LeapFrog - flying knowledge?

LeapFrog : "learning is fun, surprising and exciting you do more than simply nourish growing minds, you inspire a lifelong love of learning"
Guess it goes to show how segmented the world has become - I'm not sure i would have heard about it living in the US without kids (but we do buy gifts for a few so maybe it would have been on a xmas list) - but never mentioned here in Norway. The big product is the basic Leappad - sort of an interactive ebook reader, with the option to enhance it with various stories and edutainment (newsstory dated 1.1.06 on the pad and competitor VTech).

But the real buzz this year is the Wired-featured Fly - a standalone pen, which uses specially textured paper to set up games and PDA-like features (technology provided by Anoto of Sweden, part owned by Logitech). Sounds sort of cool, but also a real hassle if you need to have a stack of special papers - it was one reason I skipped my Filofax mini; to hard to find paper to do quick notes in volume.

Then there is the newish demographic "tweens", ages 8 to 12, not kids anymore, but still not teens. Sort of sad - the time we have as kids is growing shorter, but we don't really grow up on the other end (or at least some of us think we don't and keep on doing the fun stuff ourselves)

(darn - the updated blogger pop-up has removed the strong in favor of the span style bloated code)

Gaming and gadget galore

"Going Ape" (Wired 13.12) - Michel Ancel of Ubisoft got to do the King Kong game because of BG&E - will it see a re-release, or perhaps be included in a bundle? Good fun game, haven't played it enough but still give it high marks. We have the pc version, but I think it actually works better on a console (like Tombraider).

Shuttle M1000 XPC oooh! nice design... would really love to have one small WMCE box and another one running linux with mythTV doing all the open source hacking. And then I would only need a month off each year to watch all the stuff that might just be interesting or fun or... But there is time and space constraints, so I will have to settle for some minor tweaks to the box we have (speakers, external hd for mid-term storage of stuff)

Say it loud?

outside the Dorchester in 1930s - as told by Julian Amery: a lady waiting with umbrella for the rolls to arrive, approached by a ragged man,

"i haven't eaten for three days"
"foolish man that you are - you must try.
if need be you must FORCE yourself"

same article, differnet source, one definition of a gentleman:

"someone who is never rude BY ACCIDENT"

(quoted in and from vanity fair, an article by C. Hitchens, in the December 2005 issue)