Boing! Boing!

We generally try to keep Lillian out of the bathroom. There are lots of hazards in there. There are chemicals and medicines in the cabinet under the sink that could poison her or that she could choke on. The toilet, despite being cleaned regularly, is still an infection risk—as is the brush we clean it with. If she gets into the bathtub she could slip and injure herself on the faucet or just hit her head on the bottom. To be sure, there are safe things for her to do in the bathroom—as long as she's supervised. We give her her baths in there, now. She can visit Rillian, the Reptilian Lillian.[1] And a few weeks ago she discovered…

Peekaboo!

There are multiple stages of playing peekaboo with a baby. At first you do the hiding and the baby's job is to giggle. Other names for peekaboo include keek-bo, peep-bo, bo-peep.[1] We never managed to get any good videos of Lillian when we were playing this stage of peekaboo with her—she always stopped to stare at (or even try to grab) the camera. The next stage involves the baby doing the hiding. And this time we've got some videos to showcase.

English–Greek Ambigrams

The third batch of multi-lingual ambigrams I made are in Greek. As in the previous cases [1], I was left to deal with both another language and another alphabet. Fortunately, as with the English–Old Irish ambigrams, I was working with an alphabet that was generally similar to the Roman alphabet we use in English. In fact, the Greek alphabet gave rise to it! For this batch I consulted two fonts: a blackletter font called Spanish Main [2] for my name and a font called Fleischmann Gotisch PT [3] for Leann's and Lillian's names.

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Book Review: A Princess of Mars

My main interest in reading this book was because of the movie which recently came out. I haven't seen it, yet, but I was intrigued by the trailer.[1] which I first saw when I went to see The Phantom Menace in 3D.[2] I can recall seeing this book on the shelves of the public library I attended growing up. That particular edition had a painting of an unclad woman on the cover, so I could never bring myself to check it out.[3] But I did read the summary on the back cover and I was intrigued by the descriptions of the adventures of John Carter.

Book Review: The Gods of Mars

When Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote A Princess of Mars [1] he was very nervous that people would look down on him for writing such silly things. So he published it under a pseudonym in a serial, called The All-Story (originally with the title "Under the Moons of Mars"). He intended his pseudonym to be "Normal Bean" suggesting that despite the childish and outlandish nature of the work, he really was just a normal guy. But someone in the editing department thought there'd been a typo and changed it to "Norman Bean".[2] Burroughs promised the publisher that he could produce at least two sequels, so at the end of A Princess of Mars he leaves himself just such an opening. Following the success of his book Tarzan of the Apes, there was renewed interest in the "Barsoom" series and sequels were requested. Burroughs was only too happy to oblige.

Book Review: The Warlord of Mars

There are several different races on Barsoom (Burroughs's name for Mars): white Martians, black Martians, yellow Martians, green Martians, red Martians.[1] They are all humanoid, but the green Martians are least similar in appearance to the Homo sapiens of Earth. In the first book [2], John Carter encounters the red Martians and the green Martians. In the second book [3], he encounters the white Martians and the black Martians. Now there is only one race left (the yellow Martians), so it's inevitable that he'll meet them during this travelogue.

Movie Review: How to Train Your Dragon

After Leann and I watched Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, someone (I can't remember if it was Leann's brother or one of her co-workers) told her that it had pretty much the same plot as How to Train Your Dragon. This is actually superficial—the only similarity between the two that I found was that they both deal with boys who have trouble connecting with their fathers for one reason or another but eventually manage to forge that bond. But, erroneous as it was, that declaration had a dampening effect on my enthusiasm to see this film. It's too bad, too, since…