Blog ≫ 2014 ≫ Unplugged weekend
A challenging weekend then, an unplugged weekend... a weekend WITHOUT TECHNOLOGY! Well, partly. I'm writing this up on the computer obviously, but we got an "eco warrior" newsletter home from Number one son's school suggesting "why not spend a weekend without gadgets". A weekend would be a push, but we've tried to extend this a bit and have an even more unplugged day. No car, no computer, no TV, what on earth did we do? A whole weekend would be madness.
Friday night we still watched TV, some Parks And Recreation, that is such a good show. And we listened to number two son; he has a cough and is very wheezy and has had a bit of a temperature, apart from that he's good. We're still very excited that he is walking. Suddenly he's got it, and there's no stopping him. Now we feel vindicated in saying "he can walk, he just doesn't want to", turns out we were right!
Saturday was unplugged day. My lie in, then headed in to Folkestone on the bus. Who knew there was a "family rider" ticket that at 5 is cheaper than one single adult return into town... the boys ride on the bus for free, but even when they are bigger that is the way to travel. We could all have run around all day on this thing. If we'd had time, and if number two son had the patience to be on the bus for a long time.
First we bought number two son's shoes. We weren't going to get proper shoes right away just "cruisers" but as he is quite big there were none available in his size, so we had to go straight into the real deal. Then we had a bumble through town, then we got lunch in Beano's, then we took some pictures for Number one son's homework. Should I have been using the camera during our unplugged weekend? Oh well. Here is one:
[ ](https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/JvgkHHw38ausLNRctTKY7dMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=embedwebsite) |
| From [January 2014](https://picasaweb.google.com/112554041628292689150/January2014?authuser=0&feat=embedwebsite) |
We needed examples of symmetry, that flower bed is symmetrical, see? Next we headed down into the coastal park so the boys could play. Number one son had a great time, number two son did not like walking on the sand as much as we thought.
We walked back into Sandgate and got ice-creams for the boys, then got the bus from there back home. It's not far to walk for us but Number one son had already done a lot of walking.
When we got home we avoided the TV and computer and so on by playing in the garden, they did more playing than me. I mowed the lawn, still unplugged, I have a hand powered mower. Clare headed out after her tea, to a quiz, she came third. After I read stories and put the boys to bed (quite pleased that we managed to get even this far without a TV or computer). Normally with a quiet night in ahead of me like this I'd do some stuff on the computer or some hardware hacking on the arduino or raspberry pi. That was obviously against the rules. I had big plans to put the dartboard up and have a practice, but in the end I just read. Not by candle light on the balcony as I originally thought, but sat up in bed.
Sunday: everything plugged in again, no that we had time to use it. Details later.
arduino: Microcontroller, hardware prototyping platform, a tiny specialised computer.
raspberry pi: Credit card sized super cheap computer, awesome.