“Ticked off! @ neighborhood kids, short light - Orlando Sentinel” plus 2 more |
- Ticked off! @ neighborhood kids, short light - Orlando Sentinel
- Kinect and your kids: What works, what won't - msnbc.com
- Kids get into the running as 'fun runs' pick up speed - USA Today
| Ticked off! @ neighborhood kids, short light - Orlando Sentinel Posted: 10 Nov 2010 11:56 PM PST •I'm ticked off that the neighborhood kids play in my yard when they have three of their own right across the street. •I'm ticked off at lawyers who are paid with taxpayer money put criminals back on the streets. •I'm ticked off that our servicemen are still fighting in the Middle East for an unjust war. • Why is there a ten second light at Goldenrod and Colonial for a left turn? •To the bus drivers who think that being handicapped is a big joke. I hope you're in my shoes some day. •I'm ticked off that people pull down our street early in the morning and honk their horn for their friends to come out instead of getting their butt out of their car and ring the doorbell. •I'm ticked off at buying raffle tickets at a pet supply place and getting expired treats as the prize. •I'm ticked off at the new rules for drivers licenses. •I'm ticked I have worked hard all my life and paid my taxes. Now I have been out of work a couple of months due to surgery, in danger of losing my house and can't get a penny of help because I have a job to go back to when I recover so I can pay more taxes to help everyone but me. •I'm ticked off at people who complain about police for doing their jobs. The flip side •Thanks to the wonderful person who turned in my red glasses to the church lost and found. •Thanks to the staff at the Orlando VA Community Living Center who looked after my husband for the past five years and for the wonderful care they gave him during his life. You did a wonderful job. •We're so glad that Allegiant will be returning to Sanford. Thank goodness! •Thanks to the two families who rescued me from the rain when my power scooter broke down. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php | ||||||||||||||
| Kinect and your kids: What works, what won't - msnbc.com Posted: 10 Nov 2010 04:33 PM PST When I first unpacked the Kinect, the new controller-free motion-capture system for Xbox 360, I thought how awesome it would be to play with my daughter. She's 2 1/2 (going on 14), so I figured Kinect Sports' rudimentary bowling and ball kicking would be easy. And it was, when it worked. The sad fact was that though my kid was definitely ready for Kinect, Kinect wasn't ready for her. When I spoke to Josh Hutto, on the Xbox Kinect team, he explained that there is a recommended height minimum of 40 inches, corresponding roughly to kids 4 and a half years old and up. "The [Kinect] camera needs a field of view, side to side and up and down," Hutto told me. "It's trying to get as many people into that cone as possible. Getting a small person and a tall person in the same space is a technical challenge." While my kid is probably going to have to sit out a couple of years of Kinecting, there are some good tips for anyone with small kids closer to the 40-inch mark who do want to give it a try. For starters, you should mount the Kinect camera box above your TV, as high as 6 feet if possible. Since game play has to happen 6 to 8 feet from the camera, raising it up closes the distance required between the TV and the players. At the same time, it makes it easier for the camera to track people of different heights, since it is looking down, and not across. This is also a good tip for people who find their quarters a little too cramped for Kinect. Even an average sized living room like mine could benefit from the tighter camera space, and for city dwellers, it's a must. "My sister lives in an apartment in Manhattan," said Hutto. "I told her the same thing. If you get the camera height up to 6 feet, it's going to make the play space as small as possible." As you might have guessed, there's already a bustling business in Kinect mounts. With Microsoft's blessing, a company called Performance Designed Products (or just PDP) is selling a Kinect wall mount for $15, a floor stand on a tripod for $30, and a special flat-panel TV clamp for $40. (PDP is also selling a 10-foot-long "officially licensed" USB cable for $50, which sounds awfully steep. If you do need a USB extender, try this one at Monoprice for $1.43 first.) A colleague of mine decided to skip the fancy rigging and instead screwed an L-shaped bracket to the wall, attaching the Kinect to it with doublesided tape, and securing the cable to prevent accidental yanking. It probably cost all of $2, and did the trick. Once you've got the Kinect up in place, run the Kinect Tuner with your kid(s) in the play space, and within that tool, manually adjust the camera to tilt down a bit. Don't just tilt the camera down by hand, because the system will just compensate by angling back up. Mind you, since you basically tweaked it for the smallest members of the household, you may need to re-tune it when the kids go to bed, and the grown-ups queue up to make fools of themselves. It's important to demarcate the play area somehow. The best advice I've heard is to set a yoga mat or some other floor mat down in the Kinect sweet spot. Everyone can get carried away playing Kinect, but kids especially get over excited and tend to lunge towards the TV, which not only screws up the tracking, but is a tad bit dangerous too. One dad I talked to set out a line of shoes, telling his son not to cross it. Hutto had one other tip for kids and Kinect: clear enough play space in front and back, and to each side as well, so that everyone stays safe during playtime. I don't think anyone assumed Kinect would be injury free, but it was a little surprising to see the accident videos hit YouTube so quickly. Maybe I should be glad my kid can't get involved. Aw, who am I kidding? If she doesn't grow into this thing soon, she's getting stilts for Christmas. Catch up with Wilson on Twitter at @wjrothman, just don't ever make fun of his Xbox Live Gamerscore. Only Todd and Winda can do that. © 2010 msnbc.com Reprints This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php | ||||||||||||||
| Kids get into the running as 'fun runs' pick up speed - USA Today Posted: 07 Nov 2010 05:05 PM PST |
By Mary Brophy Marcus, USA TODAY Rheinhardt Harrison, 6, was born to run. He ran his first race when he was a preschooler. Now the first-grader is a regular on the weekend road-race circuit in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, crossing the finish line alongside adults five times his age. He's active in youth track and cross-country events, too. "He's looked up to in school. He's known as 'the runner.' Kids in fifth grade want to race him," says his dad, fellow runner Dennis Harrison. Rheinhardt is among an increasing number of children pounding the pavement for fun. "Kids' runs are taking off," says Bart Yasso, a writer and running expert at Runner's World magazine, who attends races almost every weekend. Yasso says that in recent years many race organizers have added 1-mile "fun runs" to their agendas in an effort to accommodate adult runners who drag their little ones along to events. More proof of the trend: Until recently, the youngest award category at many races was "18 and under," but now you see that group broken down further by age, says Kathy Dalby, event director for Pacers Running Stores in the D.C. area. The Marine Corps Marathon 1-mile fun run, which took place a week ago in Washington, drew 3,000 children this year, many of whom are the kids of marathoners, says Tami Faram, public relations coordinator for the event. "We've grown from a little over 670 our first year 11 years ago," says Faram, who holds the fun run in the Pentagon's parking lot the day before the marathon. "When they crossed that finish, they got a medal put around their neck by a U.S. Marine." And while medals, T-shirts and goody bags are a big draw from a child's perspective, organizers say the rewards run deeper. "Running is the vehicle of showing them they can achieve," Yasso says. Some organizations have other goals as well. "Our mission is to educate and prepare girls for a lifetime of self-respect and healthy living. So while running is part of the program, it's just a piece of it," says Elizabeth Kunz, president of Girls on the Run International, a non-profit that provides schools and communities with the blueprints for a 12-week program that culminates in a 5K race. The group, founded in 1996 in Charlotte with 13 girls, now boasts more than 70,000 participants ages 8 to 12 from 3,700 locations. Training is combined with talks on self-esteem and social challenges such as bullying and gossip. "It's very inclusive," says Dalby, who helps coordinate three big D.C.-area Girls on the Run events, too, all coming up this month and next. "Girls can walk or run depending on their fitness level. We just want them to go out there and have at it." Best part about a kids' runs? Standing at the finish line. "Running is just so natural for a kid — 99% of them finish with a smile on their face," Yasso says. "Put that same camera on an adult race, and they look like they're going to die." Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php | |||||||||||||
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