Last year we upgraded the Tivo to HD and then the Tivo people came out with their new snappier Premiere model. I'm grumpy with them for that, but do you know what else they did? The new one can completely be controlled over your network with your iPad, but not the Series 3, which is what we have.
The "old" HD version can still be controlled in many ways from the network and your computer and even via the internet... so some limited controls via ye old iPad, but not like the Remote app from Apple. That experience for swipping through your music and movies on the AppleTV is absolutely beautiful.
The Tivo interface is still light years beyond most of the other DVRs offered by the cable and satellite people. I haven't seen anything I like better, except Netflix's instant browsing features on the NEW AppleTV.
Here's the parenting part: the girls will watch a program and then when it's over they turn the set off if there's nothing else recorded in the Kid's Zone. Since the machine is typically recording something most of the time, they don't channel surf.
"A" is for absent. I've been away as my recent posts admit, but A is also for adorable. The other day, I made a brown bag lunch for Red2, my 7 and 1/2 year old daughter. Instead of writing her unusual long name, Arabella on her bag, I wrote, "Adorable".
December rolled along and we bounced through the holidays. Holiday visits, chorus events, vacationing with family. What happened in January was really, what rocked the boat most. Red1 became a blogger herself and I started actually getting real web work.
Betty and mother, Julia Kiene. 1939.
Red1 was at her grandfather's house looking through the cook books her great great grandmother wrote. My daughter's GGGrandmother is Julia Wolcott Kiene.
Ms. Kiene wrote several cook books for Westinghouse in the 1950's and according to the Amazon reviews, they are very much loved but out of print. Red1 said how much she'd like to try some of the recipes and her mother suggested that she write about her experiences and "blog her way through the cook book" like the Julie did with the Julia Childs book. We've been learning a lot more about Juila Kiene and will definitely be sharing some more terrific stories. Not everyone's great great grandmother was photographed and written about in Life magazine.
I'm preparing an entry for Blog Action day. Have you heard about it? My kids try so hard to conserve water they rarely flush and have to be sent to the shower. Do we take our access to water for granted? In the US, we absolutely do. This year the Blog Action day theme is water. I bet we'll learn a lot.
This week I learned that there are people in the United States that don't have access to other basic services we take for granted.
A fire rescue team let a man's house burn to the ground because he failed to pay his fire service fee. They had abundant water to available to wet down the perimeter to protect his neighbors from the flames. The neighbors were all paid up.
It's another list. This time we're counting down the top ten TV shows according to SF Daddy!
As always, I'm gearing this list with the kiddos in mind. No it's not going to be a teletubbie list, they were way out there even for this freaky SF dad.
Torchwood - I'm not going to pretend that I've seen this whole series yet, but after the first few episodes and the praise I've been reading, as a spin off of Dr. Who which also has some smart kick-butt female action stars, this one makes it to my list.
Star Wars The Clone Wars - Star Wars is known for its leading ladies with attitude. The storyline in this animated venture is not short on them either. Joining Padme is Ahsoka, a Jedi sidekick for Anakin who is almost more hotheaded than he is. Season two introduced Arra Sing an awesome bounty hunter with a taste for collecting Jedi. We fanboys have been talking about Ms. Sing since her 2-second cameo in Episode I. Next season we're treated with more from her and another Jedi favorite who was spared at the last minute from death in Episode III in the edit room floor. Shak Ti joins the show this fall. Great thing about this series is that it's available online. http://starwars.com/theclonewars/guide/episode001.html
We're starting a theme here... much like Moonlighting and Cheers, where the two leads are cursed in some way from ever being together. In most cases the show's demise is the only thing that ever comes out of the leads finally getting together. Pushing Daisies was a great confection. Literally. The Pie Man made magical pies from rotten fruit he brought back to life with his magically touch. He can do that trick on animals and people too, but a second touch sends them back to their death. Too bad he brought his secret love back to life one day. Now if he ever touches her again she's dead for good. So instead they bake pies and solve murder mysteries together in a beautiful technicolor dream like comic book land created by Bryan Fuller and EP'd by Barry Sonnenfield- another personal hero.
Legend of the Seeker - The ladies in this house love this show mostly because of Kahlan Amnell – the Mother Confessor.
As a Confessor, she has the power to magnify the love a person has within them for her, allowing her to control the person. This power allows her to serve the people of the Midlands, who respect and fear her. In Kahlan's quest to defeat Rahl, her role is to protect the Seeker with her life. She develops a deep love for Richard, which is torment for them both since her Confessor's powers would be inadvertently unleashed in a moment of intimacy, making it impossible for Richard and Kahlan to act on their feelings for each other. Executive producer Robert Tapert describes Kahlan as "a female action hero for 2009.
Firefly - That's right! Yee Ha! This is one of those shows you're going to hear a lot about until you actually sit down and rent it. You just have to give it a try. We attempted to watch during it's run but the networks messed us all up. So we eventually discovered this gem on DVD. Go ahead and put it in your Netflix cue now...
Georgia Outdoors - Our Georgia PBS station presents topics about our state from gardening to paleontology. Take that Pokemon! Check out your PBS station to see what you can learn about your own backyard.
Let's continue to bend the parameters of this TV list. As TV is evolving, let's add some space to for a couple of internet shows and series.
The Guild - Sweet little nuggets of pure fun. Just geeky enough to try out a few online games and even more dairing to actually go out and meet some of the guild in real life when invited to a Pirate meet, I know this series a little too well. The DVDs are available from Netflix and they stream as one long 'movie' but if the short nuggets are more you speed, check them out on their native site: http://www.watchtheguild.com/
Sad, but here's a Flash video of the first episode. Sad because it won't show up on your iPad (yet?).
TED Talks. If you haven't discovered TED yet, go now. It's more Science and Fantasy than fiction. Real people with fantasies of how we can change the world one person at a time. Here's one on the Happiness Index. Love these things... they even show up in your Tivo if you let them! We've blogged about several of these in the past.
Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world
Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Angel - The monsters in these shows are a bit much for our smaller audience, but the kick-butt girls are certainly a good frolic when we're older. Our most-est favorite episode "Hush" just made it onto the SyFy / Blastr list of best episodes ever. What qualifies as a best episode? You know the episode by name is a good indication! Buffy is so well written and smart. We were just married and growing up a few years ahead of Buffy, but Ms. SF Daddy used the show as a topic of conversation with her high school kids. She often found common ground with the kids through the shows they both enjoyed. She liked using this show in particular to talk about teen issues and the portrayal of women in media. Good Stuff.
And okay, this one's for the very little ones: Have you seen Dinosaur Train? Really? Another PBS offering. We don't graze through the channels like a lot of kids do, but one morning we had a flat tire and found ourselves at the local Firestone. While waiting for the tire to get fixed, we sat through an episode of Dinosaur Train. My 6 year old (Red2) fell in love. Sure it didn't hurt that there's a little Henson magic behind the scenes. Figures. They aren't just cute dinos, but they actually get the real names out in a catchy way.
Very much a different list for you. Can't wait so see your list!
Every year we watch the cardinals and their babies at our bird feeders in the backyard. They have a nest somewhere close.
This spring we started a row of amazing flowers along the front edge of our yard. These are much more interesting than that strip of grass was. We've seen more birds, caterpillars and butterflies than we've ever seen in our yard. Little yellow finches nibbling at the flower seeds. Blue birds swoop through.
We use the worms from our yard to turn our kitchen scraps into compost and then turn that into the dirt in the flower beds and around the bushes.
We planted 2 peach trees, 2 apple trees, a fig tree, blueberries and even a pomegranate! Yum. So our awesome new shrubs and trees will feed us people too.
This summer we certified our yard with the National Wildlife Federation. When we read the qualifications, they seemed to be describing our place! A friend of ours nearby certified their yard a while ago and I always thought it would be cool to have our own certification number! We ordered the yard sign too.
nwf.org Garden-for-Wildlife - Create-a-Habitat
"creating a certified wildlife habitat to discovering wildlife in your neighborhood and sharing the findings, there are many ways you can make a difference."
Listen to this interview! All the great things to do in your yard! We've been doing it and it's so rewarding. http://ow.ly/2w3Tq
Red1, enters fourth grade and gets word that they're putting on the musical "Annie Jr." in the spring. She's been in the school chorus for a year and is excited to try out. But she's not interested in Annie's part. She's all about the character actors! (Ye-haw! Me, too.)
So we're putting Annie DVDs in our Netflix cue and looking at the YouTube clips to see which parts she wants to think about. She knows all about Carol Burnett and loved the few scenes we've seen already. Bernadette Peters may be a new inspiration for her too.
She rolls her eyes and says that all the girls are going to being singing, "Tomorrow, tomorrow..." and just then, Red2 starts singing, "Yesterday..." And that was it. We began pulling up the list of songs and matching them all together.
An Annie/Beatles mashup. Listening to all of the songs from the musical and the Beatles album, "Help!" is going to be great fun. How do they come together? :) We'll see. It's a great project for Google Wave too.
This week we had the displeasure of hearing that Google is planning to dump Google Wave, but we'll keep using it until they close their doors. Perhaps, by sharing our projects like this more people will start using this amazing stuff Google pops out. (What if email was invented today?)
Our Wave for working on the project. - If you are interested in participating, comment on this post, but don't pass up seeing how awesome group work with Google Wave can be.
Testing out embedding this wave below. This may totally slow your viewing experience down but let's try it out.
{Waves aren't that happy on iPads, either.}
It's sad that the comic strip Little Orphan Annie is closing down, but all good things...
R1 and R2 love magic, Disney and dirt. Not necessarily in that order. This clip from Tkfore21at YouTube is the first of a series of clips that we'll be sharing that we found that just blew us away one day searching for sneak peaks into the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Now that the park is open and those clips are easier to find, we'll get on with our sharing of these gems. More on Mr. Potter later. We promise.
Drawing on the sand and playing along with the storyteller looks really fun. What a great presentation trick.
We are so thrilled about Harry. We've really introduced the girls to reading via this series. R1 (who is entering the fourth grade this fall) has been listening to the audio books for a while now. Recently she's finished actually reading the books and was treated to seeing the 6th movie in the theater. We screened it ahead of time so I was prepared to walk out with her if it was too much... that was a while back if you remember. Her reading prowess is remarkable to me. I was not a reader at that age by any means. She is definitely taking after her mother in that arena.
We Googled for this a few days ago and found all sorts of other clips. One even had a bloody Hermione. Quite chilling! Enjoy the show!
Visiting at Grandma's the other day I caught a glimpse at "real TV" and thought that the little Rugrats had aged a bit. Since being in Tivo-land for almost 10 years, we've really been successful at making ourselves oblivious to these things. The babies of Rugrats grew up and had a whole other series for FIVE years while we've been time shifting other shows. It seemed to be just as funny and gross and the original, I really groaned and felt pained as they announced that they had painted the carpet. We miss some good shows I'm sure, but I hurts a little to see the girls sit and watch a stream of shows and commercials that endlessly flow out of the screen.
Tivo's Kid's Zone parental controls features work great. I choose the programs they subscribe to and pepper in some things I think they'll tolerate. When their show is over if they want to watch a documentary about pharaohs, they can, but otherwise the TV gets turned off with few hassles.
I've heard that this creates quite an issue at school since they cannot keep up with conversations about Pokey Mans and Cyber Chasing. But most of the other 3rd graders aren't reading 900 page books either.
How surprised are we really? I love the that copier companies have always offered the security features as an optional upgrade. Way to go! They're always looking out for us. One more bullet point at the FedEx office to look out for.
"Securely copy your documents - our copiers do NOT retain your documents electronically."
and we'll start paying a little more for that. Right?
Red One and Red Two (yeah we call them that!) have a project underway for the summer. R2 graduated kindergarten and was a part of a writers group. I want her to write a story over the summer. I don't want just any story though. I'm steering her to write a story for an episode of one of her favorite TV shows. Get this: Legend of the Seeker. All of the girls started watching this a few months ago. Thanks, Netflix!
It's all about extremely powerful women. Not bad. I haven't had the pleasure yet to catch up, but I have time. I also get lots of recaps from little ones about the magic that's done. They love that one class of character can make you tell the truth.
So we're talking about this episode and R2 who is 6 and 1/2, may end up writing about an adventure a 6 year old girl might have in that world. Looking forward to seeing how it turns out.
One amazing clip from TED. The most mysterious and cool things under that water. We had seen a lot about cuddle fish from the visit to the IMAX theater at MOSY in Tampa a few months ago.
Oh, dear. This next one was not a happy video. TED is full of great ideas. Not all of them will make you smile, but even these I'm glad to have shared and seen. The girls were most impressed with the size of the fish that we used to be able to catch. These pictures really hit home what's happening under the sea.
...a letter written by famous sci-fi writer Robert Heinlein in 1945. A fan of his wrote him to request an article for a fan publication, and Heinlein responded by completely slamming sci-fi fans.
On PAGE 2 of the thread:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Human
Somehow, I don't think WW2 would have ended if the nerd population had gone to war.
Meatrocket Jones: Well, they did go to war, they were the radio guys who always got shot first
We're so excited about this summer. Even though these games are a huge time suck, they really teach some fun and hidden lessons.
In Spore, we're designing creatures: anatomy, finances, strategy, design and color.
In The Sims, it's mostly about fashion. The girls have started creating fewer NEW people and feel more like staying with their existing people. Caring for babies and pets is IN.
Sometimes doing chores and all the regular things we need to do around the house and at school and work needs to be a little more rewarding. Chore Wars is a neat way to provide incentive. The kids love it. We created cards where they keep their scores and when we tally it all up they earn gold and coins. Gold eventually becomes money via a "shopping spree". Academics, reading books, and even the alphabet for the little one are great adventures.
A TV program in 10 minutes just made it click for a 3-year-old. A plant gets water from the ground through its roots; air from under its leaves; and with sun from the tops of its leaves it turns it all into food!
After watering the flowers on the porch we pulled weeds and found some baby pine trees growing at the mailbox. Maybe we'll watch them grow up into big trees. We'll have to ask mommy if that would be okay. She doesn't really love pine trees very much... but they do grow fast!
Image via CrunchBase
- I'm not going to pretend that I've seen this whole series yet, but after the first few episodes and the praise I've been reading, as a spin off of Dr. Who which also has some smart kick-butt female action stars, this one makes it to my list. 
- That's right! Yee Ha! This is one of those shows you're going to hear a lot about until you actually sit down and rent it. You just have to give it a try. We attempted to watch during it's run but the networks messed us all up. So we eventually discovered this gem on DVD. Go ahead and put it in your Netflix cue now...
& 
- The monsters in these shows are a bit much for our smaller audience, but the kick-butt girls are certainly a good frolic when we're older. Our most-est favorite episode "Hush" just made it onto the SyFy / Blastr list of best episodes ever. What qualifies as a best episode? You know the episode by name is a good indication! Buffy is so well written and smart. We were just married and growing up a few years ahead of Buffy, but Ms. SF Daddy used the show as a topic of conversation with her high school kids. She often found common ground with the kids through the shows they both enjoyed. She liked using this show in particular to talk about teen issues and the portrayal of women in media. Good Stuff. 
