Hey! Where did my data go?
I logged in this morning to write a little bit, and found that the stuff I’d written on Monday had disappeared! I know I didn’t delete the entry myself and I’m fairly sure that Abi would have told me if she had. That pretty much leaves EZPublishing in the picture: this is what would happen if they restored the database to a previous state (for whatever reason). If they did, they never told me about it.
Fortunately, Opera (the web browser I use) has a better caching facility than Internet Explorer. (Yet another reason to use Opera, in addition to my five main ones.) And because I’d viewed my Monday page after I’d submitted it, I was able to retrieve a copy of the text I’d written.
Note to self: improve the backup capabilities of the sunpig data. Write a script to extract the data, compress it, and email a copy somewhere.
So on to what I was going to write about in the first place: B’s cognitive development.
I remember learning about this in my child development classes at teacher training college. For example, newborns have no concept of “permancence”. If you hide an object, the baby will think it is gone. And B illustrates this marvellously!
A couple of years ago, Amazon.co.uk sent me a plastic thermos mug as a Christmas present. (We were buying a lot of books on-line at the time…) It has become my regular drinking vessel, and now B is taking an interest in it as well. He sees me lifting it up to my mouth, and so he now wants to grab hold of it, too. He takes it in both hands and gnaws on the rim. (It’s quite funny to see.)
But when he gets bored with just chewing on it, he starts batting it around. Because the mug doesn’t have a handle, it rolls very easily on the floor, and B chases after it with great enthusiasm. Until he pushes it too far, and it rolls under the skirts of the sofa. At which point, it’s gone! He doesn’t realize it’s just hidden from his sight, so he doesn’t try to reach after it. To his brain, the mug has just vanished, and so he has to go find another toy instead.
If he’s really lucky, mommy or daddy will reach under the sofa and get it back for him. And when he sees that the cup is back again, his face lights up with joy!
This also means that whenever one of us leaves the room, B thinks we’ve gone, too. He is starting to get the idea that Abi and I are permanent fixtures, and that even when we go away, we do come back, but it’s not all there yet. I don’t know at what point the game of “peekaboo” will become fun for him, rather than merely confusing. But I’ll write about it as soon as I know… 🙂