Girl Levitates on Fifth Birthday!

I can't believe she is five already; I read the post from Alan the other week when he talked about his youngest daughter turning five and all that it means. Well it was my turn today when Little Ms R hit five and catapulted herself towards being a grown-up and starting school. She is an explosive child and is turbo charged with energy; they have no idea that the tornado is coming and she will hit the class running tomorrow. Her report from her pre-school stated that life would be quiet without her as she announces her arrival in any room with great gusto.

We had Nigel Kennedy the magician (again!) as he is such a hit with the kids (and Fairy Trina was in the family way with twins last time we saw her) and I think even he was taken aback with the energy of this new birthday girl. In fact, he was so amazed that he managed to levitate her during the show. Amazing; most magicians pull a rabbit out of the hat, but the energy radiated out of my little bundle and she vibrated herself upwards.

I'm sad that she is growing up but I know that she will hit life full-on and then some as it is the only way she knows how. Pity the fool the tries to stifle such energy; let's hope the school system can cope with this nuclear kid.

Go on, make a difference

Here's some questions for you. When you leave this world, will you have left behind a better place for you having lived? Will your children grow up to be happy and content in their lives and will they strive to make a difference also?

It doesn't matter how small, go on, do something that makes a difference today and leave a legacy to be proud of. It needn't be much and doesn't need to cost anything; a smile to a stranger, loose change to a charity, a shoulder to a friend. Once you've done it once, repeat until satisfied.

If you can't make a difference doing what you're doing and believe that you never will, move on, change your frame of reference, and start again. Be brave, stand straight and aim high.

So ends the sermon of Mr Reasonable today. Normal service resumes tomorrow. Oh, and I've changed jobs which was kinda brave and exciting and stupid and brave and exciting.......

iGet better and better

Am I an addict? A night does not pass when I don't pick up my iPhone and check out my feeds, latest Installer apps or to read a chapter using the eBook reader. This truly is a life changing device. Prior to buying one I got sucked into the hype and then got over it. Then I bought one and got all excited again and again got over it as I thought I'd discovered everything but wait, there's more.

The number of applications available is growing by the day and is truly staggering in the variety. My latest install is Nemus Sync which lets me sync any of my Google Calendars to the native iPhone Calendar. This means I can keep an eye on interesting things going on around town through my subscription to the Wellingtonista calendar feed, and Mrs R knows where I am and where I am going to be as it is a two way feed and she can access it from home!

I've just been watching TV with one eye and listening to snippets of the Top Ten on iTunes on the iPhone. Number four is "Sweet About Me" by Gabriella Cilmi and a double tap gives me the whole album to peruse. Some great tracks so a few taps later and I've bought it; easy. Weirdly enough, some of the tracks remind me of Tears For Fears, whose tracks fill a large slug of my iTunes library; strange how your music tastes slowly alter but the theme is never far from your youth.

Now I don't mind paying for music (a musician's gotta live and talent don't pay the bills) and I remember back a few years when Napster was the rage. A lot of people wanted free music but the power of Napster was the enormous variety and common meeting place for file sharing of often non-mainstream music. Forget the big record labels, file sharing is the home of the long tail and this is the model that helped to make Amazon the success it is and clearly Apple knows this.

I remember having a conversation with my father in law back in 2001 and he had been trying to find a single track by a humorist called Victor Borge that he had heard many years before. I found it in minutes on Napster and would have happily paid a premium for the track if the model had existed back then. So fly forward 7 years and I'm sitting on my sofa, I type Borge into iTunes and in seconds can preview a wide collection of his work and can pay for any tracks or albums I want, right there, no delay, no fuss. Amazing really; record stores can't possibly last another 2 years.