Babble babble.com

This post is part of a series on how technology fits into my family life, sponsored by Dell. See my other posts, and posts from other writers, at the Dell Family Tech page. Leave a comment below here and/ or on my last Dell Family Tech post for a chance to win a Dell Inspiron One 2320 Touch computer! Details at the end of the post.

One thing that I like to do at the end of each year is give a good think about and plan my goals for the following year.  I’m just starting the process now but I’ve already noticed a trend, which is my desire to start using some technologies that frankly have been around for quite of bit of time.  Even though I have embraced lots of new devices, services and softwares into my life over the years, I’m kind of surprised that there are other very ubiquitous ones that I haven’t.  Does that make me, gulp, a luddite?  Before you try to make me feel better, you’ve got to see my list below.

Nevertheless, 2012 is going to be the year that that all changes.

Skype: I know.  After all of Oprah’s evangelizing you would have thunk I would have jumped on the bandwagon years ago.  Nope.  Just wasn’t into it.  But, my husband does travel a lot and now that we have a family computer (thanks Dell!) with a built-in webcam, it will be a perfect way for them to communicate during my husband’s week-long business trips.

FaceTime:  since we’ll be doing Skype, I should jump on FaceTime, too, huh?  I don’t have an iPhone 4 yet.  But I am due for an iPhone upgrade and once things quiet down at the stores, I plan on making good on it.

Google:  (just kiiiiding)  But really, I’m going to start using my dusty Google Plus account.  It’s like a ghost town over there.  I am going to make a concerted effort to understand it and make the most of it.  So far my experience has been meh.  But, I think Google Plus is here to stay will be a larger part of the social media landscape.

Photoshop:  No, I’m not planning on retouching the photos I don’t take.  Instead, I have always wanted to learn basic graphic design and this is one of the basic programs used.  Earlier this year, I came this close to enrolling in a Saturday afternoon course at a design school.  Life got in the way, as it always does.

Photography: I also want to take introductory classes so I know how to use my DSLR camera.  I’m so intimidated.  I have an excellent point and shoot camera that has kept me in my comfort zone for years.  Time to break out.

Netflix: I know, I know. I am a big cable TV On Demand user.  And, my husband and I seem to acquire lots of DVDs.  But, it makes more sense economically and environmentally to use a service like Netflix or Hulu Plus.  I haven’t decided which one yet or whether we’ll set it up through our HDTV, our Blu-Ray Player or Wii.  Now, you see why we haven’t taken the leap yet?  So many decisions.  Baby steps, right?

Now, can please take a moment, stop laughing at me and confess what well-known services you have yet to use.

* * *

Leave a comment on this post for a chance to win a Dell Inspiron One 2320 Touch computer!

GIVEAWAY RULES (read them, as you have more than one chance to enter the giveaway)

The giveaway will run until Friday, December 16, 2011, 11:59 p.m. EDT and is open to all U.S. residents. A winner will be chosen at random using Random.org from all eligible entries. Each reader has two chances to win by leaving a comment on this post (#3 in the series), and my last post (#2 in the series), which went up last week. Readers can also leave comments on the final two posts by other Babble Voices writers participating in the Dell Family Tech campaign. Note: Not all Dell Family Tech post comments are eligible for this giveaway so look carefully at each author’s posts to see if comments left on them are valid for this giveaway.

One comment per person per post, please. The chosen winner must respond within 48 hours of notification to claim their prize. Good luck!

THE GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED. I WILL CONTACT A WINNER TOMORROW, SATURDAY DEC 17.

Photo from Thinkstockphotos

This post is part of the Dell Family Tech series, read on and you may win a Dell Inspiron touch-screen computer for $0.

By now you’ve probably heard about Louis CK’s self-produced special, shot live at the Beacon Theater in New York, that he made available on his web site for $5. I downloaded it as soon as I heard about it. Five dollars gives you two downloads or two streaming sessions, so I downloaded it onto a laptop and onto the Dell. I did this not only because Louis is my secret profane sweaty nerd boyfriend from another life but because I am a grown woman and I usually have $5 to spare for something potentially life-enhancing that doesn’t involve standing in line at Starbucks. (I am not a fan of elaborate, pie-flavored coffee.)(I realize you can get normal coffee at Starbucks, and I’m beyond resenting the fact that you have to use Italian vocabulary to order it, but I can’t think of another common thing most people will spend $5 on that they don’t really need. One king-sized Snickers and a People magazine? Two packs of gum and a lighter?)

When I downloaded the hour-long show, I was given the option to be added to a mailing list for future shows, updates or whatever. Normally I wouldn’t want to add myself to yet another source of spam, but I trusted Louie to put out a higher quality of spam. Yesterday morning, an e-mail from Mr. CK appeared in my inbox. It began:

Hi.  This is LOuie.  It seriously is me. Im even going to leave the O stuipdly capatalized because who would pay an intern to do that??

Okay. After our special afternoon together, my secret profane sweaty nerd boyfriend didn’t even wait a week to get back in touch with me. I was ready to listen.

Okay so you bought the thing with my fat face on it and you clicked the button that said i could email you. And i know that now you are thinking “aw shit. Why’d i let this guy into my life this way?”. Well dont worry. Because i really swear it that i wont bug you. I will not abuse this privalage of having your email.

I would have thought a Virgo would be a little more anal about his spelling but whatever, apparently he was writing it in the back of a car on the way to do Leno, he probably overrode his autocorrect by mistake. Maybe he was writing on his phone with his fat, sweaty thumbs. God, look at me, so willing to make any excuse for him.

Also, some of you may know, i recently made a statement (that sounds so dumb. Like i’m the president or something) about how the video has been doing online. Im pasting it in here below in case you missed it.

Wow, he really cares about keeping me in the loop. I mean, okay, it’s a little self-centered, he hasn’t even asked how I’ve been since I last saw him, but I get it, he’s on the Tonight Show and what have I been doing? Sitting around drinking pie-flavored coffee.

Okay well please have a happy rest of the year and more happy years after that. And please even have been happy in your past. What?

Thanks again for giving me 5 dollars. I bought 3 cokes with it.

Oh, see, he does care about me! Though I wish he wouldn’t drink that much soda, it’s terrible for you.

(You can read the rest of his statement here.)

Leave a comment on this post for a chance to win a Dell Inspiron One 2320 Touch computer.

GIVEAWAY RULES (read them, as you have more than one chance to enter the giveaway)

The giveaway will run until Friday, December 16, 2011, 11:59 p.m. EDT and is open to all U.S. residents. A winner will be chosen at random using Random.org from all eligible entries. Each reader has two chances to win by leaving a comment on this post (#4 in the series), and my other post (#3 in the series). Readers can also leave comments on the #3 and #4 posts by other Babble Voices writers participating in the Dell Family Tech campaign. Note: Not all Dell Family Tech post comments are eligible for this giveaway — only comments on the third and fourth posts in each author’s November/December 2011 Dell series.

One comment per person per post, please. The chosen winner must respond within 48 hours of notification to claim their prize. Good luck!

UPDATE: The winner of the Dell Inspiron is Vi! Look for an e-mail from me, Vi, so we can get the big ball rolling. Thanks to everyone who commented, and thanks, Dell!

Pinterest -Prepare to Become Hooked

In addition to all the various freelance and just-for-fun blogging that I do, I am also employed full time in the field of digital media, so I usually hear or read about hot, new social networking sites from my professional peers long before I ever run across someone who does NOT work in social media actually using any of these hot, new social networking site. But Pinterest was different.

Read more »

This post is #4 in a four-part series sponsored by Dell. Leave a comment for a chance to win a Dell Inspiron One 2320 Touch computer!

Holiday cards. We love getting them…we “love” sending them? OK probably not. As adorable as our families are, getting them to all look in the same direction at the same time without at least one person breaking into tears is almost impossible. Every year I say I’m not going to do them, but I always cave in. Why? Because in this day and age of emailed instant-gratification, there is something so nice about opening our old-fashioned mail boxes and discovering cards. In our high-tech world, it’s nice to sometimes enjoy the low-tech pleasures. Thankfully, there are three easy ways I’ve found for holiday card-sending. Read more »

Well, folks, the holidays are almost here, and chances are that you’re going to be getting a few days off traveling at some point in the next few days, or someone is traveling to spend time with you.  And family baggage aside, the potential of running into at least one or two awesome family or friend moments is high.  So since I’m the kind of photographer who loves to capture a good moment, I thought I’d share with you my top 5 subjects to look out for to photograph and memorialize the holidays.   Before I begin, however, let me state upfront that my rule for image-gathering at these sorts of things is go for ambiance rather than perfection.  You’ll see some photographs below that technically are horrifying (I took some of them ages ago), but the emotion that they capture is pretty evident — and really, that’s the whole point of photography, don’t you think?

I do, anyway.

So let’s begin:

1.  Greetings.  Remember that opening scene in Love Actually, when Hugh Grant’s disembodied voice talks about how much he enjoys watching people in the arrivals hall of Heathrow Airport?  Man, me too:  there’s nothing I love more than the spontaneous joy that people express when they see someone they love for the first time in a long while.

So when you’re at the airport waiting for someone, or sitting at home waiting for the doorbell to ring (or are the person doing the arriving), have your camera at the ready to capture the hugs and fist-bumps and “It’s so you great to see you again, you look well!” pronouncements that are bound to happen in those first few seconds.  And again, don’t freak out about technical proficiency here:  I promise you’re going to love the resulting shots for years to come (like I love the one of my husband coming into the Houston Intercontinental Airport arrivals hall a few years ago, above).

2.  Get pictures of the kids.  I love Christmas with a white-hot passion, but even I have to admit that the holidays are generally all about the kids.  And if your family is like my family, the holidays are often some of the few times that all of the cousins get together.  So be sure to grab your camera and get some great shots of the kids all playing together, but also grab a few nice, tight portraits of them as well.  As they grow, these shots, taken at particularly special family-times, will end up being great chronicles of how they grow up together.  Who knows — maybe a print of one of your shots might end up in their dorm rooms as a cherished memory when they go off to college.

3.  Capture images of everyday chores.  Some of my favourite parts of family coming together is how everyone sort of pitches in to help, and slowly eases into feeling at home.  So at some point during all of the chaos, grab your camera and capture some of the everyday moments:  your husband’s hands covered in flour as he makes the holiday cookies, your sister lighting a fire, your brother bringing out the turkey, everyone gathering around the table before the meal.  By tapping into your inner photojournalist, you’ll end up getting some great shots of the atmosphere and energy of the visit.

4.  Rediscover your home town.  Let’s face it:  sometimes too much togetherness can sometimes be a lot.  So at some point during your visit, grab an opportunity to take a little breather and walk around your hometown, recapturing some of your favourite memories and marveling at how much everything has changed (or how much they’ve stayed the same).

5.  Grab a shot of everyone together.  I know, I know — it might feel highly cheesy to do, but seriously, when are you all going to be getting together again?  Besides, one of my favourite photographs of my father’s is one of him and his 8 brothers and sisters (in order) with their parents, taken one Christmas years ago:  they were all adults at the time, and it was one of the few times they were all together again.  There’s nothing like looking back at photos like that and laughing at the outdated fashions.  Trust me, 10 years from now you’ll thank me when you do this.

A tip:  doing this is really best with a tripod, so you can set the timer on your camera and run back into the shot.  In fact, I’m going to suggest you take 2 shots:  one of all of you posed and smiling sweetly, but the second one with everyone making a face, or doing a group hug or whatever.  You’ll love and laugh at the outcome, and everyone will be asking you for copies of the shot.

With that, happy holidays, everyone.  If you’re traveling, be safe, and in any case, I hope your holidays (and your images!) are full of love and laughter.

Thanks very much to the good folks at Dell for sponsoring this post, and for providing me with a considerably awesome Inspiron All-in-One computer! To read more about what families at Babble are doing with technology, please be sure to check out the Dell Family Tech section of Babble Voices.

This post is part of the Dell Family Tech series. Read on to find out how you might win a new Dell Inspiron touch-screen computer.

We are not a church-going family, so our taste in Christmas movies skews a little secular. Actually, Christmas movies skew secular, don’t they, Hollywood? Unless you veer pretty far out of the mainstream. Like, to movies that are just about Jesus and have no holiday romanticism about them whatsoever. I have a brother who is wonderful and a devout Catholic, and one Christmas he sent me a copy of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. THAT movies puts the Christ back in Christmas, my friends. Bing Cosby would have coughed up a golf ball watching that. I was tempted to send my brother The Life of Brian in his Easter basket, but that just seemed immature on my part. I’m trying to be a better person. It may not be working. Also, I have a lot of cold medicine in my head right now so I may wander off track. Thank you for your patience and understanding. Have a candy cane.

Inevitably, though, I give and get DVDs for Christmas. Lucky for me, for the last five years there’s been a new season of 30 Rock to ask for, God bless us all, Tina Fey. But what to give? Oh, there’s something for everyone on Santa’s list.

FOR THE NAUGHTY: Usually the first holiday movie my husband wants to watch in December is Bad Santa. My son, who is ten, is not allowed to see this film because it is rated R. Roger Ebert called it “gleefully offensive” and It is inappropriate in so many ways that I don’t know where to begin. This one doesn’t come out until Christmas Eve after the boy goes to bed. It’s a good gift for child-free people with a dark sense of humor; you could probably develop a lethal drinking game based on Billy Bob Thornton’s frequent moral outrages.

Slightly less dark:

• A Christmas Carol (1951) — There are at least eight different versions of the Charles Dickens story, but this one is definitely the creepiest
• Scrooged (1988), starring Bill Murray as the least scary Ebeneezer Scrooge, a modern-day television executive who needs to be spooked into finding the meaning of Christmas
• The Ref (1994), starring Denis Leary as a thief who breaks into an angry couple’s house on Christmas Eve and ends up acting as their heavily-armed marriage counselor
• The Santa Clause 1, 2, and 3 — depending on your feelings about Tim Allen, this series is borderline Nice. I actually think #2 is the best one, because I am a giant Sap from Sapville

FOR THE NICE: I always want to watch Elf while I’m decorating the tree. I think this is a delightful tradition, but it usually results in me decorating the tree all by myself. My husband thinks Elf is dorky and my son finds it achingly embarrassing. At some point the shame center of his brain took over and he couldn’t bear to see people humiliate themselves with sincerity the way Buddy the Elf does. I don’t know what’s wrong with my family. Bob Newhart as the head elf! Ed Asner as Santa! Peter Dinklage as the brooding children’s author! Zooey Deschanel in the first of her many appearances as the whimsical love interest!

Also for the sentimental, there’s:

• Nobody ever wants to watch Rudolph with me, goddamnit
• Sometimes I can suck someone into the Grinch, but my son (who may not be my son, DNA TESTS ARE PENDING) prefers the Jim Carrey version over the far more genius-filled animated Boris Karloff version
  
• The Charlie Brown music is like an electromagnet, though, and I guess we have a winner for the least secular Christmas special, thanks to Linus’s sensitive readings from the New Testament
• White Christmas — Oh my God, Bing Crosby, you make me nostalgic for a Christmas that never really existed except in some Burbank back lot

What DVDs would you give to someone in need of a little Christmas cheer?

Leave a comment on this post for a chance to win a Dell Inspiron One 2320 Touch computer.

GIVEAWAY RULES (read them, as you have more than one chance to enter the giveaway)

The giveaway will run until Friday, December 16, 2011, 11:59 p.m. EDT and is open to all U.S. residents. A winner will be chosen at random using Random.org from all eligible entries. Each reader has two chances to win by leaving a comment on this post (#3 in the series), and the final post (#4 in the series), which will go up Friday. Readers can also leave comments on the #3 and #4 posts by other Babble Voices writers participating in the Dell Family Tech campaign. Note: Not all Dell Family Tech post comments are eligible for this giveaway — only comments on the third and fourth posts in each author’s November/December 2011 Dell series.

One comment per person per post, please. The chosen winner must respond within 48 hours of notification to claim their prize. Good luck!

I am, as I have freely admitted before, totally dependent on my smartphone. It’s how I run my life – both at home and at work. If I had to give up every piece of technology I own but for one device, the smartphone would be the gadget I’d hang on to.

Read more »

This post is #4 in a four-part series sponsored by Dell. Leave a comment for a chance to win a Dell Inspiron One 2320 Touch computer! Details at the end of the post.

The giveaway has ended, and the winner will be notified by email. Thank you to all who entered!

Some of the earliest press coverage described Parent Hacks as “the perfect blog for geeky parents.” I took this to mean Parent Hacks appealed to an intelligent, practical, problem-solving crowd. Many of my readers at the time had tech backgrounds because blog-reading was still relatively unheard-of beyond devoted Internet-dwellers. Most parents didn’t even know what blogs were.

Well, here we are in late 2011. Blogs are almost as everyday as the newspaper, and all sorts of folks hang out in the comment section. But I’m as connected to my blog’s geeky roots as ever. And I’m married to a geek. And our second date was a Star Trek convention (it was tongue-in-cheek, but still). And I bought a LEGO Star Wars advent calendar even though we celebrate Hanukkah. And my husband and I were invited to a gaming conference to speak on a panel called “Geek Parenting.”

I guess that makes me a little geeky myself.

So, to celebrate the season, I’d like to share a few craft projects fellow geeks will appreciate. It doesn’t have to be all Santas and holly, after all.

Read more »

This post is #3 in a four-part series sponsored by Dell. Leave a comment for a chance to win a Dell Inspiron One 2320 Touch computer!

Last week my mom baby-sat Annabel for the day. When we came home my mom gave us the rundown of the day. As an aside, she mentioned that she and Annie had watched “Frosty The Snowman” on TV and Annie had gone wild for it. “How cute,” I thought.

For the next three days, Annie talked non-stop about Frosty. It was “Frosty dancing!” and “Frosty snowman!” and “Frosty TV!” My husband thought it was cute at first, but eventually was like, “YES FROSTY OMG!!!” “Heather,” he said, “this Frosty thing really falls into the Christmas thing…that’s your department!”  Read more »