garklet

Three Law Compliance

The is generally a good lad, but he often gets a little excited or frustrated, and when he does he has a regrettable tendency to hit people. We’ve just been moving some of his toys back into the living room, into the wheeled boxes that I’d built with a little bit of IKEA bricolage, and he ended up running around with one of his old toy boxes on his head while shouting “robot!” And then he hit me. Not a hard blow, and not one borne of malice, but the sort of roughhousing that we’re trying to get him to… Read More »Three Law Compliance

Charms to soothe the savage breast

The is running around naked after his bath. I’m playing him some music to dance to. On the grounds that he likes the KLF remixes of the Doctor Who theme, I played him some Vangelis, and then some Jean Michel Jarre. He’s now running around wrapped in bubble wrap shouting “like a robot!”

Neeeeowwwww!

For those that haven’t met him, the has a bit of a thing for aeroplanes. This really became apparent about a year ago; I read him Sadie the Airmail Pilot every night for at least a month, and he was fascinated by the aircraft flying into Southampton Airport (we’re less than a kilometre south of the perimeter, and probably less than 200m west of the southern approach flight path). Last summer, we met up with my uncle and aunt at the Isle of Wight Steam Railway (they had a 1940s weekend) and ended up buying him a selection of planes,… Read More »Neeeeowwwww!

Conversations with toddlers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hprimates

recounted a conversation that had with Thea, on the subject of apes and monkeys, which got me browsing aimlessly through Wikipedia. I came across an article on Yerkish, an artificial language designed in the 1970s for use by non-human primates, principally chimpanzees. Yerkish has a vocabulary of symbols (lexigrams) which are used to label buttons on a keyboard, and has a relatively complex grammar. The paper referenced in the Wikipedia article (a scan of a microfiche version of a typed paper original) has an appendix of conversations with Lana (the first chimpanzee to have learned Yerkish) that were so close… Read More »Conversations with toddlers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hprimates

Garklet 2.1 is no more

had a scan this morning (at 11w6) which showed that the latest attempt to make a sibling for the hasn’t worked (anencephaly). There’s more in a f-locked post on ‘s journal here.

Life Chez Gark

A bit of a life roundup for the past week. First off, the cat. She might have stayed around for an extra day, but she buggered off the following day. I suspect that it was the move from luxury single sachet cat food to multipack Waitrose own-brand cat food that did it. The seems to have taken it well, and has accepted the explanation that “she’s gone back to her family” (which in all truth is the most likely outcome), and hasn’t settled for “she was driven away by next door’s army, and is now cowering under a bush with… Read More »Life Chez Gark

An unexpected turn of events

We appear to have acquired a cat: We passed her on Brookside Way, and she followed us home. She then hung around outside for another half hour, and was looking quite lost ( found her when she went outside to get some thyme). The seems a little unsure as to what to make of her; he’s currently stroking her gently, but he was telling the cat to ‘go’ earlier. He at least now seems confident that she won’t play with his train (although he’s quite keen to demonstrate it to her). I’ve been on a quick trip to the shops… Read More »An unexpected turn of events