BadTomatoes

One more for today – there are two more prepared videos, which I might get to tomorrow.

This is a little flashback to when Samuel first started walking. The video quality isn’t great, since it was taken with the still camera rather than the video camera (and whoever was shooting it – I don’t remember if it was me or Olyvia) wasn’t aiming that well). It shows a lot of change over the last year, though!

Samuel’s grandparents are all 50+ now, with Nana’s birthday on the 28th of December. We squeezed in two days of birthday events in between the Point Wells Christmas and the Whangarei one, which made everything that much tighter, but these events don’t come often!

We bought her a digital photo frame (which we also did for Poppa, and had previously for Grandma) – the difference in quality between the frames each year is quite dramatic. The one we bought her is one I would almost use myself. (I really feel that the frame needs to auto-pull photos, and needs to be able to change photo slowly (once an hour, once a day, once a week) rather than quickly – if I want a slideshow, I’ll use the TV or a computer). They still seem a bit chunky, though, considering the size of other devices (e.g. an iPod Touch), and include pointless features (e.g. displaying video and playing music).

The other gift didn’t quite get organised quickly enough to arrive in time to get to her on her birthday (and in fact has still yet to arrive, probably held up by the holiday no-mail days). As an alternative, we made a DVD including an Animoto video of some ‘this is your life’ photos (download/view the higher quality (35 MB) version), as well as a collection of the Samuel photos & video we’ve made so far.

Things have been pretty busy recently, so not much in the way of updates, although there’s a backlog of video/photos to upload that I’m gradually getting to, along with an account of the festive season.

We hosted the coffee group Christmas party this year, and it went really well. Amazinly, the weather held out, so pretty much the whole event was outside (some of the kids played in Sam’s room periodically, and Samuel gave himself some breaks in the lounge a couple of times).

I managed to take a few photos this time (being outside helped, as well as Samuel being old enough to look after himself for the most part). As usual, if the photo has Samuel in it, then it’s public. If not, then it’s only visible to flickr friends/family (or if you get a special link from me/Olyvia).

I also made an Animoto video, intending to put it up before Christmas (the party was the Sunday prior), as a holiday message. I got swamped with other things, so this is a bit late, but here it is anyway (you can watch it here directly, or download/view a higher quality (33 MB) version).

30th birthdays seem to be happening all the time at the moment! Mine is a bit under three months away, so here are some thoughts.

When people ask what I want for a gift (for any occasion) I always suggest a book, which never goes down well. For some reason, people want to get me something more exciting or unusual – my argument is that reading is something I love to do, do regularly, made better by having more books, and so a book is a solid choice. I’ll like it just as much (maybe more) than the exotic alternative gift you’ve thought of, and chances are that the book will get more use.

Since this is a ‘milestone’ birthday, it seems that the expected thing is to ‘theme’ it somehow. I’ve decided that the theme will be “books”. If you get me a gift (and, of course, they are optional – I have plenty of stuff already, really) then it should be ‘book/reading related’:

• A donation to some sort of book-related charity (the Foundation for the Blind would be a good choice, or your local library, or donating books to your local school, etc). I really do have plenty of ‘things’.
• A book – could be fiction or non-fiction (there are examples on my wishlist, which I keep updated – note that “compact” view will only be a couple of pages, rather than the very long default view). I like second-hand books just as much as new ones.
• A specific case of getting a book would be to fill out (or partially fill out) a series that I have. I unfortunately have quite a few sets of books where I am missing one or more books from the series, and it would be great to have the gaps filled in. Again, second-hand books would be fine. This can go right back to the Hardy Books books, the Dragonlance Saga, or more recent books like the Wheel of Time series.
• A book of comics or a ‘graphic novel’ – for example, Pearls Before Swine, the Buffy graphic novels (check to see which I have first), or the Firefly novels.
• A bookmark – some people lose socks, I lose bookmarks.
• Some sort of book-related software. I have Delicious Library 2, so I’m not sure what this would be, but maybe some templates or scripts or addons or something will appear for DL2, or maybe a good iPhone/iPod touch application will appear.
• An audiobook (e.g. from Audible or iTunes – I have an Audible account, so I get cheaper prices than random buyers, so I’m not sure how to best arrange this. Maybe Olyvia could buy them for you, or you could do an IOU for a specific book. I have a wishlist on AudibleKids; I have one on Audible.com as well, but I don’t think you can make it publicly available – Olyvia could get to it.
• A donation to one of the Podiobooks I’ve enjoyed at podiobooks.com.
• Book-related furniture, like a bookshelf or bookends. The final plan is to have a proper library in our house with permanent shelving, so a bookshelf would have to be interesting in some way.
• A photobook, like those you can get from snapfish or through iPhoto.
• Some sort of book-related travel (to a special store, possibly to a signing or event, although I’m lukewarm on those, or something else).
• A subscription to a magazine, like Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, or F&SF, or maybe a local one like Foodtown Magazine.
• If the kindle or something similar (something not so ugly, hopefully) is available in NZ, then I would be quite interested in trying one out. I’m not particularly convinced that it would suit me, but there’s only one way to know for sure.

I’m sure there are many more that imaginative minds can come up with. I look forward to it!

Of course, this theme isn’t compulsory. You can (a) not get me a gift at all or (b) get me something unrelated to books/reading, especially if you have something special in mind. However, if you do want to buy something, and are stuck for ideas, there they are.

You can see the books I already own:

• In a plain, but fast to load format
• In a nicer-looking, but slower to load format
• In a nice-looking, but very slow to load format

#1: I baked some muffins to take to Vanessa when we went to see her new place a few days ago. One batch was the crunchy lemon ones we did for Samuel’s first birthday. The other was a batch of sun-dried tomato with coriander and cornmeal, which I hadn’t made before. All went well, until I was tidying up after the muffins were cooked, and found the bowl of tomatoes, ready to add to the mixture. It turned out that it didn’t matter that much: I made a proper batch the next day and while they were tastier, the first batch was still fine.

#2: I put a couple of (English) muffin halves in the toaster to have as a snack while I was working. I came back when they were done, and found that there were already two halves in the toaster from when I had done the same thing earlier in the day and forgot to collect & eat them. Apparently, our new toaster is wide enough to cook two halves side-by-side!

#3: Rachel, Olyvia & Samuel brought me some three capsicums a few days ago from the garden (from the previous occupants – our garden is only just planted), with the suggestion that we could use them in our dinner. I got a chance to use them last night, so I diced them up and added them to some pasta sauce. The flesh inside was a little unusual, but I figured that it was just a different variety than I was used to, and I had a bit of a cough, so didn’t pay much attention. When it came time to taste the pasta sauce, I figured out the source of the cough: they were not capsicum. They were chilli. Three pretty large chilli in one little batch of sauce. It was very, very hot (at least I’d taken out the seeds!). I had a go eating it, but could only manage about a third before the heat was unbearable. Even the next day my hands are a bit sore (from cutting the chilli up).