Media Studies

The more mad son has an email account so he can be subscribed to things. To keep on top of any problems, I have it set to forward copies of anything he receives.

Today his Youtube acount got its first subscriber (thanks for that, 344). I was so surprised that I took a look at his home page and one of them is getting decent viewing numbers -- in the hundreds. There's no huge skill in what he does, but he does make lovely explicit titles, and I guess they come up well in the searches.

But here we have a boy, autistic as they come, having more success -- much more success -- publishing free content than a lot of other people. Me for example.

Autistic Happiness

Ours is the first age where autistic children can be happy.

It's because we have Google and youtube. Google is good -- it searches, and if you've got a special interest a search engine is part of what you need.

Youtube goes a little further. For certain we have the train videos posted by all the sainted spotters who have made the more mad son contented, stimulated and entertained from a nice safe indoor seat. That's very good. We have the Thomas videos -- very naughty, very welcome -- which have come back into his life now he's starting to get a glimmering of relationships and consequences. It goes further than that.

This picture shows why. It's the logo you'll find in the front of a lot of Thomas tapes from the eighties and nineties. Others are Strand and VCi. So it's no surprise I grabbed it off a youtube post.

What is a surprise is that this isn't the opening frames of a pirate post. It's from VCI Backwards, one of dozens of posts composed from these publisher's logos. No content, just the logos and jingles, forward, backwards, foreign variants, compilation sand the Dear knows what else.

And they're popular! VCI Backwards shows 31,000 viewings. My thesis is that the vast majority of those viewings is from ASD boys who have found whatever spark of interest lies in collection and comparison of these snippets.

Certainly Ravy D's a fan. He won't know to post fan art so I'm doing it for him: this is his interpretation -- perhaps tribute is a truer word -- of The Video Collection.

The original was created in Windows Paint as a 1.7MB BMP. This extract -- a 6KB GIF -- includes all the non-white content and was prepared in Irfanview.

Freedom

Anyway, yes Holiday time in the very wonderful Isle of Wight. If you've got odd ASD children, you probably should be booking about now for one of next years Freedom Family week at East Dene. Why? a) Ventnor is a smashing little seaside resort. If you like walks, there are lovely walks there and back, or to Shanklin. b) The IoW railway will engage any train fiend, especially if you go all the way to the end of the pier, and it connects with steam trains if that's your bag. c) If you prefer to do nothing, the outdoor pool is heated, attended and open for hours a day. Most ASD kiddywinks and their siblings will play happily and tiringly in the pool for hours, and if they don't want that, there are activities most days. d) The air and views are conducive to a feeling of irrepressible well-being. e) It's catered. If you've been driven to self catering just to avoid the odd looks, it's amazingly wonderful not to have to hit the supermarket, look for pepper or whatever.

But none of that matters, because the real colossal advantage is is that however weird, badly behaved or just plain crazy your kiddies are, other children are crazier. Howls like a gibbon in the swimming pool? No problem. Unreliable judgement on wearing trousers? Don't we all. Turds on the staircarpet? Got to do it somewhere. True for all the other guests, true for staff. Amazingly relaxing, even if you're sleeping in a bunk and eating canteen food.

As a bonus you get to meet all the other odd children. Other people's kiddies are always more fun (because you get to hand them back) but this year I had the odd sensation that I was meeting children who were amazing. That's not a conventional wishy-washy feelgood disabled rights amazing, but absolutely fuck-off precocity and ability. Some were diagnosed, and some were slightly dodgy "we think he's all right" siblings. Amazing. I wish I could publish a list of names to watch out for because some of those kiddies are going far.......