Well, I thought it was pretty cool....only cos one of the kids said "hey dad - ive got a bike like yours...."
Strange (for another thread I expect) but my kids (all 3 of them) are not interested in bikes in any shape way or form, and to be honest I wouldn't/wont encourage it. And if they did ask - id offer to buy them a car!!
the wee mans in to his quad. but more in to mind craft. strange. when i was a kid if it had something that turned i was hooked.
yeah - TBH the only reason im on a bike now is that when I was 17 I never got on with my mum and step dad (think - Windsor Davies character but an asshole) - they kicked me out, I needed transport and that was (from what I could see) the cheapest thing. Had they have not kicked me out I would have bought a car....but saying that im not so sure - it might have been inevitable as I spent most of my school life in skate parks, on bmx's, skateboards, roller skates and the biggest part down the local ice rink.... Its a strange thing but the way I see it...I got a bike, wasn't sure what to expect, got hooked inside a day. Got loads of points over the years, had a lot of accidents which have taught me a lot about riding and reading the road a lot more ahead than the average car driver. And I would say its sheer luck that im alive now with what ive done, good or bad. It sounds really selfish but I wouldn't want my kids to roll the dice the same way I did, but then in the same breath you cant wrap them in cotton wool, that's what life is all about...living, and looking back on mine I wouldn't change a thing - its been great so far.
Yeah - but id rather them do it in a car than on a bike....at the moment I think im alright, but then, theyre only 6, 11 and 13. And yes, there's a minecraft server running 24/7 in our house...they all seem to be kids of this generation, tablets, phones, consoles etc etc...which I don't really mind. They've all consistently had good reports, the oldest had a written message in hers from the Head (Message to say how pleased she was with her). They've got it all at home but theyre not hooked up to something all the time...oldest tends to draw a lot and play her guitar and the 2 younger ones are normally constructing stuff out of lego... I think because its all there all of the time they don't need their "fix" if you will. My little brother kind of prides himself on being as unplugged in life as he possibly can be....they tried to keep their little one off of consoles etc etc and IMO it backfired as he used to go round his mates to "do his homework" and they found out he was playing COD. So, now it's rationed so the "getting your fix" scenario has now been introduced....
6hrs a week for my two max. been a few tears. but tough titty. up shot he can blow me away in tech talk.
Heh - everyone's got their own way....as I say we've never had to restrict them.....unless they get lippy then stuff starts to disappear....Im in IT for a job so Im pretty cool on that. In fact I usually end up being helpdesk at home, sometimes I ask for it when I find a game and then show them....2 good games in test phase at the moment are Terratech and Transformers Universe. Transformers is free to play on line and terratech is a standalone exe...although transformers is so busy you have to create a login and then wait "to be called up"....
What do you think of Transformers? I don't play myself but I'm interested to know as the Dev team behind it are a client of mine.
ooh - that's a tough one....my theory has been that kids no matter what will eventually get bored of what ever theyre messing around with - their attention span can only be so long, so they'll only play for one given thing or a finite amount of time. So based on that they wouldn't, for couldn't get addicted - having said that all kids are different and there are frequent stories of kids being addicted to video games. Id say its down to personal make up. As I say they've always had access to all those kinds of stuff. If you deny something to your kids (this is for mine anyway) then they'll always want more - they want what they cant have, shit, im the same...! This is dangerous area to get into - I wouldn't want to tell anyone how to bring up their kids, that really is stepping into someones back yard....I dunno - are they addicted? have they ever had more time on video games/computer time? is that why they were restricted in the first place? One thing that I have noticed is my kids I wouldn't say spend that much time actually playing games....most of the time theyre just watching tv shows/youtube videos etc etc. Hell, I spend more time on a tablet than anything else but I just read 95% of the time, ive magazine subscriptions on there, I read the bike websites, so, by that definition in one way I could be classed as addicted but not really because the content is just reading - its just the medium that youre getting that information in...
hmm.... from a technical standpoint I think the way that their dedicated client interacts with the server's is a bit clunky. Theres nothing to say how it works or how to troubleshoot. eg when you fire up the client it tries to connect to a loopback ip (127.0.01) which im guessing is assuming the webpage is open for the local client to connect to....how is anyone supposed to know that!! ie if someone fires up the client without the webpage running nothing is going to work...theyre just assuming that you do...that's the way I see it. That threw me for a while as I did a dns lookup on their login page and popped that ip into the client...messy. The call up time was awful - my little one created a login and didn't actually get to be able to play the game for about a month. Youre on the whole trying to cater to kids with short attention time spans...well mine have anyway! I think a better use of the hardware should be utilized. I think its good that they are making it available through a webpage for low powered machine but lets face it....even the most cheapest laptops (taking a bare minimum standpoint) can play stuff - ie my daughters little 13" dell latitude can play plants vs zombie's (garden warfare) at a decent rate and that's using an onboard intel gfx card which are generally regarded as the bottom of the pecking order from a graphical point of view. On the plus side I think the whole transformers multiverse idea is brilliant....maybe some sort of 3rd high powered option for peole with high end equipment...I think graphically it look lovely - they've done a good job with the look...but when ive watched little'un playing it, it is let down by lag (and were on a 150mb connection) but that could be because its still in test phase, so im not expecting miracles...all of the above might be for that matter so I might be talking shite as the above issues might be gone on final release!! Sorry - was that too much information??
i would never be offended, its 6hrs a week btw. but don't really know whats normal(i doubt there is any one less tech savy than me). most of my mates are I.T dudes, growing up they would be spending that much time almost daily. saying that they are all pretty much up there, when it comes to there careers.
I suppose its down to the way your kids are....if they get complete access to anything - do they bored of it....no matter what it is...eg at the moment they haven't picked up a Nintendo DS for months, only one of them uses the WiiU and then it may be an hour twice a week or so... Wouldn't say im up there in my job....if anything ive deliberately not gone further for a number of reasons...ive refused promotion twice as it would take me away from what I like doing - which is fixing stuff (my boss told me recently I lacked ambition!) but ive personally found that, for me, my own personal development doesn't come from a promotion, it comes from learning new stuff.... Plus the more you start to climb the ladder the less time you get with your family. Ive got quite a few mates that have gone all the way and they then don't like their jobs....one of my mates is a 30 year seasoned unix admin but he now calls himself an outlook engineer as all he does is travel round the world to different sites, spend his life emailing and never sees his family. Another one is a VMWare engineer and hates his job and his life. After 20 years I still love my job, which I think in this day and age is quite a rare thing...I think its because I do a wide variety of stuff eg today ill be fixing a phone which a manager dropped so its a complete strip down and new screen, and then get a laptop ready for a new manager and then after that back on to server work....tomorrow will be different... Anyway.....try them - give them unfettered access for a couple of weeks and see if they get tired of it....ask them...say that your going to let them play as long as they want on it, see what they do, more to the point see what they are doing as I bet 80% of their time they'll be watching funny stuff on youtube and tv shows like mine...which means that as I said, yes, theyre on computers/laptops/tablets all the time but if theyre just "watching TV" or reading then theyre not really are they...does that sound a bit weird... As I say - you know your kids so what Im suggesting may be wrong as yours maybe (and probably are) different to mine...
