Haven’t quite properly woken up yet today. Yes, I appreciate it’s almost 2pm and I had a lie in this morning ’til 11am (thank you Akra!)… but nobody would notice if I just snuck back into bed would they?!

Being a precocious mummy, I’ve started to teach Akra Jr the rudiments of reading (okay, he’s interested and it’s something I’ve really wanted to do for ages being a huge reader myself).

I don’t think he’s *quite* got the idea of sounds blending yet though, as evidenced by me overhearing the following:

Akra Jr (“reading” the letters printed on his cutlery using his finger to follow along): t – o – d – d – l – e – r …. sssssppppppppppoooooooooooonnnnnnnn…. SPOON IT SAYS SPOON!

I’m trying to make it a family ritual that just before Christmas we all have a clear out, get rid of broken/unused things and make space for new stuff. I figure that the children are a little young for this idea and tend to sneak in while they’re not in the room to perform my little cull under cover, and only return items if Akra Jr suddenly notices and asks where a toy is.

It’s supposed to be ruthless, it’s supposed to clear space, it’s supposed to get our heads around the idea that things aren’t important, but space to play and a pleasant environment helps the mental health of the whole family. Plus, with space desperately at a premium at the moment this is long overdue.

This year, I thought Akra Jr was probably old enough to take some responsibility himself. We’d discussed the concept of other children been too poor to have any toys and that it’d be a good idea to get rid of things he didn’t play with any more. I thought we’d just focus on the soft toys as I know these are much more personal to a child and harder for a parent to sort through on their own.

So Akra Jr gamely starts sorting through his toy collection and bless his heart, sorts out over half of his toys that he doesn’t want anymore with no visible distress – in fact he’s quite enthusiastic that poor children will get something to play with. The only problem is, the cheap-crappy-falling-apart-never-played-with toys that I hate and hoped he’d get rid of were in the favoured “to keep” pile, and a lot of best-loved-play-with-every-day-bought-by-Nana-who-will-be-terribly-upset toys were in the “to give away” pile.

I ended up going through the pile and talking him into keeping every toy bar two.

And for some reason, he now thinks they’re going to his best friend at nursery, who he insists IS poor despite owning triple the amount of toys that Akra Jr does.

*sigh*.

Next year, I’m doing it by stealth again.

So, Blunkett wants to pass laws against “inciting religious hatred”? That’ll be the Bible they’ll be banning first then…

Fortunately, for once I don’t seem to be the only one convinced of his idiocy – most of his backbenchers are too. Please, please, please… if you’re going to kick him out of government, make it because of his Orwellian tendencies not because he shagged some woman once and helped her out from time to time. I’m not quite naive enough to believe that most people in Politics don’t exist on an old boy-style network of favours from people you know in high places. I am still naive enough that I’d like our country run on a basis of free speech and civil liberties.

I have an excuse this time. Just gradually recovering from a really nasty stomach bug. Akra Jr had it on Friday night and kindly passed it on to the rest of us.

At 12.30 yesterday, head down the toilet (sorry, too much information I know) and Li’l Bhaji getting very upset that I’d left him in his seat half way through lunch with no sign of me returning, I managed to take a few seconds out to SMS an SOS to Akra who (bless him) came back home immediately to take over even though he was feeling ropey too. I headed off to bed, waking only to feed the baby at regular intervals.

Still wiped out at 7pm as the kids went to bed and Akra was practically collapsing. I do believe we managed to go to sleep before Akra Jr last night as we could hear him playing happily in his room as we drifted off.

Managed to keep a couple of pieces of dried toast down this morning, started feeling hungry again by lunchtime and I threw caution to the wind around 3pm and succumbed to a cup of tea.

Now all I have to do is catch up with all the chores that had already hit urgent yesterday.

Berklee – I did receive your email, thank you – will try and reply ASAP!

So we’re gradually getting organised for Christmas (I’m allowed to mention that word now it’s December, aren’t I?!). Presents are mostly bought, just a few stragglers, and I’m waiting for the poor posty to drag my internet shopping to my door. Today, Akra Jr wrote his letter to Father Christmas (in the UK you can send them to: Father Christmas, Reindeerland, SAN TA1) and now I’m sitting at the computer laughing while Akra attempts to help Akra Jr with some seasonal artwork for nursery involving glue and glitter.

Think I’ll let Akra do the tidying up afterwards too…

Edit: Adding photographic evidence…

The Mess

The Finished Product

… went out for a drinkie or ten!

Right, lots of people wanted to know how I did it. I’m not totally sure exactly – but I’m sure I can bluff a good explanation along the way.

Firstly, I had to fix my windows media player – for some reason it wasn’t displaying the video part properly – you could just hear the audio. This is something to do with a “codec” (nope, I don’t know what it is either) – Quicktime had its own so could cope okay, but windows media player had lost its one along the way. I’m sure there’s a freebee way of fixing it, but as I couldn’t track down exactly which codec I needed I ended up downloading Morgan M-JPEG codec V3 which did the job. I have it on a 60 day trial and after that it’ll cost $20 US. Goodness only knows how I managed to break media player so thoroughly beforehand, oh well, it works now.

Right, so now I have an .avi file I can see and import into Windows Movie Maker (previously it failed – presumably due to the same codec problem) using File>Import into Collections…. I then dragged and dropped that into the Timeline bar at the bottom of the screen, clicked File>Save Movie File… and then follow the dialogue to determine what size the movie is going to be.

Some people still weren’t able to view it. The only thing I can think of is either my codec problem isn’t an uncommon one, or because it’s a specific Microsoft format it’s not very platform portable. There are plenty of shareware convert programs knocking about though, so I could feasibly use them to convert my .avi into a .mpg, for example (but that was still 4MB big and not so shareable – but would be more cross-platform viewable… swings and roundabouts). Maybe a google search might find something that converts MPeG4, Lisa?

Anyway, to prove it wasn’t a one off fluke, here’s a nice film of Akra Jr and Li’l Bhaji together.

Please tell me this works

Edit: exchanged for a slightly bigger but better quality image (i.e. you can actually see it’s a baby now…)

Tech help please.

I have a Canon Ixus II and I have taken a 30 second movie from it. It’s an .avi file which for some reason won’t view in Microsoft Windows Media Player (you only get sound) but *will* work in Quicktime. I’ve *paid* for a pro copy of Quicktime and have managed to save in .mov format (which still has pictures and sound) but is a whopping 9 megs big!!

a) what format is the neatest format for just a quick clip to share with friends/stick up on the site.
b) how the F*CK do I convert from what I’ve got into that format (preferably without throwing any more money down the drain)
c) WHY OH WHY OH WHY can’t I see either the still in the thumbnail (yet I can when I “see” the camera through My Computer) or see any pictures while playing back in Media Player or any other shareware program that imports .avis?!

This is why I normally stick to just photos. I’ve googled all over the place and not come up with anything, but I’m probably lacking the technical terms to search effectively.

Save me from tearing my hair out… please… I’m begging you.

Edit: it’s something to do with a Codec by the looks of it. What’s one of them and why isn’t it doing its job properly?!!!