Christmas with a little girl

Firsts are always special. This isn't technically a "first" because it's, well, a second, but it's a first where Alice isn't just sleeping through everything. Holidays are more interesting now. I'm sure that they will only continue to be.

Alice seems trained now to get up at 6 am which isn't great when it's a weekend. I'm sure that will wear off in like 10 or 15 years, but until then I guess we'll just have to deal with it. However until then it means that we'll have xmas stocking opening pictures where I look like I've been run over with a truck. The below shot is actually the best one - my eyes aren't half closed. I'm enjoying this new normal. ;-)

Alice discovers oranges in the giant sock!

Having fun growing up

I keep on thinking how awesome things are right now. Alice engages us all the time. Sometimes she's sneaky, but most of the time she's just having fun with us. She's constantly parroting new words which means that we really have to watch out what we say around her. But what gets me the most is that she seems to understand a lot of what's going on. She looks were sounds come from. When you say words of things she looks for the object. And the other day she started to use the word "more" (sounds like Mmmmm-or) in a non-food context. She wanted us to keep singing. Which sadly means she's tone deaf like the rest of us.

I no longer need to make elaborate scenarios of what's she's thinking because she's actually communicating it. Not super well of course, but it's a lot better than before. She's started on her most important developmental stage: playing with lego. Maybe "playing" is a bit of a generous description here. She's quite adapt at taking the duplo towers we build for her apart or knocking them over.

Physically she's standing and she keeps on teasing us that she'll walk. Then she changes her mind and crawls, but I'm not encouraging walking. I'm having a hard enough time keeping up as it is. Other than that the biggie is that she's actually got hair. Not blond fuzz like before, but something we can put into shapes to amuse ourselves, because that's really the important part. Fun fun.

Not looking over the edge

I was shocked to hear the news the other day of the school shooting. I know what's happened. I've read the stories. I feel that I've blocked it out. I've tried not to think about it. It's such a nightmare that I don't want to open myself emotionally to it. It's like I know that I'm at a great height and would poop my pants if I looked down. But that's not going to help the situation so I'm just not going to look down. I know that I am protecting myself from it, from feeling. But I feel guilty about not feeling (if that makes any sense).

It's just a nightmare.

I want all the toys. Just not enough to buy them.

It's very confusing. I want to have all the toys. I want the latest gadgets. The home automation. The blinky boo things in the car. The super camera. The thing is I don't want to pay for it all.

Today we moved my brother-in-law and his girl friend into their new house. It's a new house that's got fiber into the house, each room having at least one "network" wall plate with cable and I think at least 4 lan drops. Awesome. And that's not even talking about the wireless or VoIP systems. I would love to have that. It's just not worth it to me to retrofit our 50+ year old house to do that. It wouldn't even be too bad to run CAT5 (or cat6? Whatever the kids are using these days...) around the house since wireless works "well enough".

So being cheap, or frugal, or smart, or dumb, I buy something that's "good enough" all the time. I'm typing away on my 5+ year old low end macbook. Do I want a new shinny laptop? Of course. But this one is working well enough for what I use it for. Do I want to replace our entry level DSLR with something like a D600? Sure. Do I want to drop the 3k for a new body and full frame lenses? Not right now. Maybe some day. Maybe never. The longer I can hold out buying a tech toy, the more bang for my buck I can get.

Even then I think about what I need. It's not really much when you think about it. I need food. Shelter. To be healthy and have the ones I love be healthy. I need time to spend with those loved ones. When you reduce things to that level it helps clarify what exactly those other things can be. A distraction.

Exchanging electrons for physical tokens in order to get electrons

It's funny how the world always seems a bit slow to get caught up to what makes sense now. For instance we want to buy someone a book for Christmas, but we don't know which one. So we would get them a gift certificate. But they don't read physical books anymore. And we don't pay for things with physical cash - we charge it.

So the situation would go like this:

1. Using an electric transaction purchase a physical gift card at a physical store
2. Give gift
3. Copy gift card number into computer to add credit to ebook account
4. Purchase books
5. Throw away card

The only physical part would be having a plastic card to hand to someone just to show "look, I'm giving you something". But it's supposed to be the thought that counts right? You're not supposed to be showing "This is what I gave person X. Be in awe!!"

This is clearly dumb and a waste of time. But it didn't occur to me or Laura before going shopping tonight that there was any other way. "Of course a gift card has to be physical! How else could you add credit to your electronic account... wait..."

Eventually our brains and society will catch up to what we've been capable of for many years now.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

This was my last post on my old blog.

This is goodbye. This is the last post to beernut.ca. I've moved everything over to blogger under the blog j-i-m-s.blogspot.ca. The first post was written by a very different Jim than this last one. There have been weddings, funerals and births. Life has gone on and I've been riding the wave. I'll still be surfing, just at a different beach.

Thank you for reading.

Moving from Movable Type to Blogger

It's been a long time at beernut but it's time to move on. Close to 1300 posts and a decade of thoughts, rants and memories. I'm going to be porting my posts into here using some helpful advice but I've got to do a bit of cleanup first. It's been a long time without any real html validation and I want to make sure that I port clean stuff in. I'd also like to change all the self referencing links to this new home, but that's going to take a bit I think.

I'm both sad and happy about the move.

Should I say or should I go now?

I keep on debating about moving this blog. Closing the door, putting up a sign with "forward mail to...". I like writing a blog. I don't like mucking around with the markup, or thinking about backups, or deleting spam. I hate blog spam and I get it all the time. It's getting sneakier too.

Every time I check my blog it makes me think of Ryan. It makes me sad. He's been gone just over 3 years now and the feelings aren't as sharp anymore, but they are still there.

Blogger has an import function, but I think that it's more of a "export from blogger, to blogger" process. I'd have to look into it. I feel the days that I'm posting to this site are numbered.

Sunrise. Sunset.

Q: Light speed, too slow? A: Yes, we're gonna have to go right to ludicrous book speed.

I enjoy a good book now and again. I don't feel that I read them that quickly but sometimes I surprise myself. I find it harder to tell with digital books because it's missing the heft and visual clue that tells you "yes, this is a lot of words".

I bought a bundle of books which included Old Man's War. I enjoyed it. A couple of weeks later I bought the sequel on a Sunday. I finished it on Tuesday. Hum. Well, it must not have been too long a book. A couple of weeks later I bought the third book on a Saturday. Again, finished it on Tuesday.

I was starting to feel that I wasn't getting my money's worth. Then I checked how many pages those books have - 384 and 336 pages respectfully. Well then. Maybe I read faster than I thought. This is perhaps how I went through The Wise Man's Fear in a week.

This is why I'm considering becoming a member of Worldcon just so that I can get the Hugo voter packet. Good books, cheap, in electronic format. What wouldn't be to like?

Auto go away

I have a gmail account that I got back when it was really hard to get an invite. Waaaay back. Like the summer of 2004. So I have a nice and simple username. Which makes anyone afterwards with a similar name to me get a similar email account. Which means I get that person's emails sometimes. Most of the time it's a quick reply with "sorry, you've got the wrong person. Remove me from your address book. Best of luck". Most of the time.

I keep on getting emails from people at Virginia Tech. An email to several people, including one that gets into my account. So I reply-all right away with my standard-ish message. Then someone replies continuing the original conversation... to my message. And there is another reply. Anger level increases. They are now wasting my time. I like being helpful, but only to a point.

What do I do for things that annoy me? I try to automate it. Apparently with google labs you can auto reply based on a filter with a canned response. So, I set up a filter for anyone from @vt.edu going to the wrong email (same every time). They get a custom response and the email gets deleted.

Boo freaking ya.

Where have I been, #5

Time for an update of the places I've been before I forget. Other places are tracked in #1, #2, #3, and #4.

Places in western Canada including:
Banff
Jasper
Columbia Icefield
Field, BC
Radium, BC
Calgary

In Australia we went to:
Sydney
Cairns
Melbourne
Phillip Island
Torquay
Apollo Bay
Warrnambool
Katoomba

Now I will leave you with a couple of pictures from those trips.

The new normal

Now we are both back at work we have a new normal. It's a very different schedule than we had 13 months ago. I no longer wander into work at the crack of 10. Now I'm there at ungodly o'clock. I'm sure it'd be an okay time to be at work if I lived in Lisbon, but you know... I don't. I no longer stay at work hours after everyone else has gone home. I have an alarm on my phone that rings, and I leave work. But I have not really had to use the alarm because I've been watching the clock for the last hour.

I want to go home. I want to see my little girl. It's not only that, but now I have to be going home so that I can pick her up. No dragging my heals and doing "one last thing". When it's time to go home, I leave. This is new to me. I've not worked this way since... well, ever.

New topic.

Now that it's getting colder it's even more of a challenge to get out of the house. It was easier when she was small. Bundle her into the bucket car seat (where it's warm), dash to the car, click it on, zoom!! Well, at the time it didn't feel like "zoom", but compared to now it does. I have a theory that car seats are designed so that you're never 100% sure you've done it right. I keep on checking, adjusting, fiddling. Even going for walks can be a challenge. At least right now she's not good at fighting us too much.

I think that I'm blathering so I'm going to stop, but not before I leave you with a pic.

Stupid waste of time - code comment formatting

I'm pretty pissed off. I was ranted at today over something that I find stupid and a waste of my time - the formatting of code comments. We use eclipse and use the code formatter and "save actions" so people don't have to waste their time doing something that the IDE can do for them automatically. The behaviour in question is that the person would spend (apparently) a lot of time formatting their comment with indents and when the save actions would kick in they would lose all of this formatting.

I typically use the // style of comments, even for multiline comments. Why? Because it's easy with ctrl-shift-c. Boom, it's done. The other person insists that they use the /* */ style comments. Why? Because that's what they've done for 15 years. And they told me that there was nothing that I can say to change their mind. I, and the other 40 developers, had to change how we do things. Quoting years of doing something a given way as a reason for continuing to do it is a really shitty reason. It's a wonder how we as a species ever moved out of the trees or caves.

Now, I was pretty ticked at this point. Why? A number of reasons, but # 1 being that they didn't even want to discuss things. It was black and white in their head. End of story. Full stop. (I don't think that they actually said this, but that's what it felt like.) Aside: if someone says "end of story, full stop" it usually means that they are 1) a jackass and 2) wrong.

The best part about the whole thing? Perhaps the only good thing actually: I learned something new about java today. I learned that if you do slash star dash like: /*- NOTICE THE DASH! */ it will keep the indents. Who knew you were supposed to write java code like that? Apparently Sun / Oracle.

So, here I am probably like 10 hours later still pissed off. Still wasting my time thinking about it. Which pisses me off. Loop.

I love helping people, but gods people help yourselves first. It's fine to come to with a problem. Ideally come with proposed solutions. Come to rant, but not to rant at me. But don't come to me with a closed mind. I can't fix that.

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes

Well it's been (almost) a whole year. Been barfed on, peed on, pooped on (I think, but I think that I've repressed that memory). Been smiled at. Laughed with. Punched in the eye. Made to look at things totally differently - mostly from the floor level. Had a blast.

It's been a very good year.

It's like a very long cat...

I love analogies. I usually explain concepts using them. I find them fun. Today at work I listened to someone a handful of levels above me say that "We will move to IPv6. For the upgrade we just have to add more numbers to the IP address". My instant reaction was one of ridicule. Then I paused. And then I thought that it was a good enough analogy for the level that person needs to speak at. Of course it's way more complicated than that, both the concept, tech, and the transition. But if the problem is we're running out of addresses globally, we need to move to something with more addresses. Like 10 digit dialing for phones from the 7 digit.

It's still not as good as the quote that's attributed to Albert Einstein:

You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.

Is the simplistic explanation almost nothing like the problem and solution? Yes. Is it good enough for the current purposes? Yes as well. Sometimes you have to dumb it down until there is no cat.

I've got 99 inconveniences but a baby ain't one

This last 12 months has been very difficult for a lot of people that I know: friends, family, acquaintances or even friends of friends (and thus my friends are going through a difficult "support role"). It's been hard for a lot of people.

When I think about our problems they pale compared to the things that these people are going through. So much so that I realized that I don't have problems, but inconveniences. Hell, I don't even have 99 of them. I find it helps keep my blood pressure down when I think about that. It makes me feel lucky. It makes me want to reach out to the people that we know to give a helping hand. Some times we can't even do that, but we can be there to listen. It might not be enough, but it's something.

In the times in between I'll just continue to play in our tent.

Java dark arts

Even though I've been using java for a long time now, it still astounds me that there is so much that I don't know. Some of it feels like dark arts to me - the kind of thing that would raise mental red flags if I saw a co-worker doing it.

Like for instance, today I learned (or relearned?) that you can write a custom annotation processor in java. It doesn't seem too useful until you get to part 3 where they do compile time code generation using velocity as the templating engine. This is the kind of thing that's really neat; I hope I never need to know it; but I try to commit it to memory because I'm pretty sure that I'm going to be called in at some point to help someone that thought that this "oh golly that's really neat" and now they've mucked up their project six ways to Sunday.

Why can't people just make things as simple as possible, but not simpler?

Need vs Want

It's weird struggling with a simple concept: need vs want. And not just physical consumer stuff either, but like "Do I need to be a better photographer, or just want it?" Once you figure out need vs want you can prioritize all kinds of things. "Do I need that second cookie, or just want it?".

The hard part is that "need" is usually stuff that you don't want to do, like change the car into snow tires or do the dishes, while "want" is something fun or interesting like reading a good book. Well, those are examples for me. Maybe you're really into changing tires. I'm not.

I find it difficult to categorize tasks or stuff because, if you're being honest with yourself, you realize that a lot of stuff that you were planning on doing was just a "want" and has now taken a back seat to the needs. Which sucks. No one wants to spend their time doing unfun stuff. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go read my book about spaceships.

What are words?

People talk about children's first words. The way that I understood it is that the word would be pretty clear. Thinking about that, that was a stupid assumption. Alice has been signing for a while. Are those her first words? She's also been saying "uh oh" for maybe a month now. Usually when she throws something on the floor, drops something, or fills her pants. So, a word (phrase?) in context. Is that her first word? Lately she's been saying "baah" and signing book when she sees a book. So, closer to an actual word sound and in context. I don't think that anyone else would be able to recognize it because of her thick baby accent. Is that her first word?

After the first milestones like "can sit up themselves" I assumed that they would continue to be easily identifiable but I feel like I'm in the national art gallery and trying to find the work of art that defines the post-renaissance contempt for impressionism. In other words I don't have any idea and I could go right by it without even realizing it.

Eleven Twelfths

We're getting close. We're just one month away from no longer telling other children that Alice is "zero years old". I don't really understand where the days went. I look at the pictures and I'm like "Hey, I remember that! I was there!". She's changed so much, but... somehow... she looks the same to me. Is that weird? Normal probably, but still weird.

It's been fun, but my heart still twinges each morning when I go into work. Some days are easier than others. Every work day now feels like a race to be done in order to be home and maybe enjoy some sunlight before it's dark. Soon I'll have to come home at 1 pm for that to happen, so we'll just have to turn on all the lights in the house and pretend.


Hope you enjoyed the unicorn chaser.

Exceptionally stupid

This is a rant post. About tech stuff. Angry. You've been warned.

One of the things that people don't seem to understand in programming is exceptions. Some you need to deal with. Some you need to fail as soon as you can and let the issue bubble up the stack until some over all wrapper code deals with it.

For example, if you're testing input from a user to make sure that it's a number, you might try to convert it to the number and if it doesn't work, you can assume that what they entered isn't a proper number. Simple.

Other things like the disk being gone, the db down (for a db driven app), or, you know, your language not understanding utf-8: Fail early. Fail fast. I flagged something in a code review today and it turned into a 15 minute discussion / argument for something that was the least of the problems with the code.

The code in question was along the following lines by doing some processing on a string:

try {
byte[] utf8Bytes = myString.getBytes("UTF8");
}
catch (Exception e) {
// just return the original
return myString;
}

Now, one the code was littered with "catch exception" everywhere, which just drives me batty, but that is a different rant. My issue was that if java you are using doesn't understand utf-8, then perhaps that would be an exceptional case. Rather than trying to deal with that issue or letting UnsupportedEncodingException bubble up, just wrap the exception in a RuntimeException and be done with it.

When an exceptional case happens, let the exception happen.

People writing code to protect against a future case and things that might happen one day drive me insane. And not the good insane either. Oh no.

*sigh* I think that there might be a reason why they put us in small rooms with padded walls at work.

New toys and continual frustrations

I used some birthday money and bought a new toy the other day - a Gary Fong Lightsphere Collapsible Basic Kit. It was more money than I wanted to pay for a bit of plastic, but with the amount of indoor photography I've been doing it would help a bit. Today I used it for some outdoor photos. You can't do bounce flash when outside no matter how shinny the leaves are. I still need more practice and I'm not 100% sold on using the amber done - at least not with auto white balance. The biggest trouble I have is trying to fit the domes into the "lightsphere" cone thingy. I have not figured out a way to do it in under 10 minutes so far. I'm sure that there is a trick, I just don't know it yet.

Points of interest

Looking at the last bunch of posts have all been about my new family. I have not blogged about work or tech for quite a while. I could talk about the cool stuff we're doing at work like finally moving from JEE 1.4 to JEE 6. How we're going to jump 2 major versions of java. How we are abandoning our planned migration to svn and just go straight to git. Or I could talk about biking and my routes to work. The construction in our area. Or our need to get a second vehicle which will most likely be a van. I could talk about my interest in photography and the different techniques that I've been trying. I could talk about the works of fiction that I've been reading - sometimes a couple of books a week. The likes of Redshirts, World War Z, The Big Bang Bundle, the the Humble eBook Bundle, or the first 2 books of The Kingkiller Chronicle (excellent books).

Like I said. I could blog about those. But I use this blog for the things that bounce around in my head. The things that occupy my in-between moments like brushing my teeth, standing in line to order coffee, or making dinner. And for the most part that's family.

Our family.

Dealing with the bumps

Yesterday we went to one of those local farms to do the "picture of the baby in a pumpkin patch". You know, something that no one has done before. I learned a couple of things from this experience:

1) Farms might not be the best for a huge pile of pumpkins. Might be better to stop at a roadside thing where people are selling pumpkins and plop the kid into the pile. The local mega-grocery store even has a huge pile out front.

2) Llamas around here don't have cool ear decorations like they do in Peru.


3) Just because you plan something, doesn't mean that it will work out. Alice really wasn't feeling the moment. Based on the crappy night and fever last night, I'm sure she wasn't feeling physically well at the time either.

Is it wrong that this is my favourite picture from our visit?

Who's Your Daddy?

Tonight was special. At the end of dinner Laura said that Alice knows my name. I have a hard time figuring that out because if you talk to a baby, do they look at you because they understand what you said or because you're talking. I said that I didn't think that she knew my name. Laura said "of course she knows your name" and asked Alice where daddy was. She looked up and right into my eyes.

She knows who I am.

This is a good memory.

I have to admit that at that moment some dust flew into my eye and made them water. I had to blink a couple of times to see again. After helping to take care of someone for 10+ months it feels amazing that she knows my name. Well, my new name. It was unexpected to happen tonight. You don't expect to get any feedback other than crying. Then you get smiles. Then arm waving. Then you see the understanding in the eyes. Then this.

I think that I'm going to melt into the floor the first time she runs over and hugs me.

Update: based on Laura's comment here are the more relevant pictures to me being a daddy.

Full circle

It's weird. After close to 10 years I'm sitting in the same area that I had been as a co-op. I've been in a different buildings, different offices, but now I'm back. The floor has been totally redone, so it does not resemble the place where I had been a co-op. But it is.

So much has happened. Births. Deaths. Travel. Weddings. Funerals. Time.

Nothing has stayed the same, but it's like everything has stayed the same. Very weird.

Facial recognition lock in 3... 2... 1...

Things are good. I still would rather be at home playing all day with my girls, but work is fine. The thing that I'm having a hard time not doing is going as fast as I can on my bike ride home. Because I know what happens when I walk in the door: Alice sees my face and there's that moment when she's trying to figure out where she knows me from. Then the whole world lights up. Those blue eyes. That two tooth smile. I melt. Any thoughts of work, worries, or frustrations evaporate away. Maybe just for a minute or two, but for that time it's just me and my girls. Bliss.

2^5

It's not often you have a birthday that's a power of two. Looking back at the Jim that was half my age, I didn't have a clue what I wanted to be, where, or any other details. I don't think that there's really any way that I could have predicted where I am today even if I wanted to. I don't think that I'll be able to figure out those details for when I double my age again. Maybe by then we'll all have self driven cars and things will be so different than they are today. Hopefully for the better.

I'm looking at my family tonight and wondering what adventures we'll have the next time I cross a power of two. I can only hope that we'll meet those challenges wearing silly hats. Because... you know... silly hats are fun.

Signs of the times

For quite a while we've been trying to do baby sign language when dealing with Alice. Simple things like: up, finished, milk, bath, change diaper, mommy, daddy, and "divert more power to the starboard thrusters". You know, the usual. At first we were quite good at it. We'd sign like talking was going out of style. Nothing back from her. Eventually she started to recognize the signs and take action. Like for "up", she'd lift her arms to make it easier to pick her up. But she didn't sign back to us.

Until this week.

At breakfast she signed "finished". We thought that it might have been a fluke. But since then she's been making the sign when she's done eating in her highchair. It's pretty exciting to be able to not have to interpret just grunts, waving of arms, and different cries in some weird version of charades. Hopefully she'll pick up more signs as we go. Clear communication is always nice because it'll take the guesswork out of it, which will reduce everyone's stress.

The Story of the Craftsman

There once was a construction company that build homes and other buildings. They hired skilled craftsmen (and women, but we're calling them all craftsmen) to do the work. These people had been told that they'd be building homes built on the latest designs, using the best materials, in order to build peoples dream homes for a reasonable price.

The craftsmen were told that the company would provide all the tools in order to ensure a consistent quality. The workers requested pneumatic nail guns since that allow them to go as quickly as possible. The request went to the hardware store were the clerk insisted most of their sales were for tac hammers. Clearly tac hammers are all that are required, so those were purchased. The craftsmen protested - this would take them 10x as long and would cause much frustration. Craftsmen, like all skilled labour, like to feel that they are working at the best of their ability with the appropriate tools. A tac hammer is clearly not a valid replacement for an air hammer.

Ah, but the management of the company said that the tac hammers make perfect sense. If their paid more money for the faster tools, it would be out of the company budget. This would save time, and therefore money, but only what was billed to the customers. So it wasn't in the companies best interest to ensure the craftsmen have the proper tools.

The craftsmen promised that they would pay for their own tools if they were allowed to bring them into work. Alas the company's management stated that would be against policy. I mean, if the craftsmen brought in their own tools, how would that look? People would start to think that the company wasn't able to provide the proper resources to do the job.

Partners take turns

Before we were married, yet living together, I'd often refer to Laura as "my partner". It felt like the right thing to do at the time, because that's how I saw our relationship - as a partnership. You know, working together and all that crap.

Now that we have a kid, I feel that idea carries even more meaning. We have to work together better than we did before. Taking turns is required. Turns feeding Alice. Turns eating. Turns going to the bathroom. Turns changing Alice. Turns going for a bike ride. Turns, turns, turns. I don't understand how that would work if you weren't partners. It can be hard enough to make it work even if you are.

Well, most things require you to take turns. I think now we'll all go for a nap. Because as they say, the family that naps together, sleeps all at the same time. Or something like that.

Fun fun

I've only been back at work for a couple of weeks and changes with Alice seem like they are accelerating. Luckily I get updates, including pictures, of what's going on at home. She can now stand up by herself without pulling herself up. All she needs is a wall or something similar. It's only a matter of time before she figures out that she doesn't need a wall. A tooth has also come in, as evidence by the scrape marks on the end of the crib. I think that she's starting to understand waving, which is pretty cool.

The other day we were looking at photos from her birth and it almost seems inconceivable that she was so small. Each stage seems so exciting with "quickly! Come see what she can do!". I can't wait until I can sit down with her and we can play imagination together - like tea time or using a time machine / space ship.

She is a really good kid (so far) and doesn't get into too much trouble. She's patient with us when we're preparing her food, as long as it's clear that we've understood her request. It's really good. I'm a bit sad every day when I leave to go to work, but it's getting easier. Both of my girls are making it easier. Now if I can just get Laura to greet me with a drink and my bubble pipe when I get home...

Java find files for a given extension, recursively

In a bit of code I was doing I wanted to run without depending on any external libraries. The trouble that I had was that I was using commons-io.

The problem was given a directory, find all jar files recursively. Commons IO solution:

Collection<File> jarFiles = FileUtils.listFiles(new File(root), new String[]{"jar"}, true);

Simple and clean. How would I do this in java? Wait a second, I'm using java 7 which has improvements to the IO. You know, called New IO 2, or NIO2. This will probably be even easier is what I thought. Well, below is the solution that I came up with after looking at many different blogs.

final Collection<File> jarFiles = new ArrayList<File>();

final PathMatcher matcher = FileSystems.getDefault().getPathMatcher("glob:**/*.jar");
Files.walkFileTree(Paths.get(root), new SimpleFileVisitor<Path>() {

@Override
public FileVisitResult visitFile(Path file, BasicFileAttributes attrs) throws IOException {
if (matcher.matches(file)) {
jarFiles.add(file.toFile());
}
return FileVisitResult.CONTINUE;
}

@Override
public FileVisitResult visitFileFailed(Path file, IOException exc) throws IOException {
return FileVisitResult.CONTINUE;
}
});

Close to 20 lines. Yuck. To be fair, it is super powerful with what kinds of different things that you do do with it, not just looking at the extensions, but man oh man is that a whole bunch of ugly. Why with java do you always have to use heaps of libraries and frameworks to get anything that even starts to look clean and tight?

First week back at work

This was my first week back at work since Alice was born. It was the longest time I've had off from school or work since I started kindergarten oh so long ago. Work funnily enough is pretty close to the way that it was before I left. Some things changed, most didn't. New people are there, so old ones have returned. I've actually found it easier to get back into it compared to being off for a couple of weeks. There's been no "catch up", everything is pretty much fresh. That part has been good.

It's hard every day to say "bye bye" to my girls. I usually start to get bummed out in the early afternoon. The Monday was the longest that I had spent away from them since Alice was born. It's strange, but it's a new reality. Would I rather figure out a way to be paid to be full time at home with everyone? Yes. In a heartbeat I'd take that choice, at least when there are young ones at home. I've now answered a question pretty definitely for myself - I will be okay with retirement... anytime now. *cough* freedom thirty *cough*

This is the start of things becoming more difficult - as Laura goes back to work, as Alice starts daycare, etc. I think that we'll do okay and be able to deal with issues as they come up.

It was nine months more than I had ever hoped to be off and it was great.

Observing the universe from your spaceship

On boingboing they have a post about someone who makes rocketships from metal and glass. I agree with one of the comments - the picture of the first one ship with a single chair in a room of mostly glass is how a spaceship should be.

The enlarged pictures on the artist's site help you really imagine being on a ship like that. Being able to step inside a ship that could take you to any place, or time, and just watch the universe unfold. I can't think of a better form of entertainment than that, nor a greater source of wonder.

12 weeks

I was talking to my cousin from Toronto and she was telling me that her decision to work from home means that she gets the equivalent of 12 40-hour weeks of time since she no longer commutes. That sounded ridiculous to me, so I had to redo the math.

Looking at some random websites, they say there is 250 working days a year. Take off 10 fed holidays, and 15 days (3 weeks) of holidays, that works out to 225 days per year. 12 weeks * 40 hours / week gives 480 hours. 480 hours / 225 days gives a total commuting time per day of 2.1333 hours per day, or 64 minutes per direction.

That's sad.

Let's go the other way. When I was going to school downtown, at best my commute was 48 minutes. When I starting driving the whole way it was closer (or more) than an hour each way. Worst time was during a snowstorm and it was 2 hours one way. Assume the same number of working days, 48 minutes per way works out to 1.6 hours / day which gives us... 9 weeks per year as a lower bound. Just commuting.

These days I bike or take the bus to work. Both usually take 20 minutes, although the bus can take much longer if there is traffic. Assuming that I work 5 days a week, that works out to 3.75 weeks per year. I actually work compressed (I work longer per day, taking every other Friday off), so let's reduce the number of working days from 225 to 200. That drops the number to 3.33 weeks per year.

Looking at the stats for average salaries, let's assume that people are working for 60k $ / year. 12 weeks of time works out to 13846.15 $ / year. Let's say you are making 100k $ / year, that works out to 23076.92 $ / year. Redoing that calculation for 3.75 weeks / year gives me 4326.92 (for 60k) or 7211.53 (for 100k). Interesting numbers, but made up numbers.

If you consider your commute to be "your time" and you value it at practically zero these numbers don't really make sense. If you consider a commute to be unpaid employer time, well that sucks and here are some numbers about that.

Sometimes it's just fun to do some back-of-the-envelope calculations.

All Good Things...

This is my last week off before going back to work. Alice is crawling around, pulling herself up on things and doing some minor "cruising" of the furniture. I am going to miss being at home to witness all the developments. I'm honestly a bit sad, but the time off is still far more than I ever expected or hoped for. It's okay to be sad when something great ends, even if you didn't expect it in the first place.

I'm not sure how this whole "working" thing is going to go schedule wise. Everyone else figures it out, so I don't think that it will be too difficult to figure out. If I can handle it without requiring copious amounts of coffee, I think that I'll try to shift my working times earlier in the day so that I have a hope of getting home early enough to play with her before going to bed.

In the last couple of weeks I've been trying to totally repaint (ceiling, walls, trim) 2 bedrooms and rip up the carpet. It's funny when you have nine months to do something and then it comes down to the "deadline" and I still don't think that I'll get it done before going back to work. What would I rather do: paint a room or play with my daughter on the floor?

Good Great times.

How to catch a nap

We read Alice stories a lot. Every time before going for a nap, bed time, or even just because. We have some of the standards from Dr. Seuss and Sandra Boynton. We also have some others that we've discovered that I, uhh, I mean Alice, enjoys.

I read How to catch a star by Oliver Jeffers at least once a day. Usually around 3 times a day. I think that it's a good length, interesting story, and most important is that it has a space ship. Every good story has a space ship in it.

The second lesser known book (to me) was Big Bear Hug by Nicholas Oldland. Funny, nice art, and lots of room to "tweak" the story as I go. The only issue right now is that we have a non-board version of the book which means I have to hold it really far away while still making sure Alice doesn't decide to jump off my lap or rip off my mustache. As little girls and monkeys are known to do.

Good books.

How to train your Giant

Something that I find interesting about having a baby is how well she is at communicating, and how bad we are at actually understanding her. From early on she had different cries. The "I'm wet" started as an "Excuse me sir, I've seemed to have soiled myself" with reminders increasing over time. The hungry cry wasn't as fun because it was a constant "Feed me NOOOOOWWWWWWW!!!".

Now just over 8 months she's communicating physically as well. Sitting up and waving her arms when she wants to be picked up. Smiling and otherwise being cute when she's trying to get something (food usually). Different sounds / cries for different things of course. In addition to that she can anticipate what we are about to do and protest when we start to do it. Like if we are walking over to her exersaucer or crib or to play on the floor and that's not what she wants she clearly lets us know. For some reason when she wants to be changed she desperately wants to be held by her mom. Good baby.

We don't always pick up the signs right away. Sometimes because the meaning changes, sometimes because we're sleepy or just not in the right head space. Those times our baby looks frustrated. I'm sure she's thinking "How can these giants not understand me? They must be really slow!". I'm sure that's the root of "stupid giants" in old fables and not so old ones like Harry Potter. A subconscious memory from when we were babies and were having troubles training our own giants. It's funny: when you'd think that she's learning the most she's also having the most challenging time teaching.

Is cloth diapering worth it?

We bought cloth diapers. If you search around, it's supposed to be all rah rah rah cloth diapers are the best. Save money! Save the whales! etc. So, when Alice was about a month old we went out and got 24 fuzzibunz "one size". It's pretty close to a disposable diaper, but less garbage and more laundry. My feeling of cloth vs disposable is pretty neutral. I'd like to know the costs of using cloth, but most sites seem to have a bias so I don't trust them.

If you look at the cost factors, it can be pretty complicated. For disposable you've got the cost of diapers, wipes, garbage bags, any additional trips to the store... Well, it seems like it would be pretty easy to calculate it. For cloth, you've got the following factors:
- initial cost of diapers, cloth diaper bags, cloth wipes (?), additional inserts
- ongoing cost of disposable wipes (sometimes?), wipe solution, diaper liners, etc
- how much energy does your washer, dryer, hot water heater use
- cost of water
- what setting you use for the washer
- how many diapers you put in a load
- your time to wash, re-stuff (in the case of a pocket diaper), dry, adjusting and re-adjusting
- do you try on a line outside? How long does it take to put it up, take it down, etc

Blah blah blah... Lots of variables, which probably leads to no two sites stating the same cost / savings of using cloth.

So let's calculate this a different way: how many disposable diapers can I get for my cloth, and how many washes would I break even at?

The diapers we got are currently listed from 20-22 $. We ended up needing a extra bamboo insert because she was leaking out of everything (including disposables). So, let's round the cost up to 30 $. A big box of size 3 huggies seems to cost about 30 $ for 96 diapers. So, that means to me that I'd have to wash the cloth diaper 96 times before I get close to breaking even. Wow.

So how long would that take? Well, we wash her diapers every 2 days with about 18-20 in a load. Let's call it 10 diapers a day. So that would mean... uhh... the train leaves Toronto going east at 80 km/h... carry the three... the ball accelerates toward the ground at 9.8 meters per second squared... So it would take about 10 days for us to go through at box of disposables. So every 10 days we "match" the cost of 1 cloth diaper. How long would it take us to wash any individual diaper 96 times? Estimating every other day a wash that get 192 days which is about 6.3 months.

So, assuming that your energy costs, wear and tear on your washer and dryer aren't three times the purchase cost, you're going to save money compared to disposable diapers when you use cloth diapers.

Weeee... that's what every boy dreams of hearing when they grow up.

Sunrise, sunset

Yesterday was one of those rare days that I saw both the sunrise and sunset. I've seen so many, but just about every time I see them I'm blown away by the beauty of them. The colours, the lines... The implication that things will just keep on rolling along no matter what happens to you. No matter if you're having the worst day or best day of your life, you can look up and the sky can be a blaze of fire.

It makes me feel small an unimportant, but I kind of like that. I find it reassuring that my problems can't touch the beauty that has been around long before me, and will continue to be long after me. On the good days it's like nature itself has reformed itself to celebrate my triumphs in a way that all can see. And I kind of like that too.

So next time you're commuting and worrying about what you've got to get done that day, or that week, stop and look up. Breathe. Pause. Repeat.

Now re-read this post in the voice of Stuart McLean.

Sunrise, sunset

Sunrise, sunset

Swiftly fly the years

One season following another

Laden with happiness and tears

Sunrise


Sunset

What do I do all day?

For some reason my brain has been playing the question "what do I do at home all day?", and what I'll tell people when I go back to work.

The day usually is up around 7 when Alice decides to get up. Laura feeds her, we eat breakfast, I waste time reading news sites. We play on the floor, Alice watches. Or something like that. We might sit outside on a blanket and watch the wind in the leaves from the shade. Chair feeding of Alice, stories and a nap. Lunch for the adults. Maybe throw some laundry in or put it up on the line outside. We might take turns going for a bike ride. More feeding for Alice and another story plus nap. More idle time online for us. Diaper changes, maybe a walk or sit outside. More feeding, stories, optional bath and then bedtime. Dinner for us, maybe reading a book or watch a movie. Bed. Repeat.

When I look back at what we do from day to day it's not much. I have not stripped the carpet out of 2 rooms and repainted them. I've not built that trebuchet that I've been meaning to. I might not have even done the dishes.

Honestly, I'm having the time of my life. God, I hope I'm healthy when I retire because this is awesome.

Dinner out... but in

One of the things that we can't do as easily anymore is go out for dinner. It usually feels like more trouble than it's worth. Luckily for us I like cooking. Or, at least taking a "regular" meal and trying to make it taste fancy by making it look fancy. I think that you've won half the battle just by making it look good, regardless how it actually tastes.

Here's a pork chop, sweet potato and some veggies.



Looks nice ya? But we used to go out to fancy places. Places were you had to get courses and things came on little plates for sharing, all served with a good wine. Doing this at a restaurant will easily run over a 100 $, but I can spend way less than that at the grocery store. So last night first course was antipasto with fresh bread and olive oil and balsamic vinegar for dipping. I only took a picture of the antipasto.



Then we had beef tenderloin (~ 9 $) and seared tuna (~ 11 $). We split it to have surf and turf. Some how the beef was more tender than the fish - I'm not sure how that happened but it was like heaven.



Of course you've got to have dessert, but I don't bake (other than creme brulee). So I bought a couple of sneeze guard treats from the store (3$ each).



Not exactly a cheap meal, but maybe around 20 $ / person wine included. Much cheaper than going out, especially now I'll have to work in the cost of a baby sitter.

Just because I love my creme brulee so much, here's a picture. We like mine much more than any that we've tried in a restaurant. I think that the key is keeping it simple and actually using real vanilla beans.

And that's how it's done

I'm pretty damn lucky. A large portion of my day I spend "watching" Alice. Honestly she doesn't keep 100% of my focus which allows me to waste time on the internet - reading blogs, posting to FB and other general wastes of time. Lately she's started to scooch around, but she can pretty much only turn and move backwards. Sometimes that means that she moves under the furniture.



How do I as a responsible parent prevent from losing our daughter? Simple. Think inside the box using a baby containment system - or BCS for short.

Baby Hulk

No I am not actually talking about the comic book character. I'm talking about our baby. When we are done feeding her something, she hates being wiped down. I mean really hates it. It's amusing, if loud. It's even more amusing when we've been feeding her something green. Instead of her getting angry and turning green, she turns green and then gets angry. And you won't like her when she's angry...

BABY SMASH!

Video conversions

Sometimes I have brain farts. It happens. That's why even though I've converted dozens of videos from the mts format, today I couldn't remember how to convert them to something, you know, useable. I use HandBrake for that. It's great, as long as I don't have to rotate the video. I end up just using quicktime for that.

Now my next task is to figure out how to easily convert mkv to something that will play on the ps3 - ideally without spending tens of hours of cpu time.

Capturing the moments

It's the little moments that I love so much. It feels that if I try to capture the moment on film it will destroy the magic. It's just something that I try to commit to memory and pray that my memory won't fade. Like this weekend: While on the deck at the cottage I was watching our 7 month old sitting on a blanket with rapt attention watching her mother practice her ukulele while the waves gently accompanied the music.

I'm laboring to capture that visual, that feeling, in my brain. But I don't trust my brain, so this is my backup. My trigger.

Happy.

I want poor quality too!

I don't get apps like instagram and the filters that you can apply. I really don't get it. Taking cutting edge camera technology and using it to capture the best possible image doesn't make people happy until they can apply film grain and colour distortion from 40 year old badly processed pictures. Oh, ideally wrap it in a generic square boarder to make it look like you're a hipster who only shoots slide film from a defunct company... on their cell phone. If I really wanted to see such shitty pictures I'd just turn off the colour green on my monitor.

I bet that if you went back to the 1960's and spoke to the people were taking photos on film like that, they'd LOVE to be able to cheaply capture images as well as we can today. Oh, in something that you could print a wall poster of. And see it before you took it. And could take tens of thousands of pictures. And the cost per picture was virtually (haha) zero. And the camera was tiny and had access to the world's information and allowed you to contact anyone on the earth, from almost anywhere. But instead you get people taking shitty pictures, cropping it to a square and messing up the colour so bad it looks like they took the picture from inside a girly drink. In some pictures I swear that you can see part of the drink umbrella.

It's like taking a new car, putting horse cartwheels and sitting on the roof so that you can steer it. You know, like your ancestors used to in the good old days. Screw that. When your kids (grandkids, whatever) want to see what you were like waaay back in the early 2010's, they probably don't want to deal with whatever shitty filter you were playing with at the time. Would they correct it? Maybe. Maybe their cyborg assistant will. Who knows. But why make more work. Just take nice pictures. Stop being so... artistic... and hip. Be boring like me.

Credit card forget

I having a bit of a reminder how much I use my credit card. I try to use it for everything (because we get points at 1% that we use to buy food). Sometimes I just forget what I've connected to it.

The other day the credit card company called me up and said that my card / number had been found via some investigation, but no transactions had gone through. I have no idea how it was found - card skimmer, hacked website that I had bought something, I don't know. Either way, they were cancelling my card and sending me a new card which would take 5-7 business days. That was 5 business days ago and still no card.

So far I've tried to pay for a delivered pizza with it and buy stuff on itunes. Both times I had totally forgotten that the card was killed. Mental note: when they cancel your card, destroy it or bend it in 1/2 right away so you don't forget.

It's probably bad that in my brain I've abstracted the "buy" action with where the money actually comes from. Oie.

Documenting the inconsequential

It's hard with a new baby to realize that your brain has melted. You're just babbling along and you're so far gone you can't even recognize it. Everything that the baby does is exciting. It's hard not to think that everything going on is important to capture. With a camera on hand, it's easy to do. I'm not sure if it's the lack of sleep, having the total focus on one individual who arguably can't do too much, or if that's just how we are wired as a species.

That's a lot of words to apologize for publishing a video called "Alice yawning". That wasn't even one of the "boring" videos.

This last week we were looking at some of the older videos. Not always our best work. However I'm still glad that we made them. She has changed so much it's blows my mind. I've been told by other parents that you keep on thinking "this is wonderful, right now. I don't think that they could get awesomer!", but then they do. It could be for our species to survive we are wired to think that. It could be the fumes from the baby soap mixed with powered barley cereal. It's really too difficult to tell for sure.

The Element of Surprise

Sometimes there are occasions for gifts. Sometimes there are gifts because the postal shipping method is slow. Either way lately there seems to have been a lot of neat gifts. For father's day I've gotten 5 awesome t-shirts, a Robert Munsch book (Give Me Back My Dad!), and some star wars usb drives. It's quite possible that I've forgotten something else too. Aside: multiday headaches suck.

The neat part is each one has been a surprise. I find it funny how much joy an amusing article of clothing can bring. ;-)

My shittyest post yet

Yes, this post is about poop. If that will make you feel flush, you'll just have to move along. This blog might be way past number two on your list of things to do today, but I think that you should keep going to the rest of the items if you can't handle the discussion (of one).

It's messed up what becoming a parent makes you talk about.

I think that cleaning up a baby is my least favourite thing to do with them. It's the dumps. It used to be every diaper change there was at least some element of number 2. Now that she's eating "solids" things are more solid (haha) and a lot less frequent - like once a day or less. But that means when it does arrive, it's a pooxplosion. Poomageddon. A pootastrophe. A poosunami of, well, poo. In short: really, really gross.

I swear that diapers are only made to handle pee. Maybe our child is just really talented at evacuating her bowels. All I can think when I hear her "beat boxing" is "Close the blast doors! CLOSE THE BLAST DOORS!!! [BOOM! sound of blast doors not closed in time]". Times like that make me wish that we had a bidet where we could just sit her over it and hose her off. In short, babies can be gross, even if it's only like 5 minutes per day.

Joss Whedon Is My Master (for some time) Now

The title of this post is of course inspired by the pvp comic and then the t-shirt. I find it easy to love Joss's work, although there is always that point where he kills a character you've been made to love. Curse your sudden but inevitable tugging at my heart strings!

We saw The Avengers the other day while my in-laws helpfully babysat. There are probably be spoilers from here on, so if you have not see the movie or at least the trailers, don't blame me if you feel things are spoiled (hence the name "spoilers").

Of course it was awesome. Laura's complaint was that there was perhaps too much action. That's sort of like saying there was too much dessert or world peace. It doesn't really make sense. We saw it in 3D and I felt sort of nauseous by the end. I'm not sure if it was due to the 3D, the pounding sound, the blur at 24fps or what. There was a ton of laughs both on screen and off. Like when the flying prehistoric sandworm of death was attacking Manhattan, Laura leans over to me and starts to sing softly in my ear the music from the Neverending Story. I should have worn an adult diaper for that moment alone. Good times.

Where does he get those wonderful toys?

As I've mentioned before, I've been frustrated with my picture taking. I feel that I've kind of leveled out. There are still areas that I'm pretty frustrated with. Even "basic" ones. With the rumours of an "affordable" full frame camera coming out before September, I started to drool. Surely jumping up to a full frame will fix all my complaints.

Then I remembered that it's not the camera I'm frustrated with, it's me.

So rather than planning on spending a couple of grand on more toys and be in the same place (more or less) than I am, I've spent 50 bucks on a couple of books. So far, so good.

One thing that I've been frustrated with the camera is that indoors sometimes the white balance is off and everything looks orange. If I shoot with a flash everything is good, but sometimes it's nice to just use the available light (even if it means that the iso is cranked way up). My brother-in-law has a much more expensive camera and what I'm going to call a "White Balance Lens Cap" - pretty much a piece of white plastic you put on your camera, shoot a picture and let the camera figure out the white balance based on the current light. I (stupidly) thought that this was a feature only available on very expensive gear. Last night I RTFM'ed and lo and behold, my camera does that too. A couple of menu settings and a picture of a kleenex and everything looked a whole lot less orange. Frack. I think that I need to sit down and just go through the manual, section by section, to figure out all the features that I'm missing. Now I just have to fold up a piece of paper and put it in my camera bag and I've got all the new equipment that I need for now.

In order to remind myself that it's not the gear, it's the photographer, here are some of my favourite "cheap camera" (point and shoot or phone) pictures.

Single Speed Jim

A couple of weeks ago I went out for a bike ride. (Aside: I miss going for rides almost daily, so I'm really looking forward to taking Alice out when she's old enough, but that's another story.) I needed to burn off some energy so I pushed as hard as I could. I did about 21.5 km in 1:00:06 (about an hour). It was slightly a new route because of a path closure, so I didn't really have a baseline. Along the way I got stuck at a couple of traffic lights but otherwise the traffic on the paths was light.

The other day I did the same route, but I took it a lot easier. The traffic on the paths was heavier, but I didn't get hung up at the 2 sets of lights as long. And I didn't slow down at the very end to send a text message. My time: 1:00:28 (about an hour). Apparently I only have 1 speed and it's about 21.5 km / hour.

What's going through my head as I feed our daughter

Now that Alice is on solid food we're taking turns feeding her. It's usually a slow, slimy (because she jams her fingers into the food and her mouth and then touches me), but rewarding, process. Since I'm not wracking my brain trying calculate orbital velocities or figure out how to spell 5 letter words, my brain tends to wander. And when my brain wanders, it usually heads straight to Star Wars.

I imagine that feeding a baby is a lot like the ending from Episode IV where they are trying to take out the Death Star. Please consider the following screenplay:

INTERIOR: MASSASSI -- WAR ROOM BRIEFING AREA.

Dodonna stands before a large electronic wall display. Leia
and several other senators are to one side of the giant
readout. The low-ceilinged room is filled with starpilots,
navigators, and a sprinkling of R2-type robots. Everyone is
listening intently to what Dodonna is saying. Mommy is
standing near the back.

DODONNA: The Baby is heavily shielded and carries a
barfpower greater than half the family. It's defenses are designed
around a direct large-scale assault. A small one-personed spoon should be
able to penetrate the outer defense.

Gold Leader, a rough looking man in his early thirties,
stands and addresses Dodonna.

GOLD LEADER: Pardon me for asking, sir, but what good are tiny
spoons going to be against that?

DODONNA: Well, the Baby doesn't consider a small one-personed spoon to
be any threat, or she'd have a tighter defense. An analysis of the
plans provided by Princess Leia has demonstrated a weakness in the
Baby.

Artoo-Detoo stands next to a similar robot, makes beeping
sounds, and turns his head from right to left.

DODONNA: The approach will not be easy. You are required to maneuver
straight down this tray and skim the surface to this point. The
target area is only two centimeters wide. It's a small barf exhaust
port, right below the nose port. The shaft leads directly to the
digestive system. A precise hit will start a chain reaction which should
destroy the hunger.

A murmer of disbelief runs through the room.

DODONNA: Only a precise hit will set up a chain reaction. The shaft is
arm-shielded, so you'll have to use careful spooning.

Luke is sitting next to Wedge Antilles, a hotshot pilot
about sixteen years old.

WEDGE: That's impossible, even for a computer.

LUKE: It's not impossible. I used to bull's-eye womp rats in my
T-sixteen back home. They're not much bigger than two centimeters.

DODONNA: Man your ships! And may the Force be with you!

The group rises and begins to leave.



EXTERIOR: SPACE.

The Baby begins to move around the high chair toward the
leg holes in an attempt to escape.

INTERIOR Space: LUKE'S CHAIR.

Luke looks excitedly toward Red Leader.

RED LEADER: (over headset) Get set to make your attack run.

INTERIOR: LUKE'S CHAIR.

Luke looks into his targeting device. He moves it away for a
moment and ponders its use. He looks back into the computer
targeter.

BIGGS: (over headset) Hurry up, Luke!

EXTERIOR: BABY IN THE HIGHCHAIR -- LUKE'S CHAIR.

Luke's spoon streaks over the tray of the Baby.


INTERIOR: MASSASSI OUTPOST -- WAR ROOM.

Princess Leia returns her general's worried and doubtful
glances with solid, grim determination. Threepio seems nervous.

THREEPIO: Hang on, Artoo!


INTERIOR: LUKE'S CHAIR.

Luke concentrates on his targeting device.


EXTERIOR: SURFACE OF THE HIGHCHAIR.

Two Baby arms charge away over the tray toward Luke.

INTERIOR: LUKE'S CHAIR.

Luke adjusts the lens of his targeting device.


EXTERIOR: SURFACE OF THE TRAY.

Luke's spoon charges down the tray.


INTERIOR: LUKE'S CHAIR.

Luke lines up the yellow cross-hair lines of the targeting
device's screen. He looks into the targeting device, then
starts at a voice he hears.

BEN'S VOICE: Use the Force, Luke.


EXTERIOR: SURFACE OF THE TRAY.

The tray zooms by.


INTERIOR: LUKE'S CHAIR.

Luke looks up, then starts to look back into the targeting
device. He has second thoughts.

BEN'S VOICE: Let go, Luke.

A grim determination sweeps across Luke's face as he closes
his eyes and starts to mumble Ben's training to himself.


EXTERIOR: SURFACE OF THE HIGHCHAIR.

Luke's spoon streaks over the tray.


INTERIOR: BABY'S MIND.

BABY: The Force is strong with this one!


EXTERIOR: SURFACE OF THE TRAY.

Both the Baby's arms follows Luke's spoon over the tray.


INTERIOR: LUKE'S CHAIR.

Luke looks to the targeting device, then away as he hears
Ben's voice.

BEN'S VOICE: Luke, trust me.

Luke's hand reaches for the control panel and presses the
button. The targeting device moves away.


INTERIOR: MASSASSI OUTPOST -- WAR ROOM.

Leia and the others stand watching the projected screen.

BASE VOICE: (over speaker) His computer's off. Luke, you switched off
your targeting computer. What's wrong?

LUKE: (over speaker) Nothing. I'm all right.


EXTERIOR: SURFACE OF THE HIGHCHAIR.

Luke's spoon streaks ever close to the food port.

INTERIOR: LUKE'S CHAIR.

Luke looks at the baby's arms streaking by.

EXTERIOR: SURFACE OF THE BABY.

The two arms, manned by the Baby,
follow Luke's spoon down the tray.


INTERIOR: BABY'S RIGHT ARM.

Maneuvers her controls as he looks at her doomed target.
Fingers shoots toward Luke's spoon.


EXTERIOR: LUKE'S SPOON.

A large burst of the Baby's fingers engulfs the food. The arms go
limp on the daddy as he makes a high-pitched sound.


INTERIOR: LUKE'S CHAIR.

Luke looks frantically at the spoon.


EXTERIOR: LUKE'S SPOON.

Food oozes out around little fingers and goo begins to fly.

LUKE: I've lost Food!

Food makes a splattering sound as it hits various surfaces.


EXTERIOR: SURFACE OF THE TRAY.

Two hands zoom down the highchair tray in
pursuit of the spoon, never breaking formation.


INTERIOR: LUKE'S SPOON.

Luke looks anxiously at the food port.


INTERIOR: BABY'S MIND.

Baby adjusts her arms, checking her projected
targeting screen.


EXTERIOR: SURFACE OF THE TRAY.

Luke's spoon barrels down the tray.


INTERIOR: BABY'S MIND.

The Baby's targeting computer swings around into position. The Baby
takes careful aim on Luke's spoon.

Baby: I have you now.

She squeezes her fingers.


EXTERIOR: SURFACE OF THE HIGHCHAIR.

The two arms move in on Luke's spoon. As the left arm's
fingers close, the right arm is suddenly immobilized. The remaining
arm continues to move in.


INTERIOR: LUKE'S SPOON.

Luke looks about, wondering how the arm stopped.


INTERIOR: BABY'S MIND.

Baby is taken by surprise, and looks out from her highchair.

BABY: What?


INTERIOR: BEHIND THE HIGHCHAIR.

Mommy grins from ear to ear.

MOMMY: (yelling) Yahoo!



EXTERIOR: SPACE AROUND THE BABY.

Mommy's hand heads right at the remaining arm.
It's a collision course.


EXTERIOR: HIGHCHAIR.

Baby panics at the sight of the oncoming mommy
hand and veers radically to one side, colliding with
Baby's face in the process. Gooey fingers crashes
into the left cheek. Mommy grabs the left arm and holds
it out of the way.


EXTERIOR: SURFACE OF THE HIGHCHAIR.

Mommy moves in toward the baby.


INTERIOR: BEHIND THE HIGHCHAIR.

Mommy, smiling, speaks to Luke over her headset mike.

MOMMY: (into mike) You're all clear, kid.


INTERIOR: MASSASSI OUTPOST -- WAR ROOM.

Leia and the others listen to Mommy's transmission.

MOMMY: (over speaker) Now let's feed this baby and go home!


INTERIOR: LUKE'S CHAIR.

Luke looks up and smiles. He concentrates on the food port,
then moves the spoon into the food port.

EXTERIOR: SURFACE OF THE BABY.

Luke's spoon shoot toward the port and seems to simply
disappear into the surface and not explode. But the food does
find their mark and have gone into the food port and are
heading for the stomach.

INTERIOR: LUKE'S CHAIR.

Luke throws his head back in relief.

INTERIOR: BEHIND THE HIGHCHAIR.

MOMMY: Great shot, kid. That was one in a million.


INTERIOR: LUKE'S CHAIR.

Luke is at ease, and his eyes are closed.

BEN'S VOICE: Remember, the Force will be with you...always.

Half of everything

I once watched a show where they were talking about these "suites" in Las Vegas where you could stay "free" as long as you promised to bet some ridiculous amount at the casino. The suite was huge, lets say 3000 square feet, and came with a dedicated butler. The thing that I took away from that program was when they interviewed the butler and he talked about his training. You were supposed to speak an octave lower, half as fast, and move at half the speed. I think that the idea is that the staff are background and calming. I feel that this is brilliant.

This is how I try to interact with kids. I don't know if it's something that I picked up from my family or if that one interview from that show took deep root in my brain. Kids (not my own) are usually excited to talk to me (being the amazing uncle / parents friend that I am). Rather than feed this "wind up", I use the "half of everything" trick. No use the kid being so excited that they can't communicate. It almost feels zen in a way. Calm, slow, thoughtful.

I'd be lying if I told you that I don't get caught up in the excitement and mess up. But it just feels like the right way to act. It's probably the right way to act with everyone, not just kids, but that's another story.

It confuses me to see adults trying to excite a calm child. Maybe I just grew up in a family with too many excited kids. Maybe the other adults have never been attacked by half a dozen children hopped up on sugar armed with rope and a vague sense of purpose. I don't know what it is. But if you come across my calm child, don't wind them up and I won't shit under your bed. Both actions create a stink and a mess that will have to be dealt with sometime in the night.

FYI: rope burn all over your body isn't fun.

Doing things upside down

First off, I'd like to apologize about being a whiny bitch in my last post. I was bummed out (as stated), and that's just how things are. Laura helped me realize that I was comparing apples to oranges when looking at some other people's photos. From the photos and the descriptions that people sometimes include of them, they are taken by people who go out to take pictures, while we take pictures when we go out. We do it upside down: the goal is totally different. I don't spend 3 hours waiting for the perfect shot.

Now, I'm not saying that other people who just are out for a walk don't take amazing pictures. Laura just made me realize that I shouldn't be comparing the pictures that I take to others when the basic premise is different.

So enjoy a picture that I took while we were moving by on a fan boat.

Bummed out with pictures

I feel a bit bummed out about our photo organization and my general skill at it. For organization our pictures, flickr has been working out somewhat well for the past many years, but I have an uneasy feeling storing all the metadata (tags, sets, etc) in an external service like that. And I really don't know where to start to fix it. I want my cake and to eat it too, but I don't even know where to get some cake. It feels pretty confusing.

So I start to avoid actually getting that work done and jump over to the flickr last 7 days interesting page and look at the wonderful pictures there. Then I start to feel really bummed out. The pictures are so amazing and I'm never happy with my shots. I feel better about the pictures the more I practice, but never really happy. Am I limited by my lack of post processing? Equipment? Skills in composition, lighting, layout, something else. Am I lacking of any artistic talent? All of the above? Would spending more money on gear improve anything, or just mean that I've sunk money into metal, glass and plastic that I won't be able to realize the investment of? Ahhhhgggg!!

Times like this makes me want to jump through the window. But you know... that would hurt. So I won't. And I'd be the one that would have to clean up the broken glass. So I'll solve this problem as best I can: go to sleep and go for a long walk tomorrow with my girls. It's hard to be bummed about anything when I'm out walking with my girls.

Blogging is hard

It seems to happen to most people. They feel that they have something to share, or an event they want to record. So they start up a blog. Perhaps a couple friends read it, maybe a couple of strangers. Either way, readership is low, commenting is almost non-existent. The time between posts gets longer and longer. Then the silence. The blog is dead.

Blogging is hard. Especially when you receive almost zero feedback. So most blogs die. It's almost like watching some kind of survival of the fittest. I just have no idea what the criteria for "fittest" would be on the internet. Probably "lack of hobbies in the real world".

I'm glad that I've kept blogging. The only way that I've done it is that I blog for me. That way, I get instant feedback (whoa, that was a dumb thing to post!) and I know I have a consistent readership. I think that if you blog for anyone else, or if you think / hope that someone else is interested in what you have to say on the internet, you'll probably be disappointed. Not because no one cares, but because you won't know it.

Blogging. Party of one.

Measuring is boring

I love to cook. Baking, I love to eat. Not so much on the preparing part though. All cooking and baking is just chemistry, but baking is usually a lot less forgiving for any errors. And there's one thing that I don't like doing, it's measuring. It seems to drain the creativity from the process. Removes the flair, and I love flair. As I'm sure that you can imagine, if you don't measure carefully when baking, you end up with crap. But I still try to get away with it sometimes. ;-P

Set a course... for the Susan System

I keep on coming back to the The Fullness Of Time Penny Arcade comic from around mother's day. I'm sure that some things from "now" will ripple throughout time while others are washed away like a sandcastle with the next wave. And there's probably not really any way to know which way it'll be.

I like stories / ideas like that. A good one is the (false) story about space shuttle's rocket boosters size being based on the size of an Imperial Roman war chariot. Unintended, and impossible to predict, consequences. Another story, or poem in this case, is Ozymandias. My favourite part being "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!".

It's probably healthier to assume that everything we do in life will be eventually washed away with the waves of time. You just have to think about how long you want your sandcastle to be in the sand before it's gone, because this too will pass.

Milestones - 6 months or 5 years

Today Alice is six months old. I didn't think that I'd be counting half birthdays, but I am. I feel like we should have some cake or something for, well, us, to celebrate. It's not been the most difficult 6 months compared to talking to other parents, but I feel that we've accomplished something. And we are still sane. Well, as sane as before, which isn't saying too much. But it's something.

We are also coming up on our fifth anniversary. I find it hard to believe that it's been that long. Time has just flew by. Unlike with the baby, I don't really feel a sense of accomplishment - it has not felt like work. Marriage (for me) has felt more like breathing. Natural. Rhythmic. Hard to imagine anything else.

I guess that means that it was the right thing to have done. At least that's what my wife tells me to say. :-P

Don't change the url

One of my recent pet peeves is sites that are using different url based on the user agent (UA). It just seems lazy, and when you share a link, someone is just looking at the wrong site.

When in doubt, give me the "desktop" or full version. But if you detect a mobile UA, give me different css / layout. Don't redirect me to a different domain like m.example.com or add in crap like /touch/ into the url. Of course allow me to switch back to the desktop version if you've hidden something.

With each new tech we go through a shitty period where people provide different solutions that don't work well until, slowly, everyone converges to the best one. I just hope that this shitty period is shorter than others have been. :-/

Embrace change... at 3 am

Before our baby came along, we were warned many times "as soon as you think that you've got it figured out, they change it!". Since so many people said this, I just have operated under the assumption that anything that I figure out probably won't work tomorrow.

We've been extremely lucky because Alice started to sleep through the night quite early on. She would occasionally wake up, babble for a bit or cry once or twice, then fall back asleep. Lately she's decided that it's good to wake up, and stay up, at 3 am. And then sometimes 5 am. I am not amused. I don't even get the worst of it - I change her and try to settle her down, but she just wants a meal so that falls on Laura. I hope that this is just a growth spurt which is what just about any change in routine seems to be blamed on. I'm just really glad (again) that we're both off and can deal with this together, without having to get up early for work.

An alternate title for this post could have been "Embrace. Change. Feed. At 3 am"

A Long Weekend

On this long weekend a lot of people are going away and doing it special. For me, the last several months have felt like a really long weekend. It's been great. However with a weekend, you feel that since it's just so short you must do something or it will be lost. Being on "family leave" has seemed to removed that deadline.

I usually do much better when I have a deadline.

I feel that somehow we're wasting this beautiful weekend. It doesn't make sense because next Wednesday (for instance) would be about the same as today. Maybe it's just been ingrained into me to "do something" on long weekend.

Dying a slow death: a tale of our "tough" camera

Late in 2009 we bought a new camera: a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS1. I have to say that I'm fairly disappointed right now with it.

Right from the beginning the flash was a bit too aggressive and harsh, but that's something that we could live with. Then we figured that it was difficult to take the video's off it because it stored it in a proprietary that needed special software to convert them into something useful. The only thing that we had that would do that was the iMovie '09 that was on my wife's computer. A major PITA. But still, we worked around it.

Now the "select" button in the middle of d-pad doesn't work. Super annoying, but it's still possible to deal with that (partially). Except I turned it on and the screen seems to be failing. [insert expletives here]. Laura pointed out that it's ironic that the dslr that we've had longer and put through the same crap (minus the swimming) has held out better. And has a better warranty. In fact, my 18-55 mm lens just started to act up, so Nikon replaced it. Cost to me: zero.

It pisses me off that something that's marketed as "durable" has not been. Not compared to something that I'd put more into the "fragile" camp. Would I buy another "tough" camera? Probably, if only for taking to the beach / swimming on vacations. But not from Panasonic.

What the future holds

It's funny trying to figure out where we will live in 5 years. What our needs will be. How much support our parents will need. Looking that far ahead feels like being in the midst of a very thick fog: can't see anything and I'm not quite sure how I got here.

Where will we live? What jobs will we have? What will our child (children??) be like? Will we have all survived the robotic uprising of the mid-teens? People act like they have it all figured out and are following some 10 or 20 year plan perfectly, but I'm sure that they are all just making it up as they go along. Just like us.

Jim's Addiction

One of the things that I've figured out is that I've got a problem. A drinking problem. Specially hot beverages. Coffee and Earl Grey being my key weaknesses. But really, it doesn't matter exactly what I'm drinking. When at work I try to keep water in front of me and constantly be surprised when my thermos ran empty.

It's even worse at times like now when I'm sick. It's nothing serious, just Man Cold Level 1, or as I'll refer to it: MCL1. It's funny, but I can't find any formal literature about Man Cold Levels. I would have thought that it would have been documented and discussed like the Fujita scale or DEFCON. Ah well. Time for another cup of tea.

QotD - Stupid people

Think how stupid the average person is. Then remember that half the population are more stupid than that.
- George Carlin

Whilst

One of the funny (to my mind) things when we traveled to Australia was that it was quite common for people to use the word "whilst". At first I thought that it was people trying to be funny, or as my sister would say "adding funk". But it kept on popping up, both in writing and in speech. Yes, people actually used "whilst" in conversations or when making announcements. Now Laura is actually one of those people too. Funny.

How to be remembered

On a trip to visit family, my grandma made a stop at the graveyard where her husband and parents are buried. It's important to remember the ones you loved, but for myself I don't want to be remembered exactly like that. A small patch of grass in a location that I never spent time doesn't really appeal to me.

They have companies that will shoot some of your remains into space, so one day you might (again) be a shooting star. Or other companies that build some ash into a "memorial reef". One of my favourite is one of the simplest: putting some money towards a bench by a scenic lake, river, or lookout where people can stop and reflect.

Perhaps a more accurate way for me to be remembered would be to eat some tasty bread, drinking a coffee (or Earl Gray, hot), while writing something riddled with spelling and grammatical errors.

I want an intelligent agent

One of the things that I want now is a intelligent agent. I want something that stops me from getting calls when I'm at a movie. Something that knows (from sensors) that the furnace needs to be cleaned and reminds me when it's noticed I've refreshed slashdot for the 3rd time in an hour get up and go do it. Something that knows from the calendar that I'm planning a trip and suggests appropriate things to pack (e.g. a suit vs a sleeping bag). It would also recognize that I usually want my metal 1978 Star Wars lunch box for overnight trips that involve me wearing a suit, and suggests it when I forget to add it to the list.

The location services are there. The learning algorithms exist. The sensors are there. Networked devices exist. The basic idea of this is already a running service with if this than that. There just needs to be more glue, more polish, and the biggest hurdle of all: to get over peoples laziness and cheapness. I think that the funny thing is that an intelligent agent would probably save people a lot of money and time as time went on. It's just that the first steps on a journey are usually the most difficult to tell yourself to take.