Dadblog

The Guardian has a wonderful piece about kids buying Christmas presents which includes this absolute gem:

I always buy my mum and dad’s presents from the Christmas fair at church because it’s easy and cheap. I get £5 a week pocket money, providing I do my music practice, and I’ve been trying to save 50p a week since October. This year I’ve spent £2.50 on my mum and the same on dad. What I do is look for something I know I’d like, and then I think: would they like it too? I bought two possible things for dad: a catapult and a spy listening device. I asked mum which would be best and she said, “Give him the spy listening device, he never seems to hear anything I say, he could do with something to help him hear.” I’ll give the catapult to my brother instead. For my mum I bought some mint crisp chocolates, but I’m a bit partial to them myself so I’ve already had four out of the box. I’m going to wrap the ones that are left up with a little candle I also bought.

That from Francis, aged 12. This year, I know what my kids have bought my wife, and as this is the first year my son’s had a bank account I’m hoping for something special (are you listening, son? son?). But I don’t want do to him what this chap did to his daughter Olivia:

I was out shopping with my dad a few weeks ago and when we were in Virgin Megastore he picked up this CD and said, “If you’re looking for something to buy me for Christmas, this is what I’d like.” It was an album by a band called U2 - I’ve never heard of them, but he seems to like them. I think he meant me to tell my mum and she could pay for it, but I really want to buy it for him myself. I looked at the price when he wasn’t watching and it’s £8.99. I’ve got £5 saved from my pocket money and I get £1 each day for my lunch so I did without a drink and had water instead every day at school for three weeks and I’ve just about got enough. I’ve got my mummy a candle that smells of melon or something like that when you light it: I bought it in a charity shop but it’s brand new and still in the packet.

Inspired by the Register’s brilliant dictionary of the modern world according to Google Suggests, I went to Suggests and started typing in my name. It took eight letters for me to get mine to come up.

So, what’s your Google Suggests score?

It’s being widely blogged, but here’s one view on it: Dan Gillmor is leaving his gig at the San Jose Mercury News for pastures new:

Technology columnist and blogger Dan Gillmor is leaving th e San Jose Mercury News next month to work on a citizen media project. As the author of the book “We the Media” and a proponent of the idea of “open source” journalism, it seems a logical move, and his name brings credibility to the concept (which mainstream publishers are treating cautiously).Gillmor’s announcement continues the buzz over citizen journalism created in recent weeks with word from start-ups Pegasus News and Backfence.com about their plans to launch citizen reporting sites next year.

A thing of sad beauty - how South London would look with a proper underground system.

And I learned from Bill Oddie on TV the other night why South London (and South East London in particular) does not have such a system - it’s built on sand. Rest of London is on clay. Try tunnelling through the two materials and see what happens.

Philip Pullman, an interestingly complex fellow with interesting skeletons in his closet (I’d say more, but I don’t want to end up in court), may be about to commit an odious crime. Here’s the news that the film adaptation of His Dark Materials may water down the anti-organised religion tone of the book, specifically the portrayal of God as the Authority, an ageing, selfish has-been who ends up being killed.

Director Chris Weitz has upset fans of Pullman’s Carnegie-winning books after he admitted in a website interview that the books’ Authority - a malevolent but feeble deity - will appear in the planned films as a representation of “any arbitrary establishment that curtails the freedom of the individual”.

That would be bad enough, but only par for the course for an American film establishment that feeds on American ignorance like an educated vampire sucking the life out of a chav. But it’s also claimed that Weitz has Pullman’s support in this literary atrocity:

Pullman’s agent, Caradoc King, told today’s Times: “Of course New Line want to make money, but Mr Weitz is a wonderful director and Philip is very supportive. You have to recognise that it is a challenge in the climate of Bush’s America.”

Now, this doesn’t say specifically that Pullman supports the line Weitz is taking. But it comes pretty flipping close. And if it’s true, Mr Pullman, your previously sky-high standing as a writer (if not as a human being) chez moi will shortly be plunging faster than a rebel angel winged by Lord Asriel. His Dark Materials without a nasty God and Church is like Lord of the Rings without hobbits.

As you get older, two things happen to you politically: you move to the right (or, in some cases, even further to the left or right of wherever you started from), and national politics itself ceases to stir your passions.

Two things are happening to me in this regard:

1. I’m starting to think our local Conservative councillors are competent human beings. More on this another time.

2. My passion for national politics is actually growing, for two contrary reasons. One, I don’t think New Labour gets anything like enough credit for what it’s achieved. But Two, I think an ID card and DNA database is a political, legal, moral and philosophical disaster.
(more…)

This rather wonderful passage is currently on the front page of Audioscrobbler:

Submissions offline for a couple of hours due to high load
503 wait and see. no more of that, had to switch subs off for a while, will be back when we have determined what is what. hang in there folks.

UPDATE (Russ - 2004-12-01 16:00 GMT): We’re rewriting submissions in Java - it’s going to be at least another 24 hours before we’re up and running again, probably longer.

I’ve heard of tech decisions being made on the fly, but that is heroic.

Last night, it finally happened - I tried to help my son with his homework, and was stumped.

I’ve always known this day would come. As a humanities student with the mathematical capacity of an ashtray, I’d always known it would be maths that would be my downfall, too. And sure enough, along comes an algebraic task (expanding brackets, which I’ve suitably added as a parenthesis), and I hit the mud. Big time.

We worked it out in the end. At least, I think we did. I’m very excited about getting the results, to see if adult common sense can conquer simple mathematical problems. But as a reminder of my academic mortality, and my imminent redundancy as a parent, it was humbling, not to say humiliating. I even suggested buying some study guides. Not for him, you understand. For me.

Someone needs to offer a national curriculum in core subjects for parents. But even then, I’m not sure I’ll ever understand algebra.

And calculus looms in the future, like an intimation of atomic doom…

Say hello to Dadrock. It’s new. It’s a blog. It covers music. It does what it says on the tin, people.

Flippin’ heck.