Don't forget that Gmail deletes accounts which aren't logged into every so often, or at least they used to.
My new year's resolution is to email my 15 months old son daily
31–38 of 38 posts
Re: My new year's resolution is to email my 15 months old son daily
#32The best moments for me as a parent usually happen when no camera or PC is present. I have learned to just smile, relax and enjoy the moment as opposed to trying to document it. I do think however that your idea is a good one. I've also thought about starting a website for my girls, filled with photos and videos from their childhood.
It's true. Unless you carry a camera around constantly you're going to miss almost all those unpredictable moments. I completely agree about not needing to document everything - plus documenting things misses the spontaneity of it all - and unless you're some kind of world class photographer/videographer you're going to lose most of the emotion and humanity of those moments.
So why do I still obsessively document events? Simply an aide-mémoire - because my mémoire is awful.
Re: My new year's resolution is to email my 15 months old son daily
#33The best moments for me as a parent usually happen when no camera or PC is present. I have learned to just smile, relax and enjoy the moment as opposed to trying to document it. I do think however that your idea is a good one. I've also thought about starting a website for my girls, filled with photos and videos from their childhood.
> The best moments for me as a parent usually happen when no camera or PC is present.
Sure. It won't be long before a continuously videocammed household becomes practical, though. (And probably commonplace not long after.)
I'm a little sad that we missed that with our kids. On the other hand, I don't spend much time watching the videos we have made, so maybe it wouldn't be that different practically.
Re: My new year's resolution is to email my 15 months old son daily
#34Good intention, but bad idea. Instead, keep a scrapbook for him. To include text, write it in Emacs then print it out and paste in the paper. Put pictures in the scrapbook too. Involve your wife and decorate the pages too, if you like. Forget about using gmail for this. Keep his childhood private -- he'll thank you for it. The scrapbook is something you can look at together on the couch as a family.
I don't know about using a scrapbook... part of the point is to make it personal and frequent. I know that my wife has tried to keep up with a baby book, and it's hard to know where to draw the line between 'scrapbook-able' events and just plain events. The line for email is so much lower that you're going to capture more.
Re: My new year's resolution is to email my 15 months old son daily
#35This seems like an add-on that Kidmondo.com would be all over. Kidmondo is a great little service, but I found that I updated it maybe 5 times and my son is already 11 months old.
It would be great if you could use a simple email interface, but then extract all the information that you'd normally put in a baby-book (height, weight, teeth, etc...).
Re: My new year's resolution is to email my 15 months old son daily
#36The best moments for me as a parent usually happen when no camera or PC is present. I have learned to just smile, relax and enjoy the moment as opposed to trying to document it. I do think however that your idea is a good one. I've also thought about starting a website for my girls, filled with photos and videos from their childhood.
Exactly. What I suggest is not to rigorously document. I will be writing letters to my son daily about things. And this will incidentally form a record of what he has been doing/learning, and how do we predict his personality is shaping up.
I predict that this will benefit you more, through reflection and conscious living, than your son (through a historical record later in life), but it will consequently greatly benefit him, because you are more tuned in to his development and can pick up on patterns and developments better. Good luck!
Re: My new year's resolution is to email my 15 months old son daily
#37I can't tell you how awesome this is. My mother passed away 18 months ago, and I've inherited much of her online life. She had a rare disease which she got treatment for but which ultimately led to her death, and through it all we kept a blog about her life. I'm an emotional SOB so I can't stand to read much of it, but at times I do like to go back through her blog and remember her. Also, I discovered in her possessi…
Wow, great story! The problem with using a blogging platform is the likelihood (or rather the unlikelihood) that it will exist in 25 years. There's a huge hassle factor in porting data from a proprietary system like Tumblr. At least with email, the format is likely to be supported in 25 years and exporting is easy. That said, email doesn't really cut it in terms of viewing. I imagine my son would want to share the da…
Here's a solution: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=383730
Re: My new year's resolution is to email my 15 months old son daily
#38Good intention, but bad idea. Instead, keep a scrapbook for him. To include text, write it in Emacs then print it out and paste in the paper. Put pictures in the scrapbook too. Involve your wife and decorate the pages too, if you like. Forget about using gmail for this. Keep his childhood private -- he'll thank you for it. The scrapbook is something you can look at together on the couch as a family.
I don't know about using a scrapbook... part of the point is to make it personal and frequent. I know that my wife has tried to keep up with a baby book, and it's hard to know where to draw the line between 'scrapbook-able' events and just plain events. The line for email is so much lower that you're going to capture more.
Then instead of sending an email, just append a bit of text in a text file. Separate those bits with a few blank lines and a "----" or something.
Keep a text file for each month, or week. Keep a directory for each year.
If your wife has something to add, have her either add to the text file herself, or else have her just type it up in gedit and you'll take care of moving the text.
Putting every little thing about your kid's life into emails is a recipe for disaster. Google will know more about him than anyone should know about anyone. That's obscene. Really. If you don't believe me, email Bruce Schneier or somebody and ask what they think.
And, besides, if you did email every single little thing to him, could you imagine the headache of looking through all those emails? I know from experience how difficult it is to clean out my inbox. Could you imagine a whole childhood of them?