Darkoshi

Firestick Kid's Profile

Mon, 28 Aug 2023 06:22:38 GMT

M, the 5-year-old, was watching videos on TV via the Firestick. I don't know if my niece turned it on for her or if M already knows how to turn it on herself. I'd be surprised by the latter as it involves plugging in a power cord, turning on a power strip, turning on the UPS, waiting for the UPS light to stop flashing, then turning the TV on and changing the TV to the correct input Source.... or maybe pressing the button on the Firestick remote does that last part automatically*.

However, M seems perfectly familiar with using the Firestick remote to search for and navigate videos in its YouTube app. She mostly uses the voice-search option to search for specific things**, but also scrolls thru video thumbnails to select items that look interesting or familiar to her.

There were a few videos that came on which didn't seem geared to or appropriate for a kid her age. So I started looking up how to set it up to only show kid-friendly things.

After M left to go get ready for bed, I installed the "PBS Kids" and "YouTube Kids" apps on the Firestick.
I tried them out and found that doing a voice-search (via the mic button on the remote) from within those apps searches content from all the apps rather than just the current app, letting one jump right back out to non-kid content.

So next I created a new "Kid" profile on the Firestick and set it up to have access to a few kid-specific apps including the 2 mentioned above. I connected the YouTube Kids app to one of my YouTube accounts, so as to have access to more settings for it, but I don't see much extra you can do that way vs when not connected to an account.

I've got a PIN set up on the Firestick so the child can't simply switch back from the kid's profile to an adult profile.

Now that I have gotten all that done, I'm unimpressed with the results.

In the Firestick Kid's profile, the voice-search option does not work. You have to search by using the remote and on-screen keyboard to type in the words. I don't think M knows how to spell most of the things she would search on, and even if she does, she would probably have trouble doing it via the on-screen keyboard. Even when typing the searches in, the results don't seem to include content available in the PBS and YouTube Kids' apps. Maybe it only shows content from Amazon? I don't know.

Likewise, the home screen for the Kid's profile seems to only display Amazon content. (I'm not certain as it doesn't say where the content for each item is hosted.) To get to the other apps' content, you have to scroll down and find, select, and open the app.

Within the YouTube Kids app, I don't see a way to set up favorites. This page: Subscribe to channels on YouTube Kids says you can tap on a "Subscribe" button... Okay, some videos do have a Subscribe button. But it's not there for the "Kiya & the Kimoja Heros" videos - those looked good so I wanted to favorite/subscribe them so they'd be easy to find next time. But no luck.

*I just tested this, and while it switches to the correct input Source, now I can't even get the Firestick input on the TV to work again. It seems to be switched off. The power button on the Firestick remote only seems to be turning the TV on and off, not the Firestick. Argh.
Is it that once you reach 45 years old or so, TV and audio technology magically knows it should never work for you on the first or second try, only after multiple tries and/or hours of frustration? I remember how when I was in my 20s, it all made sense, and it usually worked as I expected. Now it's a mess of cables and inputs and switcheroos and switching from the regular TV to something else never works right off anymore.

Earlier today I got out what I thought was a DVD to play an animated movie for the child. It's one I'd bought last year but hadn't watched yet. (The Secret of Kells, part of the Irish Folklore trilogy. In retrospect, it doesn't seem so great for a kid her age. Rather scary and grim.) The disk didn't work in the DVD player. So I thought maybe it had a non-U.S. region code and needed to be played from VLC on a laptop. But VLC locked up trying to load it. I finally realized it was a BluRay disk, not a DVD, so it needed to be played via the BluRay player.

Sigh. I guess the Firestick won't work again until the next time the youngsters come out to use it.

**It seems to work better for her than it does me; it recognizes the things she says better than it recognizes what I say.

comments

kid cuteness

Sun, 30 Jul 2023 21:13:41 GMT

I've been letting my niece and her daughter M, who is now 5 years old, stay at my place again.

M, after talking to her dad on the phone, walked over to her mom and said, "I know he didn't just hang up on my face." "I know he wouldn't do that."

comments

no pretty mask

Thu, 12 Nov 2020 07:35:17 GMT

At Target a few weeks ago, they had a couple of racks near the entrance with cloth face-masks for sale. Not having seen that in a physical store before, I thought it was great and started browsing through them. But all the ones with pretty colors and patterns were for children, child-sized. The ones for adults were bland boring colors.

I saw a school bus drive by today and realized it's been so long since I've seen school buses. Unlike the past, I didn't hear a cacophony of children yelling as it went by. Though I'm not sure if I had the house windows open at the time or not.

My mom stopped by and talked to me on the porch. She had a cloth face mask on which kept slipping down under her nose. So I guess all those people you see on TV and in photos with masks under their noses aren't necessarily, maybe not even mainly, wearing them that way on purpose. Do they sell small clips that people could just snap onto ear loops to make them tighter? Or what else works well for that? On one of mine that was too loose, I sewed the loops tighter. On another I used safety pins. I suppose stapling them might work, if the straps are wide enough.

.

Charleston County Sheriff's Election:

Kristin Graziano won a historic bid to unseat the longtime incumbent, Al Cannon, who has been sheriff in Charleston County since 1988. She is the first woman and first openly gay person elected to serve as a county sheriff in South Carolina.

comments

missing, spill

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 22:45:58 GMT

I had out all the things to fix the tongs, and the tongs were there an hour ago when I checked if this small bolt would fit to replace the rivet. But now I can't find the tongs anywhere. Sigh. Maybe they don't want to be fixed.

Note to self: Don't trust a 2 year old when she brings me a half-full bottle of Gatorade wanting me to open it for her, and when she replies Yes to my question of does she drink it straight from the bottle. The liquid went straight down the front of her jacket onto the floor.

comments

autotune

Sat, 19 Sep 2020 05:10:13 GMT

Anyone else really dislike the sound of auto-tune? It seems like so many songs nowadays (and in the past however many years) have this sound, where it switches back and forth like a tremolo between a voice and an electronic version of the voice. That grates on my nerves*.

Yet I watched a few videos now comparing some artists singing, with and without autotune. Surprisingly, they didn't sound much different to me. In some cases the singer was made a high-pitched tremolo with their voice even without the autotune, so I guess I just don't like those songs period. In some cases, the autotune didn't bother me, and I couldn't easily say whether I prefer the songs with or without autotune. So I guess it depends on how the autotune effect is done, as well as the song in the first place.

*I'm not sure why. I've always loved the electronic voices of the cylons from the original Battlestar Galactica TV series, and similar voice effects in 80s songs (electro funk? not sure of the genre name). I guess none of them did that switching back-and-forth effect like they do nowadays.

But anyway, I came across this which is pretty neat in spite of also having that sound that grates on my nerves:
Auto-tuned Baby Cry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMNCNyn_s7E

comments

even if they enforce solid colors...

Sun, 02 Aug 2020 18:47:27 GMT

...kids will still want to swap for a different color or style.

This search phrase returns what I was looking for on DuckDuckGo, but not on Google:
school facemask "paw patrol" spiderman lunch swap

That is unusual, and speaks well of DDG. Replacing "facemask" with "mask" brings back the wanted result on Google too, but it's odd that their algorithms aren't doing that replacement automatically. Normally Google returns as many or more relevant results for me than DDG, but not this time.

This is what I was looking for, a wryly prophetic* tweet I'd seen shared on FB yesterday:

You gon send your kid to school with the Paw Patrol mask and he gon come home with a Spider Man mask because he made a trade at lunch. Whole school gon be shut down the next day.

*I'd have written premoniscient, but the dictionaries are telling me that isn't a word no matter how much it sounds like one to me. "Premonitory" is a word but it doesn't sound right to me at all. "Prescient" is also a word, but isn't exactly the meaning I intended.

..

Auditory illusion, "Brainstorm or Green Needle?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pRY3wlKwm8

I only hear green needle. The first part could be either brain or green; those words sound similar. But how can the 2nd part possibly be "storm"? - it has clearly 2 syllables!? Even if I stretch out "storm" in my mind to be as long as 2 syllables, it sounds nothing at all like the sound in the video clip.

comments

where's the beep?

Fri, 17 Apr 2020 07:23:33 GMT

My 2 year old grand-niece reminds me of baby Groot sometimes. They must have modeled Groot on a toddler. Unlike baby Groot, she's going through a learning-language phase where she makes a lot of conversation sounds, all the right kinds of intonations like someone having a long discussion on the phone, without saying actual words most of the time.

She has a small toy shopping cart with assorted (empty) toy food boxes in it, as well as a few plastic fruits. Also a wind-up fish toy that twirls its flippers.

She's come to me with the shopping cart 2 evenings in a row. I was trying to finish up work, but oh well. It's not nice to ignore a two-year-old. The first time she took each item out of the cart and put it on the table. Then put them back into the cart. Then out on the table again. Etc. Back then I was still trying to avoid touching her or her toys to prevent spreading germs. So I only talked with her, discussing the toy grocery items. Later she tried winding up the fish toy but was having trouble. I gave up and helped her wind it up. Eventually she took the items out of the cart again, this time putting them on the desk right next to me. I unflattened some of the boxes. We stacked a few of them. I counted them out loud. I juggled two fruits, which she then tried to emulate. Etc etc.

Only today with her not here, did it finally occur to me that maybe she expected me to play the cashier, to scan the items and put them back into the shopping cart. I slightly recall someone else saying "beep", simulating a check-out scanner... maybe they were playing that with her before.

comments

toys toys toys

Thu, 11 Dec 2014 04:52:45 GMT

I decided to send my cousins' kids in Germany some gifts for Christmas. So I stopped by Target and bought some neat stuff. 4 different cute little hats. A pseudo-bag (with a carrying handle and a tiny zipper compartment) in the shape of a "My Little Pony" with a rainbow-colored mane and tail. An orange yo-yo. Some stickers. 2 little toy cars. A "Pinpressions" toy.

I bought a red light saber for myself and Qiao. It lights up, has a motion sensor, and makes light-sabery noises! I couldn't resist.

After getting home, I realized that I had lost the yo-yo on the way to the checkout counter. It wasn't in my bags nor listed on the receipt. So yesterday I went back and bought 2 yo-yos (so that both older kids can have one; can a 6 year old handle a yo-yo?), another PinPressions toy (because they are so much fun), another My Little Pony bag (this one yellow with a pink mane)(because so cute), and another 2 little toy cars (so each kid could potentially have one).

I combed the one pony's mane as it was tangled. I'd like to try out the cars, as I didn't have any of those when I was a kid. Taking them out of their packages would reduce the shipping weight (excuse). I already took the yo-yos out of their packages. I'm tempted to try on the hats, but won't, to avoid stretching them out of shape.

Now if I would stop playing with the toys and actually pack them, the kids might possibly get them before January.

I was debating how to avoid gendering the gifts. Giving the boys My Little Pony bags might not go over so well, while giving them only to the girls could be unfair. The kids are still fairly young - 3 to 10 years old, and I don't know them well enough to know what kind of things they like. Two of the hats were from the boys' section, and two were from the girls' section. But the girls might not necessarily prefer the girl hats or vice versa.

The solution I decided on was to let the kids choose which items they want. Oldest kid can choose one item first, then younger kid can choose 1, and so on until everything is taken.

comments

the skirted duo

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 19:49:51 GMT

This is a sweet story about a boy who likes wearing skirts and dresses, and what his father decided to do about it.

The original German version is here.

Excerpt from the end:
When other boys (it’s nearly always boys) want to make fun of him, he smiles and says, "You just don’t dare to wear skirts and dresses, because your dads don’t dare to either."

comments