As the movie below shows (sorry it's sideways - see note) , Alex wants to keep his blog up to date just as much as the next guy. Until his fine motor skills progress a little further, however, his typing efforts will tend to bash all the useful files and settings out of the computer.

It seems that babies the world over share the same technical challenges, as this Chinese blog post about a little'un called Zack shows (babelfish translation below for your amusement).

What acrobatics does Zack also meet? All the adult does the matter he is all curious, the grandfather stir-fried dish he thought fresh, the grandmother sweeps the floor scratches the table he also to study, on the handset telephone television video cassette recorder button all is his toy, he also likes playing my PowerBook G4, each time all knocks my door to attempt to play the computer, how is he such young understands the computer?

The great thing about this post is that it goes on to

collect the baby-proof formula

I.e. this resourceful dad collected some software that little Zack could bash the brains out of with enjoyable rather than destructive consequences. I think it's worth sharing with the English speaking world so that we can all...

...prevent the child randomly knocked the keyboard influence material formula AlphaBaby, it could lock in the firefly curtain keyboard, but it could make the simple response to each kind of input, for example the sound effect and the demonstration letter, such intuition feedback might let Zack like dying, now I try to teach he the keyboard had to use according to, is not strikes, otherwise always had knocks badly one day.

So here is my roundup of software that can stop Alex knocking the fireflies out of the keyboard and, instead make the sound effect and the demonstration letter in response to each kind of input. I've taken the investigations a little further than Zack's dad did.

All these programs are designed for little babies who like bashing stuff (probably anywhere from a few months upwards). They all work by causing random key presses to provide enjoyable audiovisual feedback for the baby while disabling normal keyboard functions to protect computer files and settings.

Baby Basher Keyboard Pounder (PC, Freeware)

This one is great and it's free! If you use a PC and you only get one program, then download Keyboard Pounder.

You first select a mode, either "flowers & butterflies" or "fish". When keys are pressed a note sounds and a flower/butterfly or fish (depending on the mode you are in) will appear on the screen. There is nice midi music playing in the background. Another great thing about this one is that random key bashing won't create mind-bending strobe effects on the screen. Instead, the little images will just keep adding to the screen creating a pleasant collage.

Maddie (PC, Freeware)

Maddie displays letters on the screen as they are pressed and makes a subtle ticking sound each time. You can edit a simple text file called MaddieMap.txt that comes with the program if you would like a word to display under the letter. For example, "a" could show "apple" underneath it if you put that in the configuration file.

Unlike Baby Basher, bashing a cluster of keys is not smooth with Maddie because a trill of letters will flash on and off the screen very quickly. Having said that, it is surprising how quickly a baby will become deliberate about their key presses when they realise there is a cause and effect.

Baby2Computer (PC, Shareware)

This one is shareware and costs USD 12.95 to register. It seems that an uregistered copy is limited to a minute or two of usage.

The advantage of Baby2Computer is that the images on the screen are photographic and the sounds played usually relate to the object shown (e.g. a car horn sounds when a car is shown). It looks like the developer intended to provide additional libraries of images and sounds, but I'm not sure it ever happened. I guess an email could establish the answer pretty quickly. To avoid a frantic visual effect when key clusters are hit, this software has a configurable timeout setting so that an image will remain on the screen for at least fraction of a second.

Useful buyer's guide for commercial baby software

• Baby Einstein Baby Newton Fun with Shapes
• Sesame Street Baby
• JumpStart Baby

Mac Options

I didn't try any of the Mac software because I don't own a mac :( but here are some links.

• Kidlock - Mac, Shareware, USD 9.99
  • It sure looks cool.
• AlphaBaby - Mac, Freeware
  • Zack's dad recommends this one
• Baby Banger - Mac, Freeware
  • Some debate as to how well this one locks the keys
• Babylooba - Beta, Shareware
  • Appears to be a dead project

My Ideal

If you're thinking of cornering the baby keyboard pounding software market, here's a formula that can't be beat.

• Free, of course.
• Configurable with your own pictures/ letters/ words and sounds
  • So you could assign the letter A a photo of "Alex" and record mummy saying "Alex" to go with it
• A good set of default themes included with appropriate sounds and images for each
  • For example, hitting "a" shows a nice apple picture and says "apple"d
  • A few different languages would be good e.g. "b" is for "blau"
• Smooth transitions
  • A timeout that stops multiple key presses from strobing images on the screen
  • A fade-out effect so that images appearing rapidly one after the other transition smoothly.
  • The sounds should sustain until they are complete rather than being chopped off by the next key-press (like any polyphonic electric piano).
• Different modes
  • Piano mode; where the keys behave like a polyphonic piano keyboard with notes properly assigned to letters (so mummy or daddy can demo a little tune and baby can bash out chords free-jazz-style). The screen could perhaps show printed musical notes in cartoon style.
  • Pictures & sounds mode; where images or photos are displayed and named audibly
  • Art mode; where visual effects on the screen respond to key-presses to let baby "paint a picture"
  • Vocal feedback art mode; like the above but this one behaves just like the visualisers in media players (Winamp/iTunes/Windows Media Player etc.) by responding to the baby's voice. Actually, this would be very feasible to rig up using Winamp, a mic and a few popular plugins.

Happy keyboard bashing babies!

Note: Anyone care to rotate my mp4 file for me? After looking around for a bit on Google & the inimitable Doom9.net I decided that buying Quicktime pro or devoting a significant portion of my life to understanding how all this stuff works were my only options... and I'm not up for either of those. Surely there is some web-based MP4 rotating service out there... anyone?!?

No doubt some of you were a little rattled when Pluto was scrubbed off the map of the solar system on Thursday. It's not the end of the world, but it's a bit like finding out the Easter bunny is not real... you just might not see it coming. You might need a little time to emotionally re-catalogue all those primary school solar system projects.

I was saved from a protracted period of mourning by my colleague Mike who quickly brought things into perspective for me. He shared some wisdom that I now pass to you.

It's not that bad... it's just like finding out that one of your buddies on Skype is a dwarf.

There's really nothing you can say to that.

We move on.

"...a selection of desktop-sized high-quality PNG images, combining
        near-real-time cloud data, and some very nicely rendered
        maps using satellite data, to create a nifty, nearly-live world map
        desktop background wallpaper."

It was Bender of Futurama fame that said "great is ok, but fantastic would be great". I am reminded of Bender's sentiment as I cast my eye over the endless array of useful tools out there on the web. So many software tools are great from one perspective and barely ok from another.

I marvel that I can grab a set of tools generated in isolation from each other and cobble them together into blog that I can update from my PocketPC. How many thousands of shoulders am I standing on when I send that text & see it appear on my weblog?

On the other hand, updating my blog via flkr's email service ends with a mess (the post is mangled and not published anyway), I can't get versions of this and that to work with each other. I get excruciatingly close to a working setup only to abandon it because on little piece is no good and that makes all the difference.

Oh to be the world's most gifted programmer so I could take what is there and make it all work "just so".

Now I'm starting to get it :)
Originally uploaded by mattadgow.

Yessir, it's a brave new world out there. And I'm finally working it out.

The guy in the photo is a bullock driver who does daily bullock team demonstrations at Timbertown near Port Macquarie (NSW, Australia) he's a true Aussie character.

In the context of this post however, he represents an "ahaaa" moment because the image (and this post) were submitted by email via flikr... the picture itself is hosted on flikr. Sadly, while the post worked, the BloggerAPI support in Quills doesn't seem to be up to the task. It mashed the whole post into the title and didn't seem to know it was receiving HTML. I had to doctor the post to make it look right which kinda defeats the purpose of email posting. Oh well.

I am ever more impreseed with the features of Plone & Zope. In the space of two minutes I've set up a weblog (opted for Quills... hope it's good) and hooked it to a desktop editor wbloggar.

It's good stuff.