The Four Toothies of the Apocalypse

Through our haze of tiredness, it's great watching ThingOne change and become a little person, with personality and wants. She's starting to get annoyed if you take a toy (or , say, a leaf that she's decided to eat) away from her. That's not going to be a fun trait to deal with, but it's interesting to see it, and everything else, develop. She's moving around confidently now, standing against things and climbing at every opportunity.


ThingOne's got yet another cold, and it's coincided with about four teeth coming through at once (perhaps the culprits in the small matter of our poor nights' sleep since the start of August). These join the one tooth (well, half-a-tooth really) that's already there, and have made her very clingy and grotty. Anne had been dealing with a grumpy baby for most of Friday when she found the freezer had defrosted as we'd left the door open. A lot of food lost, including about two weeks of meals Anne had made for ThingOne. A disaster. The cost is bad enough, but worse is the time Anne has spent and will have to spend again. Spare time isn't something we're rolling in at the moment, what with needing to be in bed by 10pm most nights due to exhaustion.

I had a stunning victory today though, when I saved a fair amount of money by braving the NCT Nearly New Sale. Here, lots of parents off-load baby-goods. You can save a fair bit of money on reasonable stuff, since babies tend to grow out of things before the wear them out. I got some clothes, but the main buys I heroically fought other desperate parents off for were:

- a stair-gate to stop her getting into the hall (she hates this - she looked through the bars as though we'd chucked her into Guantanamo Bay);

- a sit on walker thing (a bit battered - it's clearly been "pre-loved" but there's no guarantee ThingOne will take to it and Mothercare wanted £50 - ten times what I paid - for a similar bit of plastic);

and
- a metal framed baby-carrying backpack.

The last item was a good find, and when we put ThingOne into it and walked her into Cambridge and back we knew I'd made a good choice. She was looking everywhere and beaming with joy much of the time (not a look we've seen much in the last few cold-laden days).

On the way back, about half a mile from home, ThingOne's appreciation manifested itself in physical form when she threw up down my back. Nice. Such is my resigned demeanour, my spirit beaten down into acceptance by almost nine months of parenting and bodily fluids, that I just carried on walking, and haven't yet changed my shirt. I'm sure ThingOne will appreciate my sacrifices in years to come...

Holiday at home

I had the last week off work. We'd thought about going on holiday somewhere, but weren't up for the organisation and upheaval that going away with a seven month old would involve. A couple of months ago we were feeling more confident, but ThingOne's sleeping has taken a turn for the worse. I think staying at home turned out to be the best thing we could have done, as I wouldn't have wanted to be in a hotel and up all hours trying to get ThingOne back to sleep. So we got the grannies over a few afternoons and one evening to babysit and Anne and I had some time on our own. Anne had her first evening out in over seven months!

We'd planned to go to a zoo on Monday, but the weather was pretty dire so we made a snap decision to go to Bluewater shopping centre instead. Whilst there are people who would consider this a good day out, Anne and I aren't two of them. Generally we shun shopping centres. However, we figured:
- it's an hour away so ThingOne can get some much-needed sleep in the car;
- we'd be indoors and dry; and
- there are coffee shops there.

ThingOne seemed to enjoy looking at everything. I think she may have been a bit over stimulated though.


We spent the day doing very little shopping, walking around trying to keep ThingOne as calm as we could, and drinking coffee. In one coffee shop I noticed ThingOne was getting more out of the sports section of the paper than I ever do:


My mum had bought ThingOne a helium balloon, which ThingOne has been having a lot of fun with. A few times we've seen the balloon coming before we see ThingOne coming, so with her now mobile we figure tying a helium balloon to her will help stop us treading on her (I nearly did the other day when I wasn't looking where I was going). This, I suppose, is following the principle used in Jaws when they harpoon some barrels to the great white so they can see where he is in the water. At least the shark wasn't threatening to pull their laptop onto the floor by the power lead.


Her "crawling" is pretty funny to watch. She can do a few "steps" on her hands and knees, but finds it much faster to lie on her front and drag herself along with her hands a la James Caan in Misery (after he's had his knees shattered by Kathy Bates).

Seven months on : ThingOne Beta

Release notes

It was seven months ago yesterday that we released ThingOne into the public domain after nine months of private development. Following some testing, we're pleased to announce that she is now officially in Beta release. Whilst ThingOne Beta is not entirely stable, she has several exciting new features.

New Features:
- Sitting Mode. Now relatively stable with little falling backwards.
- Dental Module. Installation of first tooth subroutine mostly completed by this morning. We're hoping to install more teeth over the next few months, but this one took so long to install and the installation caused a lot of issues with Sleep Mode (see Known Issues)
- Crawl Mode. This new mode has been developed over the last few weeks and it's still tentative, but ThingOne is able to move around a room and get what she wants (e.g. her developers' coffee cups - this is likely a product of faulty Java). Bugs still need to be ironed out as ThingOne tends to get quite frustrated and fall on her GUI (face) a lot. In addition, directional parameters need work as there is much crawling backwards leading to ThingOne moving away from her intended target. Note that this mode may require some upgrades to the operating environment (see below).
- Climb Mode. This bonus mode has been developed at the same time as Crawl Mode contrary to standard development procedures. ThingOne Beta has a high chance of crashing when entering this mode, especially when near the Futon Module as if the Climb routine is not completed ThingOne's GUI (face) will often collide with the desktop (floor).
- Improved search algorithm. ThingOne Beta will now look round corners to find people or things she suspects are there. Whilst not an impressing sounding feature, it should be viewed in relation to the primitive search facility she had during alpha development.
- Sound. ThingOne's sound module has received some upgrades, though no true functionality has been achieved. We've managed to enable several new babbling sounds, but though we may imagine she is purposefully saying "Dada" and "Mama" we suspect this is just a product of the randomiser algorithm.
-Hair. We've introduced some more hair in this release, though not a lot. Whilst this is really just an upgrade to the front end, and does not achieve significant new functionality, it can be quite a fun feature since it can be molded into amusing styles and ThingOne's developers can laugh at her and take photos.

Operating environment:
- ThingOne Alpha would happily operate (though with limited functionality) in most operating environments. The introduction of Crawl Mode and Climb Mode has meant that there are some environments in which it would not be advisable to operate ThingOne Beta. These are mainly due to security concerns. A firewall (also called a stair gate) will soon be needed, and various drivers may be needed to secure wiring, sockets and cupboards.

Known Issues:
- Sleep Mode. During alpha development we thought we might have had this mode fairly stable, but the introduction of new features seems to be conflicting with this. There have been nights recently where ThingOne has been exiting Sleep Mode much more than is acceptable. Many times we have been unable to initiate Sleep Mode, even after attempting for extended periods of time. Often, Wail Mode has been activated by mistake and this can be hard to shut down. Sleep Mode has been shown to be especially unreliable during the day.
- Wail mode. We're looking to tone this mode down and reduce its occurrence. A Calpol patch has been released which can sometimes help, but we're told that this patch should be used sparingly. Suggestions of a gin patch have not yet been taken up.

Photographic evidence

Here's the proof of my trip to DC. First a ironic riff on the traditional tourist shot in front of the Capitol building. Note the clever, knowing air that surrounds the shot.


And here's the tour I'd like to go on. The Segway Tour!

By George, Washington!

I’m over in Washington DC at the mo with work (actually I’m next door in Arlington, VA, but let’s not split hairs).

I flew out on Sunday from Stansted. Unusually for my firm we were allowed to go business class, since MaxJet offer “business class seats at premium economy prices”. There was certainly a lot of legroom and the seats were comfortable, but I didn’t think their service was up to much. The stewardesses didn’t seem to be able to hear anything I said and got a bit shirty with me. Charming.

I was travelling with a guy from work who used to work for Airbus. As we sat in the (business class!) lounge before boarding he looked at the registration number of the plane on which we’d be travelling and looked it up on a plane-spotters website. Within seconds he had a page showing photos of the plane through its life with various airlines’ logos on it in former lives. (See the link here)It made me feel very safe to know it was over 20 years old.

Inside the plane, its age hadn’t been hidden that well. It had been done up of course, but not exactly brought up to date. The seats were quite far apart, so rather than have a TV in the seat in front of you they give you a fairly hefty (and I suspect fairly old) personal media player. I’m sure their web site boasted of a choice of hundreds of movies, but in fact there were only 10-15. Many of them were quite old and I watched Firewall (pap, but ideal for a plane journey) and the musical remake of The Producers (pointless, I’m sure it was good on stage, but most of the funny bits are from the original movie and the songs aren’t great so watch the original. Matthew Broderick does a fair impression of Gene Wilder, but Gene Wilder did a better one).

What annoyed me was, while the media player had a widescreen screen, all the movies were 4:3. (They even carried a message beforehand saying “adapted to fit your screen!) Madness. Therefore you had a choice of either watching it in the proper ratio and having a third of the screen unused or watching it stretched with everyone looking short and fat. I of course opted for the former, though looking around I see most other people preferred the latter (or more likely didn’t notice).
I arrived in my hotel in the Arlington area to find a nice big LCD TV in my room with HD services. Joy! However, the picture looks pretty rubbish, so I don’t think it’s set up properly. Grr!

...Time passes...

OK, so I’ve figured out that I am getting an HD signal on four channels in the room, but the colours (colors?) are far too bright so the picture doesn’t look very good. Shame.

My trip here isn’t all moaning about the signals and ratios on TVs of course, I also went to the pictures to see Superman Returns. With a six-month-old baby at home the only time I get to the movies nowadays is when I’m away with work (unless I take a Wednesday off to go with Anne and ThingOne to the mother and baby session at the local cinema). SR was good. It seemed a little constrained by the original movies, which I thought was both a good and bad thing. It could have done with a little updating IMO.

After four days of work and eating out in the Ballston area of Arlington in the evenings, on my last night here last night I went with a colleague into DC itself and saw some of the sights. The buildings of government are certainly impressive and there are some nice wide green areas (the green is grass). Like many American cities I feel like I already know it, having seen it in so many movies (and of course The West Wing) so walking around it I got a feeling of strangeness and familiarity.
I’m flying back to the UK tonight, arriving back in Stansted at 7am. Having only just got used to the time zone here I imagine the weekend will be a fun mix of tiredness, exhaustion and lying awake at night.