A Sci-fi Geek's Guide to Raising Children, Part 3Battlestar Galactica Edition!

I'm a proud father of two: a girl and boy. I'm also a science fiction fan. One thing I've noticed is that there isn't a ton of entertaining and relatable information on raising children for us sci-fi geek dads and dads-to-be. What's a guy to do?

A Sci-fi Geek's Guide to Raising Children is my attempt at addressing that (black) hole. It's a series with personal advice on being a father but in science fiction terms. So to honor the closing of one of the greatest TV science fiction series of all time--here's Part Three: BATTLESTAR GALACTICA Edition (you can also readPart One or Part Two).

This has happened before. And it will happen again. You'll find that you'll be using the same bad jokes your parents used to tell and the same logic in the same arguments you had with them. The important thing to question in these moments is the same thing Lee Adama asked -- is this our chance to break the cycle? That's for you to answer.

And they have a plan. From a very young age, they develop ambitions albeit on a small scale. But it's always important to be cognizant of their ambitions. You'll be able to quickly evaluate when they need your help. Or if you should duck for cover.

Like each Cylon hybrid model, each child has their own unique personality. It's amazing how similar but different kids can be. Some of them love thrills. Others seek attention. But in the end you need to celebrate their differences. Their ability to have their individuality shine above the average metal-head cylon.

Sometimes they have imaginary friends that influence their decisions. It's not usually the manipulative Head Six or Head Baltar that's pushing them. Really, it's a manifestation of what they're really feeling in that moment. An imaginary friend can sometimes be the most useful thing sometimes. It allows a child to verbalize abstract thoughts and emotions they normally can't from a first-person point of view.

One day they'll have to scuttle their connection place they've called home. No, you won't get sucked into a singularity the day they move out. But that day will come and no amount of changes to the house (whether goop in the walls or photos in the hallways) will keep the home together the way it was when they were little children. They'll grow up and change and we'll have to deal with the decision to scuttle this home in favor for another one ourselves.

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Twitter of Oz -- Post #3

The following is Part One in a series documenting the making of The Twitter of Oz -- a modernized retelling of The Wizard of Oz through Twitter. Each of the main characters has their own Twitter feed and will tweet their experiences in real time as they try to get a Brain, a Heart, Courage and a Home.

I'm working on this at Visual Goodness where I'm Creative Manager. These are my notes as the world unfolds on Twitter.

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Summary of the story in the past few days:

Cowardly Lion -- Trying to find self-help solutions. He'll be my comic relief. He even considered at Scientology for a moment.
Dorothy -- Becoming increasingly annoyed at Aunt Em. Saying stuff like, "Who does she think she is? My Mom??!"
Tin Man -- His wife has left him and his mistress won't meet with him. He's utterly depressed. Continues to cite Beatles lyrics. Went out drown his sorrows late last night. Saw a flash of light, found himself along the river. Walked home in a daze. Back out again tonight.
The Wicked Witch -- Failed to kill the man she's been hired to kill last night. Used Incediaria spell. Figures she needs a more powerful spell. Ends up on a researching rampage.
The Wizard -- Suggests @witchwest actually miscast the spell. Ends up giving some guidance on different spells she's considering for the second time around.
Glinda -- Still trying to convince Wicked Witch to not kill the man she's been hired to kill.
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I've created Facebook pages for the witches, Tin Man and Dorothy. If i had more time and more hands, I'd build them out. For now, I'm forwarding the Tweets to their respective Facebook statuses.

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People are starting to follow. One in particular -- raggedj -- has begun actively communicating with Dorothy and the Tin Man. I've started to actively follow him back and build a conversation. Even asked him (as Tin Man) whether he should go and drink again given what happened to him the previous night.

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I revealed more of West and Glinda's backstory together. Back in school (college) West was embarrassed by her skin color, had no confidence with boys. Glinda believed otherwise -- felt that West had more to offer. They went out in Glinda's new car (I uploaded a photo via Tweetie on iPhone). They meet with Boq. Glinda locks West out. West is forced to talk to Boq. They hit it off. It's the start of her life as a self-confident person for the next year.

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I've begun mentioning spells:
- "Incendiaria" is a powerful fireball spell.
- "Elephanteum Rage" summons freaked out Elephants to trample on command
- "Lightning Strikes" Lightning bolts
- "Hornet Hordes" summons a swarm of hornets to attack
- "Flight of Daggers" sends a column of daggers at a target

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NOW LIVE!!! thetwitterofoz.com and twitterofoz.com. The both lead to http://www.visualgoodness.com/twitterOz

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The Twitter of Oz - Behind the Scenes Post #2

The following is Part One in a series documenting the making of The Twitter of Oz -- a modernized retelling of The Wizard of Oz through Twitter. Each of the main characters has their own Twitter feed and will tweet their experiences in real time as they try to get a Brain, a Heart, Courage and a Home.

I'm working on this at Visual Goodness where I'm Creative Manager. These are my notes as the world unfolds on Twitter.

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If you want to communicate with youth using Twitter, don't use Twitter by itself. Hook your Twitter feed up to everything: Facebook, web sites, mobile apps. Kids don't know what Twitter is yet. They might not ever know. For this target audience, Twitter is best served to function as a CMS.

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The single Twitter of Oz page is up. More changes coming soon.

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I learned the hard way that Twitter limits the rate of API calls from a single set of credentials (i.e. a single IP address) to 70 an hour. I've read elsewhere that the number is as high as 90. Some places cite blocking people for up to 24 hours. So, here's a tip: When developing a 3rd party API that's pulling Twitter feeds, use dummy content for most of your testing. Only connect to the live feeds when necessary.

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I might eventually open up Facebook pages for each of the characters. This goes back to the idea that youth doesn't know what Twitter is, but they know Facebook. I told my 19-year-old cousin Michelle that she was one of the ongoing inspirations for Dorothy. She wants to follow Dorothy now, but doesn't know how. It would be too much of a hassle for her to open up a Twitter account and have her visit Twitter every day. I suppose she could sign up at Twitter then use the Twitter Facebook app to follow Dorothy. But, really it's just easier for Michelle to befriend Dorothy and see her updates on her wall.

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I gave the Wicked Witch a name: Maggie Gregory. It's an homage to Gregory Maguire, the author of Wicked who named his Wicked Witch Elfaba as an homage to Frank L. Baum who wrote the original Wizard of Oz.

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I've played around with contacting Gregory Maguire. Might still do it.

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Right now in the story, the Witch has just been hired by a woman kill her cheating husband. The Wicked Witch comes home and is a bit troubled by the request. Her boss/lover (the Wizard) encourages her to carry out the request. "It's a paying gig."

Also, today was Glinda's bday. It's a convenient way to talk about Lion's origins (she originally got Lion as a gift, but quickly forgot about him when the next shiny thing came along)

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Tomorrow is the first time I'll publicly talk about the project -- at AKQA.

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The Twitter of Oz - Behind the Scenes Post #1

The following is Part One in a series documenting the making of The Twitter of Oz -- a modernized retelling of The Wizard of Oz through Twitter. Each of the main characters has their own Twitter feed and will tweet their experiences in real time as they try to get a Brain, a Heart, Courage and a Home.

I'm working on this at Visual Goodness where I'm Creative Manager. These are my notes as the world unfolds on Twitter.

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Publishing Setup:
- Multiple Twitter accounts
- Managed through a single Hootsuite account
- Tweets written ahead of time with scheduled pub dates & times

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All of the characters' first tweets begin with a statement of love:

Dorothy "i luv toto, but i hate kansas"
Wiicked Witch of the West "I'm in love!!"
Tin Man "The song says it all "I give her all my love That's all I do And if you saw my love You'd love her too I love her""
The Wizard "I am in love."
Glinda the Good Witch (of the North) "<3 my laptop <3 http://ow.ly/Iqn"
The Cowardly Lion Tweet #1 -- "I love to scare the crap out of the squirrels in the morning." Tweet #2 -- "Okay, maybe not squirrels. Chipmunks, maybe. Or maybe ants. But they don't scare very easy either. Or at least they don't show it."

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I decided to make the Wizard not Tweet on Sunday for a couple reasons. Less work. Also supports his conservative views.

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The TinMan is still human when we start. He's married. He's in love with another woman. He quotes Beatles' lyrics.

He makes a reference "Norwegian Wood" (2009.03.07 - SAT 7p). The song was originally inspired by John Lennon's extramarital affairs. John Lennon said he felt like Cynthia had tricked him into marrying him. He said:

"Norwegian Wood" is my song completely. It was about an affair I was having. I was very careful and paranoid because I didn't want my wife, Cyn, to know that there really was something going on outside of the household. I'd always had some kind of affairs going on, so I was trying to be sophisticated in writing about an affair ... but in such a smoke-screen way that you couldn't tell. But I can't remember any specific woman it had to do with.

As you'll soon see, Tin Man's Twitter feed will quickly become his own "Norwegian Wood"

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I checked the weather in Kansas on Dorothy's first day of tweeting. Coincidentally it was a day of light rain. She complains that she either wants it to outright rain or be bone dry. She hates meek weather. Coincidental foreshadowing.

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I'm trying to give each character a style of writing -- or typing at least.

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Dorothy is a composite of my wife's younger cousins: Jenn, Melissa, Michelle, Andrea, Angela and Kim with a sprinkling of a few my own family members: Mel, Lisa and Jackie. Their tone of voice, concerns and values will be the key to me sounding like a young woman longing for a place she sometimes thinks she hates most: Home.

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I'm currently working on getting all of the Twitter feeds onto a single page. Hopefully it'll be up tomorrow? Ha!

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The Scarecrow will be the last character to go live. In the original book he was only one day old when Dorothy found him.

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Interactive Spring Cleaning

For many of you, the Internet has become an absolute integral part of your daily life. Here's a quick list of things I recommend for all regular Internet users:

New Passwords
From bank sites to social media sites, it's a good idea to change the passwords to these sites at least once a year. They define your identity on a financial, technical and personal level. If you can, keep separate passwords for each of your sites. If not, at least keep different passwords for your financial and personal sites.

If you're on a Mac, you can use 1Password to track all of your passwords. To check the strength of your passwords, you can use a site like Microsoft's password strength checker or Password Meter.

Update Profiles
Okay, enough with "the sky is falling" attitude. Now's a good time to update your personal and professional information from LinkedIn to Flickr to Facebook. With the economy the way it is, it's good to keep your public ID as updated as possible. Update your skills, update your goals, reach out and network. New people will need to know who you are now, not who you were a year ago.

Delete Unneeded Cookies
WARNING: Geek Content Go into your preferred browser and clear those cookies you don't need. Personally, I clear all of my cookies. That way I start from zero and rebuild a useful cookie library.

Organize Your Bookmarks
Just as you do with the cookies, go into your preferred browser and clear those bookmarks you haven't had a use for in months. At the very least organize them into folders.

Remove Friends
Remove your link to those Facebook connections you really don't pay much attention to. It will help reduce the information overload. Like Clay Shirky said, "It's not information overload. It's filter failure."

Remove Unnecessary Email Alerts
Transit delay email alerts are the bane of my inbox existence. They were supposed to useful, but ended up cluttering my email even more. So I stopped them. If you have the same kind of problem, execute the same solution.

Look for better aggregators
Look for one-stop-shopping tools that bring multiple online accounts together. If you have multiple chat accounts, consider using Beebo. If you have multiple Twitter accounts, HootSuite.

There's a great article on managing multiple profiles over at Mashable.com.

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