Heather, On Tech

Forget "Pre-Teens" - What About Younger Kids?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's been awhile since I posted, I know.  Today's going to be a good one though.  It's not really about a gadget, but it's a rant on something that needs to be addressed by the world, like NOW, because wake up people!

I have two boys, ages 6 and 8.  Believe it or not, they can read!  And even worse, they can write!  Oh my God, can you believe it?  Guess what else?  They have their own computers!  I realise that last part may not be completely mainstream yet, but as life and technology have evolved, more and more children - and I mean really young ones - will have their own computers, or at least access to them all the time.  Mine have had their own computers since they were roughly two years old (both my husband and I are software developers, and when you get a new computer every two years, you tend to accumulate them - may as well put them to good use).

Both of their machines are set up in a "public" area of the house - namely the family room.  They have no privacy while surfing the Internet.  But that doesn't mean that I'm sitting right there with them, either.  They are old enough to type in their own searches and look for and view whatever they want to on the Internet at their leisure.

Now, before you misunderstand and think I feel there should be parental controls on everything, please finish reading.  I know there are plenty of parental-type controls to install (remember what I do for a living?  I spend much of my time on the Internet myself).  I also know that a lot of those controls are all-encompassing for your household (if you block a site at your router, you're screwed; using online family tools requires everyone to sign up (sometimes); it's a hassle because frankly, there are plenty of sites that have perfectly suitable content for my children as well as things that are completely unsuitable for the entire world to see).  So, basically, I'm not talking about a children's browser or parental controls.

For instance, my kids adore YouTube.  There are plenty of child-friendly videos on YouTube that I let them enjoy, that's perfectly suitable for them to watch (and gasp! even age appropriate!).  The rub is that while they are searching for Harry Potter, they may stumble upon something that isn't really Harry Potter related, despite being tagged as such (for instance, a teenager home-made movie with lots of blood and gore in it and one of the characters is dressed up like Harry Potter).  I have no problem with those types of videos per se, and I certainly don't think they should be banned.  What I do think is that if you're going to have parental controls on your web site, they need to address the fact that people under the age of 13 are viewing it.

Now, I'm picking on YouTube because they are the flavour of the day (and the current problem in our house).  However, to their credit, they do mention that only people 13 and older are allowed to create an account.  I also have no problem with this; it's their business and they have the right to do that.  I just wish there were a way to convince them that really, just because a six year old has an account, they can still read and write, and they can type their own stuff in - and wouldn't it be nice to treat them as the (somewhat) responsible children they are and flag the material that's appropriate for them, just like the pre-teens?  What a concept!  It's what, one more record in a lookup table, right?  If the content is being flagged by the parents anyway, why not allow younger kids to sign up and be protected?  What about something like Fred?  My kids adore him, and he's perfectly safe for them to watch.  Why not let them?  Because if they type in "Fred" as a search item, they are also likely to get "Fred Kruger" of A Nightmare on Elm Street fame, which I don't want them watching.  If they were 13, I wouldn't care so much, or at least they would be better able to understand that the boogeyman isn't real.

And yes, I know there are plenty of sites out there for kids.  My boys actually spend a lot of their online time on Webkinz.  They've tried Club Penguin but my oldest found it boring.  We've checked out a few of the other online things for kids but they are either too new when we check them out (read: there are no friends to play with there) or it's made for kids five and under.

No, I'm not trying to absolve myself of any responsibility of protecting them.  I'm just saying, if you're going to have a policy for protecting children, it's time to go younger than 13, or even 10.  There are a whole bunch of kids on the Internet that are under that age, and who's to say there's nothing on YouTube for them to watch?  Maybe it's a better policy to opt-in on things like that, rather than opt-out?

I'm not saying I have all the answers, because I really don't.  I'm just sick of "everyone" assuming that "Internet safety" applies to ages 10 and up.  It doesn't - it actually applies to everyone, including the youngsters.

End of rant, thanks and have a great day.

Hello! Anybody Out There?

Yeah, I'm still alive, believe it or not.  Just been hiding under a rock lately because, well, nothing has been going on.  And yes, I've fallen down on the job on getting one photo every day; I need to get back on that and I will, eventually.  Too much crap going on in my world right now.

But, I came across something today that I couldn't pass up writing about, so here you go:

Blood bath shower gel.  Yep, it's red, looks like blood (well, sort of), and it even comes in a blood bag.  Totally awesome if you're "into" blood (that's a family joke, if you knew my father you would understand).  At any rate, it smells like cherry (which is not my first choice, but oh well) and you can hang it in the shower.

The shower gel is available at Think Geek for $8.99.

Organize Your Legos With Box 4 Blox

Do you have kids who love Lego's?  Do you have roughly 10,000 of them laying around your house in various areas, and you step on them in the middle of the night?  Do you spend hours a week looking for "that one part" that Junior just has to have right now?

If you answered "yes" to any of those questions, you need to read on.

Anyway, other than the blocks being on the floor (for which there is really no cure other than to train your kids well), the other hassle is the question, "Mommy, can you find me some fire?  I really need some fire for this <insert destructive device here>."  (Remember, my boys are just five and seven years old, so "finding things on their own" lasts about five minutes.)  Now the fun begins.

We were keeping all the Lego's in a giant box.  It's actually one of those fold-able cubes.  So, how do you look for a smallish piece when you need it?  You dump out all 10,000 pieces and sift through them.  Sometimes it would take hours of searching.  You can't just pick up handfuls and dump them back in the box; you have to sift through each handful.  Tedious and boring, not to mention aggravating for the kids trying to patiently wait for the coveted block.

So I did some searching.  I didn't want to organize the blocks by colour, or snap them on top of each other, but I wanted to organize them somehow.  Size seemed like the reasonable approach, but how to do it?  Compartmentalized storage is easy to come by; I could use tackle boxes or sewing boxes or little tool boxes or whatever.  But nothing really appealed to me.

Until I started searching on the Internet and came across Box 4 Blox.  It looked a little cheesy, but I thought it was perfect.  It's an inter-locking stack of boxes with smaller and smaller holes in them on the bottom, so the Lego blocks use gravity to sift through.  The smallest pieces end up on the bottom, and the larger pieces stay on the top.  I ordered two sets of them and they arrived in short order.

We've been using the Box 4 Blox or a little over a month now.  I am so happy I bought these!  It's rare that the boys call me for help to sift through the blocks anymore.  They just take the boxes apart and look for the piece themselves.  Everyone is much happier and I don't spend hours looking for that one special pieces.

The box sets are just under $30 but in my opinion they are worth every penny.  I need to get two more boxes, but I'm actually waiting until after Christmas because ultimately I might need about three.  The site claims the boxes hold roughly 1,500 pieces, but I'm pretty sure I got more than that in there.  I did leave the "giant" pieces out though.

The owners are located in New Zealand and email you a few times to keep you posted on when the boxes have shipped, when they should be there, etc.  I like that personal touch, as I am a small business owner myself.  I'm really big on customer service and they certainly provided that (even though I didn't need it for any problems).  Despite them being a world away from me, the boxes shipped from within the US and I actually received them in about a week.

If you need to organize your Lego's, this is a great solution to your problem.  Of course, I haven't figured out how to get the pieces to put themselves in there, but at least I don't have to individually place each tiny Lego blog into a specific section; I can just shake the box and they all go quite nicely to their intended home.

One Remote all Daddies Should Have

OK, well, Mommies too.  It's a "Control Your Kid" remote.  And, as you might have guessed, it doesn't work.  Doesn't even require batteries.  But the buttons are good for a laugh!  They include (but are not limited to):

• grow up
• say please
• eat greens
• say thank you

You get the idea.  The "say please" and "say thank you" buttons would be worn out at our house! 

Yeah, this is a dumb toy, especially since it's $6.99.  But that might be worth it on those really "bad" days that you can't take any more of your children's shenanigans!

Available from Think Geek.

HDTV: Get One NOW

I'm a huge fan of media, as you might have guessed.  Not news media, but music, movies, TV, that sort of thing.  If there's something good to watch, I'm all over it.  I guess I'm a visual person, huh?  When we bought our house about eight years ago, we got a big TV to go in the family room.  By "big" I mean huge - a 60-inch projection television with all kinds of connectivity on the back of it.  The thing was a mammoth, but damn, it had a great picture and speakers.

Well, over time, the tubes in that great TV have filled up with an algae-type substance that makes the image fuzzy.  This happens because the projection tubes get hot when you watch TV, then when you turn it off it cools down and causes condensation inside the tube - which causes algae to grow because, well, this is Florida and you can pretty much grow algae or moss on anything down here.  So, our picture has degraded to the point of being unable to tell which team was which when you watched football.  And we can't have that, now can we?

Next came the debate over getting the tubes cleaned or getting a new TV.  Technology has come a long long way in the last eight years, and so the new TV won out.  Man, I'm glad we decided on that because damn what a picture!

We opted for an LCD television, flat-panel, HD of course (may as well go all-out).  We got a Sony Bravia because you can connect the computer to it and watch iTunes movies (or whatever else you like, pretty much), and I liked that idea a lot.  It was delivered last Thursday and David and I hooked it all up Thursday night.  Primo!

The picture was crisp and clear and I couldn't complain one bit.  It was just incredible.  We watched football all day Saturday, and we could tell the teams apart (a little too well in his case - he's an FSU fan).

Yesterday we had the cable company come out and install HD cable.  Mostly because I wanted the DVR service, but hey, again, may as well go all-out, right?  The guy came and hooked it all up and turned it to an HD channel.  I was expecting a good picture.  What I got was the most incredible television experience I had ever had the pleasure to enjoy.  He turned it to the Food channel (I guess since I'm a woman I must enjoy watching fat people cook, huh?), and let me tell you, I could almost smell whatever that stuff was they were cooking (it was too pretty to be able to tell what it was).  So then I had to surf around and see what I could see.

I kept turning channels back and forth between the HD and digital channels (you know, when you get HD cable, you still get the old digital channel as well) just to see the difference in the picture.  I was utterly amazed.  So then I watched the better part of Live Free or Die Hard.  Entertainment at its best, for sure!

So, people, trust me when I say this: if your TV is on its last legs and you have to buy a new one anyway, get yourself an HD television.  You'll be glad you did, without a doubt.

Learn to Tell Time - and Stay in Bed!

Little E is curious about time.  Being only five years old, he understands the concept, but not how it really works.  Like most kids, he can't discern between five minutes and three hours.  I have started getting him to read the time off the digital clock in the kitchen - just read the numbers to me. 

This clock might help him do just that.  It's sold by Think Geek and glows green when the kids are allowed to get up.  You can set the alarm for an "OK to wake" time, and they are supposed to stay in bed unless the clock is glowing green.

It seems the clock uses a game to teach the kids how to tell the time.  It has a digital and analog display to make sure they really get it, too.  The clock announces the time with the press of a button, so any time your kids want to know what time it is, they can just push the toe of the clock and they don't have to ask.

Maybe within a few months we can have Little E stop asking us "how much longer...?" when we're on our way somewhere.  It's a little steep at $40 but if I can get him to understand that "the length of about one Spongebob episode" is 15 minutes, I'll be happy!

Washing Machine Chair: No Water, No Detergent

This cracks me up: apparently Harsha Vardhan has put out a washing machine seat that uses no water and no detergent.  It uses ionized air to clean your clothes (obviously these people don't have children, and certainly not little boys).

You lift the lid, put your clothes in, and sit down on it.  I gather from the Coolest Gadgets article that you don't bounce up and down on the chair to clean the clothes, despite how fun that sounds.  There are actually controls on some sort of slide-out board or something.  Of course, if it has an agitator, this could be the most fun since...um, the washing machine?

Ice Pirates!

We love pirates around here; after all, I'm the only wench, so we all have pirate names (we are the Smellagain family; Stinky, Rotten, ... ok, well, the boys have pirate names!).  That's why I'm going to buy the Skull and Crossbones Ice Trays from Think Geek!

Like the ice balls I wrote about recently, these are sure to bring interesting conversation to any party, especially if it doesn't involve frozen fruity beverages (you know, the ones the wenches enjoy).

They're only $5.99.  You know you want them as much as I do!

Ice Cube Balls?

Ice cubes are pretty boring, but if you want to spice up your life, you can make perfectly spherical ice cubes with the Ice Mold.  Coolest Gadgets reports that a Japanese company called Taisin (hope you can read Japanese!) makes the Ice Mold, and you can have ice balls in your drink.

It does not freeze water; rather, it takes an existing ice cube or block of ice and molds it into a sphere.  I guess this works much faster than freezing it.  the great thing is that the spheres melt more slowly than regular ice, and it will retain its shape as it melts (much like the Atomic Fireball I'm eating right now - wishing I had an ice ball!).

I wish I could find out how much these cost; I'd get one if I could figure out how to order on the Taisin web site.  Maybe I'll enlist the aid of my brother (who speaks some Japanese)...

Glow in the Dark Water

ThinkGeek has some of the most interesting toys, like this LED for your faucet.  You just attach the light to the end of your faucet, and when the water comes out, it has a beautiful red or blue light shining through it.  It kinda gives your faucet a glow-in-the-dark feeling.

I can see where this would drive kids crazy, at least enough to make them waste several gallons of water a day!  The boys' bathroom has no windows, so they can go in there, close the door, and be in utter darkness.  This would really give them something to play with in there (as if they don't spend enough time in the water).

The lights come in two varieties: always blue, or blue and red (it turns red when the water hits 89 degrees - really nifty).  And they come at a very affordable price: $13-$20.