Do not mess with Tage

I advise you to not mess with my son. You should at least refrain yourselves from scaring him.

He told me today that when He grows old, he will become a man just like [farbror melker] and squirt him (farbror melker red.anm) in the face with water. This since Tage got scared by him whilst riding the train at Astrid Lindgrens värld when he was 2.  My son plans his vengeance ~35 years into the future. I swear, farbror melker will not be expecting it! 

Black and White

So, I started thinking.

If taking photos was not so easy. If it would cost me precious time and money to develop each frame. If it was not just a matter of sticking the memory card into the computer and importing the shots into the photo database software. Would I then stop making the same misstake of taking photos that I know will be bad and actually start to think beforehand?
Should I go back to my old Minolta and shoot, and develop, Black and White again?

I thought about this for a time in my bed, and then I got up, turned on my computer and started to brows through my b&w collections from way back (before 2008). And man was it a lot of crap! Sure, I did find some that I could put up here without totally embarrassing myself, but the main bulk of the work was, hm, not that good.

Is it possible that a second go at it could be inspiring, fun, worthwhile and a big improvement over the crappy frames of poorly exposed artsy shots of stones at the shore with water stains from the amateurish development that this is just one example of:

Me, the photographer

So, I take a lot of photos. The amount varies, but lets just say that over a period of a couple of months, it stacks up to a lot. Now, most often, one of my children are in front of the camera. Sometimes with a prop. 

But I do try to do this once in a while as well.

And yea, sure, sometimes, I happen to stumble and get some nice results even if I just fiddle around without tripods, lighting equipment and all other stuff that I should really learn how to use in order to get to a level that I want to be at.

Too often I take shots that I know will be bad. Handheld macros with insufficient light will never be good, but I keep trying. Boring shots of boring stuff in boring light will never be anything but boring. But I keep trying. Pictures of people inside, with poor lighting, whilst they are moving about will not be sharp, even if I use a 1.4 aperture (it might be sharp somewhere in the frame, but hardly ever where I want it to be).  So why do I keep trying?

I don't know.

I should learn more. I should study the classics. I should get better at using my camera, my flash, my image software. I should learn how to direct people. I should learn more about composition than just the 'rule of thirds'. I should stop taking photos that I know will suck.

Why me?

Yesterday I went to the library with the kids to return some books. It is a great place to kill an hour or so. Especially since they have a fenced in play area where the smaller kids can play.
I usually read a book or two for Tage there whilst Knut walks around and plays with the toys and books, and almost every time some other kids comes up to me and wants to listen too. Yesterday no less than tree ~15 month olds came and wanted me to read their books, one even wanted to sit in my lap (which made Tage freak out and me a bit uneasy). And I don't mind. But I do wonder why. Do I really look that soft? Are kids not suposed to be scared of men with beards?

20

Any day you can count the number of teeth of one child on the other child's skin is a good day. Or no, wait, that sounds wrong.

Adopting a park

Whilst visiting the west coast this summer I read about a project in the local paper (gp) that really struck home with me. It was someone who was fed up with the incredible amount of trash that washes up on the shores of all the islands around the coast, and had started a 'adopt an island' project. I.e. a private person can sign up for an island and then take responsibility for the removal of trash from its shores. I have no idea of how serious the project was but the idea is great. So great that I started a similar project, albeit closer to home, and so far, I am the only person who knows about it (but who knows, it might grow):

'Adopt a park'. The children playgrounds around here, and anywhere, are completely littered with trash. There are of course people employed to keep them clean, but they only come once or twice a week and they do not really put their soules into the cleaning. Cigarett buts, candy wrappers, soda cans, pieces of paper, glass and plastics still covers the ground. So I started picking up everything that did not belong in a part (maybe 150m²) of the park that we visit most frequently, and now I do this every time I am there. My hope is that people litter less if it is really clean, and maybe it is so. But even if it not so, I can at least play in (a small part of) a park knowing that my kids will not choke on a bottle cap or start chewing on a cigarett butt. My second hope is that it will catch on and spread to other irritated parents that are fed up with the sorry state of things.

I have so far not done anything to promote my idea, but I have thought of ways to do it. To put up a sign 'This park is maintained by the following persons:... and was last cleaned by:...' might be a good idea. Or to write a blog post about it, a post that will be read by hundreds and hundreds of people. Or maybe I should call a reporter from the local newspaper.

I am old

Today I asked Tage if I should crank down the windows in the car, and he immediately retorted that 'No dad, you push a button. There is no crank'. I had to explain to him that back in the day, when I was young, there were no such thing as electrical windows. Damn it, I am old.

Science

Walking home from a park last week I got a brilliant research idea.
To fill a plane up with distilled water and drop it out of the sky (the water that is, not the plane). To simulate rain. And then to collect some of it as it falls to the ground and analyze it, to see what has gotten disolved.
I can not say why it is brilliant, I just feel that it is (maybe it has already been done). I do not know what new knowledge that could be deduced, but I bet that there is enough there to warrant someone (who takes some time to write a grant proposal) a big wad of doe. That someone is not me, but I would gladly take part of the work.

Tech

I started to look for a good external hard drive to use as a photo backup drive. And all I could find was a jungle. I can't decide what brand, what model, what size, whats not, whats hot...
I started to look at some cameras instead, but that quickly turned into some serious drooling over some obscure lenses that I definitely do not need. I thought a while about buying some photo software, but noticed that I then have to upgrade my operating system. So, naturally I started looking into buying a new computer, a macbook with a retina display is perhaps not what the doctor ordered, but I can not even decide what type of computer I should go for.
Darn it. I need to get my hand on some serious doe, and then hire a personal shopper that can figure out what it is that I need and then buys the stuff for me. 

Originals

Someone has given a watch to the 'Excuse me, do you know what time it is?' man. One of our originals here where I live, who used to ask everyone what time it was.
And the man with flower tights, now walks around in regular black or pink tights.
And I have not seen the woman who screams at her children scream at here children in a while (but that might be cause I am to occupied screaming at my own children to notice).

A year ago

A year ago today I sat in a room at the hospital and I cried.
I listened to the radio in short bursts, I could take no more than half a minute before I had to turn it off.
I could not comprehend that anyone could be so evil.
They were kids.
Innocent kids.

In my arms lay my new baby boy. And I cried.

"There are no monsters" - A lie that I will have to repeat over and over again, a lie that I really have to sell to keep him feel safe and secure as he grows up. But we all know it is not true.

I-lands problem

Did I ever tell you about our elevator?
No?
Well, here goes.
It is a regular elevator, you open a door, get in, press a button and the elevator takes you up or down. Just like an elevator is supposed to do.
But.
The buttons are labeled in a fashion that makes anyone not aware of it totally confused. The ground floor is nr 2. So if you want to go one floor up, i.e. to floor nr 1, you press 3. And so on. And if you get in to the elevator on one of the upper floors and have a desire to get out of the building you must press 2. That problem is usually avoided by marking the ground floor with, for example, a green button, but not in our elevator.
To add to the confusion, the list in the lobby is also numbered wrong. We, who live two stairs up, live on the third level according to the list. So, that is, If you walk, you go Two stairs up, to the Third level. But if you take the elevator you should press nr 4. Logical right?
The elevator also has a button that you can press to get the door to open if you are to lazy to actually push the door open, or if you are crippled, in wich case my sarcastic tone in the beginning of this sentence should be ignored. The door opening mechanism only works on some of the floors, But, if you press the button anywhere the motor on the bottom floor spins into action trying to open a door that is locked, cause the elevator ain´t there.
To top it all of, as the elevator arrives at a floor it slows down, stops and then after a little to long time (maybe 0.5 seconds) the door makes a sound indicating that it is now open. During my professional career as a mailman I have tried to fine tune my elevator door opening skills so that I open the door the exact moment as the door is unlocked, much in the same way that Usain Bolt explodes out of the starting blocks, But my own elevator fools me every time. You see, the door actually opens 0.2 seconds After the sound that my brain interprets as the start-gun. Hence I bump into the door with my shoulder and bounce back, leaving me standing there, with a warning for false start hanging over me...

So, that was the story of our elevator. Hope you enjoyed.

Toothpaste

Use an amount of toothpaste corresponding to the child's pinky nail. 
I think it is rather disturbing that I am supposed to know the volume of my kids nails.

A doctors note

I am rather pleased with myself for the brilliant idea I had last week.
If you are about three years old and happen to hurt yourself, you are only allowed to cry if you have a note from your doctor that says that you are actually in pain.
The rule came in to effect after a sudden surge in small accidents that resulted in disproportional amounts of tears and a constant need of the pacifier. No more I said. Do you have a doctors note I said. And it works. The 'test subject' gets distracted and in nine out of ten cases the tears ceases. Now if the tears do keep coming,  I am not really so cruel that I force him to work his way through the healthcare system to actually get affirmation from his doctor (that would only add more pain), I simply take care of the injury the best I can (a hug and to blow a little puff of air in the general direction of the hurt section of his body takes care of most injuries...)

That awkward moment

when you realize that you have totally taken over the lego construction from your three year old...

 

 

The worst thing is when I get mad at him when he is just trying to 'help'...

Memory

Often as I lay down with my youngest trying to get him to fall asleep I think about my breathing. He usually thrashes about, tries to gouge my eyes out, pulls on my beard and kicks me in the groin, and doing that he breaths quite fast. To infuse calm into him I breath calmly and controlled as I, more or less successfully, try to get control of his flailing limbs.
And this always brings me back to when I was young and for some reason or other got to sleep next to my father. I was mesmerized by his slow breathing and I tried to mimic it. A futile task of course since the breathing period depends on how large you are (a humming bird breaths much more rapidly than a blue whale for example), but still a great way to fall asleep since you get oxygen deprivation if you force yourself to breath slower than your medulla oblongata wants you to.

Art project

In one of the parks that we frequently visits there is a 'talk pipe'. A pipe buried in the ground, about 20 m long, with open ends where two people can talk to each other as if they were close by. Like the ones on submarines (or like the once that used to exist on submarines, I hope that they have come up with something a little bit more high-tech by now). It is fun for kids of all ages!

For a long time now I have thought about placing some type of recording device down that pipe and then making an art exhibit where I play the nuggets that I am sure to get. I do expect that most of the conversations that takes place are just kids playing around and that can be fun, but now and again I bet that adults say stuff they expect to be private. Stuff worth recording.

Mars

This is the best I can do with my current equipment. I clearly need better stuff. A telescope perhaps? Or wait, have I not been down this road of thought quite recently?

 

Quite fittingly it is now Mars the month. Thankfully the ugly February is over, the light has returned to us in the north and spring is soon upon us.

Telescope

Often when I gaze up at the heaven and see Jupiter or Venus chasing the moon around the sky I get an urge to buy a decent telescope. It would be great to watch the rings of Saturn and remote galaxies together with my family.
But then I remember that I live in a city, so the view would be limited. So we would have to drive out of the city and find a nice dark place to set it up - But to do that we would have to buy a car, or possibly a house in the countryside. This is the point in my train of thought where I suddenly loose interest in buying a telescope.

A folded piece of paper

I just took apart my entire laptop, to get direct access to the cd-drive, into which Tage had stuck a folded piece of paper. And managed to put it all back into fully working order.
Savoring the victory with a few cc of Suntory whisky.

Todays science experiment

yields that you actually can blow soap bubbles when it is -19.8°C, and that they freeze within five seconds (rough estimate).

New

I did a new thing at work today. I dropped my moped keys down an elevator shaft. It is nice to know that you can do new stuff even after more than three years on the job!

Bad parenting - Update

A while ago I wrote about an idea that I had - to teach your kid something that is entirely wrong, just for the fun of it. Now I don't know anymore... Tage still insists that 'turning on the lights' is in fact when you turn them off, and vice versa. Totally without any encouragement from either of us adults, more the opposite. This has led to several fights, e.g. when we visited some friends and he and a girl got into a dark room and played with flashlights. After a while there was some shouting going on, so the other dad went in and turned on the lights and both kids started shouting Turn off the Lights!!! - so he did, and Tage continued to insist that he should turn off the lights, confused he turned the lights on again, and both kids just kept screaming for the lights to be turned off... This continued for some time. The other dad came out looking seriously bumfuzzled.

It is mildly amusing, but I can not help to wonder if maybe it will be dangerous at some point in his life. Maybe there will come a moment when something big depends on a light being turned on or off, and instinctively he will do the wrong thing. Some things are best to have a solid and correct understanding of and that understanding should not be played with by dads who have to much time on their hands.

Corn Succotash

I have gone around the entire day saying 'Corn Succotash' to myself. Not loudly I think, but still. The problem is that I can not deduce where it comes from. It is a fun thing to say so I do not suffer indefinitely but as I neither knows what it is nor why it is on my brain it kind of annoys me. (If I would have to guess I would say it is something that someone says in M*A*S*H but I have not watched an episode of that show in years...)