Friday, November 21, 2008

A little mention of a useful tool

It's something that I use everyday but hardly ever actually see:

http://www.foxmarks.com/

It lets you sync bookmarks and favorites of all your PCs or laptops once setup it just sits there doing it's business, you can create sync profiles like Work/Home and select folders and individual bookmarks that are only synced to that profile (so that P0rn folder doesn't end up on your work PC, not that I have one of those, really!).

It used to only work for FireFox (hence the name) but they now also have an IE version (and there's also a Safari version, all these can work concurently with eachother), the news was in their blog .
And even if you're on a PC without such a browser or cannot install the add-on or software then you can still go to the FoxMarks site and access your bookmarks from that site (it's what I do on my mobile phone or on a public computer)

Why do they always sleep better somewhere else ...

Because my wife was a little sick yesterday and I had to go to the owners meeting of our apartment at 8pm (which lasted until 11pm grrrr) we let our daughter sleep over at her grandparents.
Now at 2yo I think she sleeps good, occasionally we get a few nights when she'll wake up from wanting a bottle or a bad(or exciting?) dream but I'd say 70% of the time we get the sleep that we need and she sleeps a good 9-10 hours, she does go to bed late (around 10pm) and we'd like to change that but she can sleep until 8 or 9am so we figure it'll change automatically when she has to go to school and has to get up earlier.
I figured a new place (the last time she slept at my mom's was about a year ago) would disrupt her a bit but no, she slept from 6pm!!! until 7:30am I was on the phone this morning when she woke up and she sounded happy and of course well slept!
They have the same bed and I don't think it there's less noise.
Still, good for her but I don't get it :-)

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

School

I can't believe we're already doing this.
We've chosen a school for Alina, she can start kindergarten in January but we're planning to only send her in March because we want her to be a bit more comfortable with the 2 languages we're speaking to her.  At daycare it does frustrate her a little when people don't understand what she says in one language and we hope she'll make the distinction better when she's a bit older.
The choice of school will provide a bit more meat for this blog when it starts because it's a catholic school.  The primary reason for the selection is that the school is the closest one but my wife finds the catholic bit an extra bonus (I find it a mild negative).
Being a Belgian school it is not too heavy on the religion, it didn't come up during her registration and I only spotted one promotional poster that was just a soft message that I would agree with too and at the bottom in very small print it had the bible chapter/verse reference.
So I'm pretty sure it'll be ok but I'm gonna keep my eyes open :-)

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Lest we forget

This is also a big loss for the Christian God as one of His more fervent supporters put it thusly:

You could and you did!

Well done USA for this first step towards change, now show the world what you're really made of!

Too bad that for the moment (about 50% counted) it looks like CA Prop. 8 will make it, but it seems like CA Prop. 4 will not and in WA initiative 1000 (doctor assisted suicide) has resoundingly made it (though it seems like a very limited initiative but again it's a first step)

Now to try to stop looking at the results and get some work done ;-)

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Suggestion

Even if this (warning: gruesome) was a single case it should be enough for all good people to update any guidebooks, reference material and/or teaching aids to explicitly denounce such practices or remove the offending paragraphs, in fact decent people should think about either abandoning or rewriting the entire content of materials that once contained such practices.  The originals can be kept for historians in libraries and museums but should not be used anymore in reference to current events.
The sad truth is that it is not a single case and even sadder that millions, nay, billions of books, websites and other media which contain, condone and even promote such practices are being used as guides and reference material for current events and sit on the bookshelf of decent people who keep advancing it as a source of guidance (and I admit there is even one in home though I do not advocate using that book for guidance).
I don't advocate book burning but some material is not suitable for some situations (like pornography for children or in this case books which contain and advocate gruesome punishments for non-crimes for moral guidance), the original texts should not be removed from existence but please fellow humans, update the books you say you use for moral guidance and help in removing such practices from this earth let them be just a memory we read about in history books in the proper context of rejection of those ideas not in books that are being promoted as "good".