New toys

It's been a bit of a day of messing around. Ewan decided that although nothing was broken, his wrist was too sore for swimming so we stayed at home while Mandy and Ellen went. Being a loving father, I thought it would be wrong to leave him sitting watching TV all morning so I dragged him to the garage and made him construct a replacement for the bird table crushed by the falling cider tree. Nothing too difficult - just a square and two struts to be screwed to the post that survived the crushing. He did well measuring this wood, lining up the saw and cutting it. He does have an irritating habit of keeping the ear protector things on, forcing me to slap him on the head, Fawlty style, to get his attention.

After lunch we headed through to Glasgow for a spot of visiting and to visit Braehead where he could get the pre-owned Nintendo DS that he's been saving up for. Well, when I say he's been saving I mean he's been collecting £1 a week off me and adding it to his own £1 pocket money. Still, the idea's there.

I remembered that Braehead has an Apple Store now. It must be the most heavily guarded Apple Store in the country and I'm sure the super-attentive staff are only asking if you're OK to let you know they're watching. Didn't get much. A wee thing to hold my phone in the car.

And the last bit of play was discovering that I can attach a midi interface to the iPad through the camera connection kit. I means I can play all the instruments in Garageband from my piano. No idea what to do with it. I gave up all that 1980's electronica (Krapwerk in my case) and can't really play the piano. But it's amusing and the piano in the £8.99 Garageband sounds better than the one I paid about 100 times more for. That's technology for you.