I'm don't have enough information to know whether I like the attempt to silence his kids. It would be easy to see kids that age getting out to control to the point that damage to the computer occurs and noise is almost always the first step towards that.<p>But holy crap! Half of this place seems like they want to be raising robots, not individuals who all have their own needs and will need to be taught and treated differently. Worse, I have a strong feeling most of them haven't talked to a kid in years, much less ever raised one.<p>And these people are not just giving advice, but being highly judgmental. Saying the father is <i>wrong</i>. I raise four kids with my wife. Two kids as a single dad would be twice as hard at least.<p>Go walk a mile and see how your "build a robot" methodology works for your kid.<p>(Sorry about the rant. I take fatherhood and other people judging it <i>very</i> seriously. I came from an abusive household, and that is the only kind of environment I would openly judge a father for. This is <i>not</i> abusive, even if it offends somebody's sense of logic.)
I saw this yesterday and run this script all night:<p>while true; do
sox -t .wav "|arecord -d 1" -n stat 2> /tmp/tmp;
echo -n `date +"%Y%m%d%H%M%S"` " ";
cat /tmp/tmp | grep "Maximum <i>amplitude" | cut -d ":" -f 2 | tr -d '\n';
cat /tmp/tmp | grep "Midline </i>amplitude" | cut -d ":" -f 2 | tr -d '\n';
cat /tmp/tmp | grep "Rough *frequency" | cut -d ":" -f 2;
done<p>and got this:
<a href="http://i.imgur.com/oD6ZKIg.png?1" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/oD6ZKIg.png?1</a><p>Interesting things: When my neighbor walks in his apartment above mine, it creates a amp peak with low frequency.<p>I have no idea what are those approx. one hour long periodic variations in the frequency, maybe my computer's fan or me snoring.<p>Anyway, pretty useless...
Fast forward to 2030...<p><pre><code> ...
for (int month = 1, month <=12, month++)
{
printf ("You never call. I'm your Dad you know. :-( ");
}</code></pre>
I have noisy kids. Three of them. They make lots of noise when playing games, when watching TV, and right now are making lots and lots of noise (at 7.33am on a Saturday morning) by playing in a cardboard box that holds a bathtub (we are remodeling a bathroom, it goes in Monday).<p>Kids are noisy. I have dealt with it by installing a solid door at the end of the hallway. No scripting required. Occasionally I tell them to quiet down if they get out of hand. Kids are noisy, that is just part of the experience.
It seems wrong to teach your children that the machine is a person.<p>Why not tell them "I put a script in the machine that will shut down the screen if you yell too loud"?<p>Same result, more truthful method.
Great answer: "You have done this so many times manually that you feel you need to automate it... Doesn't that suggest to you that this method isn't working? "
The children are four and five.<p>Who is monitoring them while they are playing video games?<p>It's reasonably easy to calm children down when you need to, you just need to learn some techniques. These techniques would probably require someone to be in the room for them to work, but once you've succeeded in calming down the over-boisterous behaviour they'd be okay.<p>And, of course, children enjoy being boisterous, so I hope they get opportunities to let off steam in a more appropriate setting. Soft play rooms[1] are good, as are parks and gardens and some games in the home.<p>The adult could investigate various parenting courses. "Webster Stratton" is an example of a respected course.<p>[1] In the UK you might have a Sure Start centre near you with a soft play room for hire. These are lovely because you will be in the room with your child alone, and you can really enjoy the experience. There are also commercial providers such as Play Barn which will be full of screaming, crying, poorly supervised children and stressed harried parents. This is, for some people, a hellish experience.
Um......<p>Get a stick.
Stand over child.
If child makes noise, hit child with stick.
Repeat until child quiet, becomes adult, or gets stick.
If child gets stick, leave home.<p>And that is the "British" way. :)
Children make too much noise. Children don't get to use the computer for a week.<p>Eventually children will learn and stop making too much noise. This is a parenting problem, not a technical one.
Have fun automating something that will prevent them from smoking or something, since you haven't taught them to listen to you, but to the computer by then.
How about a feedback headset where the local loop from the microphone has such high volume that a whisper is rather loud.<p>Of course that won't work if the game doesn't need a headset but you could disable external speakers and make it only work via the headset.
Can anyone explain how the OP's solution works, in particular the chvt 3/7? I looked up chvt and it seems like it would switch a different terminal into the foreground, but this raises more questions than it answers.<p>Like how does he know what 3 and 7 have on them? And would this work on a windowing system? And why does it appear as if the screen has turned off?
What's up with those submission title editing lately? There was nothing wrong with the original one, and the new one is so "inspring" that I wouldn't even click there unless for checking is this yet another title edit.
4 and 5 year olds make lots of noise. When they are not making noise and being extremely quiet, they are doing something they shouldn't. Why would you want to screw up this parenting warning mechanism?
Wow... why did this guy think it was a good idea to have children if he didn't want children? "Hi, I need a script to kill fun. I hate when children are having fun."