Archives for February 2010

Digital television

February 27, 2010 by Jen

Last year after I’d done a fair amount of hourly paid work on top of my everyday job I decided to go out and spend the extra money I’d earned on a new tv. I ended up getting a 40″ Samsung LCD telly and I love it. The picture is so much crisper than our old analogue television and the screen is so big too. I at first thought it was a bit too big for the space it’s in but it’s amazing how quickly you get used to it.

Now the world of digital television stations was opened up to us and GO, channel 99 is just fabulous – probably more so for JJ than me. He’s now an expert on all the shows that were around when I was a kid – Get Smart, Bewitched, The Flintstones, The Jetsons (or his combination the Jetstones). There’s other kids shows on like Pinky and the Brain that Steven Spielberg produces that he just loves and he made me sit down and watch an episode of it with him one day.

I’m getting into watching Frasier. I never saw it when it was on tv ten or so years ago and I eagerly watch it now. I’ve even watched a few episodes of Seinfeld which I did watch when it was on but a repeat every now and then I don’t mind.

Not being used to how digital and analogue work, however, I hadn’t realised that my old video recorder would only record the analogue tv stations and not the digital ones. I set it up to record what I could though but the recordings weren’t very good. They were a bit jumpy and of course there was no widescreen. Because I couldn’t record anything on the digital stations this left out a lot of programs from GO, ABC2 etc which was getting annoying.

So, as a Christmas present I decided to buy a digital video recording device. I did a bit of research and ended up buying a TiVo. Of course I’d heard of TiVo by watching Sex and the City but it’s relatively new here. What initially turned me off buying it was the relatively small 160Gb recording amount and being tied to buying a proprietary external hard disk if I wanted more space. But in December last year a 320Gb TiVo was released and that’s what I ended up getting.

It was pretty easy to setup and now we love it. I think JJ TiVo’s a lot more than me as it’s so easy to record programs. I love how it records automatically too when you give things the thumbs up, although it doesn’t record everything I’ve given the thumbs up. I need to do some more research into how the smarts work.

My favourite thing, however, is being able to pause television. A couple of weeks ago I began to watch The Seven Ages of Rock on the ABC and someone rang just after it began. Normally I would have let the answering machine take the message but sometimes it’s good not to have to remember to call people back and this was one of those times as it was a call to do with JJ’s cricket. When the phone started ringing I paused the TiVo, spoke to the caller for five minutes and resumed the TiVo after the call ended.

With our purchase we got the Home Networking Package as well but I haven’t set that up yet and don’t know if I’ll bother. I haven’t read that much that’s great about it and all I would want to do is put stuff on DVD.

Now the only problem with our foray into the digital world is that the stereo is in the same room as the new telly so if I want to listen to music and the lad wants to watch tv, there’s a clash. I could buy a set top box for the old tv but don’t know that I’ll bother just yet or at all until the analogue signal is turned off. He can still watch some tv on it and use it for Playstation.

Awww rats

February 20, 2010 by Jen

When he starts complaining that I never do anything for him I’m going to point him to this post I’m about to write and to the last one about going fishing.

After a particularly late and overindulgent night out at an Elvis party I drove us up to the foothills to see our cousins baby rats. I knew of their existence thanks to Facebook and commented that JJ would love to see them. It was so arranged and off we went. Remember that I was feeling quite tired and a little bit seedy and he was lucky I didn’t cancel and just stay in front of the tv or lie in bed.

Once we got there, however, it was good to see the baby rats. They hadn’t quite opened their eyes yet and all they do is sleep on top of each other and feed.

Their mum and her mate were quite cute too and very inquisitive. This one loved my camera case.

JJ loved observing them and holding them and didn’t hassle me as much as I thought he might to take one or two home. I’ve nothing against pet rats, I just don’t want any more responsibility for living creatures. And I don’t know how Monty would take it.

Once these little ones are old enough they’ll go back to the pet shop. Lots of people must have rats as pets.

Gone fishin’

February 18, 2010 by Jen

JJ still continues to really enjoy cub scouts and the other night they went on a fishing excursion. I realised a few days beforehand that our $7 fishing rod was broken so with a borrowed fishing rod off we went.

The aim was to have a bit of fun and to earn a badge so with a bit of extra homework JJ has to do hopefully he will have earned his first badge. I’m not a very pushy scout mum when it comes to badge earning.

Fishing doesn’t really do it for me but I must admit it was lovely to spend a warm evening down by the beach. I wish I’d taken my bathers to go in for a dip though – a bit further down from the fishing crowd of course.

Even Scout Larry came along and enjoyed himself despite being tied up.

I even had a bit of a go at casting out myself and all of them were at an angle.

While observing JJ I could see how at peace he was while standing there holding his fishing rod. Looking at him be at peace made me realise what the fishing fascination is with so many people. I’m kind of getting it.

Unfortunately we didn’t catch anything but them’s the breaks.

Even though all he wants is money to buy electronic games for his birthday I reckon a fishing rod would be just the ticket too.

Fear of being kidnapped

February 11, 2010 by Jen

JJ has a thing at the moment about being kidnapped. He brings up the subject pretty regularly and talks about ways of coping with it if someone tried to kidnap him, ie physically trying to get away from them.

I keep telling him it’s really unlikely that he ever will be kidnapped but he obviously thinks about it a great deal.

Last night he woke me up by telling me he’d just had a nightmare. He was pretty distressed and even though my sleeping has been abominable over the last few nights due to the heat I asked him what he’d dreamt about. He told me that he’d been kidnapped and that Nana and Pop had been killed. I don’t think the two events were related but he was pretty upset.

He hopped onto my bed (not into because it was too hot to worry about bedclothes last night) and we had a hug while I tried to reassure him. After some reassurance I was able to send him back to his own bed and he was fine for the rest of the night.

Because he’s worried about kidnapping I wondered if other kids fear the same thing, and sure enough, they do.

I found a couple of articles that talk about children’s fears and strategies for dealing with them.

Just as well we’re not Haitians – child kidnapping is rife there at present.

Luckily he’s not too afraid that it’s completely debilitating, but his fear is there just the same. What are your kids afraid of?

Gone are the carefree holidays

February 9, 2010 by Jen

JJ has been at school and I’ve been back at work for two weeks now. Bring back the holidays!!

Why do busy routines get me down so much? Is it because if they don’t go according to plan I feel like I’m losing control for a moment? I don’t really know.

We’ve had a few days of quite warm weather and the accompanying lack of sleep doesn’t help myself or himself. On top of that we had a parent acquaintance evening tonight which meant coming home from work, quickly doing his spelling words, having an argument about lost lunchboxes and missing things, and gulping some dinner down far too quickly before going along to the teacher’s talk.

Tomorrow evening JJ’s scout group has a fishing excursion which means I have to take him there, hang around and try to help even though I don’t really like fishing and don’t know anything about it. I will try to be enthusiastic because it will be a good bonding experience for him and me.. But I really just want that hour or so to myself to decompress, and pop into the library as I have a book on hold. Now I won’t be able to get it until Friday or Saturday.

But wait. Cricket starts on Saturday. Or it might if there are enough year 2/3’s who want to play. Apparently there aren’t. Last year there were too many kids for the team and now there aren’t enough. Maybe the year 2’s don’t know about it yet. While I like him to play sport, the Saturday morning lie-in instead of sport is quite alluring. That and not having to worry about him having an early enough night so he’s not too grumpy the next morning.

Over the next two weeks at work I have to go five days worth of training the other side of town. This means I’ll have to drive to work (I normally catch the bus) and the journey will take a good 40 minutes each way (it currently takes me about 20). I’ll also be showing someone the ropes of my job because I’ll be acting in another position for four weeks and someone else will be backfilling mine.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. It’s just busy.

I miss the carefree times of being able to go to bed pretty much whenever I want because I didn’t have to be rudely awoken by my alarm clock at a certain time like I was this morning. My sleep was so deep it took me a while to realise what was happening.

In other news I dropped in, and paid for, the passport applications for JJ and myself. $312 to be exact. Hopefully JJ’s will be processed okay as I haven’t got, and don’t think I need to get, his father’s consent. I was just relieved that I managed to finally find our birth certificates and that I had everything I needed today. I hate filling in forms.

6 February

February 6, 2010 by Jen

I’ve had a severe case of blogger’s block here recently. It’s not really helped by lots of things going through my head that prevent me from thinking about content for this website. As I’ve been blogging for nearly six years I thought I’d share some snippets of this blog back through those years and I’ll focus on posts I created on 6 Feb, or the closest date to it.

My first February on Semantically driven was in 2005. Around this time of year the Big Day Out festival happens in Australia. I haven’t been for ten years and in 2005 I kind of really wanted to go but for various reasons didn’t. Therefore I had a Big Day In.

In February 2006 was the last time we were over in Kangaroo Island. As you’ll see from the photo in this post the beach near where we stayed was absolutely gorgeous and the photo is one of my most viewed on Flickr.

On 6 February 2007 I wrote about an entry I wrote for Blogging for Books. I don’t think this competition exists any more and I rarely write for online competitions any more probably because my imagination seems to have left the building.

This time two years ago I spoke at my first conference. It was really scary but all the same I’m glad it’s something I’ve now done.

This time last year I was thinking of taking action. The action I was thinking of taking hasn’t really happened but I’m quite okay with that.

This year, a new school year has just started and we’re well and truly back into the routine of school lunches, drop-offs, pick-ups, working, Scouts, sport (nearly) and the social whirl that is February and March around these parts with various events.

JJ has a friend around at the moment whom he met at the Gold Coast last July. He and his mum have moved back to Adelaide where her family is. His mum was here for a bit earlier but she has gone to visit her brother. I recommended leaving her son here while she does that. Him and JJ will be fine, although I’d better get them some lunch. And so it goes on.