meta-dad

DIY Backyard Ice Rink

Props to John over at My Family Loves It!. Here’s directions for how to create a skating rink in your backyard. At least this way you don’t have to worry about the kids falling through the ice at the local pond and you’ll always know where they are – they’re in your backyard!

Directions are complete with tips on how to keep that hose from freezing and how to make a Rink Rake for under $20 bucks using PVC and some PVC cement and primer, sweet! Thanks John!

(Via MyFamilyLovesIt.Com)

Kids Craft Ideas For Valentine’s Day

This year, the effort will be to concentrate on the fun of a family Valentine-making project, without driving all over town looking for supplies. Here is an afternoon of fun for the little ones all in one kit. The kit comes with:

• Thirty sheets of construction paper (15 red, 15 white)
• 24 white heart-shaped doilies
• 12 red heart doilies
• Textured tissue paper in red, white and pink
• 32 full-color floral hearts
• 63 red-foil heart stickers
• Over 100 tiny red-foil gummed hearts
• Colorful glitter
• Glue stick
• All packed in a handy storage box, along with patterns and child-tested tips

(Via HearthSong.Com)

Modern Bassinet by Monte Group

The Monte Group have designed this streamlined and practical bassinet to keep the focus on your gorgeous new baby (and to show off your great sense of style!). The removable basket nestles into a dark brown solid wood rocker base. The bassinet’s padded sides are covered by a removable and machine-washable suede micro-fiber. Includes waterproof mattress and 2 fitted sheets.

(Via MonteDesign.Net)

Parents Beware – Kids and Proxy Server Usage

Monitoring kids when it comes to internet usage reminds me of the early days of cable. I’m talking the eighties, Kids. No internet. Very few video games. Lots of free time, right? This is when the big no-no was getting caught watching R-rated film on the Movie Channel or HBO. I did it. All my friends did it. There’s a good chance you did it too. If you didn’t have access to cable at your house (we didn’t), you would simply go to your friend’s house (well, he was your friend because he had cable). I imagine it is the same routine today, except the forbidden fruit is web-access (with little or no restrictions set to it) not cable.

I guarantee there is an impressive effort made by pre-teens and teens alike to find go-arounds when it comes to getting past those “pesky” parental software filter that are in the way of them getting to the really “good” sites. One of the bigger concerns with parents (at least this one) is that unlike cable were kids are being exposed to adult-themed language and images, an online minor can also be susceptible to predators, fraud and in some cases online theft. So whether you are a parent, grandparent, aunt, teacher or principal it is important for you to know one of the quickest ways kids can get around those parental (software) filters is with the use of proxy servers.

A client connects to the proxy server, requesting some service, such as a file, connection, web page, or other resource, available from a different server. The proxy server provides the resource by connecting to the specified server and requesting the service on behalf of the client. A proxy server may optionally alter the client’s request or the server’s response, and sometimes it may serve the request without contacting the specified server. In this case, it would ‘cache’ the first request to the remote server, so it could save the information for later, and make everything as fast as possible.” ~ Wikipedia | Proxy Server Definition

I realize this is not a full and complete definition of a proxy server. Even the moderators of Wikipedia have flagged this entry, saying it needs additional references and moderation from their technology specialist, but it is in basic terms correct enough (in my mind) to quote. Basically a proxy server is a middle-man or liaison for your kids escapades on the web. It allows them to access banned websites anonymously through a proxy server (middle-man IP) without being filtered by a firewall, router or software solution.

If you have filters banning MySpace or the likes of they will be able to access it easily using a proxy server. Their are proxy server directories dedicated to accessing MySpace — look. They sell software (Anonymizer) that provides a subscription-based service which guarantees they will have a fresh list of highly efficient proxy servers to work with whenever they want.

As a disclaimer, I do want to clearly state that I do not think that proxy servers or products that allow for anonymity online are bad or immoral. If you are a reporter in a Pakistan or China and you want to report on a sensitive subject safely then I think accessing a proxy server is prudent. But if you find that your thirteen year old is using one on their bedroom computer (yet another reason why kids should not have a computer in their room) – you may want to look into why they feel they need to tunnel proxy in the first place.

Spend a minute on Google or your favorite search engine and type in “proxy server” and you will see quite a few proxy server directories come up. I just did it and came up with 3,700,000 results in 0.4 seconds. These directories rotate their IP’s all the time, sometimes every hour.

I’ve talked with a few Technology Specialists that are privy to the challenge of blocking and tracking proxy usage and a simple solution that may slow down their usage is to add an additional filter to your parental software that dis-allows any sites with the word “proxy”, “proxy server” or even “server” in them.

I am not interested in pushing a specific solution or product (I wish I had that Magic Bullet) but rather raise parent awareness to this trick.

Sited Links:
SearchSecurity.Com | What Are The Best Ways To Block Proxy Servers
Wikipedia | Proxy Servers

Related Links:
Meta-DAD | Beware of Your Kids Accessing Proxy Servers
CNET News | Study: Parents Sweat Online Predators, Social Sites
About.Com | Parent’s Guide to MySpace Safety

The Name Game

Suri. Apple. Kingston. Brooklyn. Harry. Moon Unit.

I think from the get-go dads and moms realize that coming up with the right name for your soon-to-be-born kid is a very important and potentially daunting task. Do we want a popular name or a totally unique name, or from a character in book or maybe a religious one? Should we choose a popular name with an alternate spelling or your beloved deceased mongoose? How does it sound with our last name? What do the initials spell out? And so it goes and goes and goes…

This article is topical in our household since I opened my Christmas gift a few weeks ago announcing that my wife is pregnant again with our third child! Very exciting! She is due mid-August and we are very happy.

So of course, I have been scouring the web for the best sites to reference. With the two boys we went into it not knowing whether the baby was to be a boy or girl. We decided ahead of time to choose our two favorite boy names and two favorite girl names and when the baby is born we will know for sure (when we meet him/her) what her name is. This plan has worked well for us.

Here is a short List of worthy links if you’re shopping around for good baby names;

BabyNamesWorld.Com – includes derivation and meanings of over 27,000 names
BabyNamer | Quick reference of name’s etymology
BabyNames.Com | From around the world (Persian, Aztec, Hawaiian, Slavic, et al.)
How Not To Name Your Baby | Online Guide to Baby Naming

Poised For a “Deep” Conversation With Your Kids

Here’s a great promotional site that is wonderfully informative and has the illustrated accounts of the underwater travels of author and journalist, Claire Nouvian, into some of the deepest depths captured on film. Her book, “The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss” is filled with great shots of wonderfully surreal sea creatures like dumbo octopuses, vampire squids, naked sea butterflies, spookfish, and pigbutt worms.

In the oceans, though, living space has both vertical and horizontal dimensions: with an average depth of 3800 meters, the oceans offer 99% of the space on Earth where life can develop. And the deep sea, which has been immersed in total darkness since the dawn of time, occupies 85% of ocean space, forming the planet’s largest habitat. Yet these depths abound with mystery. The deep sea is mostly uncharted”only about 5 percent of the sea floor has been mapped with any reasonable degree of detail—and we know very little about the creatures that call it home. Current estimates about the number of species yet to be found vary between ten and thirty million. The deep sea no longer has anything to prove; it is without doubt Earth’s largest reservoir of life.” ~ TheDeepBook.Org

This site and the book it promotes sounds like a perfect thing to spawn some wonderful conversations with your kids about the real and imaginary.

Related Links;
The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss