Awwwww this is sweet

Microsoft is sponsoring hobbyist development of C Sharp and VB with free Express editions although you can also do "serious" development in both editions especially if you don't giggle. That is, compiler writing is possible. I do intend to upgrade out of Express.

This application is kinda sweet. It allows the hardworking developer to develop a babycam to watch the baby while working on code.

My experience, however, is that babies tend to be a distraction because they usually do something goofy which causes the developer to interrupt development to play with the baby.

Today I can spy on my kids using the Internet by going to band sites. Back in 1981, I would have had to buy an IBM mainframe and set up a commercial grade camera in the baby's room with extra lighting and a boom microphone. The poor little perisher would have been terrified.

The author mentions WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor). Even today, technology does indeed seem always supplementary in Derrida's sense to the much more sophisticated systems by means of which children have been born since time out of mind.

Steven Spielberg has an eye for modern American family relations and the downsizing of the Father, for in AI, a movie about a family that tries to replace a son in a coma with an advanced robot, the wife freaks out when the husband brings the new "son" home in a box.

Furthermore, there is no such thing in my experience as "watching" kids. This makes the Daddy into some sort of anthropologist, peering at native rites in the jungle behind the bushes as the natives go ugga bugga.

What happens is instead a natural interaction.

If Daddy is working on his computer in the same room, the infant is likely to say, "ugga bugga Da", which means "Father, precisely in what are you engaged when you could be playing Wild Teenage Beatnik Babies from Outer Space with me as we did the other day?"

When Dad replies, "Daddy is working on an important project which is way late because the goddamn user doesn't know her ass from a hole in the ground", the infant may say "grunk wang" which means "have you considered rapid prototyping, and thereby presenting the user with a *fait accompli*?"

Word to young developer dads: don't plan to watch the baby while developing actual code. Instead, during the times when you have to work at home, tell your wife to mind the children. Go to your study, lock and then barricade the door, turn on the BBC World Service or World Reggae Radio, and get to work. No, don't go to the bikini site.

Then, when you are done, go and spend Quality Time with your infants. Suggested activities apart from the ever-popular Wild Teenage Beatnik Babies from Outer Space include going to the park, showing your brood off to local merchants including your tailor, and watching (solemnly) cement being poured.

If you live in Hong Kong or Seattle, a ferry trip is always awe-inspiring for slightly older tots. It should include wherever possible, an inspection, again with solemnity, of the engine room.

In Hong Kong, I recommend the green and white ferry that plies between Central and Tsim Sha Shue, but be sure to take the lower deck passage. It affords a view of the engine AND the pilot house. In my view, it is important for a father to introduce his children to boats and ships.

Take it from me. It will be soon enough when you will be calling your grown children at random from the back of beyond, using the Date and Time control to figure out whether or not you will be interrupting your kid's Chimes at Midnight.

"Hello son. This is your father (hier ist deine Vater)"

"Hi dad."

"Whaddya doing?"

"Sleeping."

[voice off] "Who's that, sweetie? Let's have wild and unconstrained sex again."

"Oops. I'll call later."

"No problem, Dad. Bye."