Content tagged with [family] on DuncanMackenzie.net

Sunburned at a Chess Tournament

Duncan Mackenzie — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:58:00 GMT

Well, this certainly isn't something that happens all that often, but after spending all day at a chess tournament (at Wellington Elementary in Woodinville) on Saturday, I ended up with a sunburn on my face and arms! It turned out to be a really nice day, which was good, since the waiting area for parents and kids (where the parents spend up about 6 to 7 hours, and the kids spend all the time between matches) was outside. Never seen that before, and it was cold and wet enough when we arrived that I was pretty unimpressed with the idea. In the end though, it was very sunny out there ... and it certainly gave Connor a lot of fresh air between his matches (which were inside the school gym).

Another chess tournament this weekend, last one before the state championship

Duncan Mackenzie — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 07:42:00 GMT

A new father-son activity for Connor and me has been to go to chess tournaments, spending a few Saturdays throughout the year in some school gym. Starting last year, we started to play chess at home and he enjoyed it so much that we decided to enter into the Shelton View Elementary school's chess tournament in the Kindergarten category. He did well and had a lot of fun, so it has become the hobby of choice around our house. The best thing about taking him to a tournament is that you can't really tell from his face whether he has won or lost when he comes out of a match, he always seems to be enjoying himself regardless of the outcome. Tomorrow's tournament is the last one before the state competition (which he qualified for and we decided to attend as well, since it is in Redmond this year), so I expect a lot more first-time tournament players will be attending in the hope of winning 3 out of their 5 games and qualifying for state.

New Xbox Dad column: My take on the Bee Movie Game

Duncan Mackenzie — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 09:43:00 GMT

If you or your kids are all excited about the upcoming Bee Movie with Jerry Seinfeld, then you should definitely check out my latest article on Xbox.com. Along with the movie, an Xbox 360 game is also on its way.... and a demo is already up on the Xbox Live Marketplace. Not the most representative demo (more on that in the article!), but still fun and the game promises even more.

Xbox 360 Arcade System announced

Duncan Mackenzie — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 10:24:00 GMT

For the price of $280, you can now get a new edition of the Xbox 360 console. This one is similar to the original core system, but with HDMI output, a 256mb memory card (so you can play and save your games right out of the box), a wireless controller, and five full arcade games. Perfect if you are more of a casual gamer or if:

you have an existing 360 with a hard drive and would like one with a HDMI output
you need a DVD player and/or a Media Center Extender (play all your Zune and Windows Media Center or Windows Media Player content in the living room!

For that price, you can pick up this system instead of a DVD player with HDMI out and you get the network connectivity and media streaming features along with an amazing system for playing a ton of great games. Sure the name says Arcade, but you can fire up Halo 3, Gears of War or Lego Star Wars II...

Crazy stuff, and perfect for you family focused Xbox gamers... and perhaps soon to be a second 360 for my house, since I now have a TV with HDMI in and nothing to hook into it... and it would be great to have the ability to play my music, TV and movies on our second TV as well...

More info on Xbox.com

Ratatouille preview article up on Xbox.com

Duncan Mackenzie — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 20:50:00 GMT

My latest kid-focused game article, which happens to be yet another movie tie-in, is about the upcoming Pixar film Ratatouille. Cool game, very nice looking... and it has entire missions around making recipes by spilling ingredients... just like how I cook at home!

Hey, I'm on Channel 10 ... just in time for Father's Day

Duncan Mackenzie — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 09:13:00 GMT

I sat down to chat with Tina from Channel 10 to chat about my Xbox Dad articles, gaming with your kids, etc...

Keeping in Touch, a new Xbox Dad article is live

Duncan Mackenzie — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 15:32:00 GMT

It has been 'marketized' a bit from how I originally wrote it (with the addition of a product name right into the title for one), but a 'father's day' article from me is up on Xbox.com

Keep in Touch with Xbox LIVE Vision
Published June 13, 2007
It's an interesting time of year for Dads. High school graduation is just around the corner and college graduation has probably already happened. For some of you, this means that your son or daughter is moving out of the house, and there are going to be some changes in your relationship.
As Father's Day approaches, I find myself reflecting on the relationship I have with my Dad as an adult, and then in turn, wondering how things are going to be with my kids as they get older. My biggest worry about my kids, and my biggest feeling of guilt around my own father, is the difficulty of maintaining a strong connection, and trying to continue to be a part of their lives.

Xbox Dad of the Year contest on Xbox.com

Duncan Mackenzie — Tue, 29 May 2007 17:53:00 GMT

Hey kids... if you have a gaming dad, then get going on those essays... and Dads, if you are reading this... you might want to just start hinting and sending this link to your kids!

Xbox Dad of the Year Contest

I'm inappropriately excited about something I just found on the web

Duncan Mackenzie — Thu, 24 May 2007 06:14:00 GMT

Xbox Dad's Mother's Day column up...

Duncan Mackenzie — Tue, 08 May 2007 22:42:00 GMT

Nothing very exciting for you gamers out there, but you know... 'tis the season.

Next Xbox Dad column (TMNT coverage) is up

Duncan Mackenzie — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 19:56:00 GMT

My 2nd column is up on Xbox.com, covering the recent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game.

To sum up, it is a pretty fun game for kids; I'd compare it to a faster paced, less scary and complex version of Prince of Persia, which is a great game to be compared to.

My first "Xbox Dad" column (post?) is up...

Duncan Mackenzie — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 16:40:00 GMT

<random musing>It seems like an online article, but I wonder if it wouldn't be just easier for them to publish these articles as blog entries?</random musing>

Brian is finding himself pretty busy lately so I decided to try my hand at writing an Xbox Dad column, and the results are up online now...

Meet the Family

Last Tuesday was the first FamilyGame Night on Xbox.com and the featured game, Walt Disney Pictures Presents Meet the Robinsons, has been a real hit around our house. My son Connor had been talking about the movie, Meet the Robinsons, for some time...

Check it out and let me know what you think... and send your 'xbox dad' comments my way!

My kind of use for a webcam

Duncan Mackenzie — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 16:12:00 GMT

I was on the blog of Tim Aidlin, a design evangelist in our same group, and I saw a post today about using a webcam and live messenger to see his new baby while he is at work.

Of course, any use of technology for a family purpose ends up involving a certain amount of tech-hassle, but still... the outcome is worth it.

Connor tries his hand at tournament Chess

Duncan Mackenzie — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 10:40:00 GMT

My son, Connor (6 years old), has been playing chess against me for the past year or so... but not very often really, maybe one or two games a month at the most. A local chess club held a chess tournament on February 24th at a nearby elementary school and Connor thought that would be pretty cool, so he entered. I have to admit, I was pretty worried that this would turn him off of chess, because he was really set on winning a trophy. I hate to be negative, but I didn't really expect him to get a trophy and since he had to play five games over the course of a very long day (for a kid), I thought he'd end up pretty frustrated if he lost most of his games. Well, I guess I shouldn't have been worried; he didn't seem to mind at all when he lost, he was happy and focus for the whole day... and he ended up winning three of his five games, and placing 3rd for his grade level (Kindergarten).

I guess we'll be playing more chess going forward.... good thing a Chess game ships with Vista :)

After the Wind Storm: I want my power back!

Duncan Mackenzie — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 07:50:00 GMT

It's been a few days since the big storm blew through, but I'm still without power (I'm at Microsoft now, so I can get connected and charge a few things)... which sucks when you have kids (and visitors, my in-laws arrived on the night of the storm). We aren't too cold now, we've borrowed a propane heater from a friend and we have a gas stove to boil water on for coffee/tea (and to boil hotdogs with!).

The storm itself ripped through our area with a fair amount of damage, taking down one of the biggest trees in the area right across the street from us, and knocking down one of the evergreens in our own yard. No damage to our house, but the big tree across the street managed to clip a house on the way down and tear a hole in it's roof. Fun stuff. Lots of photos on Flickr about this...

Right now, I just want power... the majority of folks in the Puget Sound have power back, but our area is listed as 'one of the most severely damaged' and we aren't expected to have power restored for another 3 to 5 days. The kids are holding up great, but on today, day 4 without power, the adults are becoming quite testy...

I'm holding onto hope that power will snap back on before the estimated times they've given us, assuming those times are 'worst case' guesses. Of course, the kids are safe and warm under the blankets at home... I'm at the office with the Starbucks iCup in full working order... things aren't really too bad.

Connor Getting Out Of School

Duncan Mackenzie — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 20:16:00 GMT

Video: Connor gets out of School

For those of you who aren't in my family... no worries... I'll stop with the videos now :)

This video seems a bit choppy to me... although the source material was just as good as the previous ones... hmm...

In honour of her 2nd Birthday... another Jada video!

Duncan Mackenzie — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 21:09:00 GMT

Video: Jada Jada Jada

Trying out the embedded Soapbox player

Duncan Mackenzie — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 20:34:00 GMT

Video: Jada Mackenzie

Pez Dispenser as a Hot Shoe attachment

Duncan Mackenzie — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 05:42:00 GMT

Ok, so I am so going to do this for taking pictures of my kids... but wait... I could probably do this on top of the video camera for Channel 9 shoots too! Now if I can only get my son's collection of Star Wars Pez Dispensers away from him and put them under the knife.

A site about taking photos of kids...

Duncan Mackenzie — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 15:31:00 GMT

But with a really cool name: http://shootingthekids.dpblogs.com

This site is definitely my latest happy discovery on the old series of pipes we call the Internet. As someone who takes lots of photos and almost every one of them ends up being one of my kids... this site is perfect.

Parental Control Software (ComputerTime)

Duncan Mackenzie — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 06:52:00 GMT

I saw this on Techie Diva today... and it was immediately appealing, but the attraction dimished quickly. This isn't any fault of the software, as far as I know it does its job perfectly, but I just don't think this is the way to deal with this problem. I have given parental control over technology a lot of thought lately, not only because I have two kids of my own, but also while writing the parental control chapter (a chapter I'm really proud of, I think it is a great bit of info for parents) in Xbox 360 for Dummies.

I've looked into this type of software before, and hardware solutions that prevent the use of the TV or a video game console, but I think that if you need to use this type of solution then you are in trouble. If you tell your kids they can't play/surf any more today and you can't trust them to listen to you even if you aren't watching, then that is a problem (are you going to have software to control access to junk food, drugs, etc. ? Kids need to learn some self-control, to follow the rules even if they won't get caught)

If you are so busy that you have no idea how long they've been on the computer and you need software to track it for you, then they are on too long or you are too far away from them while they are using the computer.

To be clear, I'm a fan of these tools as soon as I see them... but when I think it through I think our current system is working fairly well. On any given day my wife or I can say that Connor was using the Xbox "a lot" or "not much" and thereby decide if he can play some more. Sometimes we have to take away his right to play Xbox for a day or two, and during that time we don't hide the Xbox we just tell him that he can't play it... and while he might get upset about that... he knows exactly how to get a controller, put in a game and start up the Xbox but yet he doesn't do it.

Link to Techie Diva's Guide to Gadgets ?: Parents Can Use ComputerTime

Christmas pictures

Duncan Mackenzie — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 15:30:00 GMT

Just had some photos taken, (I even splurged for the reproduction rights on them, so I can get prints via Ofoto or wherever), there might be photos with me in them, but the kids are cuter

Berry picking....

Duncan Mackenzie — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 05:29:00 GMT

It was a very enjoyable summer weekend for our little family, including a trip today to pick raspberries (tons of fun, easy to pick...) and strawberries (very tasty... but much less enjoyable to be squatting down in the tiny little space between the rows trying to dig through the little bushes looking for ripe strawberries...) out at a local place called Remlinger Farms.

We only picked for around an hour, at that is moving at the speed of a 4 year old, and ended up with a nice pile of berries. With a bit of 'low-carb' ice cream, they taste wonderful... but quite a few just went straight from the bowl into the mouth...

The Spouse Acceptance Factor

Duncan Mackenzie — Tue, 07 Jun 2005 14:28:00 GMT

I'm not sure who invented this term, SAF, but it comes up often around folks who are into new technology for the home... "sure you might want to install a media center pc, but have you taken into account the spouse acceptance factor?" or the more common, "having to restart the cable modem sure reduces the SAF". With everything new seems to come a few annoyances, so the question is whether or not the benefits outweigh the issues... and not in your opinion, but in the opinion of the rest of the people in your house. This is an ongoing issue for me, because I have a habit of picking up new gadgets for the home.

Update: So, it seems that SAF is just the politically correct form of WAF, which has been around for quite some time... at least the 70's according to this site: http://www.wordspy.com/words/wifeacceptancefactor.asp

First, I went out and picked up Tivo, back when we first moved down to the US (Tivo is not available in most of Canada)... which was accepted into the household with very few bumps. It took a little while to get used to it, my wife was asking me to schedule recordings for awhile, and it had some problems changing channels on the digital cable boxes (using IR blasters, which I am not a big fan of). Eventually we got to a point where I don't think we would ever want to go back to life without a Tivo-like solution.

Next, I brought in my own home-grown media center like box to play all our music. Generally well accepted, but with remote control issues (a tendency to take one button press to mean 3 or 4, therefore playing music you were just trying to browse through, scrolling way farther than intended, etc..). I was never really able to fix the remote issues, but I never spent any time trying (too much work to do for my real job to be debugging my hobby project for more than a few minutes), and the system became something that only I would use.

Eventually I replaced that music pc with a 'real' Media Center system running the first version of Windows Media Center, and tried to get people to use it instead of Tivo as well as for music/photos... well, it worked most of the time, but we had it stowed away in a cabinet and it would occasionally (way too often for our tastes) require the user to hit a keyboard or mouse button to get past some message box or dialog... which resulted in my wife just shutting it off and using the Tivo again. Along came the most recent version of Media Center (2005) and the SAF was greatly increased... no more dialogs require the keyboard ever appeared and it seemed easier to use for many reasons. Combined with a media center extender, which brings the whole system closer to the feel of a consumer appliance, and everything seems hunky dory... kinda...

For some reason, every once in awhile I get an error while watching a show... "Content Expired" and the screen is replaced with a big message about needed to re-acquire the content (this isn't some HBO content protection thing ... this happens on normal ABC/NBC type shows recorded the night before). Pressing stop, then play, fixes the problem, but every single time it happens I get to hear "Tivo never did this, you know" (partially just to bug me, I'm sure) ... and it happens a few times a week. Oh... and sometimes the media center extender just suddenly dies and says that it experienced 'a problem' ... and needs to be reset. There are a few other issues, making it seem unreliable... which means it is currently toeing the line between being loved and being thrown out... not sure what the resolution is going to be on that one.

The final piece of 'new tech' in my house is the Vonage voip phone system which works very well, except when the Internet is down. This isn't Vonage's problem but it is a dependency and for some reason my Comcast internet seems to die for at least a few hours every week... generally right when I'm at work and my wife finally has some time to call all the various doctors and friends to set up appointments, playdates, etc... sure, it comes back in a few hours, but by then my wife has tried the phone ten times, reset and power-cycled the cable modem, etc... and whenever that happens I get the request "can we please go back to regular phone service and Tivo? I don't need fancy features, but I need this stuff to work.... and work all the time!".

Yesterday the phone service stopped working for an hour, when my wife was trying to call the doctor about a problem that my son is having... and then today the media center extender stopped working (I think because I had VPN'd into microsoft the night before on the media center pc, and then disconnected... but I still think that is what ended up confusing the extender) ... leading my wife to compare all the new technology in our home to "being left alone with a pet that behaves itself when you are home, but then gets violent after you leave".

As a technology junkie, this is a difficult situation for me... so now I'm considering my options... should I go back to 'regular' phone service (cell phones don't work at my house, by the way... they start to die around a block from my place)? Should I get digital cable and a DVR from the cable company perhaps? Should I consider DirectTV and their DVR? Should I take advantage of the switch to get some form of HD service... only if I can get a HD DVR solution, of course...

hassle, hassle, hassle... and there are always so many choices (DirectTV vs. Cable for example) and you are generally giving something up with every choice...

Of course, this is all unimportant in the big scheme of things, but I often find it is these unimportant details that end up taking a large amount of your time ... whether you are talking about that little bug in your code that causes drag and drop to not work in 1% of the cases or the decision of what type of TV signal provider to go with...

Caterpillars.... yum...

Duncan Mackenzie — Sat, 26 Mar 2005 07:25:00 GMT

The theme at my son's preschool last week was Caterpillars, and it also happened to be his turn to bring the snack (the kids rotate through this task, bring snacks/juice for 16 people)... so my wife went all-out and baked these breadstick-larva creations...

... and these butterfly cookies. Recipe for the breadstick/caterpillars is here

Very yummy and supposedly quite well received by the kids...

Heading out on parental leave... 10/26/2004 to 11/23/2004

Duncan Mackenzie — Mon, 25 Oct 2004 20:16:00 GMT

Luckily or sadly, depending on your point of view, I will still be posting the occasional blog entry and responding to at least some of my email, but my output volume will be reduced for the next 4 weeks (thanks Microsoft!!). I'll be spending my time at home with the kids;

A post about new MSDN Content? Nope, not quite...

Duncan Mackenzie — Wed, 13 Oct 2004 06:58:00 GMT

I've been a bit busy lately, and it hasn't just been with MSDN work... there is a new addition to the Mackenzie family!

Jada Elizabeth Mackenzie
Born on October 10th at 2:27 pm
At home now, healthy and happy!!

Good Guys and Bad Guys

Duncan Mackenzie — Mon, 20 Sep 2004 14:31:00 GMT

Everything comes down to that one of those two groups to my son, and he seems to really like that idea (wouldn't we all like the world to be that clearly defined). Today he is a bit sick and my wife sent me this message;

Connor's feeling pretty sick today. He still has a fever. We're definitely not going to preschool. I explained to him that the cold is a "bad guy", and that he has good guys in his body that are fighting him. I reasurred him that the good guys outnumbered the bad guys, and that they'd win, but that he could help by trying to rest today. He seemed to like the idea of the good guys and bad guys.

My thought, within moments, was that there has to be a game out there somewhere that shows his body fighting off a cold using imagery that would appeal to a 3.5 yr old. I didn't manage to find one, although I did find flash animations about bio-terrorism, AIDS, and more...