Category: Fun

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Fun

Distracted parenting in smartphone age

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Saw quite a few articles on this topic lately. Basically parents focus their attention on their phone/tablet at dinner table, at fast food restaurant, etc., when they are supposed to talk to their kids. In some cases (fast food restaurant), it will increase the likely-hood of children misbehavior. We have all done that (I’ve done my share of it). Today, I saw this interesting behavior, my wife is asking Serenity to watch hand, while focusing her eye on iPad. I told her Serenity already washed her hand, or something like that. The thing is she was in the same room as Serenity, while I was in another room.

So, pay attention. Kids need attention.

Another way to ease parenting chores, is let kids watch TV or play with iPads. I’ve bought a screenful of iPad apps for Serenity. Good thing she did not play those all the time. She still like the traditional toys and goof around for the most part. Unless she wanted to drink milk (in bottle) and watch TV 🙂

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Fun

What is this?

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IMG_0067

It’s the ticket stub of Philly train, when I visited more than 3 years ago (Oct. 15, 2010) for Voice That Matters iPhone developer conference.

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advice and tips Fun

Throw fits

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This afternoon (Friday afternoon), as a recent custom, both my wife and I went to school to pick up our daughter. My wife was pretty happy, until she saw Serenity started to cry as soon as she saw mom. The reason, she felt we went there too early, and she just started some drawing project. The teacher tried to help, to no vail. The kids tried to persuade her, no help. Being a extremely thin skinned person, my wife wants to leave. We managed to take her out, she still cries cries cries.

Once a while, not very often, our daughter does this when we picked her up. Reason varies. Not wanting to leave is one. Also sometimes she is just tired (probably she did not get much nap after lunch). Anyway, those things sometimes could seem embarrassing, as kids just cannot stop crying, or throw fits. But looking at another way, that’s just a part of their growing processing. Not all kids do this. But I imagine many kids once a while hit a rough patch. As parents or teachers, we just need to have a lot of patience.

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advice and tips Fun kids

Birthday party places for little kids in St. Louis

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We went to the Chick-fil-a Chesterfield valley today for lunch, actually we spent quite some time today. The reason being we have a birthday party at 3 pm at Chesterfield mall, and it takes 40 to 50 minutes going back and forth from the Chesterfield to our home in Creve Coeur. Talking about the birthday party places in St. Louis, since Serenity turns to 3 and went to pre-school, there are a lot more birthday party invitations, and I typically obligated. Here are the place we went so far, and I added my comments there (purely my personal view as a dad):

1) St. Louis Zoo (3 times): good for little kids. Kids got to see the insects and the birds and small animals (such as guinea pig). Their Owl cup cake is big (maybe I will do a cup cake series next time 🙂

2) Bounce-U (3 times): the first time was quite amazing, kids just bounce bounce bounce. I think Serenity still enjoyed the 2nd/3rd time, except me as a parent got a bit tired in the 3rd time as 2nd/3rd time was fairly close.

3) Magic House (2): one is for big kid (grade school, 7 years old), the other is for Serenity’s classmate (4 years old). So the content is slightly different. The first one is science focused, the second is more art focused. Both has cup cake decoration.

4) Des Peres “The Lodge” wave swimming pool (1): unique place, one of a kind in St. Louis (the other one being Carousal below, both places the parents need to prepare own food, other places pretty much they offer pizza, or cakes).

5) St. Louis Carousal/Foust Park (1): one of a kind, it’s interesting Serenity does not like the carousal at the Chesterfield Mall (she got scared once when she was much younger), but she like the original Carousal.

6) Hi Energy Gymnastics Chesterfield Mall (1): a lot of gymnastics exercise, from pure gymnastics point of view, Team Central at Dorset is probably better, but this place is good for party and the location is also good. Note Chesterfield mall also has a carousal.

7) Last but not least, the art/drawing place in Chesterfield mall (1). I forgot the name now, but it’s by the Sears store in the mall (near mall entrance).

Quick summary: work-wise, probably less work for parents at Bounce-U, St. Louis zoo, and magic house. Fun/unique factor: Des Peres “the lodge”, the Carousal at Faust Park are probably the winner. But more work for parents.

I will refine this post as time goes.

(Update 05-10-2014) Last month we went to Butterfly House at Faust Park, which is also very nice and unique. The kids got to tour the butterfly house with parents, the staff played a butterfly themed game/Q and A with kids, art project, decorating cookies, etc. Overall I think this is very good. This is a bit similar to Magic House (the art part), as kindly reminded by one of the parents.

(June, 2014) That paint spot: this is a unique spot near Manson and Olive, we went there for birthday. Kids like painting, the unique thing they do is they paint on ceramics, then they will put it on fire and make the color stick. I guess from business point of view, customization (think T-shirt, mugs) is very interesting.

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advice and tips Fun

Serenity wants the lemonade from Chick-fil-a

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Yesterday evening, after my wife and I picked up our daughter, and decided to go to a local Chinese restaurant for food, Serenity wanted the lemonade from Chick-fil-a. I cradled quickly, and suggested we stopped by Chick-fil-a before going to the Chinese restaurant. My wife was extremely upset, and wanted nothing of it. We calmed down it, during the time I went to dollar tree store to pick up something. After that Serenity still wanted the lemonade. I suggested we go to Panera (St. Louis Bread Co.) for the lemonade, because it was on the way vs. Chick-fil-a which was a bit out of the way.

Thanks to God eventually I was able to persuade Serenity to get it from Bread Co., and we went o Jiangxiang afterwards. Which is a another story (hint: they are extremely busy on Friday evenings)

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Fun

Serenity’s new drawing

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photo

Yoyo, mom, daddy, and incoming baby sister (my wife is expecting)

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advice and tips Fun

Signs we do too much googling

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This morning, Serenity asked me to show her draw a pig. I said I don’t know how. She said google it, as mommy always did. So I googled how to draw a pig, and it comes up some results. I showed her the wikihow step by step animations. Now she is into wolf 🙂

(Update 02-19-14) This reminds me similar phenomenon in software development area, the popularity of sites like stackoverflow.com, coupled with some of the flaws in technology books/documentations, make me search much more and read much less. As a matter of fact, one of the iPad book author, Kurby Turner, mentioned this phenomenon in his learning iPad programming book.

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Fun iPhone app Life Tips

Back up iPhone iPad photos

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I learned the lesson the hard way. Almost a year ago, I left my former employer, and I had to turn in my iPhone 4s. Being a computer professional, I knew the backup thing, so I backed up the photos to iTunes, both via iCloud and via iTunes to PC. But I forgot one more backup, to the iPhoto on my Mac. The backups on iCloud and iTunes are good, but I can not view the individual photos from there, and eventually I got a new iPhone 5s and got the backup iPhotos to my new iPhone this way. The first thing I did after I receiving my new iPhone is to restore the photos, and backup to iPhoto on my Mac.

I did one more thing, as I learned from my Nexus 4 experience, is turn on auto back up on google+. I paid $20 extra for the additional 10gb space on iCloud (for one year), when the time of renewal comes, I plan to cancel it, as now I will do backup via iPhoto, iTunes and google+.

Personally I felt the management of all these photos on iPhone/iPad is an interesting project. With Apple TV, I did see I play videos on iDevices more, and sometimes even slide show the photo. I did this quite a few times to my young daughter, when I found that’s more fun than the Netflix TV shows 🙂

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advice and tips Fun

I failed persuade Yoyo go to Gymnastics class

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And I regret it now, because she appears have a lot energy after getting home. But at pre-school when I picked her up, she was complaining about “lip hurts” (probably due to cold weather, and low moisture indoors), and “fear of doing high beam”. No matter what I offer (snack, chocolate), she was not motivated, and cried while asking for “go home”. I can understand both factors, and I feel the high beam is probably a more important factor, but I chickened out eventually. It’s also one of the coldest day this winter (minus 10 c). And I feel a lack of energy myself, so I “let it slide” (borrowing Steve Job’s word).

But I quickly regret it as I saw she is full of energy after getting home, esp. when doing the Skype with grand parents and her aunt/cousin back home.

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Fun iPhone app

Almost there ~ my 1st impression on Nexus 4 and Android 4.2.x

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(Update 2, 11-18-2013) I sold my Nexus 4 as I am getting my iPhone 5s. I still think Nexus 4 is a lot phone for the money ($199 before tax). Another feature I liked is the integration with google contacts, and google+ photo backup. I just found there’s an option on iPhone Google+ app for backup now.

(Update 09-16-2013) I agree with @PhillRyu that the back button on Android is nice, along with the multi-task button, it separate tasks from the home button (the iOS home button is a bit overloaded, it does both back and home, and double click home brings up the multitask thing).

(Original 09-08-2013) Last week I got my 1st Android phone, the Google Nexus 4. I bought it primarily due to its lowered price (from $299 to $199 before tax), and my 3 year old iPhone 4 battery is doing down hill (found a trick to save it after I bought the Nexus 🙁

I tweeted some minor problems/questions I have with Nexus 4/Android since then. Again for the most part, I am happy with the screen size, battery life (being new), and the sharpness of android in general. A few things I mentioned/complained in twitter:

1) Lack of a native Mail app, in iPhone I can add all the mailbox (yahoo mail, gmail) to the Mail app, in Android there is not a good very native app. But later I noticed the notification feature kinda compensated it. I did install the Yahoo Mail app. The Gmail comes by default.

2) Again on the email things, for some html formatted email, it appears iPhone can scale it properly the first time when the user opens it, on Android, it did not get right the first time. The workaround is move the mail left, then zoom (make it a bit smaller to fit in the screen). Not a big deal.

3) A bit sneaky: the Android recommend feature, in Youtube, Play store (music). Also the photo upload (to Google+).

4) Chrome web browser does not have a “reader” feature like Safari does: for better reading experience (filter out ads, and scale the web page).

5) Share it feature: initially I thought it only has the gmail, google+…after I installed the facebook and yahoo Mail, I found those are also available.