Category Archives: Jo

Time (mis)Spent With Freya

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I’ve been feeling a bit guilty recently. Despite being able to leave work earlier than most people (although I do work on a while because of the workload), I don’t give as much time as I would like to Freya.

By the time I have collected her and come home it’s soon time to start making food. I sometimes have a half hour with her, in between preparing the various elements that make up the evening meal, and I suppose the time I’m with her on the journey home (which may include an exciting visit to the shops for food, or a walk home instead of the usual tram) should count for something, since we are interacting, but I wouldn’t call it quality time. Although maybe Freya does.

I wonder how other families have it. I can’t believe their situation is, on the whole, better than ours. I work a good few hours less than most parents do (thanks to some kind planning by my employers); nonetheless, I refuse to use comparison as a way to assuage my displeasure at the situation.

One solution to the quagmire would be to plan and prepare our evening meals more systematically. This would be an attainable goal if we had the space to freeze in, which we don’t. Having said that, most of the food I cook could easily keep in the fridge for a couple of days, which would free up valuable time.

At least with the summer weather fast approaching I can start thinking about picnics. Part of my current feelings derive from our time together being confined to the flat, whilst I prepare food. If I’m cunning I can prepare “cold food” like salads, take them to work, and then take Freya to the park on fetching her from nursery school.

Respite from this will no doubt come from the summer holidays. Soon I’ll have a whole six weeks with Freya, which should go someway towards lessening the negativity I have towards my role as a parent.

An Evening Playing Games (Of The Wrong Kind)

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For the year we have been living in our flat we have been going through a mini-port to connect to the internet. This has, apart from the fact that we shouldn’t have to, been of no real concern. Everything we need to do gets done, and with no loss of bandwidth. Until yesterday.

I’ve been considering the best way to connect Jo’s Nintendo DS for online play of Animal Crossing: Wild World. The first option is to purchase a wi-fi router, which will also allow us to connect the unowned Nintendo Wii and X-Box 360, as well as securing us for the wi-fi future.

Ideally we’d like to get the router that our IP provides free of charge, but despite their claims on the website we cannot have one. It appears that the station which we are connected to has compatibility issues with our IP’s modems. This is a ridiculous set of circumstances, and the only thing for us to do is await some kind of executive decision to manufacture new modems that do not suffer this problem.

Another option is to buy a wi-fi router ourselves, and simply place it between our current modem and the computer. This would hopefully work (mental note: contact Jack to make sure), but I decided on a cheaper and easier solution: a wifi USB dongle.

All I have to do is run the software, attach the dongle, turn on the DS, and let the hardware do the maths. I’ve done this, and it doesn’t work (the DS connection to the computer works, but not to the server), so I search the internet for a solution. One idea is to run an updated version of the software, after going through several steps to remove all trace of the original. After fiddling about for a while I am rid of the offending software and reinstall the new, improved upgrade. This time I can’t even laod the software, getting a “Internet sharing error (6)” message. So, I uninstall the new version, using the same method as I went through the first time, and installed the old version. Same message appears.

Jo rings up our IP server, gets the miniport taken away, we realise we can’t connect at all to the internet, and go back to to the miniport (this part of the story is condensed, but involves both a minor success and complete failure of connecting to the internet).

After all this, we are back to a regular connection (no miniport), whilst being unable to connect to the Animal Crossing server. All in all, a waste of time time very well spent.

Now, I love technology, and am constantly amazed just how well .exe files work, considering the infinite amount of hardware set-ups available. When working on their own, hardware does a sterling job, but it’s when it comes to interacting that things really go arse up.

I shall be in contact with Jack to talk about the wi-fi router.

We Met Lassie

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In town today we happened upon a CD-singing by 80’s pop-icon, Kim Wilde. Jo was more a fan of her than I, but my curiosity convinced Jo to go and take a look.

Behind the real-life Kim were several glossy posters of her, advertising the newly released CD she was signing. She must have been doing far too many of these signings because the poster-Kim looked to be in a much better physical condition than the real-life one.

Sitting-Kim has put on more than a few kilos, and looked botoxed to boot. She looked reasonably bored, though this may have been the chins and neck-fat talking, but the money queue snaking through the shop for her signature must have alleviated the boredom.

Jo took an obligatory picture of her. The quality is so-so, which, surprisingly, neither detracted nor added to my opinion of her appearance. Still, that’s another celeb crossed off our list.

Showing Freya Yoda

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It’s about time I joined the throngs who, because of lack of content, include a YouTube video on their site. This not only makes me look like I actually have something to offer to the outside world, but gives the impression that I’m hip and know what is hot on the “Internet”.

Anyway, Jo has started work on creating Freya’s Yoda costume for next week’s Halloween party, which takes place at Freya’s nursery school. Freya has been reluctant to try on Jo’s work of art, so we’ve been showing her what/who Yoda is. The best place to do this is YouTube, and I found this little gem that is an Easter Egg on the Revenge Of the Sith DVD.

This is one of the first entries I’ve written that will no doubt be obselete in a few years when:

a) the above video gets deleted because of copyright infringement.

b) YouTube gets closed down due to copyright infringement.

c) Google (who recently acquired YouTube) get bought out by Microsoft, who then make it impossible to embed any video in any non-Microsoft software.

d) Technology advances enough to make the quality of this video look even more laughable than it already is.

RIB

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Have seen them around and read about them for while now, today I finally had the opportunity to try them out myself. Ahhh … RIB are a brilliant method of transport! This particular one went 50 Knots, roughly 90km/hours for you not so familiar with boat-speed.
50 knots is actually a quite fast speed when you are without safetybelt and in an open air!
I strongly recommend trying one when the cruiseships are leaving Stockholm, you are able to enjoy the high-jump opportunitys in madness.
1 and half hour later I, unwillingly, got dragged off to end the evening with a fantastic dinner at Bryggan.
I just have to enter more work related competitions with wins like this!

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