Cartons of Drink

As a consummate consumer whore, M'laddo squeals with joy when we present him with a carton of fruity drink and shrieks with horror when we offer his a beaker of water or fruit juice. The addition of a straw to the beaker of juice will sometimes placate him but more often than not he drinks his beaker in a surly fashion mutter he wants a fruit shoot under his breath.

What's always baffled me slightly is the ingredients list on the side of these juice drinks. It doesn't matter whether it is orange, pineapple, grape or banana, invariably the largest fruit ingredient by percentage is apple. This has always confused me because I just tend to drink orange juice without added apple juice or pineapple juice without apple juice. You never see apple juice with added apple juice do you?

So, in the spirit of adventure, I explored the fridge and grabbed the orange juice. A quick taste (not direct from the carton I hasten to add) reassured me that yes, this is definitely the normal taste of orange juice. I then poured a couple of inches of apple juice into a tumbler and topped it up with orange juice. BEHOLD! I have created a hybrid carton-ised beverage.

And bizarrely, it tastes quite nice. The apple rounds off the tartness of the orange a little and allows it to slip down your throat very easily. Yummy.

So there you have it, the most pointless thing in the world. Ever. But it does lead me on to wondering what other pre-packaged foodstuffs I can lovingly recreate in the comfort of my own kitchen. Any suggestions?

Thinking of buying a games console for Christmas?

Games consoles are often the most requested thing for Christmas for kids from about age 5 upwards. The range of consoles from 3 major manufacturers encompass handheld machines and ones that sit under the telly and can be more than a bit baffling.

So to start with, we’re going to have a look at handheld machines. Nintendo’s effort is called the Dsi and Sony’s is called the PSP.

The Nintendo Dsi is the top selling handheld out there. It retails for £149.99, which if you think is steep, is still cheaper by a fair margin than the PSP. The older version, the DS Lite, is still available at £99 and at the moment is pretty much the same as there are very few games available that make use of the extra features in the Dsi. The range of games available is huge and although new releases aren’t cheap, a lot of the games are specifically aimed at kids so there should be a lot to choose from. The console itself has two screens, one of them a touchscreen which is used via a stylus and even though its made of plastic, it is pretty sturdy- it closes like a book to protect the screens when its shoved in a coat pocket or bag.

Sony’s PSP is available in two versions, the new PSPGo (pictured) which retails at £249.99 (currently £199.99 on Amazon) and the older PSP 3000 (snazzy name there Sony!) which is a much more reasonable £140. Things now get confusing as where the Nintendo Dsi and DS Lite share a common game format and can more or less share games, things are different with the PSPgo and the PSP 3000. The PSPgo relies totally on downloads for its games, where the PSP 3000 uses a little minidisk style disc called a UMD. The PSPgo doesn’t have a UMD drive, so all the old second hand games you could pick up from GAME or Blockbusters for a bargain price for the PSP 3000 aren’t worth even looking at on the PSPgo. I’ve owned a PSP for over 5 years now and I have to admit it doesn’t get played as much you would think it would. Technically its miles ahead of Nintendo’s offering, the graphics are better, the screen is lovely, but somehow it just doesn’t quite work. The controller gives anyone of any age hand cramp after about 15 minutes of play and there just aren’t enough games. Given the choice, I’d turn back time and un-buy it but they are definitely popular with youngsters. They also have the typical Sony build quality too.

If you don’t want to buy something that your offspring could lose or smuggle into school and have it confiscated or stolen, you’re best bet is a home console that sits under the telly. There are basically 3 to chose from here, the Nintendo Wii, the Sony Playstation 3 and the Microsoft Xbox 360. Each has its strengths and weaknesses and is probably more suitable for certain age groups. All the 3 consoles have wireless controllers as standard now days, so you can rest assured you wont be tripping over cables.

The Nintendo Wii is such a small cute console that its hard not to love it from the outset. It’s the only one of the 3 consoles not to be designed specifically for HDTV’s and the games on it certainly don’t look awesome but the one thing it does have is fun games. It also has a unique motion control system. Basically you put a little bar on top of your television and point a controller at the screen and it tracks your movement. That’s not to say you can’t control games in a a conventional manner but it is certainly a different take on it. Although there are some fiendishly difficult games on the Wii, it definitely has the best range of games suited for children on it. It’s also got the rather fab BBC iPlayer too, which is nice. Our two year old likes the odd game of Mario Kart.

The Microsoft Xbox 360 is available in several different versions but the only real difference is whether you get a hard drive with it and how big that hard drive is. A hard drive is used to download demos to, to save game progression on and to download films onto, so to my mind is pretty much essential. I’d recommend the 60gig Xbox 360 Premium which you can pick up for around £160. The Xbox 360 will play DVD’s as well as games, and as mentioned will let you download films (for a price). It allows you to easily play games online against your friends (or strangers- so make sure your kids console is located in a communal place) but there is an annual subscription for this service, RRP £40. The range of games is the best of all 3 consoles and if a game comes out on more than one format, it tends to be better on the Xbox 360. There are a lot of games for kids and older teens but there are also a lot of games that are aimed at adults- the average age of a games player in the UK is over 25 you know- so make sure you look at the age ratings on games you’re buying, if it says 18, there’s the likelihood it will contain graphic realistic violence.

The final machine is the Playstation 3 from Sony. It follows on from the astonishingly successful Playstation 2 but watch out, while the Nintendo Wii can play old Nintendo Gamecube games, the Playstation 3 cannot play Playstation 2 games. This means you either have to keep both machines out or pack away all those PS2 games. At £250 it is pretty expensive too. It doesn’t have a range of games as good as the xbox 360 but it does have another trick up its sleeve in the form of a BluRay disc player built in to it. So if you have a high definition television, you can watch BluRay movies on your PS3. Considering that stand alone BluRay players can easily cost more than the PS3, it is definitely worth considering it, especially if your (older) child likes watching films. The PS3 does allow you to play online against your friends for free but the trade off is a system no where near as slick as the xbox’s xbox live system.

So there you go, 5 consoles to chose from, you must choose wisely. And that’s before your 7 year old asks for an iPod Touch for Christmas too, as the daughter of one of my work colleagues did last week.

(Originally posted on Mummy Reviews)

Blokey Fiddling Stuff

I've been fairly busy this week in the evenings. I love Blogger as it's all set up for you and all you have to do is concentrate on providing content. But I am also a bloke, so tinkering and fiddling is my forte.

So with that in mind I've been playing about with self hosted blogging software, fiddling around with database settings, designing favicons, setting up multi level access users accounts and generally spending far too long hunched over my netbook.

Wordpress- I've used this to build Mummy Reviews for wifey. It's pretty ace as it allows different levels of access, the use of lots of cool widgets (google analytics plugins, SEO optimisation), different themes etc. Basically hosted blogs at www.wordpress.com use a cut down version of this software that isn't as useful.

b2evolution- this is package that's specifically designed to run multiple blogs on the one hosting account with one database. The thing it has over Wordpress is that it can redirect several domain names you own to the relevant blogs. Currently I have my new reading blog I am currently reading hosted there But once I find my felt tipped pens I'm going to have at least one more there :)

Joomla- this is a really really flashy CMS (content management system) that can make magazine style websites as well as blogs. Because it has this extra functionality, its a lot more complicated to set up and I'm still playing around with it. Sites like this use it, so the end results can look very professional. Whether I can get the end results to look very professional is of course another thing entirely :)

Repeat: My Daughter Does Not Look Like Kevin Spacey

Lack of sleep does strange things to you. Take this morning for example, or was it last night? 3am is a peculiar time to define but anyway I digress. I was giving the wee lass a bottle at 3am and there was an odd combination of how she was holding her head and the way she was looking at me that mad my sleep deprived addled brain think she looked a bit like a young Kevin Spacey.

So basically I spent twenty minutes mentally programming myself not to mention this bizarre observation to wifey on my return to bed.

I managed it- but I have a feeling she might read this ;)

The Rise of the Ukulele

Just spelling ukulele correctly will probably get me near the top of google you know :)

One of the members of the rather excellent book group I attend has the grand title of peripatetic music teacher. I had to admit I knew what peripatetic meant, being an all round sort of know it all (I'm like a straight 10% as knowledgeable version of Stephen Fry dontcha know). For those of you who weren't the school nerd and didn't swallow a dictionary when you were growing up, it means "walking or travelling about" according to dictionary.com. Mind you, they failed to spell travelling with two l's, so what do they know?

When I found out there was a music teacher about, I immediately had flashbacks to my youth: a bucket of dettol, communal recorders and the endless squeaking thereof. I love music dearly but have absolutely no appittude for it whatsoever. I can't even clap in time with a simple beat and even M'laddo can do that. So obviously we got talking about the changes in school music since I was a nipper all those many years ago.

The biggest change in primary school music appears to be the rise and rise of the ukulele- they're cheap, small enough for little hands, and even gradually beginning to encroach into popular music (Noah and the Whale's big hit In 5 Years Time is the first one that springs to mind). This is just so much better than squeaking 3 Blind Mice on a dettol flavoured recorder I can begin to tell you!

Another Long Day of a Different Nature

When I blogged about my long day a couple of weeks ago it was a work related long day. Today has been a long day of a personal nature that started a couple of hours after I left my buddy's house and went to bed at about half 11. M'laddo is unwell and a couple of hours after my head had hit the pillow he woke up extremely distressed. So distressed he didn't know whether he wanted me to help or go. After a while I managed to get him to have some medicine but he still wouldn't settle s he came in with us.

The silence that followed obviously disturbed the wee lass as she woke up shortly after and then regularly until we all got up at about 6ish. I've spent about 14 hours in our sitting room today, and the novelty has definitely worn out. I'm off to bed as I expect a similar night of turmoil to come :)

Doctor's Waiting Room

Waiting room is the right word. Why is it that Doctor's are never apologetic when they finally see you well over an hour after your appointment?

M'laddo had sore bits and general flu like symptoms so we booked him in to see a doctors this evening at 5.50. I took him and didn't take a change bag or anything because how long would they keep a two year old waiting? Well past the point where he over-filled his nappy and wet himself unfortunately. At 7pm when we finally got into see the doctor, she apologised to me. My response was to say, it's not me she should be apologising to, its my little boy. Credit to her she did.

I could tell the wee lad wasn't well because he was astonishingly well behaved too. It's a struggle for a two year old to stay still for long, especially when there are no toys or books present and he did a magnificent job.

Shame we were really let down by the doctors really.

It's Panto time!

(Oh no it isn't, oh yes it is!)

I've never been to a panto in my life but have lurked in the basement of the Alban Arena at a couple of beer festivals enough to see the wide array of posters proclaiming the Chuckle Brothers, Cannon and Ball and Dirt Den to name but a few.

M'laddo isn't yet old enough to enjoy a panto, otherwise this year he'd get to see Cbeebies Sarah Jane Honeywell in Cinderella (she's a trained contortionist you know). Oh well, maybe next year :)

It did make me wonder though, the number of C right through to Z list celebrities out there in Panto must be truly awesome.

The list of locals are:

1. Sarah Jane Honeywell, St Albans
2. Bernie Nolan from the Nolan Sisters, Bedford
3. Some bloke from Eggheads, Stevenage
4. I can't even remember now,Welwyn Garden City

I knew the right people for 3 and 4 on Friday but can't even remember them. Gone are the days that Roland Rat would headline...

Computershare Voucher Service

The idea of childcare vouchers is a really good one- that must be why the Labour government are looking to abolish them. Basically each parent can surrender up to £243 from their pre tax salary to go into vouchers to pay for childcare. This means that you save the tax on the money. £243 of childcare costs me £146, which over the course of a year adds up.

It still adds up if the voucher provider is useless and:

1. deducts the money but doesn't provide you with the voucher;
2. has a touch tone phone system that takes a minute to get through and then tells you to hang up;
3. doesn't respond to emails to customer support;
4. doesn't respond to emails to your account manager.

One of my colleagues actually got the name of one of the directors off the internet and emailed him to see if he could do anything, the support was that bad. Myself, I sent an email every hour for a day and threatened to carry on doing so until they replied. No-one replied.

As it stands, my October voucher was issued on 8 October 2009, should have been available to me on 31 October and as of today, 13 November, still isn't available for me.

Computershare have variously told the chap who administers it here that no carer was included on the order (there was a carer on the order), they've raised another invoice (there was already one in place), and they've realised they hadn't taken payment (we've now passed two deadlines when they said it would have been taken and cleared so the voucher would be accessable).

Consequently, despite having £146 deducted from my pay, I've had to write a cheque for £243 to our childminder to cover the administrative debacle from Computershare Childcare Vouchers. In the long term this doesn't matter as our childcare costs exceed the value of the monthly vouchers we can claim but it is still shambolic and simply not good enough.

So in my mind, if your employer is looking to set up a childcare voucher scheme, warn them off Computershare Childcare Vouchers and if your employer uses them, keep a hawk like eye on your account.

It Has Officially Been a Long Day

Today has been long and not particularly eventful.

It started with a nocturnal visit to M'laddo's room for a cuddle which turned into a toddler head lock because he didn't want me to leave (he still occasionally shouts ""dadda, want you lie down with me!" in the middle of the night which is endearing if it doesn't happen too often), was followed by a quick trip to the office to grab my newly dry cleaned jacket, some business cards and to set my out of offfice on Outlook, then on to the Chamber of Commerce Business Breakfast at the unsociable hour of 7.30am (by unsociable, I mean nobody else is sociable at that time, it's often like mid afternoon to me so I'm fine). Since it was in a gym this month no fried brekkie either :(

I then had a quick trip to the office to gather my notes and then onto the London office to brief my fellow managers on a cold file review procedure we've implemented over lunch. That is we briefed them over lunch, it wasn't implemented over lunch.

Immediately after that it was on to a 4 hour training session, followed by a dash to the train station and a bit of a Colin Mcrae to get home in time to put the little ones to bed and make an "attempt" to help with the washing up and tidying for 20 minutes before dashing off to book group to discuss Julian Barnes debut novel Metroland.

It's now 10pm and I've just got in from that feeling a wee bit knackered.

Whats worse is I know that this sort of day is a walk in the park compared to what Wifey is doing at the moment, so I want to say a huge thank you to her for not getting cross with me for going to book group and also for being just so darn incredible with everything that's going on with ill children, horrible work and unreliable childminders to name but a few of the problems.

Love you wifey!

The Power of Torchlight

There are many downsides to it getting darker earlier. My walk home past the Roman walls of Verulamium is a bit spooky as the ditch fills up with an ethereal mist, the autumnal leaves hide a multitude of perils and that owl has decided to nest in the most atmospheric position possible.

Still, being a chap and not adverse to a few Ray Mear's style gadgets, this does give me the opportunity to use my incredibly bright torch when I exhaust all the street lighting. This babies so powerful it can illuminate the far set of posts on a football pitch, so I always get to see where I'm going on the way home.

Apart from the other Friday when we all descended upon Pizza Express after work that is. M'laddo decided that he didn't like the dark and the only way to stop him whimpering at the owl or the ethereal mist was to give him the torch. I'm sure the thought he was helping by shining it directly in my eyes and when I told him to stop I didn't really mean it but I got so dazzled I drove the pushchair into a wall. Fortunately there were no injuries sustained.

So if you see a chap out in the evening with a pushchair (pre the 7pm children's bed time) wearing sun glasses, that'll be me :)

Potty Training Mistakes: My Biggest

Over the last year or so I've let M'laddo watch me having a wee when he's around. I've been trying to suggest to him that as a chap, we decide when we have a wee and it doesn't need a nappy to have a successful bladder empting experience.

It seems like I've taught him too well, as whenever Wifey points the intrepid lad at the Fisher Price Musical Potty we got him, he puts the seat up and attempts to take his trousers and nappy down. Fortunately he's not managed to hose the entire sitting room with urine just yet...

Socks

There are few things in life as confusing as men and there socks. I never seem to have a matching pair but thats because they go into the washing machine together and one is eaten by the machine. This only appears to happen to my socks, Wifey's, M'laddo's and the odd pair Fifi has are immune to this desecration.

So I end up buying a bazillion pairs every year and if I'm unlucky enough to get some that are patterned, I invariably end up wearing a pair that don't match.

Well, it's not my fault.

He's All Grown Up

A couple of days at pre school and M'laddo is chattering away like I used to at his age. He seems all grown up and able to express himself in ways he couldn't a scant few days ago.

I feel left out :(

No Words Wednesday- Things to Come?

Christmas Pressie Suggestions for Toddlers

This is going to be M'laddo's 3rd Christmas. He was only 8 months old when his first came around but still grown up enough to rip the wrapping paper off most of his toys.

Buying toys for babies (in fact for anyone) can be bewildering, especially when they see stuff they think they want. I remember wanting a King Kong robot Zoid thing when I was about 9. Really lusting after it, only for the anti climax of wondering what to do with it after I'd built it to hammer home on Boxing Day.

So with that in mind, I thought I'd do a quick guide for what to get the under 3's for Christmas. This is based on my extensive market research (we have a house packed to the rafters with toys you know), and a good rummage through the excellent Great Toy Guide. (You may spot some of Wifey's reviews on there!)

Top of any list for the older end of toddlerdom has to be Playmobil. It lacks the instant recognition of character based toys (Bob the Builder, Fireman Sam, Peppa Pig and so on) but more than makes up for it in sheer quality. As an adult, all the Playmobil toys actually feel nice and are evidently well made. There are plenty of things to choose from, ranging from the inexpensive like the Child in a Wheelchair we got M'laddo when he broke his foot last summer to the special present from Grandparents level of expensive like the Rock Castle Playset. A lot of the items say 4/5+ years but to be honest as long as you're careful on making sure any small bits are kept out of the way of younger children, you'll be fine. The range is extremely comprehensive, covering all the emergency services, to Castles, Zoos, Hospitals and Vet Clinics, so there should be something for everyone. I'm particularly looking forward to pitched battles at the Castle, followed by a trip to A&E for the wounded knights. We've already got him the executive jet for one of his Christmas pressies.

On a similar vein but for children a wee bit younger, Fisher Prices Little People are really good. The people aren't articulated like Playmobil, so its easier for little hands to put the people in the cars and so on. The playsets themselves, like the Zoom Around Garage we got M'laddo for his first Christmas (8 months) are chunky and durable enough for little hands to give a hammering to (he even managed to use the garage as an impromptu walker at one point) and slobber over without showing any ill effects. The mechanism on the lift takes a bit of working to loosen up, but two years on he's still playing with it which show remarkable concentration in my book.


And another one for the boys (can you spot a theme here?) is the perennial role play favourite of toy wood working/power tools. Manys the time M'laddo has "helped" me assemble flat pack furniture with his toy hammer and saw(!) or used his electric screwdriver to make sure the table is securely screwed together and not about to fall to pieces. I have to admit here we got the wrong set. We instructed M'laddos grand parents to get the JCB workbench set for his second Christmas and the build quality is way below the excellent Bosch range that one of his little friends has. John Lewis sell them in store, so I'd advise you trek down to your local if you're considering buying anything like this.

Well that's my top 3 boys toys, although of course none of these are gender specific to any great degree (the Bosch set happens to be owned by one of M'laddo's little lady friends). I'd be interested to know what suggestions anybody else has?

The Awesome RAF Museum and the Terrible Cafe therein

On Sunday we indulged my love of airplanes and M'laddos specific love of helicopters by taking a trip down to the RAF Museum at Hendon. For various complicated yet not as interesting as you might guess reasons, I'm a Friend of Duxford which means M'laddo and I tend to get our aircraft fix there rather than at the much nearer Hendon. Duxford is a working airfield, with lots of take offs and landings to excite us both. The RAF Museum is decidedly static but no less impressive for it.

It's hard to write about one without mentioning the other, so I'll get the comparisons out of the way now. Duxford is huge. Really massive. It has a Vulcan Bomber and manages to make it look fairly small. Hendon has a Vulcan and it looks really really massive. Hendon has a really cool collection of helicopters, Duxford has a Wessex and doesn't even have an autogyro (even the DeHavilland Museum in London Colney has one of those!) There, all but the final comparison is done. I'll save the final one for the end though...

Bizarrely as it's the RAF Museum, they have some really cool German aircraft. They've got a Messerschmitt Me 262 and a Heinkel He 162, which was a wooden framed jet aircraft that saw limited service at the end of WWII. Seeing these incredibly early jet aircraft is really awe inspiring, especially as they have some some very late post war Spitfires which really show the end of one era and the beginning of another.

So all in all the museum as pretty impressive. What was a let down, and caused a huge amount of tears from M'laddo and almost caused me to burst a blood vessel, was the cafe. The queue wasn't very long but the service was incredibly slow. Slow enough for the wee lass to entirely consume her bottle, M'laddo to come up and check on me four or five times and for me to read all the signs, notices, labels on packets many many times. That's why I was beyond furious when I finally got to the front of the queue only to find they were the only cafe in Christendom not to take cards at the till. Not that they had any sodding signs to show it. M'laddo burst into long drawn out sobs when it became apparent he wouldn't be sharing my KitKat and I could have committed murder, standing in queues for 20 minutes isn't my favourite pass time by any stretch.

So our next visit will be fine, as I'm forewarned of the utter utter utter uselessness of the cafe. That's if I can convince a traumatised two year old to have a return trip...