Games Online

Do you have a favorite website where you go to play games online?
Do you pay for it or is it free?

I have always used MSN games. Don't ask why, just seems to be one of those sites I came across early on, enjoyed what I played on there, liked the variety and have continued, when I remember, to use it.
It is a free site, with about 85% of the games being able to be played to a certain level online immediately. You then also have the option of downloading a free trial. this lasts for about 6-12 hours and from what I can remember the last time we did this, many years ago, you can only ever download a trial once per game.
You do also have the option to buy the game. Most games cost $19.95 but if you commit to buying 2 games in 2 months or 4 games in 4 months then the price per game starts to drop.
We have purchased a few of the games over the years, about 4 I think, and we have had enormous fun from having them immediately to hand on the computer. The boys have loved playing them and they are ones that it is easy to loose the time of day with.

The boys like the website Friv, which has some weird and wonderful little games. I don't know about what services are available on this site or whether it is just purely an online site for games.

My mother plays on a site from England I think and she pays a small fee for the year. Really must remember to get the address from her again one time, although once she reads this post it will probably be in the comments!

So where do you play, what great sites do you know about that you would be willing to share with us all?
And I mean sites specific to games, not those on Facebook that need friends to be able to play!

The Computer

I love our computer...well most of the time!
Sadly it has been unwell recently but is now home, it is taking a rest, as usually advised on returning home from being sick and it will be a few more days before it is up and running again and keeping up with our daily family life.
However, I am not computer savvy, well no I lie, I am computer savvy.
I know how to find the computer, how to switch it on and how to log in.
I know where to find most programmes to be able to control my life with technologies and I know where and how to use the internet. I am savvy enough in Power Point, Excel, Word, Outlook and any programme we have loaded.
I am not so flash hot at downloading things and finding them again later but I am getting better at that.
Unfortunately what I am not savvy at is actually understanding the workings of the machine!

I know that they changed the RAM whilst at the hospital and I also know they reloaded windows, which means I also realise that they did nothing to the hard drive and all our items on there.....pictures, documents, emails etc are still all intact and available to us
However what I didn't understand is that by reloading windows means that they have placed our whole hard drive in a folder and wiped all other programmes.
So currently I can't use Outlook for my emails as Outlook is not loaded on the machine.
I can't open my PTA minutes to check them as we have no Word.

Suddenly:-

• I realise what a whole heap of work Steve has to do with the computer this weekend
• I am realising just what programmes we had loaded on our computer that we had brought on-line.
• I am realising just how much this is going to cost us above and beyond the hospital fee for them looking after our dear buddy for 10 days!
• I am realising that maybe we should have kept the discs from Office 2003 that we finally got rid of last year when 2007 was installed via the internet.
• I am now realising all the games etc that have kept us all entertained on cold wet days that we downloaded.
• I am realising that we really do need to make sure that all and I mean all computer discs for the computer really do need to be stored in 1 set place!

Luckily for us we have a lap top, so all is not lost, we can check emails online but there are ones we need to save for reference to later so my inbox is filling up nicely online.

I am able to blog from my laptop but alas no personal pictures that I have on the main computer, no fun little pictures I have gathered over the years that make things look pretty but I know they are not lost, they are all resting on the hard drive.

The only good thing throughout all of this, is that we have a 1TB external hard drive that we back up to regularly and store far far away from the computer, so if all had hit the fan as they say when the computer was sick, we would have been very lucky in that apart from a few months of pictures we would have 90% of everything that was on our hard drive. There is a god sometimes.

So if anything from this, my biggest word of advice to you all is....do you have an external hard drive that you back up to 3-4 times a year or even monthly if you are a big user of the computer? Believe me if something goes wrong you may just be very grateful for it.

So leave the keyboard and mouse alone, go get in the car, drive to the nearest techo store and purchase yourself one and then back up your hard drive, when everything fails you will be glad you did!

Doctor Visit

Don't worry all is well, apart from the computer which is sick.
We took it to the doctor on Saturday and we are waiting for the diagnosis any day now.

So please bear with me during this time as I am only really able to blog from work, and having just had 2 days off then it feels like I have been away for ages!

Catch you soon

Online or Offline

I got introduced to blogging via a magazine would you believe?
There it was in a parenting magazine back in 2005. It was an article about keeping your family in touch when living many miles away and the nature the internet was now playing in keeping families in touch.
It listed and wrote about many different forms of communication and I quite liked blogging.
So 6 years later I have my blog, that has moments of input and other moments of being ignored, but everyone can relate to that!
I am a self taught blogger, everything that has been done to this blog has been done by trial and error, another thing we can all relate to. Sometimes I will see something done on someone else's blog and then I will try and work out how they did that, or even get my compter savvy husband to look at it and see if he can't help me out.
I have managed to change the template and layout myself using the Cutest Blog on The Block page and even managed to make a heading picture to match the theme.

I am sure there are a few other things I could do to make blogging easier and exciting things I could add to the blog but for now I am happy.
However the other day I did come across Windows Live Writer.
Now has anyone else used this, is anyone else using this as their way of writing their posts?

I have always just logged into blogger and written it there and then, sometimes saving it to draft to publish later when I have time to add pictures etc.
I am aware that you can email your posts in but haven't set this up or even contemplated it yet.

So does anyone have anything they can tell me about Windows Live Writer, I have worked out that it is about writing a post for your blog offline and then you can save it or upload it to blogger.
It states that it is easier to use and friendlier, although having just written a post in it I didn't like the line spacings. It is like writing in Word and on that part I found it easy to use, I added a picture and yes that was easy to do from the computer although Ican't say I played too much with the positioning of the picture.
I do like that you can preview how it will look once published without going online as well (because it has downloaded the blog template you use when setting up your system)

However I am still trying to understand the advantage of using it, apart from you are offline?
Really useful for me when at the caravan because we have to pay for internet over there and it is $8 per hour and of course writing on blogger online soon eats up your money, so usually I write in Word and then copy and paste to blogger and then quickly format prior to publishing, means I am not using too much time online.

Would just be interested to know if anyone else uses it and how they have found it and whether they have any user tips for newbies like me?

Back Up

How often have you read somewhere about someone having their computer crashing and loosing all their favorite pictues or documents?
Yes, I have many times.
Now never fear we have not had any accidents with the computer but it does always sit in the back of my mind.
I have mentioned to Steve a few times that we really do need to do something, just in case.
Now being married to a guy who knows so much about IT you would expect us to be all organised and sorted....wrong.

However, our computer has been playing a little silly recently. It has suddenly gone very slow, although there is still a lot of space available. We don't have many programmes running in the background and suddenly the music programmes on the computer all stopped working. It kept coming up with errors regarding 'unable to find that song' or 'that file no longer exsists'.

Steve said he would try some stuff but I suddenly had this horror thought that something may happen and we would crash the computer, thus having to spend a lot of money to get some nice company to retrieve all our favorite docs from the old harddrive, if at all possible.

So at 7.45pm on a Sunday evening I suggested he go to the Warehouse and see if they had an external harddrive.
$160 later and a harddrive of 1 terrabit (available space now of about 4 times our computer) we sat and went through everything on our computer, worked out what we would like saved and copied it all onto the harddrive. Pictures, files, documents & music.
So now we have a back up of everything we want to never lose. The harddrive is now hidden in the house well away from our computer so god forbid, if we were ever burgled, we would still have that first ever picture taken of Ben when he was an hour old etc.

I now have to try and remember to get Steve to back up the harddrive ever 3 months or so, cause then at least we will only loose 3 months worth of stuff and not everything!!

Sign of the Times

This big old world has definitely moved forward 20 paces!
Steve and I were talking about getting a new television and Ben's solution to the old one was to put it in their room! I don't think so.

I told Ben that I had to earn the money for my first tv set in my bedroom when I was 18.
Later Steve and I were talking and I mentioned about how many computers we would one day have in the house when the boys required one for school etc in their rooms, he laughed, and reminded me that I had said no to a tv set but was saying yes to a computer!

However, the sign of the times is showing, when as a family in the car we were discussing mini golf. The conversation went like this:

Ben: Mummy when are we going to play mini golf?
Me: Not sure baby, why?
Ben: Well there use to be a golf course on this road didn't there?
Me: Yes, but they removed it. But don't worry mummy will find out where there is another in Hamilton.
Ben: Well just go to minigolf.com.co.nz and look it up!
Me: Speechless!!!

Shame the address is all wrong, but he obviously has the gist of this internet thing down fine, but then every ad on tv does usually promote the company website, so only a matter of time before they use that more than telephones and yellow pages!

Ok world you can slow down a little now please, my babies are still only babies and I want to keep it that way for a couple of years more thanks.

e-Books & My Wishes

A little behind the time, New Zealand has just recently launched the Kobo, an e-book device.

You can only buy it in one store in NZ and it is through their website that you can down load the books. You do still have the ability to download to your PC as well.

Steve mentioned the other day, as we were packing to go to Auckland, that I could do with a Kobo, as I packed the library 3 large books into the bag.
So whilst in Auckland I sought one out and had a play.
It was nice, the concept was good and the size and weight was reasonable for what it is, although there were one or two features I didn't like.

The other evening Steve was on the computer and happened to come across the Kindle, the more world wide version of the Kobo.

Unfortunately to begin with it is not available in NZ as a hand held device, although you can download to your PC.

Upon further reading I decided I actually liked this device, it is actually going to hit NZ shores at the end of August. But unlike the NZ Kobo, this has a better selection of material available for it online.

I have also seen the ipad.

Now this gives me the ability to have Kindle on it, which I think is a good thing as then the device is actually used for other things and not just reading a book.

However I do also wish to have something else and that is a laptop computer.

As I am currently undertaking some new study I wish to have something a little more portable and user friendly than my PC at home in the study. I will also find it useful for my work when all is completed.
The boys are starting to take more of an interest in the computer too, even if it is just to play games on, I believe it is not long before we are going to have to consider another PC at home, I feel a laptop would be a suitable solution.

It would fit with the family in that we could have it to take with us when going places and I do like the ability to be able to do computer work in someother place than the study.

I would be able to have Kindle or Kobo on there and although it is bigger and bulkier than either the Kobo or Kindle, I like the fact it has multi functions that would make the device more financially viable.
We would get more use out of the laptop for the $1200 we would be spending than we would from the $299 for the Kobo or the $300 odd for the Kindle or even $800 for the ipad.

If I was suddenly given the ability to obtain any of the above then I would choose the laptop, I am a reader but not enough that I feel I need a device especially for it, when I can have a laptop and still use the programme but get some much more use from it.

Although if money was no object then I would go for the ipad and the laptop, but then who wouldn't?

Computer Usage

I seem to have read a lot of magazine articles recently that are criticising everyone's day to day computer use. Are we spending too much time on Blogger, Facebook, Twitter etc?
They happily gave facts and figures, trying to convince us that this is bad for our health, our lives even our families!

However, times have changed.
I remember when I was growing up that people lived in the same town as they were born in and they never moved, well, apart from to a new house several streets away!
Your family and relatives all lived close by and you probably had lunch/dinner with them at least once a week. Grandma's house was the local meeting point every Sunday afternoon.
Your friends were people you caught up with at least twice a month, if not weekly and you always knew what other people were up to because you would always pass someone in the street who would know you both and happily pass on the latest gossip/news.
If you did ever move away from this town, it was usually for work training etc and then you more often than not returned to your home town to raise your own family and so the cycle began again.

Times have changed.
I have had the lucky experience of living in 39 different houses in my life, and at least 12 or 13 different towns.
I have friends and family all over the world but I can't just drop by every Sunday afternoon to catch up or even meet in town to catch the latest movie.
I am still friends with people I knew when I was 17, ok so we are not the closest of friends, we do not know each others daily lives, but we know enough about each others families etc to be able to have a decent conversation when we do meet, even if this is every 10 years!

So are these web sites useful to me, definitely.
I started using Blogger in 2006 because at one stage Grandma was overseas and it was ideal for her and Grandad to keep up to date with their growing grandchildren, even though they were only gone for 2 years, at least at the end of it they didn't feel like they had missed out on so much of their grandchild's lives.
I posted about what the boys were up to, the latest pictures of them and even things that affected our lives, the same as I would now when I pick up the phone to mum.
This has lead on to my Aunties and cousins in Great Britain also logging on and catching up with what the family is up to, how they are growing etc, so even though I do not keep my blogs (I have 2 of them, Life Today and Bac to Skool) up to date daily, there is enough information on there for everyone to keep up with the boys and what they are doing.

I also use Facebook, yes sometimes I do post that 'it is raining' and how this effects my day but mainly I use it to keep up with my friends that do not live within easy reach of me, people that I now know more about than if it was left to hand written letters!
Now I love receiving hand written letters, although I seem to have stopped sending them like everyone else in life. But I am an avid Birthday card sender and probably send more than my fair share of them every year.
We may not be able to go to the movies together but that doesn't stop us talking about the same movie when we have both seen it.

So can these sites get addictive?
Yes of course they can, I sometimes feel like I am having an affair with my computer.
But then there are other times when there is nothing to post about for a day or two, no pictures to upload and no one you need to catch up with.
Someone once mentioned that her blog was her personal journal, she no longer kept a handwritten diary every evening, she posted on her blog instead.
It was also her personal journal to her children and she was looking forward to the day when the children could look back on what she had posted about and remember their childhood.

Times have changed, the world is a bigger place now, although it seems smaller with our ability to travel round it so quickly. People no longer live down the street but that doesn't stop us wanting to keep in touch with friends and family.
So the computer is here to stay, it will always have a place in most homes and I don't think people are going to complain about that too much.

Up and Running

We are back on line.
Yea for modern technology, well yea for me for working out the problem whilst the tech support guy was here!

New modem and we are running nicely.
Now if we could only get the tv to work and we will have no electrical problems to sort out.

Computer

I am still here, but unfortunately we have internet issues!
We are currently running at about 450 kbps (kilobites per second) and it should be somewhere between 1000 - 3000 kbps!

I can get online but am never sure what it will allow me to do or how long it will last.
They assure me the fault is being looked in to but I am not so sure, it is taking too long!

So I am checking your blogs when I can and I am updating here when it has enough power to let me post something.
Hopefully things will gp back to normal soon, cause I have lots of pictures of things we have been doing to share with you all.

Have a great weekend

Computer Problems

At some stage or other everyone puts up a post about this!

Our computer is fine, no problems there but our internet speed is in basic words 'crap'

Last year I adjusted our monthly amount so we never had to worry about using up all our usage. Went from 1MB to 5MB a month.

Never had any problems with it and it there ever was a problem with the internet connection then I just unplugged the modem, waited 5 minutes, plugged it back in, waited another 5 mins and hey presto everything would work again.

For the last week I have noticed that we are running ever so slow, I mean slower than dial up, if there is anything that slow anymore!

Once you had one page open you never stood a chance if you wanted to open another tab at the same time, it was like an internet death sentence!

So I finally called the company and asked if there was any problems in the area that we should know about?

His answer to me was 'Do you always run at that speed?' meaning we are running at 10x less than the minimum recommended basic speed.

So after having to unplug all the telephones in the house he did a quick line test, still running slow. Quick change of the filter on the modem and everything was fine but still slow. So now he has logged it with a technician.
So now we sit and wait for them to organise a tech to come and look at the exchange in the street, hopefully that will be before the end of the week and maybe by the weekend we will have fast internet yet again.

New Sign Off Button

As mentioned before, I had changed my sign off button to match the new background but seemed to be having some trouble with it.

Now I am no computer expert!

I love blogging and can do the very basic things to keep it looking good, usually after my darling husband has shown me first. If someone actually shows me what to do then I remember and can do it again when needed.

I am definitely a visual person when it comes to learning stuff, I get lost try to understand things read from a book!

So it was no surprise that he managed to fix my little problem by loking at the html code and telling me where I had gone wrong.

So hopefully we are all fixed now and things should be fine from now on, well until I change the background again and have another new button!

Sign Off

I have noticed that with all these customised blogs that are now appearing, they have cute little sign offs at the end of each post.

Seeing as I put all this blog together myself, then it has been a little bit of trial and error to achieve what I want.

So finally I have now got this......

My own little customised sign off.

Yea to me, I did it all by myself.

Computers

My 2 are getting quite adapt to the computer.

We can sometimes realise that we don't actually know where Alex is and then we find him surfing the web for his game site that they like to play.

It is so cute to watch him, he knows exactly what to do and how to do it, but he also likes to test out buttons!

Sometimes you will find something has happened to the computer and we have no idea as to how he got it to happen!

I love the little feet resting on the hard drive!

Such concentration

We are actually beginning to realise that one day we will actually have to have more than 1 computer in the house!

Computer Update

We are all alive and well again and up and running nicely.

In fact Steve thinks the computer is now running more efficiently.

So when we come back from our weekend at the caravan then I will try and go through all the pictures I need to up load and tell you about and catch you up with what we have been doing for the last few weeks.

Computers

Unfortunately our computer has decided it does not want to play nicely.
In fact it does not want to play with us at all.
On Sunday evening it put its foot down and said 'no sorry not now!'

So it has gone to the doctor and he wants to keep it for about 3 days, or more to the point he is so busy, it could be up to 3 days before they get to look at our machine!

So we are computerless.
I can still add posts from work, but I can not add pictures because I do not want to start downloading pictures at work from the camera, so all the pictures I have to share with you will have to wait till next week.

So please bear with me whilst I have limited access and hopefully I will see you all on the flip side....