Sleep Interrupted

It’s been a couple of weeks, so it’s past due for another vocabulary report from Ben. Unlike the last two updates, I’ll forgoe the translations, as frankly it’ll drive me up the wall. So here’s a not–too–complete list of his latests words: bottom, bus, cheek, chin, chocolate, clap, dance, dark, duck, face, flowers, funny, hair, head, Jessica, lady, lid, man, messy, mouse, mouth, music, no, pocket, Sam, sleep, tiger (complete with growling noises), trousers, tummy and yoghurt.

I’m sure there are more, we just haven’t decoded his pronunciation yet. What I really find amazing, though, is that he’s got hold of fairly abstract concepts like “dark” and “funny”.

Those of you playing along at home will have noticed the inclusion of “no” in the list. Yes, we’re into the really fun part of his development now!

A few of you who know me will be aware that I’ve been following the progress of Parrot — the virtual machine that Perl 6 (among others) will run on — for many years now. On Friday I read that someone is writing a C–to–Parrot compiler called, wait for it, Carrot. Well, it made me laugh!

Wasting a few minutes on Planet GNOME I also came across a link to a scarily accurate description of “enterprise software”. Far too close to home in relation to my day job…

The Hoary Hedgehog Release (or more prosaically, version 5.04) of the highly rated Ubuntu Linux has been released! I use an exclamation mark herewith purpose, as I’m genuinely excited — this is probably the best Linux distribution I’ve used to date and I plan to rebuild our Debian-based machine as soon as I get a copy.

I’ve ordered 10 sets of installation CDs, so if you’d like a copy, leave a comment here. These also come with a live CD that you can boot your PC from, allowing you to see what the system is like and check for hardware compatability before you install.

Our usually reliable ISP had a catastrophic disk failure over the weekend, meaning that this blog was temporarily wiped off the face of the Internet. Luckily I had most of it backed up, so we’re online again. Only the photos are missing, and I should have those back up in a day or two.

A good thing about being a parent: Watching your child feed themselves. A bad thing about being a parent: Watching your child projectile vomit what they’ve just fed themselves all down your front.

A good thing: Having your child help you sow grass seed in the garden. A bad thing: Having your child plant your screwdrivers in the garden — so deep in the soil that you can barely see them from the surface.

A good thing: Watching your child learn to say news words by copying you. A bad thing: Watching your child learn to say “bollocks” by copying you.

And all of that in the last week.