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...)

Industrial design

One thing that can really get me cooking is industrial design.
Today it is the plastic little flipp on the cat-5 cable connector that after some time, at least when it is connected to a laptop that is carried around the flat, breaks off. It really grinds my gears. I have not counted, but I believe that I currently have at least five cables that are broken. The cable is probably designed to be stationary, you plug it in to a router and a computer and then you leave it, and then there would be no problem. But I can not be the only one that use a cable connected to a laptop right? It baffles me that the connector has not evolved into something sturdier. (One reason might be that most people use a wireless connection and hence circumvent the problem entirely, but I don't since I got in a fight with my isp regarding a wireless modem that they promised me over the phone but then cheated me of).

Feelings of guilt

Am I alone in feeling guilty walking past my regular pizza place carrying ingredients for home made pizza?

(The pizza was good, the listeria bacon that I used as an ingredient on said pizza kind of ruined it though)

Who are you?

Especially you who come from: http://www.dongo.org/the_netherlands-germany/list_4_en/a_dutch_street_and_a_german_street_in_category_transport.html
And why do you come from there to this little corner of the world?

Quote of the day

During lunch today Tage says:
'Hur säger man på engelska pappa? Tack för maten?'
('How do you say it in english dad? Thank you for the food?')

I was stunned.

I am certain that there is a Nobel price in my future

The nurse at my doctors office told me, when I asked for some advice about my broken back, that I should eat the maximum amount of non-prescription pain pills. That I should combine paracetamol and ibuprofen (i.e. Alvedon and Ipren) to get a maximum effect. So, it came to me, the Nobel price winning idea: Making a pill that contains both substances! Alvepren! The maximum effect in One small pill! I can assure you that it would be a big seller.
I am giving the idea away to the pharmaceutical companies, but I do want the price money and a seat at the kings table!