This is the personal website of John Watson: father, software developer, artist, guitar player. Follow me on Mastodon or Twitter or Twitch or itch.io or GitHub.

Dad-blogs

My son on manliness

BaconGameJam - Dark Arena

#1GAM April 2013: Jellyfish Escape

#1GAM February 2013: Meteor Defense

#1GAM January 2013: 115

#1GAM March 2013: Reverse Invaders

#1GAM May 2013: Duel!

Pants

It. Just. Works.

Cycling + Google Spreadsheets

It's the little things

Machine vision

Carnivorous thing

What language is that?

Fix for CrashPlan not remembering window position/size

Tomato tells me when the kids wake up

Terminating Amazon App Store agreement

You are likely to be eaten by a grue

Embossed steel business cards

Cassette what?

Creating sprites with Blender and Gimp

Game dev: Finding the fun

Kids are expensive

Introducing Caravela

Thank a software developer today

What does it mean?

Bibble 5, DAM for Linux, and data portability

Fair use lives

Lifestreaming

In which noble research is unexpectedly tainted

Driving, driving, driving

Googling God

Undead Together

The more things change...

Naked As We Came by Iron & Wine (cover)

Welcoming 2010

I Saw Jesus At Walmart

Late lunch

Hey, Everybody, Let's Go To Maine!

Too old for the band

Bad Horse Chorus (for ukulele)

Let's revive the Golden Rule

Recent Tweets

I am parent, hear me roar

Longing for days gone by

New family member

Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated

Play DeepLeap: The Fast-Paced Time-Wasting Word Game

Recent Tweets

Hunch declined

Friday Nights

Overheard: two girls, on the wagon, off the wagon

Ah, to be a kid again...

I died three years ago

The best thing that ever happened to me...

The Kindle vs. audio books

Newsweek reinvention

This is a picture I did not take

Review: Hancock

Review: Wii Music

Such Great Heights

Coat pockets, contents of

Review: Burn After Reading

Sitting on the porch, practicing as the sun goes down on a beautiful Winter day

Recent Tweets

Review: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Dear UPS

I just want to be ok

Chickens are not pretzel-shaped in nature

Apparently I am not at my most dashing in the early AM

Sleeping for free

One of those days

Recent Tweets

Sweet tradition

Blog house cleaning

Happy ninja day!

Configuring vsftpd for active and passive data connections on Amazon EC2

Brain chart

Learning the guitar, a progress report

A new way to wake up the kids

In the age of Google, who cares about the BBB?

One million visitors

Recent Tweets

New life for an old mp3 player

Listening to lately...

Untitled

FD Weather Icons

Recent Tweets

2 minutes and 45 seconds in the Fashion District

DRM is Bad

My mouth is my kryptonite

Recent Tweets

Console password management script

They REALLY wanted me to take their survey

The "envelope" drawer

I'm sailing! I sail! I'm a sailor!

Science, Hannah Montana, and men in tights

Things that are awesome

Review: The Tudors, Season 1

Buckle up!

Random thoughts and tidbits from elsewhere

Are your kids online? Should they be?

The perils of sleeping in

Shopping shenanigans

A comparison of communication products available from Apple, Inc. and God

A viewer's guide to Battlestar Galactica

Archives, tags, categories

In which my son expresses his opinion about how I earn a living

Drama queen

Better than planned

A working condition that can lead to illness or death

TiVo is stalking me

Use the poop, Luke

Little "g"

Teamwork

Nintendo rocks

WWLLD

In which The Boy foresees the punchline

Bad words

Sex, daisies, Miley Cyrus, and me

Writer poised to take the intertubes by storm

The sound of magic

Review: Nim's Island

The internet, advertising, and young minds

Review: Balls of Fury

Review: Bee Movie

Review: Dan In Real Life

Laughter is the sound of love

Review: Juno

Birthday parties are serious business

I used to think 90 wpm was pretty fast

Things I've learned

Review: Stardust

Not that I needed more proof that we're perfect for each other even setting aside the fact that we have the same taste in children

Charlie Bucket, born 1957, not pushing up the daisies

Not for sale

Paying the taxman

Typing non-standard characters in Ubuntu/Gnome

Heritage

Lovely and talented feet

One less

The Girl

In which I do not LOL

The eye of doom

Writer screencast

Footnotes plugin for WordPress released

I wear her ring

Payback comes in small doses

I'm suspicious of anyone with three or more children. O, that way madness lies.

Boredom, tolerance, movies

Review: Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

Almost 8

He wore those St. Patrick's day socks for a week

Review: The Music Man (2003)

Weather forecast for kids

Send To Flickr: a Flickr photo uploader for the Gnome desktop (Linux)

Review: The Fountain

What do you think of...

Open house night

Review: Death at a Funeral

Ultimate Recipe Showdown

Badware warning

"Send to Flickr" call for testers

Ariel was a tech geek

A parenting checklist

A little blog housekeeping...

Replacing the High Voltage Block on a Sony 46" Rear Projection Television

Almost there

The Last Crusade

LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga

If I were president...

About the Technical Reviewer

How I found my fitness mojo and lost 38 pounds in 6 months

The Dude abides

Who are you?

Bachelor pad

It ain't fixed unless I'm bleeding

Special delivery

All tucked in

"No Knead" bread is a hit!

Thoughts about my refrigerator and its infernal automatic ice maker

Fido

Big Huge Thesaurus API

Falling through fatherhood

Do you have any tips for a beginning bread baker?

Friday audio zen: Ballroom Blitz

He's a very progressive 5-year-old

game mod

Meet the fam

Please pardon the dust

Possibly some of the worst marketing I've seen

Free and open source database design software

Pro Web 2.0 Mashups

Review: Sweet Land

Review: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

My backup system saved me today

The long cruel holiday break is over… School starts Monday!

Dangers of blogging (for men)

Happy 2008

Note taking with Tomboy

Cure for sleep

5 dangerous things you should let your kids do

Can anyone suggest a good desktop note-taking application?

Bye bye Script.aculo.us, hello MooTools

How to make the coolest brown-bag lunch in class

Good behavior

Google Christmas Card

The Story of Stuff

Wishing for Neverland

Free Rice

Chaos and bean sprouts

Removing Windows from a Dual-Boot System

A year with Linux on the desktop

Sumo means ginormous

At last, our dinosaur/seasonal vegetable hybrid is ready to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting world!

Happy Halloween

Love

Do you love photography and can you write?

I married a genius

It's that time again...

She's home!

Lessons learned from a month of single parenting

On Monkeys

Cheesetastrophe

Well is she a virgin or isn't she?

Bedtime in D

Day 12

Once again relegated to a supporting role.

Moving On

School can't possibly start soon enough

Sampson C01 + Xenyx 802 recording sample

12 chocolate cakes

Friends don't let friends podcast

Science fiction you should see

Ad firms are trying to change the stereotype of gamers

So... we're all friends here, right?

I'm thinking The LA Times may not quite understand this whole "intertubes" thing

Very disappointed by Musician's Friend

Want to read a book with me?

Life ain't so bad

HourChallenge.com: 1 hour a day towards ending extreme poverty

Is This Man Cheating on His Wife?

Anticipating Awful Babies

Carrots in McDonald's wrapper taste better to pre-schoolers

Have I offended you?

Stuck in Stuff

Are they here?

Dignity and childbirth

Here Comes the Sun

She's a Fake!

How do you like Harry Potter?

Advice from children is crafted from the best ingredients: the wisdom of innocence, empathy, sincerity, and love.

An oasis of comfort and happiness

Queuing for Casey Jr.

Review: The Magnificent Seven

Utility is overrated

North Pole

The Art of War

I believe that all good parents are optimists. Who else would attempt the thankless task of turning 2-year-olds into human beings?

Making her musical debut

24 Hour Fitness cracks me up

I think this might be what they mean when they say that no publicity is bad publicity.

On skating in the jungle

Dear PR agents,

What would it take to get me to work in an office again? Seriously?

In which The Boy reveals his comedic genious

Grilled cheese and carrots (with love)

The family business

Zooomr update: down for the count?

Review: Eragon

Whither Zooomr?

On the brink of five

Review: V for Vendetta

The Zonbox $99 desktop computer

She bought the scissors anyway

That's entertainment

Dear Rookie Web Developer

Review: The Good Shepherd

I guess I'm the straight man in this duo

Screen time tickets

A quiet, beautiful moment

Review: Children of Men

Lunch, moth, Oreos, noodles

Good news!

Review: Stranger Than Fiction

WordPress 2.1.3 disk usage chart

Tuesdays

My mind is filled with silvery stars

Review: Pieces of April

If you stick with someone long enough, you're going to find some things you don't like

Seventh birthday party

Pre-flight encounter

You know I'm just some guy, right?

She's coming home

Homelympics

Review: Long Way Round

An update from the random thought machine

Surly in Denver

Review: Hoodwinked

It was negative, thank goodness

Does the punishment fit the crime?

If I think this is funny, does that make me a child?

Snap Preview Anywhere, scourge of the internet

Justin.tv

Going nowhere, fast (or "Why they should have included booze in that stupid 'new parent' bag we got at the hospital")

50 songs for kids AND their parents (or 50 songs for kids that aren't utter crap)

Sunset, no mail

My eyes are still burning

Think of the children

Shutdown Day

Four weeks with Ubuntu Linux on the desktop. Part 4: And the verdict is...

Wanted: sanity

Four weeks with Ubuntu Linux on the desktop. Part 3: Oh my God---it's full of stars!

On the possibility of discussing the possibility of time travel with the lovely and talented wife

Four weeks with Ubuntu Linux on the desktop. Part 2: Down the rabbit hole.

Are these words real?

Four weeks with Ubuntu Linux on the desktop. Part 1: Switching is hard

Reply hazy, try again.

Only his 4-year-old cuteness saves him

Windows Genuine Spyware

This is why I'm married to my wife and not somebody else

HOWTO: Make a PDF e-book from any text file using Open Office

The family that computes together, stays together

I want to see some fracking explosions!

Valentine's day is effin' metal

Of zucchinis and hypothermia

Kentucky Girls

Daylight

How to give your young children a personalized (managed) email address

Is your blogging service offline?

Where'd my baby go?

LetterPop, now integrated with Flickr

Dear Old Skool Account-Holding Flickr Member

Old memories

Storynory: Free Audio Stories for Kids

Skype brings out the 6-year-old girl in me

Afternoon stroll

Our Daily Miscommunication or Spanking 101 or Perchance to Dream

Review: The Break Up

Review: Little Miss Sunshine

Make a paper monster

Stone soup

The Girl

A comment for the Toontown mailbox

Hug

Snakes on a Plane

The "olden" days

Tips for tiling a small bathroom yourself for the first time

Children of Heaven

TiVo and spaceships

Santa must be a republican

Christmas Eve

Fridays are lonely on the internets...

What sound does a boat make?

Caring is creepy (sometimes)

Santa is coming. And we have his phone number.

LetterPop!

Songs from the Labyrinth

Rock, Paper, Scissors, Karate

Remotely Connected

Changes

It's that time of year again

0.55 terabytes

Listening

Want to know the best part about Dibs ice cream?

Boy philosopher

I kicked Dell's ass!

Things she likes

Are jobs in IT bad for marriage?

I'm forever yours---faithfully

The best deal in Lego

Cell phones and customer service: it doesn't have to be this difficult

Does homework suck?

Musings of a 4-year-old boy

Parental involvement at school

Sir Topham Hat really knows how to rub it in

Visiting from diy.despair.com?

333 books for kids

Searching for cookies

The Elephant Song by Eric Herman

Dear Tooth Fairy

From China with love

Bath time

You asked, lady.

Utata

A trip in the wayback machine...

Jack Black stole my schtick

Cucumbers and Larry

No fear

Fall 2006 catalog

Sweet tooth

What does "sweet pea" mean?

ITT Tech: Give us your tired, your poor, your poets

Lovely and talented (but sometimes hears T's when there are none)

You can't protect them from time

Do your kids have ESP?

Learning to write

Overheard: two girls at the playground

Texas Ranch House? Are you insane?

Rock, paper, scissors

Superman Returns

She's totally on a roll

Brains... BRAINS!

Photodoto.com

The family that pees together...

Those TV guide blurb writers are getting lazy

Milk emergency

The calculator

Being Daddy

Axes and trees

Dropping off Mr. Grumpy Pants at preschool

I feel like I live inside a Japanese game show

Kids have no idea how good they've got it

New site design

Free Flickr Pro accounts

Me and Cookie Monster, that's how we roll

Breakfast negotiations with 5-year-olds

BloggingBaby.com

That fetus is 17?

Another melancholy milestone: the two-wheeler

Feedburner Plugin for Wordpress 2.0

Site update: Feedburner

Tooth update: it's loose

Truths of parenting

The Kindergarten Journal

What's for dinner?

Corporate greed run amok

Kicking and Screaming

Señorita Precoz

Sweetie Pie means I Love You

Her teeth are the teeth of steel

Go ask your Mom for breakfast

The Magnificent Burden

Three Golden Rules

Why do toy manufacturers hate parents?

Robot Vacuum Cleaner

Welcome, Call For Help viewers

Welcome, Popular Photography readers!

A moment of arms race zen

Welcome to the Dollhouse

Hypnotized by blue flashy lights at the Microsoft conference

Christmas shopping

What's on the news?

A bed of her own

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

Strangers vs. the Spooky Eye

Cheaters are mighty fine eatin'

Seeking Holy Cow at the local mega-store

World of Warcraft as sparkling dinner conversation

Mass production of the letter B

The best part of Halloween...

Happy Halloween

Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Songs of destruction and woe

Cingular GoPhone service about to be cancelled?

How to Backup Your Photos

Is Netflix worth it?

Yesterday, at lunch

Today

Nerdiness, I embrace thee

PBS Kids Sprout

The shadow of food

At home dad-hood

Parents Behaving Badly

I ate the cracker

It's that time of year again

Nintendo Revolution

Cussing on the playground

First day of school

D-O-R-K

The 40 Year Old Virgin

A room of his own

Did I just say that?

Dogs and vomit soap

I love you this much

Dungeons & Dreamers

No house work?

Excellent cinematic experience

My daughter, food critic

What would you say?

The Hero's Journey

It's not fair

45 minutes

National Sex Offender Public Registry

lightproofbox.com

Run Lola Run

Manganese! Gesundheit.

Another actual conversation

earth.google.com

Who have I become?

Candlequake

Supergirlypretty shoes

You dare to defy ME?

The ground's a-shakin' again

Fiery sunset

Earthquake @ 8:44am

That's one hairy lobster, Missy

Hide and seek

Toddlers: not the people you want making long-term plans for you

Are we there yet?

Excuse me, do you have the year?

Just playing

Training wheels

I love the sound of flushing in the morning. It sounds like... victory.

Episode III: Revenge of the Nerds

Just Wait Until Your Chaotic Evil Father Comes Home

Letting go

How to get a dog

Candy is dandy but Flickr is quickr

Pickles

Street lifeguard

Warning: Bridge is out

Potty training, redux

Do you hear an echo in here?

Some out of the ordinary children's movies

But I grew up watching Bugs Bunny -- a cross-dressing, wise-cracking rabbit

The challenge of working from home

I'm father to a nut

Shots

The Spring time change is killing me

Hell

Google Maps is all kinds of great

Into the great unknown

Breathing

Life and death

I'm dancing and I don't care who knows it

Making friends

Nostalgia exploitation has jumped the shark

When I was a kid...

Happy Easter

Grumpy boy

The things she says

Sex offenders' likelihood to repeat crimes debated

The end is near

This episode of potty training brought to you by the letters "H", "L", and "A"

80 lubs

Leave a message? With you? Are you mad?

Check me out, I'm a "blog father"

Things I was thinking about on my birthday

Why?

So that's what new teeth look like

Frustration

Terrible twos

"Only You"

Electric Version

Radios

Thinking of Woodie Guthrie at 3:15am

You owe me one

Picasa 2 vs. Nikon View vs. Picture Project

Shaun of the Dead

Splat

Sleep -- who needs it?

Daddy, I used the potty -- I promise!

Cake

Breakfast conversation

My D70 has left NY!

The freedom of digital photography

Camping out

Musical chairs

We're [pause] watching [pause] a [pause] movie [pause]

What happened to Daddy Types?

New camera

The SSA sucks

This is probably one of those posts that will embarrass him later

Sleep debt

18,507 registered sex offenders

Welcome

99 rooms

Schuyler's monster

Sorry, this website is on a coffee break, please come back later

Who am I?

Youth

Lying to The Children, Acceptable Situation #47

Google and Answers.com

Lions and tigers and snails, oh my!

Starbucks density

Farmer's market + White Noise (the movie)

GenX dad

RIF

The rain has cleared

Rebel uprising

Cellphones 'should not be given to children'

Genius

43folders

Extreme Dodgeball

I love being Santa Claus

That's my girl

Christmas delayed somewhere in Ohio

Kids 3, Dad 0

Grilled cheese

Mistakes

Caveat emptor

On aging...

Compliment from a comment spammer?

Scrapbooking, part 3

Kids vs. computers

Scrapbooking, part 2

Rotating house

The long weekend

Scrapbooking

Some people would take the blue pill...

Kids vs. sleep

That's my boy

Printing from Linux to a Windows XP shared printer

Rebel Billionaire

The Darth Vader of poop

Serious playtime

Heroes

Notice: Crime and terror have been defeated, people. Nothing to see here.

Phone call

Kids are messy

Weekend update: Daughter 2, Dad 0

7am

Bummed

Strangely sentimental

The Gimp experiment

Tickles

2004 election

Gimp

Costumes

Not it

A thousand curses

1248

Gaim Message Blocker plugin

The Zoom Quilt

Living life

Babies change everything

Parental ineptitude

Sesame Street rules

If my life had a soundtrack it'd definitely have a sad "Wa wa waaa" sound

Dealing with comment spam

Kids vs. Electronics

Thoughts on misbehaving

My daughter, the critic

Lost time

Ouch

Over and out! Roger!

Serious hair

Sunday at grandma's

Has Been is good!

Knots

Life and children and death

Turn it up

Smart Susie

A bath? AGAIN?

Logic

The gift of sterility?

It hurts when I do this

Doom 3 impressions

Photo Matt cosmos

Go to Dairy Queen

Tempo

I'm a princess! With pants!

Firefox 1.0 Preview

Batdad

Sandbox

Has Been

Rebirth

Cuteness is nature's defense mechanism against parents

Ignorance is bliss

What hath man wrought?

Perfect timing

Shut up and write!

Word Statistics plugin for WordPress

Thinking of me...

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program...

Blockbuster online

Strung Up (via Flickr)

Comment spam

Digital photo printing doomed?

Kerry Renews Call for Rumsfeld's Resignation

N

Blair, the Martha Stewart of Creative Correction

Fold-up infant cabana

Set my people free!

Alas, poor Pancho!

Canon EOS 20D

Out of the frying pan

Sleigh bells

And the gold medal goes to...

Baby photos from Flickr

Bob, Katie... shut it!

Hi, BoingBoing

Little Eric

Hi, Kuro5hin

My son the talker

Nail polish and Barbie dolls

Child seats urged for air travel

Blogging heals

Games don't kill people. People kill people.

Tricycle building

What, no juice?

The 909

Best. Picture. Ever.

Oh, fickle girl!

The paternity leave joke

Folding shirts

Scooter's Jungle

Wiggles break up

Is wilted lettuce more important than your kid?

Vacation, day 5

Poor kid

This is nothing like a group hug

Vacation, day 3

Vacation, day 2

Imported old entries

Picasa

Vacation, day 1

Erik Estrada begs for swift death

No matter how bad it gets...

French press

Tantrum Redux

Faceless surgeons armed with razors

Four new Internet Explorer exploits (yes, more)

Discovering his shadow

This is normal?

Vote delayed to protect America?

Boingo Boingo Boingo

Programming joke

"Your imagination airbrushes"

Update: Electronic Waste Recycling Act (Sher, SB 20) postponed

Where is West Darfur?

A smile for a blurry daddy

Iranian woman 'gives birth to frog'

Electronic Waste Recycling Act of 2003 (Sher, SB 20)

VB.NET upgrade "wizard"

Those pesky numbers

Father's day

I finally saved Neverwinter!

Yeah, right

No limits

Surfing on a Rocket

You talk, it types?

Cookies

Female Gamers Wanted!

Weekend without code

Last cookie

Smart guy

How about Tuesday?

Tickles

Cookies vs. hate

Don't hurt yourself, kid

Good eater

Um... Thursday?

Jack and the beans

Pre-school

King Kong

Popsicle family

Take cover!

Why?

Happy birthday!

Gone Fishing

Dance class

Hot fudge

Babble

Singing at lunch

Taxes

6th sense

What did you say?

Screwy?

Hi... Daddy?!

Yumm