All that comes with it

This is my 383rd post (my 321st if you don’t count my mini-blog in the sidebar). As you are no doubt aware, these two numbers are both highly significant. 383 is the house number of the small condo in Washington DC in which Al Gore, the inventor of the internet, was born. And, as we all know, 321 is the atomic number of the element blogranium.

In order to commemorate these two numbers I am dedicating this post to blogging about blogging.

Google Reader

Like many people I’ve recently switched to using Google Reader to aggregate my blog reading for me. This has meant that I’m able to zero in on who’s updated recently and cut down my trawling around time by about 90%; allowing me the time to add a fair few new blogs to my reading list.

There are, however, a few problems I see with Google reader.

I can get a little obsessed with my blog’s statcounter. I’m not saying that I sit in front of it pressing the refresh button every thirty seconds, but sometimes I sit in front of it pressing the refresh button every thirty seconds. I haven’t got a problem though, I could quit whenever I want.

When people read the blog using Google reader, or when I read other people’s blogs, the reader is like silent ninja, stealthily sneaking through the web using their ninja guile and cunning to pass undetected. The only time they reveal themselves is when they uncloak and err… throw a comment shrunken. Ok, so it’s a bad metaphor, but you know what I mean. You can actually tell how many subscribers you have using Google Reader, but the process is rather arduous, at least using my ISP it is, and quite frankly I can’t be arsed.

The other thing that concerns me about Google Reader is that the whole process of commenting becomes very one directional. There have been a couple of occasions on this blog in the past when there has been some really entertaining banter going on in the comments section (a good example is the claim to fame contest). With Google you don’t have the opportunity to see if anyone else has commented on a post, and so there is a risk any sense of community will be lost.

I still use the service though, it’s just too convenient not to. But these worries do niggle me.

Any oppinions?

Sell out?

I’ve never been tempted to pay-per-post or have advertising on the site. I’ve nothing against people who do, but it’s never really appealed to me.

Today I got a letter from the publisher of a book called Dadditude offering to send me a free copy of the book in return for a review. I expect a few of you may have got the same email too. I checked out the website and read the extracts and to be honest I quite fancy accepting their offer. There is just something cool about being sent a review copy that makes me feel like a hack journalist, which as we all know is every young boy’s dream.

I think I’ll accept the offer, providing the publishers will post it to England that is. Anyway you never know, if I do a good job on this review someone may send me a car to critique next.

For some reason Evan and Amy’s nursery decided that as well as taking Monday as a bank holiday, they would take Tuesday off as well. I imagine this decision left a lot of parents frantically looking for alternative childcare, but fortunately I had the day off anyway.

It did mean that, along with my usual Wednesdays with the kids, I had sole responsibility for both my children for two consecutive days in a row.

On a box standard Daddy day Evan and Amy begin the day as clean, tidy, well presented children. By the evening however they have deteriorated to a state in which they are so unkempt they would be rejected for parts in Oliver Twist. I was a little worried that being exposed to an extra day of my ineptitude would have such a negative effect it would cause them to start to de-evolve or something. The last thing Kerry and I need right now is having a couple of Neanderthals running around the house, we’ve just had new windows put in you see.

Thankfully it turns out that the Daddy day effect appears not to be cumulative after all. The level of food stains, tangled hair and general dishevelment was about equal at the end of both Tuesday and Wednesday. The only difference is that I’m that one step closer to my inevitable complete nervous meltdown.

Hats off to the single parents, I really don’t know how they do it.

There are many objects in this world that can cause pain and misery. Guns, flick-knifes, explosives, Céline Dion. We are fortunate in the Hughes household in that these sort of things do not have any significant impact on our lives. The closest we have come to the atrocities of this world is watching them on the news, and sometimes we have problems stomaching even that.

There is something in our lives that has been the root of much suffering and distress recently however. It’s about 0.5cm long and 0.05cm thick and it’s made of wood.

Amy has a splinter. She’s had it since Friday. It’s not one of those extrovert splinters - the ones that stick proudly out of your finger at a jaunty angle. No; this little bugger has gone deep undercover, revealing itself only by a faint black shadow on her palm surrounded by angry red soreness.

We tried to get it out on Saturday. Amy’s distress was so great that we had to physically restrain her in an attempt to keep her hand still enough to excavate it. Her entire body was heaving with great wracking sobs and she was begging and pleading with us to stop. After a while we couldn’t bear to put her through it any longer and gave up for the day.

Amy and I went upstairs for a a comforting cuddle and a chat. I told her a rather convoluted story about a Giant called Jonathan. I’m still not quite sure why I made him a giant, but I was making it up as I went along so she was lucky he didn’t mysteriously change name, sex, and species twelve times during the tale. In the story Jonathan got a splinter in his hand then refused to let his Dad, then his Mum, then his dog get his splinter out for him (The dog was going to bite it out if you must know. I bet the brothers Grimm never got people poring scorn on their gingerbread houses). Jonathan’s splinter became redder and redder and sorer and sorer until finally in the climactic and explosive conclusion to the epic tale Jonathan’s friend Jack took it out with some tweezers.

I don’t think J.K. Rowling has much to worry about.

We tried to dig the splinter out on Sunday as well, but her distress was just compounded by the fact that once she saw the tweezers come out she now knew what was coming. I was laid on her arm and restraining her legs while Kerry fought to prise her fist open. The whole affair was completely horrific and ultimately unsuccessful. Amy still has the splinter and probably a hefty dose of childhood trauma to boot.

Still, she told me that her new favorite story is Jonathan and the splinter, so things aren’t so bad.

I received the following email this evening:

Subject: Evil man
Date: Sat, 26 May 2007 17:33:50 +0200
From: “Singh, Sandip” [sandip.singh@******.com]
To: dghughes28@yahoo.co.uk

Dan, I used my NASA-supplied, biodegradeable image intensification software on one of your photos, and managed to reveal some previously hidden detail - all I can say is YOU HEARTLESS SWAN BOTHERING MURDERER’

See the attached.

Sandip.

(you might have to click on the picture to see it properly)