Yoyo, mom, daddy, and incoming baby sister (my wife is expecting)
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Author: omaha
I am Serenity and Sophia's daddy.
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Signs we do too much googling
This morning, Serenity asked me to show her draw a pig. I said I don’t know how. She said google it, as mommy always did. So I googled how to draw a pig, and it comes up some results. I showed her the wikihow step by step animations. Now she is into wolf 🙂
(Update 02-19-14) This reminds me similar phenomenon in software development area, the popularity of sites like stackoverflow.com, coupled with some of the flaws in technology books/documentations, make me search much more and read much less. As a matter of fact, one of the iPad book author, Kurby Turner, mentioned this phenomenon in his learning iPad programming book.
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Serenity got sick
She got some fever, and cough. Not too bad, but a nice two days break from her school. Reflecting on this “kids got sick/fever” topic, I recall a few instances when she was much younger, and we were really worried sometimes. I recall in one winter evening, she couldn’t stop coughing, I walked to nearby Walgreens in blizzard condition, the road is totally covered, and after I got there, I found out the cough syrup is really not for young babies. Even now she is 4, as the doctor told us today, honey might be do much better compared to cough syrup.
Recall in one summer, she got fever, was sleeping on bed, I can tell her short breeze, or difficulty to breeze. Of course before she turns to 2, we already worried more when her temperature hits 102 F. This is a bit loosen as she gets bigger, and today I picked up a “20 myths about kids fever” print out at doctor office, and I agree with some of the things talked about there.
And I regret it now, because she appears have a lot energy after getting home. But at pre-school when I picked her up, she was complaining about “lip hurts” (probably due to cold weather, and low moisture indoors), and “fear of doing high beam”. No matter what I offer (snack, chocolate), she was not motivated, and cried while asking for “go home”. I can understand both factors, and I feel the high beam is probably a more important factor, but I chickened out eventually. It’s also one of the coldest day this winter (minus 10 c). And I feel a lack of energy myself, so I “let it slide” (borrowing Steve Job’s word).
But I quickly regret it as I saw she is full of energy after getting home, esp. when doing the Skype with grand parents and her aunt/cousin back home.
I sold it much quickly than I thought (sold right after I posted on Amazon on Nov. 18, 2013), and I did back up photos using 3 approaches.
1) Dropbox;
2) Back up to PC using the backup utility on the Phone;
3) Google+
After using google+ backup on my Nexus 4 for a while, I liked it and decided to give it a try on my iPhone and iPad. I enabled the auto backup feature. There is a limit for each account, I believe. An interesting thing I found out about google+ in the new year, is it creates a slideshow (about one minute) using the photos in google+, for me it’s mostly about my daughter’s activities. This reminds me of Facebook year in review feature (kind like year book). One thing keep in mind is the privacy, if you decide to share it, the default setting it share to public, so use your judgement when you share.
My take:
My daughter is 3 and half years old. My wife had iPhone (3g) before she was born, and I bought iPhone 4 when she was 6 months old. Then comes the iPad (1), and currently I have an iPad mini, and my wife has iPad 4. I spent about $30 buying apps for my daughter (mostly Toca Woca and Sigo Mini; also raywenderlich WildFable; and I see Ewe, I Hear Ewe). I felt the latter is better suitable for toddlers, while the former ones are more like games (which I have some reservations).
My observations on iPad app and screen time: my daughter also watches Netflix kids TV/Youtube for about half an hour a day. We tried pretty hard to make sure she did not watch too much TV before she was two (again, this is mostly from hearing her teachers’ advice; and from reading the articles about TV’s effect on growing children).
My thoughts:
1) Moderation, moderation, moderation. It’s not easy. I know, we all have been there. Grabbing iPad/iPhone from crying toddlers. “5 more minutes”. But we need to be firm. Otherwise the 5 more minutes will means 15 more minutes. And the flood gates started here. I found out, if I’m consistent, and if the child is tired of the silly game/TV, and if we can provide a better alternative (reading books, something more fun), she gives up iPad quickly.
2) Engagement, engagement, engagement. When she was very young (probably around 2), sometimes we let her watch the “Curious George” on Netflix, together with parents. And she will have a lot of questions. In that sense, watching TV is not purely passive, and that’s a good thing. Same can be said of reading/listening the wild fable, and the I see Ewe/I hear Ewe.
The BBM for Android and iPhone app collapsed (see TechCrunch article).
Feel bad for those guys. Note my first smart phone is a Blackberry.
It appears they got some serious problem with the scale of BBM on Android
and iPhone app rollout. It’s possible the talent guys already left the boat.
..basically they put half baked stuff out there.
(Update 2, 11-18-2013) I sold my Nexus 4 as I am getting my iPhone 5s. I still think Nexus 4 is a lot phone for the money ($199 before tax). Another feature I liked is the integration with google contacts, and google+ photo backup. I just found there’s an option on iPhone Google+ app for backup now.
(Update 09-16-2013) I agree with @PhillRyu that the back button on Android is nice, along with the multi-task button, it separate tasks from the home button (the iOS home button is a bit overloaded, it does both back and home, and double click home brings up the multitask thing).
(Original 09-08-2013) Last week I got my 1st Android phone, the Google Nexus 4. I bought it primarily due to its lowered price (from $299 to $199 before tax), and my 3 year old iPhone 4 battery is doing down hill (found a trick to save it after I bought the Nexus 🙁
I tweeted some minor problems/questions I have with Nexus 4/Android since then. Again for the most part, I am happy with the screen size, battery life (being new), and the sharpness of android in general. A few things I mentioned/complained in twitter:
1) Lack of a native Mail app, in iPhone I can add all the mailbox (yahoo mail, gmail) to the Mail app, in Android there is not a good very native app. But later I noticed the notification feature kinda compensated it. I did install the Yahoo Mail app. The Gmail comes by default.
2) Again on the email things, for some html formatted email, it appears iPhone can scale it properly the first time when the user opens it, on Android, it did not get right the first time. The workaround is move the mail left, then zoom (make it a bit smaller to fit in the screen). Not a big deal.
3) A bit sneaky: the Android recommend feature, in Youtube, Play store (music). Also the photo upload (to Google+).
4) Chrome web browser does not have a “reader” feature like Safari does: for better reading experience (filter out ads, and scale the web page).
5) Share it feature: initially I thought it only has the gmail, google+…after I installed the facebook and yahoo Mail, I found those are also available.
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iTunes, iCloud, Dropbox, wd 2go
Krugman, the Nobel economics laureate recently penned an article basically saying Apple is no good. I think he has one valid point on iTunes and the relatively closeness of Apple ecosystem. This reminds me of one thing, the cloud storage for consumers. Apple has this iCloud going for a few years, it can be used to back up iDevices (photos, videos, documents, etc.), but not as flexible as Dropbox (or Box.net, and many others), both Apple and Dropbox has the subscription plan, for iCloud, it’s $20 for 10Gb additional (5Gb is free) per year, and for Dropbox, it’s $10 for 500 GB per month (2Gb is free, and there are other ways to earn free storage).
Then I came across this wd 2go, it is probably the cheapest (if we ignore the electricity, and bandwidth cost), basically it’s free with the WD My Book Live purchase. My Book Live costs about $129. There is no recurring fees. I have not got this one yet, but I’m thinking about it as I have 2 iPhones’ worth of pictures/videos, and need to store it someway. Was wondering if I could just transfer from iTunes to the WD My Book drive.
While I went through all these, what’s my point? Personally I think the openness rankings of those 3, from most close to open: iTunes/iCloud, Dropbox, wd 2go. Of course I understand one can argue security wise, the ranking might be different 🙂
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People are more important
Was at a friend’s house last night, watching the July 4th fireworks display at his house, as the house has a perfect view. We talked about things since we have not seen each other for a while. When asked by a friend what is the things gave me impressions on my first employer (I worked there for 8 years), I thought about it, and said “people”. Yes it was the people in Unigraphics Solutions (UGS, EDS PLM Solutions, and last Siemens PLM Software) help me jump started my career, and you all know who I meant. I still keep in touch with some of them.
The paragraph above was written about a month ago. This past Saturday I happened to bump into my old colleague at local license office. I knew he changed job couple times in recent years, after both of us left the company (me in 2008, him in 2009). He told me some unpleasant development in the company lately: downsizing, layoff etc. I know at this time my capability is fairly limited, but my thoughts and prayers are with my former coworkers.
Yes, human beings are always the most important.