Author: admin-blog

Enliven your day! First, download (right-click+save or just option-click on Mac) the delightful song Where Do Ice Cream Trucks Go in the Winter?. Second, read more about Songs for Ice Cream Trucks.

Some observations on recent attempts to present information with pixels instead of pie charts.

Good advice for designers.

Recently having been drawn into the world of breastfeeding, as an observer and assistant, it’s striking how different the dream is to the reality. Let’s be clear: despite being the best thing for your baby (as written on the side of formula) it’s not automatically a happy experience for mother and child. Attachment, the way in which the baby latches onto the nipple, seems to be the major problem point.

It’s not that there’s a lack of information about breastfeeding out there, it’s just different people will express slightly different parts of the same generic advice. Trying to find out if using a bottle with expressed milk is a bad idea? Written advice varies: never before 2 weeks, between 2-4 weeks, not before 6 weeks, not after 6 weeks (as it won’t take). Speaking to actual people is contradictory. Their advice is that if you need to rest your breasts, a feed of expressed breast milk here and there won’t hurt a baby with a strong suck.

And colic? Hazel’s just a week old, but some proportion (20-25%) of babies will apparently scream for hours every day for no reason. A quick Google will reveal that it’s probably diet-related, and to remove milk from your diet. Maybe wheat, corn, soy and green vegetables too.

What I find to be largely missing from the literature is actual scientific studies. This study says that colic is not related to whether a baby is breastfed or bottle fed, which could indicate that the diet of a breastfeeding mother is potentially a minor contributor. Stress and irregular work patterns are flagged, though.

It’s a minefield, so read, read, read, and then assess what’s actually worthwhile. Advice changes over time (the Australian Breastfeeding Association says that sterilisation of sole-use breast pumps is unnecessary) so bear that in mind too. And enjoy the ride if you can; it’s definitely worthwhile.

I can’t remember how I found Jelly Blocks. Seriously, I’d opened it at some point, but I didn’t get to it for days. It’s a puzzle game, just brainy enough that I can deal with it at the moment.

Gripis very nice if you’re into video editing, effects and so forth.

The Hello Experiment. Not what I expected either.

I like a print or two, but these people ♥ prints.

You know it’s not a good idea to trust search engine aggregators, right? These sites sometimes look like real sites, but usually they’re little more than a banner and a ton of links to Google searches. These sites are run by the less reputable internet professionals, and typically make them a very small amount of money per click. Fifty sites might be run by one person, giving a small income by linking to sites of questionable relevance.

So, they’re not very useful, but they’re not harmful, right? Wrong. If you were to, for example, search for “girls” on the site linked above — babycentral.net — you’d expect to find information about baby girls, or girls’ names, yes? Instead, you find links to porn. Gah.