My son is being encouraged to lie.

It's a fairly regular occurrence around here, and I'm sure you've seen it yourself. It's that checkbox on the website you're visiting where you say "Yes, I am over X years of age".

Last night, after the kids had gone to bed, I entered the bathroom to find this wonderful diorama Max had created to reenact the ramming of the Ady Gil.

I just love the stance from the 'Japanese' seaman, and particularly how he's represented by a tiger, with the plug for a hat. The Ady Gil, of course, just a harmless duck. Altogether spartan in the simplicity of the representation, and yet wonderfully evocative.

All of the items are bath toys that have been in the room since the kids were much younger, but such wanton creativity is truly a joy to observe.

A few years back I remember reading this article by David Brin suggesting that it is hard for children to learn programming nowadays, and how it ain't happening so much any more. It's something that I have been wondering about for some time now, and it's something that I think has to be important for the future.

Is there really a huge slowdown in the numbers of computing graduates coming out of University? Perhaps there is really nothing there to worry about. Maybe there are so many more computers around, that even with a smaller percentage of users becoming programmers there will continue to be enough programmers around.

I got out of bed this morning to a divine smell... Max was making vanilla shortbread!

After I helped him get it into the oven we got the kitchen all cleaned up just in time for Heather to surface for a cup of tea and some amazingly delicious shortbread.

Now, all day I'm reminded of it by the faint smell of all the vanilla that didn't quite make it into the mix. Not at all wasted, I'd say!

As some of you will know, I used to be on the board of Parents Centres New Zealand for several years. While I was involved there, we finally managed to finish the internal debate around the repeal of Section 59 of the crimes act, and to publish our viewpoint that the excuses in this legislation are not appropriate for the kinds of child-rearing practices which we considered acceptable in New Zealand.

Children in New Zealand should have the right not to be assaulted by their parents.

A couple of years ago the legislative world caught up with that viewpoint, and legislation was passed which changed the scope of section 59.

Now, it seems, some minority groups want to go back to return us to an age when parents are entitled to assault their children, and there will be a national postal referendum in August, with a particularly weaselly worded question, and these groups will use the response to that question to justify a lot more than that question asks.

New Zealand's current legislation regarding parental control of children allows parents scope to discipline their children, without providing them with an excuse against an assault charge if they use excessive force.

So please vote 'Yes' to the referendum on child discipline, when you see it, and please encourage everyone you know to do likewise.

It is nice to see someone apologising for their planned failure to consider Linux users. It's ridiculous that they even have to. It seems to me that these people have spent way too much effort on making the logo and menus scroll in from the left and right of the screen, and not enought effort on the actual functionality of their website.

I fail to understand what benefit they have gained from using the Pizza UI for their logo & menus (yes, really) rather than using simple links - or CSS-based menus, if they needed fancy. The page layout doesn't actually need anything more than simple text links. The logo (thankfully) does nothing after it's page-load scroll. For extra 'fail' marks they substitute graphics when I initially arrive with Javascript disabled (and wearing my tinfoil hat) but the graphics give me the appearance of a menu without actually performing a useful function.

Today has been a beautiful one, enough to persuade even me to visit the Big Blue Room. Some extensive rearrangement of the local greenery happened after Max lost one of his toys in a tree, and many scratches later I was able to relax in the knowledge of a section somewhat spruced up. That tree that blew down a couple of years ago has been appropriately dealt to, a drain has been uncovered, much moss, ivy and branches removed as well. The weather forecast for tomorrow is for similarly coloured skies, so the industry may even continue for another day!

In other blueness and greenness, when Fraser finally got dressed this morning he loudly proclaimed that he was "all in blue" so I said "Let's have some music to match, then" and we spent the first half of the day playing only tracks with names ending in "Blues", which sourced such a delightfully eclectic set of artists so that this afternoon we moved on and I found that music with the word "Green" in it's name might provided us with even more exotic entertainment to round out a great day of blues and greens. Tomorrow, Max says he wants to hear some Reds and Yellows, so I guess we will carry on there! I might cheat a little and leave the 'w' off yellow :-)

We go to the library every three weeks. Since we don't have a television in our house there is a lot of reading going on. For myself I don't get out many books, spending far too much time in front of the computer to really read stuff. I make an exception for Neal Stephenson though, and I just finished "The System of the World" this morning, so it was time for me to switch to lighter stuff. Terry Pratchett, I think.

My son is demolishing books though! He just finished reading stuff like:

• Winston Churchill and his great wars
• Scottish place names
• The Lonely Planet guide to experimental travel
• A wild ride through the night : suggested by twenty-one illustrations by Gustave Dore
• MacBeth : man and myth
• Fables Aesop never wrote

Time for something lighter? No fear! When we left he could scarcely lift his backpack full of the following:

• Maddigan's fantasia
• Mind-boggling buildings
• The last of the sky pirates
• The curse of the Gloamglozer
• Freeglader
• The stormin' Normans
• Gorgeous Georgians
• Who stole the black diamond?
• Who shot the sheriff?
• Who is the prisoner of Portcullis Castle?
• 501 TV-free party games for kids
• The seeing stone
• The field guide
• Stopping for a spell
• The limerick
• Scotland
• Scotland's Highlands and Islands
• The price of water in Finistere
• EARLY people
• A short history of nearly everything

Well, in fact the last one didn't fit in his backpack, so he had to carry it. At least he had to carry it for a little while until Heather pinched it off him and started reading it herself! That's the way it is in this house though: Max read the Terry Pratchett that I'm on now about a month ago, and I'm sure he'll run through those and start pinching the books Heather or I took out. I don't suppose that reading list would be unusual in a 15 year old (if they liked books :-), but for a 9 year old it constantly continues to amaze me.

Meanwhile Fraser (who's 6 now) isn't so up on the reading thing. He's getting there, and can actually read better than most in his class at school. Never mind: he still listen's avidly as I get through one chapter a night of "Tears of the Giraffe" by Alexander McCall Smith. It's so good that the other folk don't mind listening either, even if they have all read it themselves.

This morning I was rudely awakened by the sounds of Boowah and Kwalah as my son Fraser decided to get up at around 6:00am on a Sunday morning. He has been doing this for the last few days, and he has been warned...

The final solution was applied this evening

# Enforce time limits on the computer...
* 0-8,20-23 * * * root /usr/local/sbin/timelimits || /sbin/shutdown -h now

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
#
# Enforce time limits on the use of the computer.
#

if ( -f "/tmp/notimelimits" ) {
  exit 0;
}

my ( $sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst) = localtime();

my $useful = $hour * 100 + $min;

if ( $useful < 830 || $useful > 2030 ) {
  print "Time for a shutdown!\n";
  exit 1;
}
else {
  exit 0;
}

We shall see if it works. At this stage it has managed to shut the computer down this evening, but I think it should work - at least until he can read this page. Perhaps that will be motivation.

This evening Max also restarted his computer after ostensibly being fast asleep in bed, so I was forced to threaten a similar approach. I wonder if these children think that threats are irrelevant until / unless they are followed through on? Certainly, they seem to have no effect, and I have little doubt that I would have felt that way about threats at their age.

Note to self: it appears to be about time to point eldest son at Machiavelli...

This weekend we visited Karori Cemetery. It was a beautiful morning, and a most enjoyable walk around a park, trying to compose photos to give some idea of the beauty and scale of the place. With so much vegetation around it was often difficult to get an appropriate vantage point, but I think it worked.

I was so reminded of Dave Dobbyn's lyrics about having "a father buried on the hill, with the best view in town" (Shaky Island). I don't have any relatives buried there, but I find it a much nicer place than the considerably more famous cemetery "La Recoleta" which I visited in Buenos Aires. It seemed quite a lot larger too, although possibly less populous - apparently 80,000 people have been interred within the nearly 40 hectares.

All this peace and beauty must really be for the living though. A dead person is, surely, dead, and doesn't really need a mausoleum, a tree-lined path. Surely a peaceful nonexistence means nothing to them. We call it "respect for the dead", but the only people who visit are very much alive, and the place is clearly a park. It is a shame that the pressure on space is making them less and less interesting. When once you could have an imposing mausoleum to remind everyone of your antecedent's existence, nowadays it seems you often have to settle for the more budget burial. Of course even burying your predecessors on a budget will cost you a bundle. At Karori Cemetery you can apparently be interred in an existing grave (with appropriate consent), but it will set you back a good few thousand to do so and if I have to recommend burial then Makara Cemetery is cheaper, although a lot less parklike. A mass-produced interment, rather than a craftsman-produced one - following an ongoing trend we all see in everyday life.

I like the park, I think, but not so much the concrete and marble. When I die, if my own feelings are to be considered relevant to the matter (and they probably should not be), I would prefer my mortal remains to be more usefully disposed of. While turning them to ash is less waste of space (and money!) it still seems a gross waste of good biological material. Perhaps I could be ground up into a good sack of blood and bone and sold off for a small sum at the local garden centre.

No doubt such a non-standard approach would be more expensive, and the cheapest useful way to 'get rid of the body' would be to 'donate' it for medical purposes. In which case, science it should be!

Not having a TV in the house changes many family dynamics, although it's so normal to us that I'm sure we don't notice most of them.

Quoted from "Association of Television Viewing During Childhood With Poor Educational Achievement" by Robert J. Hancox, MD; Barry J. Milne, MSc; Richie Poulton, PhD, published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine July 2005;159:614-618