All posts by Alistair Lattimore

About Alistair Lattimore

My name is Alistair Lattimore, I'm in my very early 30's and live on the sunny Gold Coast in Australia. I married my high school sweet heart & we've been together for longer than I can remember. Claire and I started our family in September 2008 when Hugo was born and added a gorgeous little girl named Evie in May 2010. You can find me online in the typical hangouts, Google+, Twitter & facebook. .

Hugo Rankin Lattimore

Family, Photos

Hugo Rankin Lattimore, born 12:50PM 4 September 2008 at Pindara Private Hospital Gold Coast (3840gm/8lb 8oz and 52.5cm)Claire and I became parents for the first time on Thursday 4th September at approximately 12:50PM when we welcomed a little boy named Hugo Rankin Lattimore into the world.

Hugo weighed in at a neat 3840gm or 8lb 8oz in the old scale and was 52.5cm long. According to the height/weight charts for births, those figures places Hugo roughly within or just above the averages for births.

Claire and Hugo are doing really well and we’re extremely proud, excited and blessed to have such a wonderful addition to start our family.

More to follow!

Game Time

Family

Claire and I were due to be parents, at least according to the due date estimates, on the 31 August. As it turned out, that wasn’t to be and when we met with our doctor leading into the birth they scheduled an induction just in case. After no action for the last few days, the ‘just in case’ appointment is going to come in handy as Claire is going to be induced tonight at midnight. In really simple terms, in less than 24 hours – we should be proud new parents!

Everything Is Relative

Internet, News

I came across a snippet of information regarding ComCast, the United States largest cable TV and second largest internet provider – they are about to place limits on their clients internet usage.

As you can imagine, after having competitively priced, very fast all you can eat internet for a long time – the change has been received as though it was the end of the internet and after all, a heavily restrictive 250Gb per month is outrageous!

To contrast what ComCast clients are about to receive, most broadband users in Australia pay a little more for their internet, it is 1/10th the speed and the overwhelming majority of people survive on a plan that offers less than 50Gb per month.

After having lived through the notorious 3Gb Cap from Telstra in the late 1990’s, Australian broadband users were happy when competition entered the market and provided better value plans. While we’re happy we’re not being limited to 3Gb and can get up to 50Gb at a moderate price, ComCast clients are screaming foul play that they are being pulled down to a measly 250Gb per month.

Channel 7 Fail As An Olympic Broadcaster

Sport, TV

Channel Seven secured the broadcast rights for the 2008 Beijing Olympics in Australia and to mark the event, Channel 7 essentially blocked out all other shows over the two week period while the Olympics were on to broadcast it continuously.

I couldn’t believe that while broadcasting the Olympics close to 24 hours per day, that they managed to show so little of the sports on offer. If you look into that just a little bit, it becomes clearer quite quickly:

  • If you replay the same three rounds of the diving five times in one day, a lot of time is burnt that could have been spent diversifying what they were showing.
  • If you interview the same athlete four times, ask the same questions and and expect to get different responses – as the saying goes, it is the definition of insanity.
  • If you re-interview the same set of athletes on different shows, continue to ask the same questions in point 2 a different way and still expect to get a different response – you get the point.
  • Promote only the sports that have an Australian in it
  • Promote only the sports that have an Australian in it and result in some sort of achievement
  • All but flatly ignore the effort and dedication put in by every other athlete that did not get a medal or break some sort of record
  • Televise two rounds of a given sport (see point 4) then ignore it if/when point 4 ceases to be relevant
  • Continue to replay the same event over and over again, hang on – I mentioned that in point 1
  • Fill time in my promoting yet another bullshit excuse to interview more athletes, hoping to get the tear jerking emotional response which you didn’t receive the last 3 times you interviewed them; meanwhile not showing the vast array of other sports available.

The Olympics are about pitting the worlds greatest athletes against one another in a competition that comes round once every four years. It will clearly come as a shock to Channel 7 that it is not about continuously interviewing and re-interviewing the same athletes and showing the same heats of the same sports over and over again.

I suppose we should be happy that Michel Phelps and Usain Bolt aren’t Australian or we’d still be hearing about it.

Antenatal Class #5

Family

This week Claire and I attended our last antenatal class before the birth of our first child!

The fifth session was a more of a hands on session than a lecture like the last four have been. Everyone in the class had to learn how to wrap a baby in a wrap a number of different ways and also change a nappy. Wrapping up the toy baby was pretty funny, specifically watching different people in the class essentially tie their baby in a knot – there was quite a bit of laughter.

At this stage we’re meant to know everything that we need to know about having a baby, though for me personally it doesn’t feel like it. I wouldn’t say that I’m completely calm about the whole experience, though I’m not stressed out either. My thinking at this point is that plenty of people before us have had children and survived – statistically speaking that puts us in pretty good shape.

Starting a family is going to be an enormous learning experience and at this point in time, I know I don’t know it all. Not having it all mapped out in your head is part of the experience I think though, changes in priorities and different views and opinions about things. We’ll learn as we go along, making mistakes and hopefully learning how to make less of them in the future.

One piece of information that Alex (the midwife that instructs the Gold Coast antenatal classes we attended) pointed out is that while babies are tiny and helpless, they are also surprisingly resilient – lucky because there’ll be plenty of on the fly learning going on I think!