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Boys R Us

For Kids, Big And Small

Before we go anywhere, I'd like to take a minute to thank Blogger for nothing. Particularly not saving all the earlier changes I'd made to this post, making all that work... for nothing. You suck.


Carrying on...




Let's start this out right. Play the first few seconds to get the idea of what's happening, then skip ahead to the 50 second mark.



Not sure how many times the boys and I watched this, but it hasn't lost it's magic yet.


So today's random is random with a point. With the exception of the first video, everything posted here came from a fantastic new site called The Kid Should See This that is made up of videos that, while maybe not originally geared towards children, are educational and actually interesting to them. And no, I'm not promoting this site. Well, actually I am, but purely because I think the site is awesome and I think anyone with kids should know about it. Hell, even if you don't have kids, these videos are great. I've watched all of them and can't wait for more to be posted. I first heard about it on Kottke.org who described it like this:

With obvious exceptions, media “made for kids” is mindnumbingly dumb. YouTube, Flickr, and Vimeo are amazing resources of not-made-for-kids but totally-appropriate-for-kids stuff like what Rion is posting here.

Anybody out there remember the movie The Black Hole? If you do, you'll get the reference in a minute.




The next one is from General Dynamic. It uses dropped objects and gelatin molds to illustrate the transfer of energy in their dynamic braking system on hybrid locomotives. Dropping heavy things on jello in slo-mo, how can you go wrong?



Lastly, and my favourite, is this. A NASA promotional video that wasn't even created by NASA, but a fan who wanted to show what the space agency could do for itself if it only tried.

"In all of their brilliance, NASA seems to have forgotten to share their hopes and dreams in a way the public can relate to, leaving one of humanity’s grandest projects with terrible PR and massive funding cuts."

Make sure you supersize this one, it deserves it.



It's sad to think that what we spent on the mortgage bailout a few years back was more than NASA's entire 50 year budget. That 50 years bought us a man on the moon, the shuttle program, the International Space Station, the Mars rover, probes sent out past the farthest reaches of our solar system and inspired countless numbers of boys and girls to grow  up and become scientists and engineers. The mortgage bailout bought us out of our own stupidity, and only temporarily at that. Wouldn't it be great if we could go back to the optimism of the early space program? Wouldn't it be great to have something like that to inspire our children? Personally, I'd be much happier knowing my tax dollars were going towards that than buying our way out of poor financial decisions and padding the wallets of the Wall Street executives who got away with letting it all happen.


Seriously, go check The Kid Should See This out, there's more awesomeness then I could possibly post here. I highly recommend the bike guy, the element song and the crazy octopus.

Mirror, Mirror On The Wall...

Less Words, More Content

For the lack-of-Star-Wars-content complainers:

Moss graffiti

Put in blender: one can of cheap beer or 1 1/2 cups buttermilk, a few handfuls of moss, one teaspoon of sugar. Paint on wall and mist daily until it grows.

This is pretty cool.



I finally, finally, FINALLY got an iPhone because my wife is awesome and said I could get one for our anniversary. After I got her a new bedside lamp from Ikea. Don't be jealous ladies. Anyway, here's some text between my brother and I. (btw, an otter is an iPhone cover)

There's really no way to introduce this.



There's 2 minutes you'll never get back. You're welcome.

'Cause You Can't, You Won't, And You Don't Stop

So it turns out that when you abandon your blog for long periods of time people stop coming round. Then it ends up looking like the dark house on the block with the scary old recluse that gives you the stink eye through the blinds when you pass by. Jeez, you'd think somebody would at least stop by and offer to cut the grass.




I've been seeing this ad for some new Dodge minivan lately. At one point, the cutesie family inside is stuck behind this ancient flat bed truck carrying a load of hay up a hill and passes it in a show of the van's speed and versatility. Seriously, this is your ad campaign? Your van can pass a 60 year old farming truck. Oh goodie.


MOVE from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

My office works from 5am to 9pm and for the last week or so I've been doing the morning shifts. The kids spend the day at my in-laws, so after work I go over and usually wait around for Supreme Leader to finish work so we can all go home together. The new schedule also means that I'm at my in-laws everyday in time to see a new soap opera that my father-in-law is watching. Sure it's in Mandarin and I have no idea what anyone is saying, but after watching it for a week in my post-work coma on their sofa I'm hooked. It takes place on a Chinese air force base, but it's the usual soap-ish drama, regardless of geography or language. Apparently, there are no lady pilots in the People's Republic, but their ground crews are sure hot.


Sesame Street breaks it down from Wonderful Creative on Vimeo.

With SL back at work now I've been spending a lot more time on public transit. Lately I've noticed that people don't seem to want to sit next to me, even when I make a point of holding my bag in my lap so they have a spot to sit. Do I look like an axe murderer or something? Maybe I should get an axe. No, that's totally impracticle, I'll get a hatchet instead, easier to swing. "The wheels on the bus go round and round..."

Random child picture. Well, random picture of my child, not just some random photo of another child. People frown on that.

Not sure if he has to pee or if it's just a guy thing. Wait... no, just a guy thing.

Have you seen this video yet? It's Neil Patrick Harris' intro to this year's Tony Awards. I see it every day. Many times a day. For some mysterious reason, whether he's a fan or likes show tunes (we're not judging), Finn will stop whatever he's doing to watch. Temper tantrums, injury, climbing across the ceiling spitting fire, whatever, he will climb up into our laps to watch. Whenever it's bottle time, on comes Harris and we all slip into a little bubble of peace and harmony. Thank you, Neil.

Teachers

Dialing it in as usual, but this one is worth it.

The Boys, Er... Girls Of Summer

On the American military base that I live near in England, they offer Little League baseball for the kids to join. I asked my oldest daughter, LaLa, who is 7, if she would like to join a team. 

At this point you're probably thinking, the hell? I thought you lived in Canada and only had sons. You're right on both counts.

She was really keen even though she in all honesty has not been exposed to American sports since moving to the UK nearly 3 year ago. In fact, for the first week of the season she was still calling it cricket. Wrong bat. The season has been going on about a month and she has been steadily improving with each game. Well, as much a child with the attention span of a gnat can improve anyway.

My children have the same attention span and the only thing they could hit with a bat is each other. It's really Kat from 3bedroom who gave me a post because she's awesome like that. Now let's get back to the story, 'cause it's funny.


Last week, during our 3rd game, there was an incident. Ok, there has a been an incident almost every game, but this one took the cake. LaLa's team was out playing defense in the field. LaLa was playing the pitcher position, but since it is coach pitch baseball, she was basically just standing next to the opposing teams coach and waiting (when she was paying attention) for the ball to come her way. There was a little boy from the opposing team standing in the batters box waiting for the pitch to be tossed to him by his coach when all of a sudden LaLa took off running and screeching at the top of her lungs. She went out past the short stop, rounded 3rd base, down the 3rd base line, behind the catcher, down the 1st base line and came to a stop in front of the home team bleachers. When she stopped her eyes were filled with tears and she had a look of absolute panic on her face. Our whole set of bleachers was sitting with our jaws on the floor.


She stood there for a second caught her breath and the with a wild shout said “THERE WAS A BEE!”


I heard some of the parents behind me start giggling and I was in fact trying to hold in my own giggles as I said, “Alright hunny, you can go back to your position. I think you frightened it away!”


A career in sports or the military not likely with that child. *crosses those off the list* No composure during the heat of sporting battle. 

I laugh, but I'd do the same thing and sound pretty much the same way. Including the little girl's voice. Whatever, like you're any different. 

Thanks for enabling my lazy posting, Kat. Check out Kat if you don't already, she has a great blog, so great that she's actually #8 in the UK which is doubly cool considering she's not even English. Her Dear So & So posts every Friday are always entertaining. She also posts more than hardly ever.