Archive for the ‘kids’ Category

Vtech Kidizoom

Thursday, January 1st, 2009

Top of Grace’s Christmas list for Father Christmas was a camera.

In the end, Santa went with the Vtech Kidizoom.

Faith - Grace's baby sisterIt was tough to find many reviews for it, so I thought I’d share a few of Grace’s snaps with it so far, for anyone interested to see what the image quality is like – all of the photos in this post were taken by Grace (our 4 year old) with the Kidizoom.

The camera cost £40, and produces JPEGs with a resolution of 640×480. There is about 12 MB of storage in the camera, which has enough space for at least a couple of hundred pics, and an SD card slot if you need more space.

DC00029

The pictures are a little fuzzy, but Grace is certainly happy enough with them.

The camera does have a flash, which means indoor pics are possible.

It can be tricky getting the distance right when using the flash – too far away and the flash is no use at all and the picture is very dark, too close and the flash is too bright creating a bright white picture. (Although this has created a couple of neat pics such as this one!)

(more…)

Lapland UK

Tuesday, December 16th, 2008

On Friday, we took the kids to Lapland UK.

The first reaction I got when I mentioned this to people generally went along the lines of “OMG, you’re going there?! I heard about them in the news!”.

It’s not the same place. This isn’t the New Forest Lapland-themed attraction that made the headlines so spectacularly a couple of weeks ago – it’s a place in Kent.

Even their website has a banner on the top to reassure visitors saying: “Please be assured Lapland UK has NO association with Lapland New Forest”.

Hmmm… I guess they have a bit of a brand problem, at least in the short-term.

With this in mind, and as we had such a lovely day there, I thought I’d do my little bit to help their image by sharing our experience.

(more…)

Making your own font

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008

hosted on Photobucket

It was my wife’s birthday last week. As a part of the birthday present that our three year old, Grace, made for her, I made a font based on Grace’s handwriting.

This isn’t terribly technical, or even new. But I thought it was cute. 🙂

(more…)

Snap Circuits Jr

Sunday, April 27th, 2008

My latest Maplin purchase – an electronics set for Grace. My plan to turn her into a mini-geek continues!

I still remember my first electronics set. It was good, but this one – ‘Snap Circuits Jr‘ – is so much better.

Firstly – the ease in which the bits snap together. Each component is mounted on thick chunky pieces of plastic, that snap onto a plastic board. The pieces clip together very easily – the idea is that you can connect stuff without needing fine motor controls, so my three-year old can put the pieces in roughly the right place and give them a push to click them together.

Secondly – the quality of the kit. It all feels very solid – you don’t get the feel that it’s cheap plastic or spend your time worrying that Grace is going to break it.

The manual that comes with it includes 101 different project ideas, with large colour diagrams that she was able to copy. Before long, she was putting together circuits by herself just from the plans – which was so cool!

(more…)

Faith Emily Lane

Thursday, February 28th, 2008

Faith Emily LaneWelcome to the world, Faith Emily Lane.

Yup, I am now well and truly out-numbered, and am doomed to live in a house of women.

Even my cat is a girl 🙂

Twitter was down today (typical!) so my twitter followers were spared minute-by-minute updates on the labour. Probably the best for all concerned, actually.

Faith is absolutely perfect. She weighed 8lbs (why is that always the first thing people tell you?), and all the tests so far have showed no problems.

(more…)

matter

Saturday, February 2nd, 2008

the "matter" box arrivesI signed up to matter a little while ago. It’s a service where you sign up to be sent promotional stuff.

If you look at their website or their blog, they don’t really describe themselves like that. They talk about it as a “communications channel” between consumers and advertisers, and they talk about the “brand experience”. In fact, they say pretty much everything except “we’ll give you free stuff”.

even before it's opened, she likes it :-)In the lead up to today, they’ve talked a lot about the care they’ve been taking to select interesting things that “you’ll want to keep”. Even so, my hopes weren’t very high. This is all free, so I was a little sceptical how good the stuff would be. Today, the pilot matter box arrived.

(more…)