Chat Heads

I sort of despise Facebook. I am not sure exactly what it is. Sure the privacy issues irk me. The format of the website has most recently been more annoying than innovative. The mobile application has been barely functional on both iOS and Android. While those things bother me, I am not sure exactly what it is that makes me want to flee it. It is probably a bunch of little things like those listed above.

There are some likes I have within the world of Facebook. All of them are entities that also exist outside of Facebook. That is to say, I like the users that I am connected with on Facebook. In fact that is what keeps me and, as far I can tell from the chatter among the internet, most everyone else there too.

I do have to confess though, that I am liking one of their recent products. Chat Heads is a new feature for Facebook's messaging platform on Android devices (and in a very limited fashion on iOS devices). It came out with a more prominent product that I never see myself using called Facebook Home. But you can get Chat Heads without using the whole launcher by simply having the Messages app installed.

What I like about Chat Heads is the ability to have a text conversation without leaving what I am doing. Although Chris calls this the ADHD function of Facebook, I would like to see other messaging products come up with their own versions of this. It would be handy to see some text messaging apps such as Google Voice as well as even Gmail's mobile app use something similar. With Gmail, perhaps one could set a certain group of contacts that would show up as a chat head, or whatever alternative nomenclature Gmail might use.

So to conclude. I am still not being brought back to Facebook by this feature. I suppose it may increase my usage of the Facebook Messaging platform temporarily. But I would like to see this type of feature become standard across the board for other messaging platforms.

Have you used Chat Heads? If so, do you find it useful or annoying?

Welcome

I have been thinking about moving to a new blog. I guess Google+ comment integration pushed me over the edge, so I am going to start this one.

Oh, wait. I am getting ahead of myself...

See, I have been blogging on my blog Human Daddy for the past year and a half. I really have liked that blog a lot. But the thing is, I feel that I have been taking the term 'dad' to be too big a part of my identity in the past few years.

Do not get me wrong. I love being a parent, and it will from now until my last days be a big part of who I am. But I am other things too. I am a partner to Chris. I am a runner. I am a secular humanist. I am a lot of things that I feel I have not been giving an equal chance to explore with my writing. I feel perhaps that is because Human Daddy was branded mostly as a parenting blog. I am sure that, being a stay at-home parent, a lot of what I write about will continue to include directly and tangentially parenting topics. But I will not feel limited by that.

So if you are reading this and want to catch up on what I have written in the past, you are welcome to go to the Human Daddy blog. Hopefully I can import those entries here with some relative ease though.

Edit: Okay, so importing old posts was not too hard. Done.

Random Thoughts As Cars Drive By

We live on a fairly busy street. Lots of cars drive by our house in the morning commute. There is a 'T' intersection that stops just outside the picture window to our living room. There are also a lot of people running or walking their dogs down the street as well.

We have shades for the picture window. We keep them up all the time because they are broken due to our dogs inability to contain their excitement for new mail, new packages, and the sexy dogs of the neighborhood who are walking their humans. This despite the fact that they do not get any mail and the neighbor dogs are seemingly not interested. We could replace them, but the excitement of the dogs would not end there.

I know that the commuters, particularly the ones who stop at the 'T', can see me sitting here most mornings in my boxers if they are lucky (less if they are not) reading books on my book reading technology while waiting for others in my family to wake up. Then I have to wonder what the reaction is.

Do they avert their eyes from the overweight, hairy, tattooed, pierced, aging man that they see? Do they change their morning commute in order to do so? I have noticed no decrease in traffic (yet). Do they shout obscenities at what they feel violated by having seen without their permission? I have always contended that when someone looks into a window of someone else's life, what they see is their own responsibility to deal with.

I am not here trying to be looked at. I just want to read my book and watch the cars drive by. I am in my house reading my book. Why should I have to make myself less comfortable in my private vicinity for their comfort on a public street?

Exploration

This afternoon Chris and I were spending some time in the backyard with Tsunami. He seemed to be in an independent mood and was wandering about the yard in full discovery mode. I personally love watching him when he is doing this.

A few days ago we put plastic eggs all over the yard and let Tsunami and Jupiter hunt for them. It was all part of some sort of Spring holiday tradition wherein folk celebrate everything from simple sugar overdose to sex and fertility to even walking dead deities.

Tsunami really enjoyed this egg hunting part of the holiday because, to him, the eggs look a lot like balls. At this stage in his life, he is very obsessed with balls. With the 'ball' hunt in mind, he was out to find some again today.

His ability to find balls in just about anything is pretty amazing to me. Today he was not off the mark by any means. He found some plants in the yard that were growing purple balls at the flower and started picking the balls off of them.

As I watched him I started to appreciate his natural curiosity in the world around him. He was driven not only by his appreciation of cylindrical objects, but also discovering textures and interacting by testing the limits of the things he saw. He was feeding his scientific curiosity by testing his own limits too. As he climbed up on a table which was near the place we were sitting he wanted to see how far "up" he could get.

I spoke to Chris about how valuable the uninterrupted exploration of the world is for kids (and everyone, really). How kids naturally employ the scientific method, and how sometimes parents might prevent them from doing so when we think we know better.

Certainly there are times when we know better and our fears for their wellbeing are legitimate. For example if a child is new to walking outside alongside a street, they may lack the experience to know why wandering into the area where cars are driving is probably not the best plan of action. That is truly where the role of the parent to step in is indisputably part of the job.

However, there are other times when taking control of a situation can be harmful to development. Indeed, a few minutes later Tsunami did fall down and hit his head on a piece of landscaping wood and got hurt. I suppose if we had not been giving him the freedom to wander around the yard or had been hovering over him the painful incident could have been averted. But then he would not have had the pleasurable experience he had just before that.

I think even in hitting his head he learned something too. He learned that he can try, fail, and live to try again. He learned that the pain will pass. He also learned that he has people to support him and help pull him out of the hardship of failing as Chris ran over to comfort him just after the incident occurred. He now has a little more reassurance than before that his mother will be there to help pick him up when he falls and confidence to explore even more. Certainly, the more one falters, the better that person gets at pulling themselves back up.