Being the proud papa that I am, I would be remiss if I didn’t post Clara’s latest feat: crawling! If you count the army crawl, she’s actually been crawling since around Christmas, but she has always been hesitant to get on her hands and knees. Given that she also know like to walk while holding hands, we thought she might just skip crawling all together – but she proved us wrong!
Family
Hope everyone had a great Halloween!
I hope everyone had a great Halloween! We really enjoyed putting Clara’s costume together – one that was after my own heart.
Baby Monitor Phone Hack
At our baby shower we were lucky enough to be gifted with an awesome baby monitor: the Samsung SEW-3037W, which features Pan Tilt Infrared video. Aside from the annoying startup sound that can’t be disabled (that every Samsung device seemly has to have), it’s been the perfect device for keeping an eye on Clara. However a few weeks ago, we realized that the microphone – the most critical part of the monitor – stopped working. Samsung was really good about fixing it for warranty, but we are without it for a few weeks.
We had a few options: move Clara from her secluded nursery to a closer (and noisier) part of the house, buy a cheap baby monitor that may not even work well (and probably set us back another $50), or figure out how to cobble together a baby monitoring system with what technology we have. Luckily we were able to use our phones to have a decent monitoring system that set us back $4.
We actually have my old Droid Bionic permanently docked in Clara’s room, that streams music and white noise at night. After installing IP Webcam on the phone, we have an instant video-streaming server. From there we installed tinyCam Monitor PRO onto my Galaxy S4 and have been able to consume the stream. I played with the free version of tinyCam Free to set up a proof of concept, and opted to spend the $4 so that I can get the prolonged audio streaming (the free version only allows a minute of streaming).
As far as an interim solution, this has worked really well over the last week. There is a tiny bit of a lag (about 1 second on average), but I’m wiling to live with that. The Bionic’s camera has always been pretty poor in low light, but I can make Clara out pretty well (we have a lamp with a red light bulb in the room). The angle isn’t the greatest because the camera sits in the dock on her crib, but it gets the job done. The benefits of this is that both Bethany and I can monitor Clara at the same time, and I actually can use VLC on my computer to watch the video as well (where this screen shot came from).
All things being equal, I would choose the Samsung monitor due to the responsiveness and nighttime performance – but if you don’t have $200 to spend, and happen to have an old Android phone lying around, this would definitely be an option that would get you by.
Summer Sleepless Sabbatical
So obviously I haven’t been blogging for a while, taking the summer off having my hands full with this little bundle of joy.
It’s hard to believe that she’s already 3 months old! In fact, Clara celebrates her 100 day birthday tomorrow. I finally got some time to comb through all of the pictures we’ve taken of her, and posted some of our favorites up on Flickr. This has seriously been a mental barrier for me in terms of non-work-related computer time, so I’m really excited to be able to get back into the swing of things and making some posts. I’ve had no shortage of thoughts and opinions, and am anxious to get them back on here.
Friday Tech Roundup: New Parent Tech
So my tech roundup is a bit late due to my adventures in new parenthood. As you can imagine, I’ve been pretty much out of the tech news stream (and I also think it’s been a slow week due to the July 4th holiday), but I’ve made a lot of tech discoveries being the first time parent of a newborn.
When I haven’t been holding m new daughter or catching up on sleep, I’ve committed some thought towards how we want to capture and share our special moments. I’m not sure if Facebook is the best vehicle for this, in large part that I’m not quite sure if I have a true awareness – let alone control of – who would see all of the content. I use Facebook as a social media public face, and am extremely sensitive to Facebook over-posting. Given this stance, splashing multiple pictures and videos per day is the last thing I want to do.
However, I do recognize that there is a segment of people in our lives (namely our families and friends who live further away), who wouldn’t mind an avalanche of pictures. So with that I have prepared two vehicles for social media sharing:
- Clara’s Tumblr Page – I think Tumblr provides the perfect vehicle for the two of us to submit these bit-sized chunks that Clara-admirers can scroll to their hearts content. The app is a joy to use, and I love that the both of us have an easy way to publish.
- Flickr – Given that Picasa is all but dead, folded into Google+, and that I currently use Google+ as a de-facto backup for my phone’s pictures, I’ve decided to use Flickr. I love Google+ in concept, but the reality is that their notification system is too overreaching. I’d like to think I’m a reasonably smart guy when it comes to technology, but I still can’t figure out how to post things to my circles without them receiving a notification (be it in email or on Google+). I’d like to simply push content out and if people see it: that’s great – don’t notify them. Anyway, so I’m back with Flickr, and do think their re-design is pretty compelling. The only problem I have is that Flickr has become a virtual ghost town, I’m not sure if people are viewing these images or not. Oh well. I’ll keep pushing my higher quality images to Clara’s Flickr Set.
Speaking of pictures, I can’t rave enough about the Nikon D7000 that we bought for the baby. My hope was that we’d have a camera that could take some high quality images, but not be too difficult to use. For the most part I’ve been keeping the camera in “Manual” and have produced some images that have made us pretty happy. I’m excited to learn more about the camera and start playing with some other lenses.
On the email front, I borrowed the “Dear Sophie” idea in the Google Commercial only to find that I had to lie about Clara’s age in order to create an account. I understand there are terms of service, but I found it a little surprising that Google advertised a method of using Gmail that requires you to break their terms of service. So yes, Clara now has an email address that I’m hoping to periodically contribute to.
Mobility speaking, there have been two apps that have been pretty helpful during Clara’s first week of life: iBaby and White Noise Lite. We’ve been using iBaby to track all of the feedings and diaper changes, and the only major complaint I have is its (or any similar apps) inability to share this data across the cloud in some way. I’d love for both Bethany and I to be able to contribute to the same data set through each of our devices. I’m majorly tempted to go back to using a Google Spreadsheet. As for White Noise, for new parents that are using the Happiest Baby methods, this has made all the difference. We have this app on each of our phones (as well as a docked phone we’re using as a music player in the nursery), and I love that I can press a single button and have white noise blaring through the speakers.