Hello, and welcome to another instalment in an ongoing occasional series I call Lazy Blog Posts.
As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Here are some photos which I thought were a pretty good short-cut to saying something about life. Or in some cases just my life.
So without further ado: photos!
Showing posts with label life lessons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life lessons. Show all posts
Nov 24, 2016
Feb 7, 2016
Minecraft Part 1: What the hell are you talking about, kids
I thought I was a very tech savvy parent and secretly felt pretty smug about my preparedness for my kids to gradually enter the fray of online life. Then along came Minecraft.
I'll admit, gaming has been a bit of a black hole for me. What little I know about gaming I have gleaned from 9Gag and Gamergate (which, you know, both make gaming seem super awesome).
I am, however, a technophile and ambitious to know it all. I mean, I switched from an iPhone to a Samsung two years ago, so I'm like, pretty cutting edge.
Now that the kids have an Xbox, I fully intend to give up some Netflix time to learn how to steer the goddamn Need for Speed car down the middle of the highway instead of careening from barrier to barrier and getting stuck in reverse, and I am looking forward to trying a first-person shooter game to see how violent it makes me.
But commanding the Xbox controller is, like, hard. Why are kids immediately so dextrous at this stuff? I cannot get all my fingers plus my brain to work in unison. I cannot get my car or skateboarder to go more than a couple of metres without crashing. This is a good way to immediately feel like your own parents as your kids try and keep the laughter out of their voices while they show you how to use the technology. Karma.
Back to Minecraft...
The kids have long loved Minecraft and spend a borderline unhealthy amount of time glued to their screens building stuff and playing interactive games. And here's where I (also) got caught napping. I had no idea you could play Minecraft online.
When my kids started having run-ins with online etiquette and trolling, they came to me with complaints and lengthy descriptions of online interactions I could barely understand. And I thought I knew about online interactions! I was a bit shocked and had to have some quick tutorials from my ten year olds on what the hell they were talking about.
Here's the deal: you can join servers run by other people and build stuff in their world, or play battles or racing games where you are playing against, and interacting with, other players. This whole world is subject to a whole lot of arcane rules and etiquette the kids pick up fairly quickly, but is also obviously subject to the whims of the people running it.
There are also the usual dispiriting online spats between friends where someone gives some people access to a game but not others, or kicks one person out for bad behaviour but lets their best friend behave worse, etc. There are days when this seems to be happening all the time and I have to tell the kids to take a break from it and do something else, and sometimes they even listen to me.
The thing with online play is that your kids can be sitting calmly in the lounge room tooling around on their iPod and you can be sitting a metre away, and a whole world of turmoil can be going on where they show no sign and you have no idea.
For me (and I'm trying not to sound smug here, as I know I don't have this solved) the answer is to try and be involved enough to understand what's going on and be interested in the games and the online world so they will talk to me, and we can talk about the problems as they come up.
There are millions of kids playing Minecraft. Most Minecraft players these days are probably under 13, but there are a lot of adults too. My kids and I have talked a lot about this, what it means and what they need to keep in mind. We've had a couple of ugly moments, but for the most part, it's been fun and educational and the girls have been handing it well.
There are Minecraft glossaries and guides online you can Google if you want to know how redstone is used, or what a creeper or an Enderman is - this one is a good place to start - but they don't have the words my kids and their friends are using when they talk about interactive play.
Here are the Minecraft words I hear all the time and what they mean:
Seed - the code that Minecraft uses to generate terrain and content in worlds you create. There are online directories where people have shared good seeds or people pass them on through word of mouth. The reason these are valued is that without a good seed you have no idea where you will "spawn" to start your game: it could be awesome terrain, or it could be "a bland, uninspiring world full of flat grassland and the odd chicken" (that sounds familiar as that's what I got the one and only time I tried to play Minecraft on my own)
Server - any Minecraft player can set up a game on a Minecraft public server and others can join if they have the IP address of the server (which is passed around by word of mouth or found in the Minecraft public server directory)
Admin - person who runs the server, gives access to players and polices behaviour
OP - "give someone OP" - full access to all the available commands. The Admin as someone who is already OP gives OP status to other users. If you are given OP, it is generally bad form to give others OP without permission from the Admin.
Donate - Admins will sometimes ask players to donate money to the server, which is fair enough when it's a couple of dollars to help with the cost of an established game, but can be a bit rich if players are asked to donate as soon as they join, or if it's more than a couple of dollars, or if it's in return for getting a ban removed, etc.
PvP (player vs player) - term refers to interactive play with other online players, but my kids and their friends (in which case others they play with online as well) are using it as a noun to mean the server/game hosting the play, e.g. "I was on an awesome pvp yesterday but I updated my iPod and now I've lost it"
Grief (verb), Griefer (noun - person who griefs) - destroying things others have built, generally causing trouble in the game
Lag (verb) - perform moves that cause the game to lag - a major infraction that can get you banned. Eg flying.
Kick - to be "kicked" is to be kicked out. Not as bad as being banned because you can usually get back in, but it is done as a warning, or in a fit of pique
Ban - you can get banned for griefing, lagging, trolling, speaking in all caps, using annoying phrases like "lol" or "yolo" or... all sorts of things really! I will cover that in Minecraft Part 2...
I'll admit, gaming has been a bit of a black hole for me. What little I know about gaming I have gleaned from 9Gag and Gamergate (which, you know, both make gaming seem super awesome).
I am, however, a technophile and ambitious to know it all. I mean, I switched from an iPhone to a Samsung two years ago, so I'm like, pretty cutting edge.
Now that the kids have an Xbox, I fully intend to give up some Netflix time to learn how to steer the goddamn Need for Speed car down the middle of the highway instead of careening from barrier to barrier and getting stuck in reverse, and I am looking forward to trying a first-person shooter game to see how violent it makes me.
But commanding the Xbox controller is, like, hard. Why are kids immediately so dextrous at this stuff? I cannot get all my fingers plus my brain to work in unison. I cannot get my car or skateboarder to go more than a couple of metres without crashing. This is a good way to immediately feel like your own parents as your kids try and keep the laughter out of their voices while they show you how to use the technology. Karma.
Back to Minecraft...
The kids have long loved Minecraft and spend a borderline unhealthy amount of time glued to their screens building stuff and playing interactive games. And here's where I (also) got caught napping. I had no idea you could play Minecraft online.
When my kids started having run-ins with online etiquette and trolling, they came to me with complaints and lengthy descriptions of online interactions I could barely understand. And I thought I knew about online interactions! I was a bit shocked and had to have some quick tutorials from my ten year olds on what the hell they were talking about.
Here's the deal: you can join servers run by other people and build stuff in their world, or play battles or racing games where you are playing against, and interacting with, other players. This whole world is subject to a whole lot of arcane rules and etiquette the kids pick up fairly quickly, but is also obviously subject to the whims of the people running it.
There are also the usual dispiriting online spats between friends where someone gives some people access to a game but not others, or kicks one person out for bad behaviour but lets their best friend behave worse, etc. There are days when this seems to be happening all the time and I have to tell the kids to take a break from it and do something else, and sometimes they even listen to me.
The thing with online play is that your kids can be sitting calmly in the lounge room tooling around on their iPod and you can be sitting a metre away, and a whole world of turmoil can be going on where they show no sign and you have no idea.
For me (and I'm trying not to sound smug here, as I know I don't have this solved) the answer is to try and be involved enough to understand what's going on and be interested in the games and the online world so they will talk to me, and we can talk about the problems as they come up.
There are millions of kids playing Minecraft. Most Minecraft players these days are probably under 13, but there are a lot of adults too. My kids and I have talked a lot about this, what it means and what they need to keep in mind. We've had a couple of ugly moments, but for the most part, it's been fun and educational and the girls have been handing it well.
There are Minecraft glossaries and guides online you can Google if you want to know how redstone is used, or what a creeper or an Enderman is - this one is a good place to start - but they don't have the words my kids and their friends are using when they talk about interactive play.
Here are the Minecraft words I hear all the time and what they mean:
Minecraft online play words and meanings
Server - any Minecraft player can set up a game on a Minecraft public server and others can join if they have the IP address of the server (which is passed around by word of mouth or found in the Minecraft public server directory)
Admin - person who runs the server, gives access to players and polices behaviour
OP - "give someone OP" - full access to all the available commands. The Admin as someone who is already OP gives OP status to other users. If you are given OP, it is generally bad form to give others OP without permission from the Admin.
Donate - Admins will sometimes ask players to donate money to the server, which is fair enough when it's a couple of dollars to help with the cost of an established game, but can be a bit rich if players are asked to donate as soon as they join, or if it's more than a couple of dollars, or if it's in return for getting a ban removed, etc.
PvP (player vs player) - term refers to interactive play with other online players, but my kids and their friends (in which case others they play with online as well) are using it as a noun to mean the server/game hosting the play, e.g. "I was on an awesome pvp yesterday but I updated my iPod and now I've lost it"
Grief (verb), Griefer (noun - person who griefs) - destroying things others have built, generally causing trouble in the game
Lag (verb) - perform moves that cause the game to lag - a major infraction that can get you banned. Eg flying.
Kick - to be "kicked" is to be kicked out. Not as bad as being banned because you can usually get back in, but it is done as a warning, or in a fit of pique
Ban - you can get banned for griefing, lagging, trolling, speaking in all caps, using annoying phrases like "lol" or "yolo" or... all sorts of things really! I will cover that in Minecraft Part 2...
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| Wallpaper image by dkjjr at Minebook |
Jun 19, 2015
You learn something new every day: refrigerated minced meat edition
I learned a couple of new things today.
Firstly, I learned that I am getting too old and wussy for scary movies. I nearly had a heart attack throughout almost all of Jurassic World, and actually got quite emotionally terrified when a flock of escaped pterodactyls flew across the island toward the crowds of unsuspecting tourists. (I actually got a lump in my throat, and when the pterodactyls started to swoop I for real started shallow-breathing and almost squeezed out some tears. The children! The children! What would I do if I was herding my kids through a stampeding crowd chased by raptors and pterodactyls?? What would I do, dammit?! The horror, the horror....)
So that was number one. I can obviously no longer go and see scary movies, or even enjoyable adventure movies with predictable character arcs and what I am sure is deeply inaccurate science.
But: despite all that, Jurassic World is actually pretty good and I did (kind of?) enjoy it. I am just an emotional idiot.
The second thing I learned was that managing minced meat can be a whole lot easier than I ever knew. I was making bolognese sauce, and you know how once you've heated the oil and sautéed the onions and garlic, you get the beef mince out of its packet and drop it into the saucepan, and it's basically a big red cold brick that you have to sort of hack away at with your wooden spoon, if you don't want to tear it into chunks with your bare hands first? And it's actually quite hard work chopping it all up and mixing it and turning the pieces until it's all broken down and brown and starting to cook?
Well, it turns out you don't have to do that. Today I dropped my red brick of cold minced beef into my saucepan, then turned away momentarily to read a couple of pages of a book I am reading, then got lost in the book and completely forgot about my saucepan... until a faint cooking smell wafted over, and I hurried over to resume. Voila! My minced beef had all "melted" into the pot, broken down and almost all browned, and only needed a couple of easy stirs to get all mixed in and ready for cooking.
So there you go.
Firstly, I learned that I am getting too old and wussy for scary movies. I nearly had a heart attack throughout almost all of Jurassic World, and actually got quite emotionally terrified when a flock of escaped pterodactyls flew across the island toward the crowds of unsuspecting tourists. (I actually got a lump in my throat, and when the pterodactyls started to swoop I for real started shallow-breathing and almost squeezed out some tears. The children! The children! What would I do if I was herding my kids through a stampeding crowd chased by raptors and pterodactyls?? What would I do, dammit?! The horror, the horror....)
So that was number one. I can obviously no longer go and see scary movies, or even enjoyable adventure movies with predictable character arcs and what I am sure is deeply inaccurate science.
But: despite all that, Jurassic World is actually pretty good and I did (kind of?) enjoy it. I am just an emotional idiot.
The second thing I learned was that managing minced meat can be a whole lot easier than I ever knew. I was making bolognese sauce, and you know how once you've heated the oil and sautéed the onions and garlic, you get the beef mince out of its packet and drop it into the saucepan, and it's basically a big red cold brick that you have to sort of hack away at with your wooden spoon, if you don't want to tear it into chunks with your bare hands first? And it's actually quite hard work chopping it all up and mixing it and turning the pieces until it's all broken down and brown and starting to cook?
Well, it turns out you don't have to do that. Today I dropped my red brick of cold minced beef into my saucepan, then turned away momentarily to read a couple of pages of a book I am reading, then got lost in the book and completely forgot about my saucepan... until a faint cooking smell wafted over, and I hurried over to resume. Voila! My minced beef had all "melted" into the pot, broken down and almost all browned, and only needed a couple of easy stirs to get all mixed in and ready for cooking.
So there you go.
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| Cute Dino Pics |
Mar 18, 2015
Here, I've fixed it: Dear Future Husband
There is a song that is currently HUGE on the tween girl circuit that is so teeth-grindingly annoying to me that I was very glad to see Salon just called it out for being "the worst".
If you're not familiar with Meghan Trainor's "Dear Future Husband", the real lyrics are here.
Now obviously, this is a light-hearted pop song, depicting a girl fantasizing about her ideal husband, a man she seems to know does not really exist. The 1950's sound make it an obvious retro-fantasy, and it's clearly not meant to be taken seriously ("Even if I was wrong / You know I'm never wrong / Why disagree?"). So obviously, I know this is just a fun silly song and not an actual guide to life.
But I still hate it!
I hate that whole "treat me like a lady" thing, and don't want my daughters to learn it.
I hate that whole "you better treat me right" thing, and that whole "you have to love me even when I'm batshit crazy" thing.
I hate that whole "if you treat me like a princess I'll have sex with you happily" crap that no one really means or can keep up in real life anyway.
So I've made the lyrics a bit better:
Dear Future
You'll need to know I think will help us if you we wanna be
My one and Each other's only all my life our lives
Take me Let's go on a date
I We deserve it, babe
And don't But let's forget the flowers every anniversary
'Cause if you'll treat me right
I'll be the perfect wife
Buying groceries
Buy-buying what you need
We'll treat each other right
No one's the perfect wife
You got that 9 to 5
But, baby, so do I
So don't be thinking I'll be home and baking apple pies
I never learned to cook
But I can write a hook
Sing along with me
Sing-sing along with me (hey)
You gotta know how I don't want you to treat me like a lady
Even when I'm acting But never tell me that I'm crazy
Tell me everything's Gaslighting's never alright
Dear futurehusband partner,
Here's a few things
You'll need to know I think will help us if you we wanna be
My one and Each other's only all my life our lives
Dear future husband,
If you wanna get that special lovin'
Tell me I'm beautiful each and every night
After every fight
Just We'll both apologize
And maybe thenI'll let you try and rock my body right we'll hold each other tight
Even if I No matter who was wrong
You know I'm never wrong We won't stay mad for long
Why disagree?
Why, why disagree?
Dear futurehusband partner,Here's a few things
You'll need to know I think will help us if you we wanna be
My one and Each other's only all my life our lives (hey, baby)
Dear futurehusband partner,
Make time for me
Don't leave me lonely And I'll make time for you
And know we'll never see your family more than mine And we'll take turns to see our families all our lives
I'll be sleeping on the left side of the bed (hey)
Open doors for meand you might get some kisses if you go through them first,
Or if I'm first through, I'll hold the door for you
Don't have a dirty mind
at least not all the time
Just be aclassy decent guy
You don't have to Buy me a ring
Buy-buy me a ring, (babe)
You gotta know how I don't want you to treat me like a lady
Even when I'm acting But never tell me that I'm crazy
Tell me everything's Gaslighting's never alright
Dear futurehusband partner,
Here's a few things
You'll need to know I think will help us if you we wanna be
My one and Each other's only all my life our lives
Dear future husband,
If you wanna get that special loving
Tell me I'm beautiful each and every night
Futurehusband partner, better let's love me each other right
______
Not quite as catchy, I'll agree - but MUCH BETTER!
Now to get my daughters singing along to this version...
If you're not familiar with Meghan Trainor's "Dear Future Husband", the real lyrics are here.
Now obviously, this is a light-hearted pop song, depicting a girl fantasizing about her ideal husband, a man she seems to know does not really exist. The 1950's sound make it an obvious retro-fantasy, and it's clearly not meant to be taken seriously ("Even if I was wrong / You know I'm never wrong / Why disagree?"). So obviously, I know this is just a fun silly song and not an actual guide to life.
But I still hate it!
I hate that whole "treat me like a lady" thing, and don't want my daughters to learn it.
I hate that whole "you better treat me right" thing, and that whole "you have to love me even when I'm batshit crazy" thing.
I hate that whole "if you treat me like a princess I'll have sex with you happily" crap that no one really means or can keep up in real life anyway.
So I've made the lyrics a bit better:
Dear Future Husband Partner
Dear future husband partner,
Here's a few thingsI'll be the perfect wife
Buying groceries
Buy-buying what you need
We'll treat each other right
No one's the perfect wife
And we'll take turns
Buying groceries
Buying groceries
Buy-buying groceries
You got that 9 to 5
But, baby, so do I
So don't be thinking I'll be home and baking apple pies
I never learned to cook
But I can write a hook
Sing along with me
Sing-sing along with me (hey)
Dear future
Here's a few things
If you wanna get that special lovin'
Tell me I'm beautiful each and every night
After every fight
And maybe then
Why disagree?
Why, why disagree?
Dear future
Dear future
Make time for me
I'll be sleeping on the left side of the bed (hey)
Open doors for me
Or if I'm first through, I'll hold the door for you
Don't have a dirty mind
at least not all the time
Just be a
You don't have to Buy me a ring
Buy-buy me a ring, (babe)
Dear future
Here's a few things
Dear future husband,
If you wanna get that special loving
Tell me I'm beautiful each and every night
Future
______
Not quite as catchy, I'll agree - but MUCH BETTER!
Now to get my daughters singing along to this version...
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