Ticket system helps kids track their own TV and game time

Found this on parenthacks:

I got tired of being the boss of when my kids (three and five) could watch videos and DVDs. I also wanted to help them learn to make choices about media consumption while they’re still young. So I decided to set up a ticket system.

Every Friday, they each get tickets (purple for one kid, green for the other) that can be redeemed for ½ hour of TV time.

See full article. And this post helpfully gives designs so that you can create the tickets yourself on your printer.

I am tempted to try it out, but I think that my kids might be a little too young for this.

How to get (old) Media Publicity for your blog

Hobbit Hob from has an interesting article on the IndiaPRBlog where he gives ideas on how you can get some publicity for your blog or for yourself in the old media (newspapers, etc). I obviously have no experience with this myself, but it does appear to be useful advice. Also, what I do know is that many people would never even consider something like this, basically because it appears to be too difficult, or out of their league. But these are fairly easy to achieve if you take time to do your homework and take a disciplined approach.

For bloggers who are engaged in blogging as a profession or are aiming to build up a high profile through blogging, getting covered in the traditional media can be the next big achievement after making a presence in the blogosphere and among the blogging community.

[…]
It’s difficult but not impossible to achieve. With an understanding of how the media works, bloggers can do their own PR and chart out a plan for their own media-image building exercises.

Here are the top 5 steps that bloggers need to take.

Link. (found on DesiCritics.)

79 Percent Of Americans Missing The Point Entirely | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source

The Onion (America’s Finest News Source) has a great article on how most Americans are missing the point entirely on a fairly wide array of issues that they consider important:

“From the overweight housewife who eats bag after bag of reduced-fat Ruffles, to the school board that bans Huckleberry Finn for using the word ‘nigger,’ to the Manhattan stockbroker who uses recycled-paper checks to pay for gas for his behemoth SUV, the tendency of Americans to really just not get it transcends all boundaries of class, color, religion, sexual orientation, and political persuasion,” said Dr. Ronald Shaw of Georgetown’s Center For American Studies.

See full article.

If you haven’t really been reading The Onion, you should. It is amazing. The best coverage of the 9/11 bombings and the ensuing American reaction was in The Onion. Almost every article in that issue was spot on – from “Hijackers surprised to find selves in hell” (they were expecting 72 virgins) to “US vows to defeat whoever it is we are at war with” (be it Osama, or Saddam, or Taliban, or whoever). I have been a fan of the Onion for over 15 years. This was when it was just a small, local, print newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin (where I spent 8 years), before the web really existed, and before the Onion hit the big time with a #1 bestseller.