While I realize that my year-long absence from the interwebs has most likely been met with an overwhelming chorus of chirping crickets, I also realize that it was chirping crickets which forced Screen Gems to bring “Underworld” back to your local cinema in what film critics are describing as “uniformly awful”, “pointless”, and “Number 1 Movie In America!”. Incidentally, it was the crickets which penned early drafts of the film in a kind of emergent chirping binary that also picked this year’s 10 Best Picture Nomineezzzzzzz…
Nevertheless I return a new man– accomplished businessman, failed writer, and expectant father. Babies are becoming quite the life change this year (Mr. Beard just had his), and I figured what better way to re-enter the blogosphere than changing direction in 2012 by focusing this blog on all things expectant father. That means baby product reviews, maternity tips, and detailed anecdotes about funny things that happen each day in my expectant father life (you are going to LOVE the conversations my wife and I have had surrounding French baby names).
I know this is a big tonal shift but we’ve got a lot to get to…
You said it Sinclair!
To start, I’m looking at the Graco True Focus Digital Video Monitor. This is essentially a baby monitor that features a digital camera to broadcast your child’s movements to you and your spouse, and any local pedophile who happens to pick up the signal (it’s digitally secure but that means nothing to a crafty pedophile but good sport) . Now I should warn you that we don’t actually have the baby yet, it’s still about 6 months off, and I don’t actually have the Graco True Focus Digital Video Monitor, but from what I’ve seen based on marketing materials and other reviewer comments leads me to believe this product provides high video quality, digital zoom, and isn’t emitting any brain tumor-causing signals like a cell phone probably would if you put it next to your baby’s head. In addition, the battery life is a whole 2.5 hours which means this thing can run practically the entire night, so long as you live in either Alaska or Argentina.
Setup is fairly simple. Just pick a good time when nobody’s around and you won’t get distracted, and set the camera piece somewhere inconspicuous, like behind some stuffed animals or a jewelry box on her nightstand. A piece of duct tape is handy in concealing the red “recording” light on the unit if it seems like it’s too bright or could give away its location. Once you have the camera secure it’s just a matter of finding a place within the 1000 ft. range of the device where you can quietly watch, and wait. It’s incredibly how some things can be so close and so far away.
Next up is this wooden toy thing from the folks at Swedish company BabyBjorn:
This product, which consists of a black wire run through seven pieces of polished wood, costs exactly $39.95, which is currently the stock price of Batman: Arkham City, which consists of a digitally rendered, open-world Gotham City, which is a fictional location that had to be painstakingly created by piecing together thousands of pages of source material into a realistic 3D environment that incorporated not only dozens of characters (voice acted by talents such as Mark Hamill & Kevin Conroy) but also the real-time physicals of combat, flight, and gravity into an almost limitless number of potential storylines and outcomes. The wooden fixtures on the BabyBjorn can be turned clock-wise and counter-clockwise.
It’s good to be back!
