Half a year old

It's difficult to believe just how quickly the last six months have passed. We were looking through some old photos of Alex a couple of nights ago and it's incredible to compare his size at birth with his long frame now. He has also lost hair and does a pretty good Dr Evil (or is that Mini-Me?) impression.

Just as incredible is how many adventures he has already had over the last six months. Viewing world-class art exhibitions, two weeks zipping around Japan on high speed trains, carried to the top of a castle, around a ferris wheel, and watched monkeys play in the wild. He's gone on long drives south to Canberra and further a few times now and even attended a Star Wars exhibition.

Last Sunday he squealed with delight as we wandered around Ikea when, for the first time, he was faced forward in the Baby Bjorn.

I don't know what he thought of all of those adventures, but I do know that music brings him a lot of pleasure. If Alex hears John Williams' themes to Star Wars, Superman or Indiana Jones he listens intently. He's started to "sing" along when listening to music or bashing away at the electronic keyboard, he sings to his mobiles above his cot.

We read him books, but one of his favourites we cannot read (yet). A book about the Ampanman train in Shikoku might be written in Japanese, but it has a series of buttons that play various sounds related to the train. Symbols on the page give you sequences of buttons to press and he seems to be able to relate the two.

But what seems to bring him the most pleasure of all is being around his parents. Last night, after returning home from work, I opened the door to see Alex in B's arms. Alex saw me and began smiling and laughing away whenever we looked at each other. Naturally I was laughing just as hard back at him. It is the most wonderful feeling to give love and be loved in return.

Bio war

The Sunshine Project is an interesting website about biological weapons. For all my love of Japan, citizens of that country have committed some terrible atrocities, such as biological warfare and experiments on live prisoners of war.

Mormon crickets

It's not sport, nor a religion. And they don't like rock music.

Gargalesis

Gargalesis is the tickle you give someone when you really want them to laugh, as opposed to knismesis, which is feather touch torture.

Petrol of a good vintage

In France they convert surplus wine into ethanol for use in biofuels. In Australia many petrol stations sell E10 fuel, petrol with up to 10% ethanol content.

Our Mazda 626 requires either premium unleaded or E10 fuel, and this must be the case with many of the more expensive European vehicles. It has just occurred to me that there might be a business opportunity here in selling premium E10 containing ethanol sourced from wines of a good vintage. Can you imagine running your Renault or Peugot on E10 sourced from wheat? Surely it would run smoother on a good French wine? Or your Mercedes on a fine German Moselle. Even your Fiat's fuel economy would improve with a fuel from Italian grapes.

Oh, and while your at it, would you like to purchase some tablets that improve your car's fuel efficiency?

Convenience in the electronic age

Over the weekend we visited a couple of doctor friends up in the Blue Mountains. With two young children and with the husband constantly on call at the hospital they don't have much time for household chores.

Their house is designed to be low maintenance. Every room is wired up to a central computer that can control the lights and heating, automatically sensing when the room is occupied. Solar panels supply their electricity needs and in the back yard a large steerable satellite dish picks up television from Asia. In their main lounge room a Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner sucks up the dust when the family are not around, while in the backyard a robot lawnmower from Israel cuts the grass. It was rather amusing to watch it chase our dog while he was squatting down to do his business.

It sounds like a geek's dream, and it is, but watching the robots in action I realised just how far they have yet to go. I don't mind mowing the lawn, it's trimming the edges that annoys me. Yet this is precisely what the robot mower doesn't do. Similarly, the robot vacuum cleaner can't suck the dust off the nooks and crannies, the shelves and furniture, but this is what takes the most effort. These are not simple activities to train a robot to do and the devices that will one day do these tasks will probably bear little relation to the crude robots in action today.

Is it better to design the living space around the robot, or the robot around the living space? Most technology presents some form of constraint on the end user. The friends' house and garden was already designed for minimal maintenance, but our own multilevel house and sloped garden with irregular borders would present a far greater challenge for an autonomous device.

Another chore that they have attempted to simplify is grocery shopping. They buy in bulk from discount retailers over the internet. As a result they have very little fresh food. Even the milk is of the long-life UHT variety. Personally, I would rather forgo the convenience for the joy of cooking and eating with fresh meat and vegetables.

So, how do they spend the time saved? Their lounge room has a huge projection screen, wonderful for watching movies on. What I do not recommend using it for is racing car games on a PS3. B and I both felt physically ill from the motion on the large screen.

All this left me wondering if geek heaven was really such a wonderful place to be. At the end of the day I was glad to be home.

Sexy farts

According to a recent research Hydrogen Sulphide, or rotten egg gas, could play an important role in male erections. It gives a new meaning to those awful late night Nasal Delivery Technology advertisements!