I dont really miss it now that I have moved on.

Windows Vista is the OS that I had taken great pains to avoid since its much maligned release. I was pretty much against it from launch, for no good reason at all. I just totally bought in to all the negative hype I read. After using Vista for about a month professionally now, I have to say it was a lot of hub-bub about nothing.

Maybe the initial release of Vista had driver issues and was slower and buggier, but as I recall, XP was so bad as to be almost unusable almost until the second service pack dropped. At this point, Vista runs quite fine and I think it is fast, better looking and adds quite some improved features over XP. The search window on the start menu alone has changed the way I do things.

I have not yet added back iTunes and Picasa, but all of my work applications (office, SAP) run great and my non-work applications like firefox and photoshop also run great. The Windows Live writer for blog posting is also pretty wonderful. I do most of my posts (when I bother,) in this program now and I really like it.

Windows 7 is of course the new big sexy and I had to get on board with that the day it dropped. I run it on my home laptop, which is a slightly older, but not ancient one. I really think it feels like Vista++ rather than a whole new OS. It lost some of the things I disliked (the silly widget window) and added great things like the way you manage windows on the desktop.

My primary uses of the Windows 7 box are internet browsing (firefox again runs perfectly,) Light gaming (Warcraft, Torchlight, Team Fortress 2) and some video watching. The OS handles all these applications great.

Now I need to decide where my music, photos and video needs to live… on my work PC or on my home laptop. Ideally I will set up an HDD as a network drive (or maybe a NAS for Christmas if work gives a nice bonus.) Once I get all my media set up to be accessed easily, I hope I will be able to motivate myself to write a few more blog entries.

Oh, and since we have another baby on the way (not sure who knows and who does not) that will no doubt provide a bunch more content for me both photos and stories.

What the hell is this?

2009-11-24T06:27:00.001-08:00

OK, I was on the internet today and I saw that some travel site was listing the top 10 ugliest buildings in the world.

I was surprised when they listed the ROM in there. I have not lived in Toronto for a long time, but I had remembered the ROM as a nice old building. I jumped on to google to see what this ugliness was all about.

It seems that since I moved, the powers that be decided to do a little renovation to the museum. I have to agree with the internets, this is one of the ugliest things I have seen in my life. What I think makes it infinitely worse is the fact that this not only destroys a nice building, this is destroying a whole area of the city.

The ROM is right at Queen’s Park, where the provincial government is located. Home to some nice old buildings, this chrome and glass explosion really does not fit at all.

Maybe I am just becoming an old crank or something, but I can’t see why anyone could have thought this was a good idea.

Updating the links section

2009-11-19T04:56:00.000-08:00

OK, so i noticed that my "links to friends blogs" section is really really out of date. So, it is time to make a few changes.

OUT:
Wong Family Blog : I know its cruel to remove your own family, but hey, last post was May 2007.
Warren in Vancouver : removed as Warren has TWO new sites.
Shelley in Toronto: Last post Dec, 2008. I know Shelley has moved on to Twitter as her main vehicle.
Nader and Rina in Singapore: Sorry brother, no updates in a year.

IN:.
Mike P : infrequent updates Plaka, but you are still at it on occasion.
Warren's personal Blog: moved from the old address.
Warren Cartwright Photography: his new professional endeavour.
Rymal Family Blog: Jay & Bonnie are pretty much Twitter folks now, but I left it on for the moment.
Save the New York Times: a site by the Doris.
M-cause: Ryan's cause and marketing related site.
I'd Rather Be Gaming: blog from Ozvortex in Australia that sometimes comments on here as well. Good one for board gamers like me.

I think that cleans up the links section.