3...2...1...Convert!

Now that NaBloPoMo is over....

For future Anthromama blatherings, go to http://anthromama.wordpress.com/.

Will I Convert?

I'm thinking of moving from Blogger to WordPress for a long time. I even set up a blog over there just to play around.

I'm even more convinced now that WP and the New Blogger Formerly Known As Blogger Beta get along much better, to wit: I just transferred over all of my posts (published and drafts) with comments and photos, in about 2 minutes.

I think I'll just get through NaBloPoMo on Blogger, while properly categorizing everything on WP, updating widgets, etc. and then switcheroo!

Unless anyone can think of a reason not to. (Staying all Google all the time doesn't cut it.)

Monday Mishmash

I'm serving up myself a nice hot dish of humble pie* for dessert tonight....

Yesterday I made the following comment on someone's blog :

"I don't think TV is appropriate for young children at all, and only in small doses for older children."

I followed that up by entertaining my children for a half an hour looking at pictures and YouTube videos of animals from the cuteoverload.com site.

I loathe the overly cutesy captions and comments, but we were all cracking up at kittens attacking empty boxes, overfed hamsters, and the world's tiniest snail.

I know, I know.

It's just that when the kidlets wake up from their nap and I'm already on the computer, they immediately beg for pictures of dinosaurs or puppies or whatever. And I'm weak, I'M WEAK, I TELL YOU!

*I just love Wikipedia: where else can you find the following things all related to each other: Offal | Savoury pies | English idioms?

* * *

This afternoon SillyBilly reminded me of his greatest superpower: eagle-eye vision. (The boy can spot the tiniest things, as well as the one thing that you didn't want him to notice, or the one tiny thing that you changed in the room.) He noticed a visitor in my bedroom window:


Though I hate tormenting creatures, I just had to go outside and bring this amazing mantis in for the kids to see. (It was raining, and the thought of getting the kids ready to go outside in rain gear before the mantis left was beyond me at that moment.) It was mostly reddish brown, with bright green wings peeking out. And about 6 inches long!

I had caught it in a large glass water pitcher, and the mantis showed us his amazing superpower by crawling all the way up the sheer, slippery side of the pitcher and almost escaping!

* * *

Tomorrow is my birthday (yes, it's a nice birthday to have. I just get a little extra pondering of mortality every year now). I decided to make my own birthday cake. Mostly to give the kids a project, but also because the last store-bought cake we ate just wasn't that good, and this way I at least know what the ingredients are and can pronounce them!

I also decided to try out my spiffy cake pan that I bought a long time ago:


Of course, I don't have a recipe for this pan's shape or volume, but with my trusty Joy of Cooking I was feeling no fear. I used the Sour Cream Chocolate Cake recipe.

Now, I seem to have a constitutional inability to follow recipes exactly as written. Though this time it wasn't all my fault: Anthropapa had bought some almond extract so I just had to add some, and we didn't have enough sour cream so I improvise a half cup of whole milk and lemon juice.

The kids had a great time sifting and stirring, though mostly they liked licking the spoons. Coming out of the oven, all seemed well:


I hadn't expected the batter to completely fill the pan, and in any case I could live without a little train around the bottom of my cake.

The problem occurred when I tried to get the cake to come out:


I don't know if the batter just wasn't quite right for the pan, or I didn't grease the pan enough, or didn't let it cool enough before attempting it.

Whatever. It will still taste good, especially after I melt some more chocolate to drizzle on top.

Shove a few candles in it, and pass me a fork!

World Famous

So, I've been thinking about the little ClustrMap in the sidebar. I found this fun little thing on Zygote Daddy's blog, and thought it would be cool to see where people are coming from when they visit my humble blog.

I recently had the pleasure of seeing that I had penetrated every continent (excepting Antarctica-- I somehow doubt anyone at McMurdo Station is interested in toddlers)--thank you Brazil! Thank you Egypt! And some unlikely places: Sicily, Iran, Guatemala....


One problem I have with the ClustrMap is that the resolution is pretty bad. It's hard to tell where some of those dots are: Is that someone from Iran or Oman? Hong Kong or Guangzhou?


And then I wonder about some of those unlikely places...are the hits from countries like Iran or China caused by trolling internet censors? Or are there people interested in Waldorf education or something else I chose to write about?

The Anonymizer Has Spoken

I've just gone through all my posts and changed my kids' names to nicknames. My son is now SillyBilly and my daughter is Napoleona. I know there are still links to our photo blog, and I'm sure their names are in the comments somewhere, and I'm not sure if this action even increases our privacy or security, but it somehow makes me feel better.

I found through Technorati that a very, very weird site had linked to one of my posts about my son. I never wanted to go this route, trusting in the universe and all, but in the immortal words of Beethoven and Milan Kundera, Muss es sein? Es muss sein.

What's a Blog For?

I've been trying to figure out why anyone blogs. Here's what I've come up with:

1) To keep in touch with friends and family, especially with pictures.
2) To express their opinions.
3) As a creative expression.
4) To disseminate information.

Those are all nice reasons, but what's missing for me is true dialogue. I love reading comments on this blog (LURKERS: please quit hiding and tell me what you think! I know all those ClustrMap hits mean something.) I love posting comments on blogs of friends and strangers alike.

Maybe I'm just missing something about the technology, but blogs don't seem to engender real dialogue. Perhaps threaded messages work better, I'm not sure.

The Blogger function where I get an email every time someone comments here is great, except unless I have that person's email address already, I can't respond to them other than commenting in my own post.

O ye 3-4 readers, what do you think? Why do you blog?

Privacy

It's funny how little comments can stick with you. Over the holiday weekend, Grammy asked if we ever worried about putting our kids' pictures and names on the internet, because of "predators".

I've never given that much thought. Perhaps I'm naive but I just can't imagine anyone taking the time to track down some random child. I know my kids are gorgeous and brilliant, but what could follow from someone reading this blog?

But then Anthropapa pointed out that all of our favorite parents' blogs use pseudonyms for themselves and their kids. So I'm wondering, what level of privacy is necessary? What are the assumptions behind the privacy of information on the internet? What are the actual risks?

Any thoughts, O my loyal 2-3 readers?