A.C. Flory's Blog, page 138

Mad Max – Fury Road

I don’t review movies so this will just be one long…IT’S BRILLIANT!

In the last 40 years I’ve seen three movies that gave women a real chance to shine – Alien with Sigourney Weaver, Terminator II with Linda Hamilton, and now Fury Road with Charlize Theron. Unlike the first two movies, however, Fury Road gave every single female character, large and small, permission to be strong. And dirty!

But wait… there’s more. Fury Road does not explain every little thing ad nauseum. Instead, it drops the odd clue or hint and leaves the viewer to fill in the gaps. As a writer, I love that the story treats the viewer like an intelligent adult. And of course, the action is eye-popping. :D I really, really love this movie.

night night!

Meeks

Filed under: Sci-fi Tagged: 10/10, Alien, Charlize-Theron, Fury-Road, Linda-Hamilton, Mad-Max, Sigourney-Weaver, Terminator-2

How to fix missing ebooks on your Kindle Fire 6

Last night I went to bed, got cosy, opened my Kindle Fire 6 and discovered that the ebook I’d been reading the night before was nowhere to be found. What the…?

This morning I discovered that missing ebooks are a known problem with a couple of solutions/workarounds. I could:

De-register and re-register my Kindle, or
Reset my Kindle to factory defaults

Not having a Wi-Fi modem* and remembering how hard it had been to register my Kindle Fire when I bought it [I had to go into work and ask to use their Wi-Fi connection], I quickly decided that the first option was not for me. Instead, I chose option 2 – resetting the Kindle to the factory defaults.

<>

This is where my geek friends roll around in fits of laughter, and my reputation as a baby geek takes a nose-dive. Let’s just say I should have known better. In my own defence, I have to say I did know that resetting the Kindle would mean losing all the ebooks I’d downloaded from Amazon, but in my wisdom I thought it would not matter because :

a) I’d already read those books anyway, and

b) I could always download them again from my Amazon account if I wanted to re-read them.

It did not even occur to me that there might be an option ‘c’ to consider. :(

So…I did the deed. I’m not providing pictures because I don’t want to make this too easy in case someone does it by mistake, or in a drunken fit. Anyway, the steps are detailed below:

With the Kindle Fire 6 turned on, swipe to unlock, tap Apps, tap Settings, tap Device Options, and finally, if you’re brave [or foolhardy] tap Reset to Factory Defaults. You’ll be given one chance to change your mind, but once you tap OK you won’t be able to stop the process; everything currently on your Kindle Fire will be erased.

Sadly, it was only when the screen prompted me to register my newly empty Kindle that I realised I’d done the very thing I had not wanted to do – i.e. I’d erased the registration data along with everything else. Ut oh….

I won’t detail the choice words that flew around my office at that point. Suffice to say I was not happy. I did consider asking my neighbour if I could use her Wi-Fi connection to re-register my Kindle Fire, but embarrassment stopped me before I could dial her number. I hate having to explain that I’m not really a complete luddite, just a scrooge. [I built my house with Cat 5 cabling in the walls so my network is hardwired. I don’t need Wi-Fi…except at times like these.]

Anyway, that was when desperation made me remember something I’d read about using a mobile phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot. Could I do it?

Much research later, I finally found a video clip that detailed how to turn a Samsung Galaxy S2, Android version Jellybean [exactly what I now have] into a mobile hotspot. And this is it:

It’s a great video, but it does go very quickly so I’ve provided a sort of step-by-step transcript below:

Make sure your S2 is fully charged
Turn it on and swipe to unlock
On the home screen tap Apps
Then tap Settings
Then tap …More settings
Then tap Tethering and portable hotspot

The next bit involves a slight change of technique.

When you see an option called Portable Wi-Fi hotspot, don’t tap it. Instead, tap-hold-slide the slider bar from ‘O‘ across to ‘I‘ as shown below:

Now tap Portable Wi-Fi Hotspot. You will get a warning message that says turning the portable Wi-Fi hotspot on will turn the phone’s Wi-Fi off. Tap OK.

Next you will get a message saying ‘enabling Wi-Fi Hotspot’. When it’s finished doing what it needs to do, the display changes to show the ‘I’ lit up in green:

Tap the Portable Wi-Fi hotspot option to display the configuration options as shown below:

Your phone will have a default name and password. At this point you have two options, you can either change the default name and password on your phone, or you can leave it as is and simply connect your Kindle to the phone’s default hotspot settings. Either way, your Samsung Galaxy S2, Android version Jellybean is now an active mobile hotspot.

Now to connect your Kindle Fire to the Wi-Fi.

Keep your phone set to portable Wi-Fi hotspot.

Turn the Kindle Fire on.

Swipe to unlock.

At the top of the screen, tap Apps.

Tap the Settings option.

Tap Wireless and VPN.

Tap Wi-Fi.

The next Wi-Fi option is set to ‘Off’. Tap it once to change ‘Off’ to ‘On’.

You should now see the name of your mobile phone in the list of available hotspots. If it’s not there, tap ‘join another network’ to make your Kindle sense the mobile phone’s presence.

Once you see the name of your mobile phone on the list, tap it to select it.

You may now be asked for the phone’s password. This will be the password shown on the configuration screen of your mobile phone!

Tap in the password and the Kindle should show a connection to your mobile hotspot. Yay!

Now, follow the Kindle Fire onscreen prompts to complete the registration of your device.

Note: The email address required to register your Kindle will be the email address you use to login to Amazon. Similarly, the password will be the normal password you use to log in to Amazon.

Once you’re done, your Kindle Fire should sync with your Amazon account and display your most recent purchases. I downloaded my two missing ebooks via the mobile hotspot but doing so does chew up quite a bit of the data allocation – i.e. it’s expensive so be warned.

Finally, when everything is ticketty boo again, close Wi-Fi on your Kindle Fire.

Now to fix up your phone.

If the screen has gone black, just tap the ‘On’ button at the side of the phone to wake it up. It should still be showing the configuration screen for the portable Wi-Fi hotspot.

Turn the portable Wi-Fi hotspot off by moving the slider bar from ‘I’ back to ‘O’.

Your mobile hotspot is now off but you are not finished yet. Go back to Settings/Wireless and networks and turn the [ordinary] Wi-Fi option back to ‘I‘.

[Do not get confused, this is the setting your phone uses. It is not the portable hotspot setting].

And that is that. A lot of work to fix a silly error. The only good thing to come out of this is that I’ve got my new ebooks back and I’ll have something to read tonight. Oh and I’ve learned some new stuff about my phone. :)

cheers

Meeks

*Normally when I buy ebooks from Amazon, I download them to my pc and then sideload them onto my Kindle device[s].

 

Filed under: How-to guides Tagged: default, ebook, factory, glitch, hotspot, how-to, Kindle-Fire-6, missing, mobile, register, reset, Samsung-Galaxy-S-II, Wi-Fi

REAL LIFE SUPERPOWERS: FLIGHT

Source: REAL LIFE SUPERPOWERS: FLIGHT

Filed under: Uncategorized

John Farnham and The Voice

I wasn’t going to do a post today, but when I saw this video clip on David Prosser’s blog I couldn’t resist sharing it:

For those who have never heard of John Farnham, you can find his Wiki entry here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Farnham

This particular song is from the album Whispering Jack and catapulted Farnham to the top of the charts for something like half a year. I bought it. Everyone I know bought it, and we listened to it until we knew all the tracks by heart. Why? Because it was and is an incredible song. But there was more to it than that. The Voice said something about what we believed in and who we were as a nation.

Things seem to have gone downhill since then as we now ‘sit in silence’ and watch our duly elected government ignore compassion, justice and the hope of the future in favour of…?

To be honest I have no idea what the Abbott government is in favour of. Before the election the buzz words were looking after ‘Australian families’ and ‘balancing the budget’ but they don’t seem to have done either of those things. Instead, they have managed to trash our reputation internationally while drumming up hysteria and hate towards just about every segment of our society. Oh and the economy? That’s going downhill as well.

-cough- Apologies. The Voice reminded me of who we used to be. The contrast with today is not pleasant. Now we seem to be afraid of everything – afraid of ‘boat people’, afraid of Muslims, afraid of gays, the list goes on and on.

We would do well to remember Frank Herbert’s Litany Against Fear :

I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.

Only I will remain.

I hope we aussies become that nation of fair-minded, egalitarian, anti-authoritarian, big-hearted, larrikins again. One day.

cheers

Meeks

Filed under: Music, My soap box Tagged: 1986, aussies, boat-people, compassion, fear, John-Farnham, muslims, The-Voice, Whispering-Jack

Alice Monro – simple family tree

In ‘The View from Castle Rock’, Alice Monro [born Alice Laidlaw] traces her family history from Scotland to Canada in a series of short stories. Unfortunately, who-is-who becomes rather muddled, at least to the naive reader, so I created this simple family tree for my year 12 English student:

Click on the picture to see an enlarged view of the family tree.

I hope this helps others out there confused by the early stories in the The View from Castle Rock.

cheers

Meeks

 

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Alice-Monro, Canada, diagram, family-tree, Illinois, Laidlaw-family, Scotland, The-View-From-Castle-Rock, year-12

Dune is 50!

Happy Birthday Arrakis! And apologies for the huge picture. It’s a photo of the front cover of my copy of Dune, and I wanted you to see the loving wear and tear on this precious, 1975 version.

I first read Dune in 1971 or ’72, when I borrowed it from a university friend, but as you can see, I have re-read it many times since. Not only is story just as compelling as it was all those years ago, it also brings to light something new with each re-reading. I guess it’s time to re-read Dune again because I was not consciously aware of its environmental credentials. Oh I knew and loved the whole desert environment and the small scale terraforming the inhabitants were attempting, but it was not until I read this commemorative article in Flavourwire this morning that I realised Dune’s connection to Silent Spring:

http://flavorwire.com/535249/dune-at-50-why-the-groundbreaking-eco-conscious-novel-is-more-relevant-than-ever

I highly recommend reading the article as it points out some rather interesting facts, facts I have never known, such as:

Fact 1, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was published in 1962.
Fact 2, Silent Spring was instrumental in the banning of DDT, but it did not touch the awareness of the masses in the way that Dune did.

Published just three years after Silent Spring in 1965, Dune has been re-printed many times. It has also spawned more than one movie version, all of which have kept the level of public awareness ticking along for 50 years. In fact, I personally know of one, highly popular group on Goodreads that is dedicated to discussions about Dune.

Nevertheless, I believe Dune’s greatest contribution to environmental awareness has come about indirectly, via the novels and movies that owe some part of their creation to the concepts popularized by Frank Herbert’s master work.

Novels have power. Great novels change the world. I wish Frank Herbert were still around to see the fruits of his labours. Or maybe not. I fear he might be disappointed.

cheers

Meeks

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: 50th, birthday, Dune, environment, Frank-Herbert, Rachel-Carson, science-fiction, Silent-Spring

FFXIV update – The Keeper of the Lake

Apologies, another gaming related post coming up. The pic below is of my character, Meeka, and the new minion she just earned from completing the Keeper of the Lake.

To bring my non-gamer friends up to date, Square-Enix, the Japanese developer of FFXIV brought out an expansion in July I think. This expansion was mooted to be as big and fantastic as a whole new game. Hence the buzz.

I didn’t buy the expansion, however, because to actually play it, you have to finish all the old content first. This content is attached to the storyline, and FFXIV is heavy on storyline so there’s a lot of it.Up to this point I would not be complaining. Unfortunately, the dungeons and trials I hate so much are a part of the storyline, and you can’t do one without the other.:(

Yesterday, I tried to do the next dungeon in the storyline [the Keeper of the Lake] and came very close to quitting the game altogether. The reason? A group of players I would not like to meet in real life. I don’t want to make this a self-justification rant, but I was not the reason the melee dps and the healer died at the first boss [Einhander], leaving just me and the tank alive. [In dungeons, once the healer dies, the tank usually dies soon after, and vice versa].

Now, in this situation, the thing I did right was to use my weak, Summoner healing spells to keep the tank alive. The thing I did wrong was to forget about my ‘Resurrection’ spell.

As its name suggestions, Resurrection allows a Summoner to revive a dead player during a battle. Unfortunately, Resurrection takes over 6…six…seconds to cast, and you cannot move during that time or the spell will be interrupted – i.e. the player stays dead.

While this is all happening, however, the boss is not being polite and waiting while you cast your six second spell. No, it is spamming AOEs [area of effect spells] all over the place, so the player who stands still for even 1 second is essentially dead.

I knew this, and thought the fight was hopeless, but I was wrong. There is a way to get around the long cast time of Resurrection – by using it in conjunction with another spell called ‘Swiftcast’. Essentially, what Swiftcast does is it turns the first spell that follows it into an instant cast. So in theory, Swiftcast + Resurrection should go from taking 6 seconds to taking 0 seconds.

In theory, again, when the dead dps said ‘smn rais hlr’ [translation: summoner raise healer] he was right – I should have whipped out Swiftcast and followed it by Resurrection to revive the dead healer. But I didn’t have Swiftcast, did I?

Without going into too much detail, Swiftcast is a spell that you get as another class. The class is called Thaumaturge, and they get the spell at level 26. Now what you need to understand is that in FFXIV you can play as every single class in the game, and you can use some of the skills you gain in what’s called ‘cross class skills’.

But. You guessed it, my Thaumaturge was only level 20 [because I don’t enjoy playing it].

So in that sense, the dps player was within his rights to demand that I use Resurrection. Instead, we wiped and that should have been that. In the past, when a group wipes [everybody dies] they try to learn from their mistakes and go back in. In this group, however, they kicked me from the dungeon and the group.

Under normal circumstances, I’d feel as guilty as hell about that, sure that my age blah blah makes me a terrible player. But in this instance I just got mad. Very, very mad. You see the mechanics of Keeper of the Lake [the dungeon] are all about movement, and dodging. If there is a theme, KotL [Keeper of the Lake] is a movement test of all party members. Thus the melee dps and the healer died because they were either not aware of, or unable to master the dungeon’s mechanic. My lack of a quick Resurrection spell may have exacerbated the problem, but it did not cause the problem itself.

Hence my anger. Nasty, mean-spirited and unfair were some of the cleaner things I called the group as I stood there, unable to believe they would blame the whole mess on me. I can understand the temptation to do so, but it was neither just, nor in keeping with the courteous spirit of the game. And for once, anger stopped me from running away.

I spent all of yesterday getting my unloved Thaumaturge to level 26. Then I spent hours more trying to create a macro that would allow me to revive someone faster. [Macros are like tiny command driven in-game apps that automate actions and skills].

I wish I could say my Resurrection macro worked this morning when I retried the KotL [with a much nicer group!], but it didn’t. This is what the macro looks like:

/micon “Resurrection”

/ac “Swiftcast”

/ac “Resurrection”

/p Raising!

/micon “Resurrection”  – simply creates an icon for the macro so you know which one does what. [worked]

/ac “Swiftcast” –  is made up of a number of commands:

/ac ‘ means the command is about an action. It can also be written as ‘ /action ‘

“Swiftcast” – is the name of the action to be used [worked]

– says that my casting is to become instant

– is supposed to give the connection time to process the command before going on to the next one. Remember we are talking about the command going from my computer, via the internet [slow in Australia] to the Japanese servers and back again. On good days there is no appreciable lag and everything feels ‘instant’, but in dungeons and other areas of peak action, the lag can be noticeable. [I think this failed]

/ac “Resurrection” – this is the prime command and tells the game to revive the player currently targeted – – by me. [did not work]

/p Raising! – this is basically just a message to the group members that I’m going to be raising someone. The is supposed to play a sound to get everyone’s attention. [did not work]

Each line of commands should work, but something in the mix failed because when I used the macro in the dungeon this morning [to revive the healer would you believe 0.o], Swiftcast worked but nothing else did. I managed to cast Resurrect manually before the 10 second Swiftcast interval ended, but I died just as the healer revived. If anyone can fix this macro I will be eternally grateful.

Now, this is where it gets really interesting, and lead me to writing this post – we were at the last boss [of 3] and the AOEs were insane. Picture a main boss who keeps spamming AOEs that cover great big chunks of the available floor space. Get caught in this maelstrom of criss-crossing damage and you don’t last long. Now add to that a second, boss-strength creature that is also spamming AOE’s and the fight becomes horrendous.

We did not have time to think, literally dancing from one small safe area to the next while desperately trying to do some damage. But as both the Black Mage and I were magic casters, it meant we’d get half way through and 2.45 second cast and bang, we’d have to jump out of the way again. Our spells kept being interrupted and we were all getting tired just from from the visual overload of trying to make sense of the constantly changing action.

Inevitably, concentration slipped. The Black Mage died and suddenly the healer was dead as well, leaving just me and the tank. Again.

I won’t lie, I was terrified. The debacle of the first attempt ran through my mind as I hit the macro to revive the healer. And…nothing happened. What????

I wasted a second or so thinking the delay was normal before it hit me that the macro had failed. Swiftcast was on but nothing else had worked.

My brain went into neutral. I knew there was an icon for the manual Resurrection spell on my hotbar but do you think I could see it? Talk about flustered, or perhaps that was just sheer fear. I did find the icon eventually, and there was enough time left on the Swiftcast to manually hit Resurrection, but I was caught in an AOE and died just as the healer revived. It was the most freaky timing I have ever seen.

After that, all I could do was lie there, watching as the healer [who is a very experienced player] and the tank did the impossible and beat the boss. Just the two of them.

It was wonderful, and I can honestly say I loved every member of my group the second time around. And you know what? Out of that 4 man group, only the healer had ever done KotL before, but the healer made sure everyone knew what to expect and we pulled together and got through. As a team.

That is how massively multiplayer games should be played – with courtesy and kindness and camaraderie. Because everyone has to learn the hard way, by making mistakes. I studied that dungeon for hours, but seeing it on a video clip is nothing like doing it yourself. That experience you can’t get second hand.

So to G***t Knight – you were right, I should have raised the healer. And thank you for pushing me to learn a skill I should have had sooner. But about everything else, you were so wrong.

And in celebration a few more screenshot of me, my house in-game and my cute little minion.

-hugs-

Meeks

 

 

Filed under: Games for big kids Tagged: dungeon-mechanic, Einhander, ffxiv, Keeper-of-the-Lake, Midgardsormr, minion, mmo, movement-test, Summoner, Swiftcast-macro, Swiftcast-plus-Resurrection

The craft of creation

As more and more of the world becomes automated, what will there be left for humans?

My answer: beauty and the creation of designs never conceived before. I can imagine a robot making this piece of glass, but I can’t imagine a robot conceiving of the design. That is our job.

Work has been using up a lot of my energy lately, but I’ll try and post lovely gems like these when I can. Enjoy.

Meeks

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: automation, Baccharat, beauty, creativity, glass, hand-craft

I survived Titan hard mode!

-dance-

Okay, this post is for my gamer friends only. Apologies to everyone else, but today has been a huge milestone in my gaming career, and I just have to write about it. You see, Titan hard mode is…a very hard fight. The video clip below is what I studied, for hours this weekend, just to try and learn the mechanics of the fight:

If you’ve had a look at the video you’ll know that even young, very competent gamers consider this one tough. As I am neither young, nor very competent when it comes to battling, I fully expected to die, multiple times. Worse, I fully expected my incompetence to cause the whole group to fail dismally. Given how much gamers invest in these fights, they do not tolerate failure terribly well. And they don’t tend to be very forgiving of group members [like me] who make them fail.

So I am not exaggerating when I say this particular fight has ruined my weekend till now. I literally could not think of anything else, and when I logged on this morning I had to grab a bunch of tissues because my palms were sweating so much. Fear sweat, people, fear sweat.

And then none of the bad things I’d imagined actually happened!

Titan hard mode is an 8 man fight – meaning two healers, two tanks and 4 dps [damage doers like me]. Two of the eight were my wonderful friends, Mateus and Baufian, but the rest were complete strangers. Luckily they were all players with heaps more experience than me, and essentially, they carried me for most of the fight.

But…. I managed to remember all the mechanics of the fight, and more importantly, I managed to avoid all the many things that could have killed me. And then, at the Heart phase, I actually remembered to use the caster LB [Limit Break] against Titan’s Heart. I can’t tell you how proud I am of that because my hands were still shaking at that point.

[For those who don’t know, the caster LB is a ground targetting skill. This means you have to click on the LB and then move the ground circle under the foe you want to target. When you release the button, the cast time for the LB begins and it goes boom.]

And I lived. No one had to waste time resurrecting me. No one had to bite their tongue about the ‘useless noob’. And I didn’t humiliate myself in front of my friends. I will remember this fight for a long time to come.

Now, just in case there are others like me out there, here are some tips that helped me get through Titan hard mode, in one piece, first time through:

Do your research.

For me this involved watching the above video a million times. It also meant taking something like 8 pages of notes AND doing dinky little drawings of the hardest bits – like the Bombs.

Turn off Titan’s music.

I’m told the music is very stirring, but for this fight you need to be calm, not revved up even more.

If you’re on a pc, click on the system icon as shown:

Select ‘System Configuration’ from the menu. That opens the System Configuration window:

Click the ‘sound’ option in the left hand pane, and then drag the BGM slider all the way to the left. That will shut off only the music. Click ‘Apply’ and you’re done.

Turn the battle effects display down.

When you have a boss and 8 players all using showy weapon skills, it becomes almost impossible to see what’s going on, and in this fight you must be aware of what’s happening at all times.

Again, you start with the System icon, but this time select ‘Character Configuration’ as shown:

From here, you will get this window:

Click the ‘Character’ tab and scroll all the way down to the bottom. That’s where you will find the Battle Effects Settings [the big, showy special effects]. To change the settings, click on the words, not the radio button. For some strange reason, the radio buttons don’t actually work. -shrug-

Again, click on ‘Apply’ when you’re done.

Zoom your camera out as far as you can.

Again, this is so you can see the whole fight instead of just your own small corner of it. Coincidentally, that will allow you to see the things you have to avoid. If you can’t see it, you can’t get out of its way.

Position.

If you’re a caster dps like me, don’t hang out right at the very edge of the fight. I know this is what we normally do, but this fight requires you to move almost constantly so if you’re a little closer in to Titan, you have more options of where to move to. Also, when he does Geo Crush, it means you can run in towards the tank faster. This in turn means you can be AOE healed.

Marked guide.

And last but not least, it really helps if you go in with an experienced friend or two, especially if one of those friends puts a mark above his head. That mark is very visible all through the fight and if you ever suddenly get that awful feeling of not knowing where you’re supposed to run, following that mark can be a lifesaver.

So there you go, a very non-expert review of Titan HM. I suspect that preparation aside, I was very lucky to make it through so easily, but hey, I’ll take a little credit for my win. :D

cheers

Meeks

Filed under: Games for big kids Tagged: ffxiv, hard-mode, heart-phase, Limit-Break, Summoner, tips-for-noobs, Titan-HM

The Rights of Children

I received this comment from Brandi Walton today :

‘What is your response to children who were raised by gays and say things like “I deserved a mom, or I wanted a dad.” “I wish I hadn’t been created just because two lesbians wanted a kid. It’s not fair I don’t know my other biological parent.”

I ask this sincerely.

Brandi’

The more I thought about it, the more I realised no short answer was possible because there are so many questions implied within that one comment. On the one hand there is the issue common to adopted children of not knowing who their biological parent[s] are and hence, not knowing what their own DNA/family heritage may be. That is real. And then there is the plaintive ‘I wanted a dad.’ I adored my Dad so I could hardly ignore that one. But what of :

‘I deserved a mom’?
‘I wish I hadn’t been created just because two lesbians wanted a kid’?

I believe every child deserves to be protected and cherished and loved. If any of those needs are not met then the child’s parents deserve to be censured, but I can’t see how their gender makes a difference. I also can’t see how their marital status makes a difference. There are bad married parents; there are bad de facto parents; there are bad single parents; there are parents who abandon their children, either to the state or to the care of grandparents or aunts and uncles; there are parents who should never have conceived a child at all because they lack the ability to look after themselves, let alone a child. But in all these sad situations, being gay is not the cause; being gay is simply a fact, like being blond rather than brunette.

Unfortunately, I suspect that Brandi is not talking about that kind of bad parenting; I think she is talking about parenting that makes the child feel ‘different’ to her peers. Not fitting in can be a terrible thing. I know because I have never fitted in.

My parents and I arrived in Australia when I was just four. We were asylum seekers from the Hungarian Revolution of 1957. We did not speak English and we acted ‘strange’. My Mother insisted on bringing me hot lunches and sitting with me at school while I ate. She also brought delicious cakes for the other little kids, but I would have preferred eating sand. But that was nothing compared to her insistence that I wear trousers during winter – ugly, boyish trousers while all the other little girls ran around in frilly skirts and short socks. They almost froze but at least they were…feminine.

And then there was that weird European obsession with learning. While the rest of the kids were having a good time and messing around, my Dad expected me to actually pay attention and learn stuff. Yup, I fit in so well I could have been scarred for life and yet, my parents were hetero.

Now, as a parent myself, I know that no matter how hard I try and how good my intentions may be, I will still get things wrong. But my daughter forgives me because she knows how much I love her.

And speaking of love, I have to say that my Dad was the best Dad on earth. He was a real hands-on father before the term was even invented. He helped me with my homework and took me to ballet classes, taught me to think logically and question everything while holding my hand as I learned how to rollerskate and ride a bicycle. He taught me about beauty and honour and justice, all without raising his hand against me.

My Dad was a good parent, a very good parent, but you know what? Dad was good because of who he was, not because he was a male. His maleness was irrelevant. It’s the person that counts, not the gender.

And finally the question about heritage. I cannot imagine not knowing my parents or the history of our family. Heritage is part of who we are. It’s not everything, but it is an important part and I believe all children should be given that information. The laws are slowly changing to reflect that need, but I can imagine that some children conceived with donor sperm may have a terrible need to know the other half of their heritage. Sadly, the need to use donor sperm is not restricted to lesbian couples and the heartache of the children concerned is a deficit of the law rather than the relationship between the parents.

Finally, I have to wonder whether the child of lesbian parents is so bitter because she lacks a father, or because she clashes with her mother the way I clashed with mine?

My hope is that one day we will all take marriage equality for granted and allow little kids to go to school without being tormented for being ‘different’. I was tormented for looking different; boys like Kenneth James Weishuhn are tormented for being gay. Does any child deserve that? I don’t think so.

-hugs-

Meeks

 

 

 

Filed under: My soap box, Uncategorized Tagged: adopted-children, bad-parenting, being-different, children, lesbian-mothers, marriage-equality, rights