My Family Loves It » Geek Dad http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog Family reviews, stories, ideas and activities. Fri, 03 Feb 2012 02:24:04 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Spring 2010 Netflix 1 Month Free Membership http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2010/05/04/spring-2010-netflix-1-month-free-membership/ http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2010/05/04/spring-2010-netflix-1-month-free-membership/#comments Tue, 04 May 2010 17:30:41 +0000 Heather http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/?p=5196 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]> Netflix has sent out their Spring offer for a free 1 month membership.  We’ve had our membership for years and love it.  We mainly use the DVD service, but have also used the streaming service to watch old kid shows (Inspector Gadget!)

Click here to use the Netflix 1 month coupon

This link expires on 6/15/2010.  Feel free to add your Netflix coupon codes in the comments.

*WE HAVE NO CONNECTION TO NETFLIX, every day we get emails from people thinking we are Netflix. If you need assistance with your account please visit the NETFLIX WEBSITE, thanks!

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]]> http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2010/05/04/spring-2010-netflix-1-month-free-membership/feed/ 1 Animusic http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2010/03/20/animusic/ http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2010/03/20/animusic/#comments Sat, 20 Mar 2010 16:35:43 +0000 Heather http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/?p=4965 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]> I’m not sure where we first saw Animusic, but we have the first 2 shows and the kids love it.  Looks like most of the music videos are on Youtube and definitely something fun to show the kids.  They really enjoyed this “marble race” one.

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]]> http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2010/03/20/animusic/feed/ 0 Holiday Shopping Tip http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2009/11/27/holiday-shopping-tip/ http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2009/11/27/holiday-shopping-tip/#comments Fri, 27 Nov 2009 16:15:20 +0000 Heather http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/?p=4447 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]> While many people have been awake for hours, fighting crowds for deals, I prefer sleeping in and surfing websites for good presents.  The biggest challenge for me is not finding the best deal, but finding presents that have the quality, durability, and re-playability.  Searching the top ten lists on most sites is a waste of time because they are inundated with things like Twilight and Zhu Zhu hamsters (?!?).  Instead, I discovered this tip for finding great gift ideas.

Search for the things you already own and your kids love.  Why?  Because then you can take advantage of the “customer who bought this item also bought…” part of the site.

For example, one of our favorite games is Monza by HABA (a great game company).  Looking halfway down the page I see suggestions for numerous games that also have 5 star rating and reasonable prices.  Some by HABA and other by companies we haven’t tried yet.  Some examples:

By looking for the things you own you can take advantage of the wisdom of the crowd to find other great gift ideas.  Just make sure to do price comparisons between online stores because as we get closer to Christmas you will start seeing unscrupulous merchants start price gouging popular items.

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]]> http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2009/11/27/holiday-shopping-tip/feed/ 0 Experiencing Technical Difficulty http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2009/11/04/experiencing-technical-difficulty/ http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2009/11/04/experiencing-technical-difficulty/#comments Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:36:20 +0000 Heather http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/?p=4435 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]> We just transitioned the website to a new server and are having some minor issues.  Please bear with us while we beat down the web gremlins and get everything running normally again.  Has anyone noticed if the website is loading a little faster?

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]]> http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2009/11/04/experiencing-technical-difficulty/feed/ 0 Netflix 1 Month Free Trial http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2009/10/21/netflix-1-month-free-trial-2/ http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2009/10/21/netflix-1-month-free-trial-2/#comments Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:57:00 +0000 Heather http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/?p=4410 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]> Netflix just sent us a new batch of coupon codes for a one month free trial.  Enjoy!

Netflix coupon codes

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]]> http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2009/10/21/netflix-1-month-free-trial-2/feed/ 0 How To Rotate a Video http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2009/07/13/how-to-rotate-a-video/ http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2009/07/13/how-to-rotate-a-video/#comments Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:16:03 +0000 Heather http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/?p=4005 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]> We’ve been using our point and shoot camera more and more to record video.  The short clips are good quality and much easier to manage and share than camcorder recordings.  Occassionally, Heather will record a video clip vertically giving us a lovely sideways video.  I finally decided to do some homework and found a very easy program for rotating video called Streamclip.

Streamclip is available for both Mac and Windows.  To rotate your video, simply open it in Streamclip and then export the file in your desired format.  In the options window select a 90 degree rotation in the direction you need AND set the zoom to 75%.  This will prevent your video from getting the top and bottom clipped off.  The program runs quickly and the end result will be like the video of Ben I posted yesterday.

Here’s a website with a simple tutorial for using Streamclip to rotate a video.

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]]> http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2009/07/13/how-to-rotate-a-video/feed/ 4 New Netflix Coupons for 1 Month Free Trial http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2009/05/13/new-netflix-coupons-for-1-month-free-trial/ http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2009/05/13/new-netflix-coupons-for-1-month-free-trial/#comments Wed, 13 May 2009 13:29:24 +0000 Heather http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/?p=3749 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]> Netflix just sent us a new batch of coupon codes for a one month free trial.  Enjoy!

Netflix coupon codes

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]]> http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2009/05/13/new-netflix-coupons-for-1-month-free-trial/feed/ 2 Sidelined by bad hard drive http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2009/04/06/sidelined-by-bad-hard-drive/ http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2009/04/06/sidelined-by-bad-hard-drive/#comments Mon, 06 Apr 2009 17:29:31 +0000 Heather http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2009/04/06/sidelined-by-bad-hard-drive/ Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]> Our iMac isn’t feeling well. On Friday it locked up and now refuses to boot. I ran diagnostics over the weekend and am trying to repair the hard drive, but it seems like the drive is completely toast. I plan on writing a post with the complete symptoms and tests in a day or so, but for now I wanted to let everyone know where we’d run off to.

The good news is that we bought the AppleCare extension so our repairs are covered. We also had been using an external hard drive for our Time Machine and everything should be backed up. I’ll let everyone know how that works. As a fall back I also backed up our 85 GB iPhoto library to our Drobo about a month ago so the worst case scenario is that we lose 1 month of photos.

Let this serve as a reminder to any other photo nuts that you MUST have a digital backup strategy. This is the second hard drive we’ve had crash without any warning. If a disk suffers a hardware failure there is no way to recover the data unless you send it away to a lab and take out a sizable loan to pay for a service that may not recover anything. Buying an external hard drive (or two!) is cheap in comparison. The ideal solution is something that is automatic, like Time Machine, and will perform regular backups without any human intervention.

Stay tuned to hear how we make out.

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]]> http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2009/04/06/sidelined-by-bad-hard-drive/feed/ 2 Bugs and Bots http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2009/03/23/bugs-and-bots/ http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2009/03/23/bugs-and-bots/#comments Mon, 23 Mar 2009 18:11:15 +0000 Heather http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/?p=3661 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]> Families in our area have been getting hammered by bugs the last few weeks.  Flu bug, stomach bug, strep throat, and who knows what else.  I got sick with the mini-flu that is going around a few weeks ago and promptly passed it on to a co-worker who then shared with his car pool and someone else in our office.  Some how our family didn’t get sick then, but now that I’m better we have all 4 kids coming down with a fever and boogers.  Fun.

The exciting news in our house is an upcoming project I am researching.  We subscribed to the Best of Youtube podcast and have been watching it on our TV at night (thanks to PyTivoX).  One of the videos was instructions on building a Bristle Bot.  A bristle bot is a simple robot that uses vibration to achieve locomotion.

There are 3 ingredients:

  1. The head of a toothbrush (w/ angled bristles)
  2. The vibration motor from a pager or cell phone
  3. A watch battery

While cleaning out our spare bedroom to gather things for our upcoming garage sale I discovered 3 of our old cell phones.  Next I need to hit the dollar store for some toothbrushes and see if we have the batteries lying around.

The tricky part is extending the wires on the motor.  For the video they soldered on wires.  I’d love to get a chance to try soldering, but that would mean buying a soldering iron.  I think I’ll try to simply attach longer wires with electrical tape.

Of course, the uber-geek in me is not satisfied with construction without an element of destruction.  My brother sent me a video with ideas for modified bristle bots.  So now I am thinking we could get creative with a little aluminum foil and some paper clips.  Using the boards from our Kaskey Kids Hockey set we can have our own Battle Bots ring!

Stay tuned.  I’ll make sure to document the whole process and get some video of the bots in action.

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]]> http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2009/03/23/bugs-and-bots/feed/ 0 Lego releases for 2009 http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2009/02/23/lego-releases-for-2009/ http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/index.php/2009/02/23/lego-releases-for-2009/#comments Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:30:07 +0000 Heather http://www.myfamilylovesit.com/blog/?p=3609 Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.]]> Geekdad posted about the upcoming Lego releases for the new year on display at the 2009 Toy Fair.  Lots of fun stuff on the way, but my favorite is the Space Police series which will come with alien minifigures.  As much as I love Lego, it is about time for some unique guys to go along with the kits.

Based on the concept of intergalactic cops and robbers, these sets add a lot of new heads, faces, and colors for the minifigs.  Available in August with 5 sets under $20 these should be easy on the pocket book.

Link

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