Following my previous post about ambigrams I stumbled upon ambigram.matic, a site that generates ambigrams from two words. I think it did a reasonable job with Annie and Billy:

Billy and I have been playing around with the opensource stopmotion stop-animation application. He has created this short with his Lego.

Learn how to make a chocolate dalek at chocablog. I have a little boy who’d love one of these.

Billy had to go to school dressed as an animal today. We decided upon a bat, and made his costume out of an old umbrella. Not bad is it.

Today Billy is six years old. We had a brilliant morning opening his presents and he then had to go to school. So far the things that made the most impact were a magic set, an anatomy figure (you know with lungs that drop out) and some spiderman stuff.

Last Saturday he had a joint birthday party with the twins James and Steven. We hired out a local pavillion and a childrens entertainer called Esther. She got all the kids dancing, and they had a brilliant time doing the hokey-cokey. He got loads of presents from his friends, went to bed late, and thoroughly enjoyed himself. Annie got chicken pox (but enjoyed the party anyway).

Billy’s Favourite Things:
Spiderman, Star Wars, Badminton, Water-Pistols, Duck-Dodgers, Riding on his taggie, Doctor Who.

Interesting Recent Events:
Live8 (on party day), Scientists fired some stuff at a comet (Deep Impact), ID Cards still being discussed, G8 Protests happening.

Billy and I have been hooked on the new series of Doctor Who. I can’t wait to see the last episode tomorrow night. The mystery of ‘Badwolf’ has been interesting; I have, however, found a picture of the Rose/Dalek DNA combination - so look if you dare.

I’ve just discovered this great site that tells you how stuff works. It’s called HowStuffWorks.

In just three minutes I’ve found the following gems:

Can flour explode?
The true story behind The Amityville Horror
What causes an ice cream headache?


This is an essential resource when you’ve got a five year-old.

Last week was highly eventful.
Annie did her first poo in her potty, and Billy’s got his first couple of wobbly teeth.

Check out Mike’ Classic Cartoon Themes & Images to download mp3’s of classic cartoon theme music. My favourites are Battle of the Planets, The Banana Splits, Spider-Man and Wait Till Your Father Gets Home. Absolutely brilliant. My Squeezebox has a new genre.

Last night I was reading a paper, Paula was on the phone and Billy was playing with his gigantic super magnet, sticking it to the radiator and picking up coins.

Billy suddenly said “Look Dad, the magnet makes great patterns on the TV screen.”

Yes he was dragging his super-powerful magnet across the screen, taking the electrons with it. I stuttered a bit, and said that maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. He had been watching a cartoon, and the picture looked sort of ok. I changed channel to be sure only to see Rolf Harris with a green head and purple hands. Yes he had magnetically charged the tv screen, and the colours were all over the place. I looked for a degauss setting on the menu, to no avail. I turned the TV on and off a few times but still no joy, and I was resigned to having to buy a new TV at the weekend. We turned the situation into a opportunity to give Billy a science lesson as to how TV’s work and why magnets and TVs don’t mix too well. We also covered video tape and anything else I could think of.

Later we turned our multi-coloured TV off to put the kids to bed, and we didn’t turn it on again for an hour our so. When we did put it back on, the picture was fine. I can only assume the TV degausses itself after a period. Phew!