Guest-Post: Comments

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Today's guest-post comes from the lovely Fay over at Glass Half-Full.

I was having a chat to someone the other day about comments, or in this case the lack of them on their posts.

I'm new to this blogging lark and I am just chuffed to bunnies when I take a look and see a figure which represents more people than are in my immediate family have looked at my page. I'm at the stage in my blogging hobby, that I'm just pleased I get posts out which seem to make sense and the odd person enjoys them. But it is pretty impressive when you see a post with a lot of comments on it!

Makes me wonder how many hits it must be getting, because I'm sure there is a 'golden ratio' number.

X amount of hits = Y percentage proportion of comments left

So if I wanted to grow my blog, is this something I should be aiming for rather than figures alone? Or is it simply a 'look at me, I've a lot comments, so I must be great at this' exercise?

The conversation got me thinking too, how do I know someone has enjoyed the post by looking at the stats. Did they just look at it, or was it actually read & understood? A bit like the difference between hearing and listening!

Is there a connection between me and the reader or is it a case of speed read and move on. Is that why some people care if there are comments or not? Is this a measure of someone actually reading it, and getting it…getting what we were trying to say, the message we were sending out into the bloggersphere?

Now, I just want to point out, I always try to add a comment on a blog, but sometimes its just not possible!

  1. I can't blumming sign in properly to validate something or other.
  2. I can't read the 'type this word in so we know you aren't a bot" safety feature.
  3. I haven't got the time.
  4. The iPad messes up with the settings and won't let me physically post it.
  5. I'm using my iPhone, its just too fiddly.
  6. I literally have nothing to say or add!

But the reasons for leaving a comment?

  1. They've triggered a memory, one which means a lot to me, and I want to share it with them.
  2. I feel they need some support, some virtual hugging and/or validation of the message.
  3. I feel incredibly strongly about the message or purpose of the blog, whether I am in agreement or not.
  4. I think I can maybe add something to the debate, a new angle or clever observation.
  5. I'm offering a possible solution to a problem
  6. Just a simple, 'Well done! I liked that!'

Reading through the two lists, I can see one is very task orientated, the other is more emotional.

So maybe this is one reason why some people care if comments are left or not. It's not only a possible validation exercise for peers; 'a lot of people read my blog and care enough to comment' but also the difference between listened to and being heard.

Do you agree or is my argument too simplistic? There has got to be lots of other reasons for comments being added or not or why we should or shouldn't be bothered by it. What do you think?

Can you see what I did there? Don't let me down!

Daddy SIGG

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Well, aren't I the lucky one?

It started on what the Boy would call "Daddy's Day", but what everyone else calls Fathers' Day. I'd been impressed with the Boy's Desert Fun and his Mummy's Summer Splash, and so the Boy's Mummy decided that I needed a SIGG bottle of my own. Knowing that I'm not a bright designs type of person, she chose a classic 'Heritage' for me and, knowing how much I would be using it don't drink enough at all during the day; one that could take a full litre.

Since then, it's been everywhere with us. I've packed it alongside the Boy's and his Mummy's bottles for trips to beaches and all over the country, but more importantly also take it to work with me every day. Aside from yesterday, when I was in such a rush I forgot it; I knew something was missing but I was already on my way to work before I realised what. Now, the Boy's Mummy can be sure I won't forget to drink water during the day, and I don't have to worry about walking halfway around the builiding just to find a usable tap.

What's more, the Boy and his Mummy even chosen a specific lid. Not one of these new-fangled coloured caps, this one is metal all the way. It's not the only SIGG bottle in the office; a colleague has the Vipers Illusion design on his, and he swears by his SIGG's durability.

A classic design through and through, and a fantastic and much-appreciated present.

AntiVirus: A TRU Review

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I get a lot of things to review, either for me or for The Boy. Nothing ever comes for daddy.

However, in the second box of toys from Toys R Us there was a game that I could see him eyeing up instantly. A logic puzzle. "Ha ha," thought I "that'll make him happy!"

Suitable for ages 8 years and over, The Anti Virus puzzle has 60 levels ranging from Starter to Wizard. It's a white, plastic base measuring 17.5 x 17.5 x 2cm, and has dimples in it in order to hold the different shaped and coloured game pieces. There is a very attractive, laminated instruction booklet with rules, puzzles and most importantly for me, the solutions! It also comes with a nifty zip-up travel case which is going to be handy next week on holiday.

I'm handing over to The Boy's daddy to tell you what he thinks. And trust me, this is a man obsessed.

"I've always been a fan of board games, whether classics such as Draughts and Solitare or more obscure games like Abalone. The idea of a game that takes 30 seconds to learn the rules of, but hours (or more) to learn how to play effectively, appeals to my curiosity.

So when the Boy's Mummy passed me Anti-Virus to try out, I was instantly intrigued. The game consists of nine differently-sized pieces, a booklet containing 60 setups (and, if you're a quitter, their solutions), and a simple task: move the pieces across the boardwithout rotating or lifting them, to allow the red "virus" piece to exit the game board.

At first glance, it resembles the game 'Parking Lot', but where the vehicles in that can only move one-way these pieces can move two ways. And with the setups covering five different difficulty levels, the complexity ramps up very quickly. Each setting up takes less than 30 seconds per level. But as I quickly discovered, whether you solve it in 10 seconds, or it takes you an hour, there is a definite "well, let's just take a quick look at the next level" factor. I admit it; I'm hooked."

Anti-Virus retails for £14.99 RRP. Keep an eye on the Toys R Us Facebook page for updates on availability.

Guest-Post: Subtitles are Educational too!

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Guest-blogger Jo Berry is a film critic and mum of one who runs the website movies4kids.co.uk. The site has a database of over 1000 reviews of films aimed at kids, teens and families, and also reviews the latest cinema and DVD releases.

Until the birth of my son D in 2005, movies were my life. As a film critic, they are also my bread and butter, but I have always loved movies so much that they are a big part of who I am. I can remember my dad taking me to movies when I was little (the first was Lady And The Tramp, age five) and my mum sitting me down in front of the TV whenever there was a film starring one of her favourite actors – Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, William Holden – being shown. (I also remember her telling me that weepie Love Is Many Splendoured Thing had a happy ending so I would watch it with her, but that's a subject for a whole different blog, or perhaps a therapy session). Name a movie from the eighties when I was growing up and I probably have a memory linked to it – Ghostbusters (I nearly killed the mum in front who loudly opened a pack of Mr Kipling tarts during the film then asked each of her kids at the top of her voice what colour jam tart they wanted), An Officer And A Gentleman (the first 15 certificate film I sneaked into, aged 12), The Evil Dead (watched on video at a friend's house while another pal hid under a cushion), Batman (the first press screening of a movie I ever went to).

When I met my husband, we bonded over a love of Steve Martin, GoodFellas, Star Wars and big budget Hollywood movies; so much so that my dad's speech at our wedding was made up of movie titles (he finished by saying he knew that together we had found our 'field of dreams', at which point I started blubbing into my champagne). So it's not surprising that, whether he likes it or not, we're both passing our love of movies onto our son. Obviously in my line of work, this has been quite easy; film companies screen their movies to the press a few weeks before they open in cinemas, and if they have a family movie they show them to us on Sundays so we can bring our kids. By the time D was 18 months old I had taken him to his first screening (of Happy Feet) and showed him tons of DVDs at home that I thought he would like: Elmo In Grouchland, Thunderbirds and Cars becoming firm favourites. (He wouldn't watch Star Wars, though). He even loved The Iron Giant (based on the Ted Hughes book) so much that I had to write a 'sequel' one evening as he didn't understand why Hollywood hadn't ever made one.

Of course, there have been slip-ups along the way. I carefully started the DVD of Finding Nemo after the first scene in which Nemo's mummy and sibling eggs are gobbled up by a predator so three year old D wouldn't be traumatised… only for him to pick up the remote a few days later while I briefly was out of the room, select 'deleted scenes' (he has always been a whizz with TV remotes) and find a longer, even more upsetting version of the scene. Cue a week of bed time conversations in which I had to reassure him that his mummy wasn't going anywhere, and certainly wasn't going to be eaten by some nasty fishy.

More recently, he came out of a press screening of Kung Fu Panda 2 and loudly announced (in front of the PR handling the film) that it was 'the worst movie ever.' It isn't, of course (it's actually pretty good), but D had been scared of the bad guy peacock throughout, hence his reaction. (I have always told D that if he doesn't like a movie he should tell me so I can take him out of it, but during this one he had stayed silent because, he tells me, he wanted to know how it ended).

Cementing my reputation as an irresponsible mummy, I let D watch the first two Transformers movies on DVD despite being 12 certificate movies (I did vet them myself first). He loves the toys (what six-year-old boy doesn't?) and the violence in the films is robots smashing up other robots, so I thought it would be ok. I skipped a scene from the second one in which a woman turns into a robot with a snaking metallic tongue (really didn't want to explain that one to him) and decided that, although there are a couple of swear words in Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen they are uttered so quickly they would pass him by. Oh no. A few weeks later, D comes home with a 'comic book' he has drawn in class (luckily during a wet lunchtime, rather than a piece of work seen by his teacher). This collection of stick images with speech bubbles including one page of transformer Bumblebee under attack, a predicament that has him yelling "SHIT!" in his speech bubble. Apparently D had once turned the subtitles on for a few minutes while watching the movie, and in doing so had learnt a new word (credit to him – he did spell it correctly).

Needless to say, I never leave him alone with anything more controversial than Toy Story in the DVD now. I know in a few years time we'll be arguing over whether he's old enough to watch Reservoir Dogs or The Godfather, so in the meantime I want to enjoy his childhood and his love of movies featuring animals that talk (Zookeeper had him in stitches), cars that can fly (Cars 2) and tank engines named Thomas. And maybe one day, in the not too distant future, D will finally let me and his daddy show him the classic that is Star Wars…

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