Video Contest - Drake

Okay, I've been uploading to YouTube and Facebook insead of posting here. Sorry.
More posts later, but for now:

So my son has entered his first video contest, and has made the finals. Now he needs help getting the votes to win. Voting is limited to once per day per e-mail address, so don't go crazy, but if you've got some time every vote will help.

here's the link:
http://www.bandai.com/powerrangers/videochallenge/

His is the second video down, "Calling all Rangers" the still for the video is him and his sister playing on a slide. The video it's self is about 2 minutes long but you don't have to watch it to vote for it (though I do recommend pausing the couple of videos that seem to be auto launching)

Fight Club

I don't know if it's the summer weather or that I'm working during the day, but nightly wrestling sessions are getting closer to a Fight Club than horseplay. Here are some examples of what I'm dealing with:

And now for a longer portion of the fight, though not nearly a full night's match, trust me. Note my lovely wife encouraging our son about halfway through.

Rock Out

So can you rock as hard as a 4 year old?

Now, time to get some sleep.

No Plans Weekend

Attempting a relaxing weekend at home. Let's see how that works out. So much work last week and when I'm home my son is literally climbing all over me for attention.
On the work side, I'm getting more comfortable taking more creative risks with what I'm delivering to clients, which is more fun for me. Here's an example:

Bitter Strawberries

So we have a wooden barrel planter at the top of our driveway with a strawberry plant in it. Last year we lost about half the crop to birds, deer and squirrels. So this year we've put a net cover over it, it seems to be working as the first berries are ripening. It's nice to see my son picking the fresh berries and eating them, though I'm not getting many berries for myself. Also, the weather has been great and my son has taken to running off to play with the neighborhood kids. It makes me happy we got his house.

Okay funny story. We were out shopping Sunday and as we arrived at a store I took our son in while my wife got our daughter out of the car. After about 5 minutes in the store, no wife and daughter. So we looked back outside to see the driver's door open, a clear sign of a diaper change in progress. Then my phone started ringing, it was my wife calling for help. My son and I ran out into the parking lot to discover a half changed baby and my wife with splattered poop on her shirt. Apparently she had started changing the diaper after "one push of poop" and was surprised but a stream of projectile poop from the second push. And without the diaper, well, she got sprayed. Nothing I had ever seen or heard of before. On the up side; newborn breastfed baby poop has almost no scent, we had a shirt in the car we were going to return (too small for me, but big enough for the wife) so we had a change of clothes and finally it wasn't me that got sprayed.
On a totally different note, I'm trying to figure something out. I am very busy production-wise right now, but when I see other companies or individuals get work locally it makes me mad. It's not that I need more work right now, but I guess I still want a shot at every job I see. It has made me want to focus on getting production work lined up for the summer, hopefully get a short film done too. Or at least widen my network of contacts so I know more of what's going on around here. It's that or try and pick up some distance editing jobs from NYC. Actually that's not a bad idea either.
More later, should be video posts of completed work next time as I'm going to take tomorrow as a work day.

Establishing a Routine

NOTE: edited to add sound to movie

Well, we're a family of four now and I think that for the time being we're getting a rough schedule worked out. Something that will be blown apart when my wife goes back to work this fall.
But for now I'm back to work, old school. Which means video shoots on nights and weekends and editing during the day. This last weekend it was a Bar Mitzvah where I discovered that today's 13 year olds dance like 5 years olds play soccer, in a big clump that would be much more fun if they knew what they were doing. Speaking of soccer, I'm going to be an assistant coach on my son's team this fall. So I'll be helping the 4 & 5 year olds to not clump so much. And the extra running around should be good for my son, who seems to have extra energy reserves now that we're up to two kids. Here's the second half of the third song in a four song dance routine he did tonight:

Not to be out done, here's his two week (okay 13 day) old sister in one of her daily tummy time sessions:

I have a feeling that my wife and I will really have our hands full in a few months. But for now I'm going to try and get as much work done as possible. I'll post some as pieces are finished.

A Weekend at Home

We had a nice weekend at home. My brother came to visit. He was a great help easing my son over the transition to having his sister at home. That's the on going goal, to establish a stable routine so that everything goes smoothly between the new siblings.
Along those lines it was back to after school play-dates with my son's friends.
Today we went to Iron Kettle Farms. A nice little place that's a very popular source of pumpkins in the fall. In the spring they sell flowers and such, but you can still visit the animals and play on the wooden vehicles. We got "spoken" to twice, once about the kids getting on top of a wooden plane, though that did produce a nice picture. And then for playing with the engineless train. It was on tracks and my son was pushing the other kids around in it. That go the train forklifted away to the barn. But it was still a fun day.
Tomorrow I'm going to try and get some production work done, though my desire to rush back to the SCA is still low, I really want to get back to editing especially with the new computer

Turn down the heat please

Okay, where did this heat wave come from and when's it going away? I was outside Saturday at an SCA event and it totally destroyed me. And seriously dented my confidence about crown tournament. I'm considering calling in sick to work to get in an extra practice this week. Mmm, perhaps not a thought I should post on the internet.
On the production side, the more I work that harder it is to eat well, or perhaps the easier it is to eat poorly. I'm going to try and fix that over then next couple weeks, or at least cut out the fast food. I'd skip the soda to, but I'm tired and as previously mentioned it's too hot for tea. However, here's my first editing project for my newest client:

And finally, here's a quick video of my son and his cousin at the Discovery Center:

Music Video

So last week I got footage for a music video to edit. I cut together two versions. One that was kind of a story, which is what they said they wanted. And a second version which was a hodgepodge of effects with no real theme, just something to give them an idea of what was possible. After review they said they'd like a third video, one with a story but more effects. Like Joey from Friends would say: "Put your hand together."
It's okay though, more work is more billable hours, its just that my schedule is getting full. It's good, but with the baby 2 months away I'm a bit nervous about staying on deadlines. And I might be picking up a new big client, but more on that if it happens so I don't jinx it. When it rains . . . well, if it gets too much I could always hire an assistant.

Anyway, here are the two videos:




And now, my son doing a puppet show for his mommy. It's a little morbid, if you can't understand him the puppets are saying: "You die!", "No, you die!" back and forth.

Turtle Song

Laser Gun Fight

Happy Square Root Day

03.03.09, you only get a couple of these each century. It's also my son's 4th birthday. So, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
The conversations that are sticking with me from the birthday party are the ones about the activities the other kids are involved in. Is 3 too early for ice skating lessons, dance, gymnastics or soccer? The stories you hear about the standouts in most fields involve becoming dedicated at a VERY early age, but on the flip side there's the older brother of one of my son's friends who at 9 has "hung up the skates and retired from hockey." I guess providing the opportunity is okay, as long as you don't push too hard, but then you run the risk of a kid just siting and not participating or getting burned out on an activity that they could be good at later. Tough choices, still I we are thinking about a soccer league for our son this summer / fall.

No pictures or video of party yet.

Poster Contest

So tonight I found this contest on the Internet. It's hard for me to believe that the Simpsons have been on TV for 20 years, makes me feel old.
The weekend was full of birthday stuff for my son, cleaning Friday followed by the party Saturday. It went very well again his year, lots of fun & lots of people. We even had a few neighbors over, which is nice. 4 years in the house and just now having them over. Then Saturday night and Sunday were full of what I can only assume was food poisoning from an egg salad submarine. The up side is that I wasn't sick with anything long lasting and I was the only one who ate the sandwich. The down side was, well the effects of food poisoning. I'll do an actual birthday post tomorrow on the actual birthday.

Fighting Weekend

So Saturday was a full day demo at the Ice Festival in Scranton and Sunday was a regional fighter practice in Syracuse. I don't know how the Ice Festival was, as I spent the entire time fighting at the demo. But my wife and son walked around and they said it was small but the ice sculptures were nice. And I got to be in the local Scranton papers the next day. I've put up one of the picture's here, where I'm giving a flower to a particularly blood thirsty girl. I'd taken (cut off) one of my opponent's arms, so in keeping with SCA convention, he dropped his shield. I asked the crowd if I too should drop my shield, sometimes seen as the chivalrous thing to do, and the little 4 year old girl yelled "Keep your shield", the prudent choice. I won the fight and gave her a fake flower we had to hand out to on lookers. Overall a nice Valentine's Day.
My elbow was killing my Saturday night, but fighting on Sunday seems to have mostly fixed it. That's my second injury a full day of fighting has fixed, the first one being a badly wrenched back a few years ago. I was able to stay on my exercise schedule on Monday, so it looks like just some lingering pain, not a serious impairment.


So yesterday starts the cleaning for my son's birthday party. YEAH! Nothing like a two week cleaning schedule to make things fun. Plus I still need to start the trivia DVD for the party.
And we go a new digital camera over the weekend. To replace the one with the non-functional LCD screen. And I got to try it out last night when my son started putting stickers on my wife's back while she was watching TV. After a few pictures I tried to test out the video function and got the following reaction: he says "Don't do a video of me" then takes the camera and puts it back in it's case. I'd already started the recording though, so here's what I got:

Aftermath of new electronics

So the new television yielded a BIG box and a TON of packing foam, formed into pieces not the loose peanut variety. My son has just about gotten all of the fun out of them, without passing the excessive mess line. I took some video of him and discovered that the LCD on the back of the digital camera is cracked and nonfunctional. So I shot the movies with a kind of point and hope approach. Time for a new camera, because I'll be shocked if you can replace teh LCD screen for less than buying a new camera.
Day 1 - short video:

Day 2 - LONG video

New TV

My new television showed up on Friday. Of course working 33 hours over the weekend resulted in little time to enjoy it. But yesterday my son and I spent a little time relaxing on the couch and watching the new television. It's great, like being at a movie theater. Now I just need to finish hooking up the speakers and I'll be set.
I started training for crown, and discovered I'm much farther from in fighting shape that I though I was. I went to a large tournament in New Hampshire a few weeks ago and my endurance was okay, but I'm not sure I was doing as well as I need to against the top level of fighters. And that's who (in theory) I'll need to beat to win crown. Well, there's an event at the end of March in New Jersey that I think I will use as my next benchmark.
On a work note, I may have a line on a job running camera for a local minor league baseball team over the summer, but I'm not sure how that will work with my SCA plans. Winning crown comes with certain implied responsibilities, one of which is activity level. More production work is more money, which is good, but with a new baby scheduling may be difficult, after my wife's maternity leave is over that is. And I'd really like to get into running camera for sports teams, but baseball games are all the time and I think it's the weekday afternoon games that will end up giving me problems. I wonder if they have a cameraman rotation, or if they expect you for every game. I guess I'll try and get the job and then find out.
I'm sure everything will work out, I guess I just want too many things and I'm not really willing to choose which one to give up on. It's very disressing, like trying to walk around with 3-D glasses on.

Superbowl

Superbowl was great. Full day of fun & games with another great championship game. The end was a bit disappointing. I am a proponent of "if you need a last second play to win, then you had other problems", like not being able to stop a three man rush from getting to your quarterback in the Superbowl. But the game as a whole was great, and like last year really picked up in the second half. Here's my son at halftime:

I'm going to try and do an SCA update later this week, but I've got an all weekend job I've got to prep from so we'll see.

You want how much for that?

Okay, so I was putting aside money to get a new TV. Our 10 year old CRT is showing all the signs of being about to die. Well, the only retailer locally that sells the TV I want is Circuit City. And, assuming you're not living under a rock, you will have heard that Circuit City has gone into liquidation. So I figured I should stop by this morning and see what the situation looked like. It looked like this: Price of the TV goes up 11.7% and then there's a 10% discount. So the price has gone up due to liquidation, as was to be expected. Plus there was a HUGE line of people there to take advantage of the "deals". My reaction was to go home, find a good on-line retailer and buy the TV for 25% off the original price. Perhaps I'll spend my savings on a Blue-Ray player.

Today is the NFC and AFC championship games, and the time at home watching the games turned into cleaning up the last of the holiday decorations hanging around the house which turned into this:

I don't think that he's completely come down from the high of christmas presents. Well, 38 days until his birthday party and he picked out the theme today: Transformers (huge surprise there). I guess I should start thinking about the trivia DVD soon. Mostly thinking up the questions and drawing out the flow chart for how the game will work. I have some improvements in mind from last year, though that game did work pretty well.

Finally, here's a video of my son playing a puzzle game on the PBS kids web site. He's getting quite good at using the touch pad. Perhaps I should think about getting him a little mac book that he can fill up with his movies and such. You know, so that he's not tying up my editing laptop. Though my wife would most likely be fairly mad if the 3 year old got a laptop before she does.

That's all for now, and it looks like an Arizona vs. Pitsburgh Superbowl in two weeks (interpection returned for touchdown in the 4th quarter).

Why is the snow burning my face?

So we went sledding yesterday. The first pass was not so much fun or my son. Here's a picture of us before our first run. It's how we went sledding in our backyard last year. But this time we went to a bigger hill and there was fresh powder, the result was a lot snow spraying up in his face. He was very unhappy about it. So the second run, I went down by myself, face first in the sled. No snow in my face, so my son wanted to tray again that way, with horrible results as can be seen in this video.

At this point my son was ready to go home, but I talked in him to one more run, with me sitting in front to black the snow. This went much better and we ended up sledding for about half an hour, or until he was to tired to walk up the hill and I was to tired to carry him up. After we got home we ended up playing outside with the neighbor kids. Then coming inside for some Sunday football. We put on our jerseys, my son's is a Dolphins jersey (#23 RB Ronnie Brown) that was an early christmas present from nana and papa and mine is my jersey from high school.

On a football note I have just discovered that all the Sunday night games on NBC and all the Thursday games on the NFL Network are simultaneously broadcast on the internet. That's right, at the same time. Actually the internet broadcast is better, because it will let you cut between 5 different camera shots of the game. What I want to know is why nobody told be about this earlier. I could have been watching lots more football. Well, at least I got to see a good game last night (good being defined by an exciting finish and the Panthers loosing).

Well, more later. As we're down to 3 days until Santa.

Winter Wonderland

Well, just in time we're getting some good snow for christmas. And it looks like its going to stay cold enough for it to stick. Maybe some sledding tomorrow. The holiday festivities are beginning, my wife's brother and his family visited today (more on that later), we went to a christmas party hosted by one of my wife's colleges and we finally got pictures for our holiday cards done (so late that they're going to be New Year's cards this year).
So now it's time for a cozy night at home with some sort of mini-marathon of television shows.

Finally, I was impressed by my son's restrain today. With the visit of my brother-in-law's family we did a mini-present exchange. And though he did ask if he could continue opening the rest of his presents under the tree, only had to be told once that we were waiting until christmas day to open the rest of our presents. That being said, he has also developed his own victory dance. It's funny but also vaguely taunting with it's usual accompaniment of either "See I told you. I was right, Uh huh, uh huh, huh huh." or "I beat you, I win. Uh huh, uh huh, huh huh." Here's two movies one with him celebrating making it trough a snow tunnel (no taunting on that one) and one after winning the race upstairs at bedtime (some taunting on that one):