Blogging squared

This is not a post about parenthood, but one about blogging - just a brief interlude between parental complaining.

Anyhoo, you get some stats related to your posts. For a tech-head like myself it makes for interesting reading. This graphic gives the complete breakdown since I started this thing;

So, aside from my drivel being viewed (or at least glanced at) in places like Saudi and Romania, which is kind of cool, I find the breakdown of the devices being used the most interesting. In terms of browsers, Chrome is the clear winner, though people viewed through facebook is screwing the results.

The worrying bit is that around a third of the views are coming in from Apple products. Now, I personally think Apple is the work of the devil and I won't so much as have one of their devices in my house, but I'm beginning to feel I'm part of a dwindling majority (soon to be minority??? :O).

Also, one of you nice people is giving my posts a +1 - for you, whoever you are, a sincere thank you. The + rating is related to your post's searchability. So if you can, and assuming you actually like the post, don't be afraid to hit that button... I don't think people viewing from Apply devices can, coz it's a google feature. See? Work of the devil I tell you.

OK, back to parenting and there's something looming that I'm seriously dreading...

Twitter rant

A quick twitter related rant. I've been locked out of my twitter account for the past few days. Twitter announced they'd reset by password for... reasons and that I should click this button to get a password reset link emailed to me.

Okay, no problems, except... it doesn't work. I've mashed that button so many times that even the automated system told me to stop but an email is not forthcoming. I've raised a ticket but have yet to recieve any response to that either. I want to get good an angry about this but... I'm torn.

On the one hand the world is being denied my witicisms (in 140 characters or less), and by world I mean whatever % of my 90 odd followers who happen to catch a glimpse of my post as it blurs past in the endless stream of brain farts that is twitter, but even so - MY brain farts are currently being denied a 140 character outlet.

And on the other hand, it's a free service. It's like bitching at someone for doing you a favour, but not doing it good enough for your liking. Obviously I know twitter aren't doing me any favours, this is their business model, but that's how it feels and I feel like a dick for being angry at them. Even so.... anyway, as I said, torn.

Should I be angry at twitter? Am I just being petty? If facebook locked you out of your account would you get angry?

A day out at the farm

Big thing on on at work last week which horrifically involved me working last Saturday. Which I never think is right. I specifically chose a career path that involved no outdoor working, no heavy lifting and working hours between 8.00am to 5pm Monday to Friday. Having to work a Saturday is like heresy.

A sacred trust has been breached as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway, this week I took Friday off as payback and we headed off to a local farm. Not what I'd consider your typical tourist destination but farms seems to be going in for this kind of thing in a big way these days. It's like a zoo, but less interesting. No matter what you do cows and sheep are never going to feature up there with lions and tigers in terms of crowd appeal in my opinion.

Which apparently is a minority view as the place was jumping, on a Friday, outside of school holidays. It's also, given the facilities on offer, surprisingly expensive with the entrance fee being higher for kids than for adults, which I think is just rubbing it in.

As expected there were cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, guinea pigs and some giant tortoises who apparently are masters of disguise, as I never saw any. Some play facilities featuring the classic slide and swings, but also some junior go-carts, which from my point of view required a lot of pushing. But the highlight was the maze made of haybails where myself and Jamie spent a happy fifteen minutes recreating the ZX81 classic 3D Monster Maze (with me as the monster obviously).

But for Jamie, the big draw of the place was the tractor ride. It was locked off for school kid trips until 2pm and Jamie watched the tractor with it's trailor stuff with kids coming and going with obvious anticipation, and even though we were probably ready to go home around then there was no way we could deny him his little adventure.

The adventure consisted of a five minute ride in an open air trailer with only a passing familiarity with the concept of suspension up to the top field where the farmer stops and educates us in the finer points of sheep farming for ten minutes before bouncing back down the hill.

Jamie seemed to enjoy it though, so that was okay.

I do think the most fun was had by Sarah... when me and Jamie were bouncing around the countryside and Fraser was sleeping she managed a nice, peaceful twenty minutes that also featured a cup of tea.

Thought for the day

If people really knew what parenthood was like ahead of time the human race would have invented birth control before the wheel and promptly went extinct.

Twitter

I'm on twitter now - as Winging Fatherhood. Just thought I'd make you aware. It's kind of weird as I don't really get it. It's like a bunch of people all making an effort to be as funny as possible in 140 characters or less and I feel like my Dad confronted with the clock on the VCR (man, that reference alone makes me feel old - even updating it to DVD player doesn't work anymore).

So I'm on there, trying to be funny and accruing followers and following people and marvelling at the people who're following 5000+ people. I imagine their twitter feed is a constant blur of 140 character jokes that are whipping downwards too fast to read and wondering; what's the point?

But it's ultimately a way of driving traffic to this blog (eventually) if anyone happens to catch a glance of the link as it goes screaming downward. Anyway, I'm on there, I'm attempting to be funny. Look me up and I'll follow you back - apparently that's important.

Jamie's big bed (cont)

Just a quick update. First night in his big bed went without a hitch (astonishingly!) and he had to be woken up this morning. This is how Sarah found him;

Clearly he's not quite grasping the concept of a bed yet. I wonder if we could have gotten away with a much smaller mattress :)

So, fingers crossed for a repeat of this tonight and then on to building the actual bed this weekend.

This parenting lark's a doddle... sometimes... occassionally... rarely... almost never actually, so should really celebrate this going as well as it did, unless this is just the calm before the storm.

You know, if 10 years ago someone had told me I'd be excited about a 2 year old sleeping in a bed I'd never have believed them, and you know what? I'd have been right, excitement isn't the word. Relieved, cautiously optimistic, surprised, yes. Excited, no. I might be a parent by I'm not THAT sad yet ;)

Jamie's big bed

So, big day for Jamie today, or rather, a big night. It's his first night in an actual bed... well matress, we haven't built up the bed yet (we really are awful parents but I'm confident the mental scarring will be minimal - he's two, he can't recognise half-arsed parenting yet).

Sarah was worried, I was a tad concerned as well to be honest. We'd taken the time to strip his room of anything that he might find even vaguely entertaining so there't literally nothing in there except his bed now and we have the advantage of the door knob being too high for him so he's really just been transfered from one cot to a much larger one that so happens to have a door and window in it.

So he's safe and contained but we doubted he'd stay in his bed and that it would only be a matter of time before there was the sound of small fists pounding on the door - and that's really difficult to ignore, and what with Fraser we can only turn the TV up so loud these days.

But no, straight to sleep, no problems. As of witing he's been down for an hour and a half and not a peep out of him. I'm really trying to work out some way we can take credit for this, afterall, everything crappy about a kid is the paren't fault, right? So if he does something good it's a credit to the parents, right? Right? It does work that way doesn't it?