Some quick changes to SGL this morning. I have decided to try using dropdowns for the archives and categories in the sidebar as both of these have become so large that they were cluttering the sidebar and making it useless. One of the gotchas of having such a large blog.
Also, the Flickr badge has been added back in so that the five more recent photos uploaded to Flickr will appear on the side providing a quick view for people to see if something new has been added and also providing a quick link to the Flickr site which has become increasingly popular now that Liesl has arrived.
I got up at seven thirty this morning and got right to work down in the office. This morning’s work was not too bad and it lasted only until around ten. Not bad at all.
I finally got Dominica and my first video from our trip to Walt Disney World in 2007 posted up no Vimeo. I have been meaning to get this done for forever and just have not gotten around to it. Now that there will be baby videos coming soon it is rather important that I eliminate any potential video processing backlog and get things completed.
This video was shot using our Canon Elura 60 camcorder from the balcony of our hotel room at the Animal Kingdom Lodge where we stayed for a weekend early last year. If you have a good video player on your computer such as VLC you can download the original 640×480 video in h.264 (m4v) also from Vimeo. Original h.264 video of Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge. This version should play beautifully on AppleTV as well and is available via the vlog feed for our subscribers.
Dominica, Liesl and Oreo slept in until around ten. I was in the living room playing some Fable 2 on the XBOX 360 while I had some quiet time to myself. Today is my relaxing day for the week and I am taking advantage of it.
I spent the bulk of the day playing Fable 2. What an awesome game. I am so glad that Dominica decided that we needed to get that as our one game for the XBOX 360 for “Christmas” as a gift to each other. I am over halfway through the game now playing as the boy and going for “good and pure”. Dominica is only about an hour or so into the game and is playing as the girl and has decided to go for “evil and corrupt” so that she can get as different of a storyline as possible from mine as she has watched so much of the game as I have played it.
Dominica spent most of the day shopping and surfing the web from the laptop that we have set up in the living room. Christmas is always a busy shopping time. We are so thankful that we live in an era when Christmas shopping is an online affair. There is no way that we could handle going out to the stores looking for things. We would go crazy. It would have to be me doing it all as Dominica can’t go out shopping. We learned that lesson from the grocery store a few days ago, and the grocery store doesn’t have crazy Christmas crowds.
We were both very thankful that today got to be a “do nothing” day for the most part. Liesl was a little fussy today but not horribly, and today we began switching her over to cloth diapers. Cloth diapers are cheaper, better for the environment and better for preventing diaper rash and/or contact dermatitis – which I had as a child. Liesl has a little bit of diaper rash at this point and so Dominica felt that it was the best time to start switching her over before it got any worse.
We did several loads of laundry and two loads of dishes today plus hand cleaning. We generate so much stuff that needs to be cleaned every day around here I just can’t believe it. And several loads of garbage too.
This afternoon Oreo started acting strangely. We first noticed that something was wrong when he went down to the basement all by himself to get away from us. He wasn’t acting funny beyond that so we didn’t think much of it. As the day wore on, though, he started spending more time away from is in the basement and started acting more sluggish and sickly.
I took Oreo out for a walk and he didn’t even make it past the front walk before he was sick twice. Hopefully this is nothing more than a stomach ache. I brought him back inside and offered him dinner or a bone and he wanted neither. I went down to the basement (which is when I managed to get the videos uploaded to Vimeo) and spent a few hours with him while he just lay on his pillow feeling sick.
Later in the evening I forced him to go on a little walk just to make sure that “everything was working” since he hadn’t been eating. Everything was working (you can work out the details there for yourself) and as soon as he was done I scooped him up and ran him back to the house because it is so cold outside and he is so weak. So at least we believe that there is no blockage and it appears that he just doesn’t feel well like he has a doggy flu. He went to bed as usual and seemed to be about the same so we will watch him through the night and judge how he is doing in the morning.
We are not aware of him having eaten anything strange in the last twenty four hours. He was very happy, alert and perky when I took him on his long morning walk around the top of the hill. He seemed to be in better than usual spirits, in fact. He was extremely energetic and after his walk demanded his breakfast and then made me play fetch with him for half an hour or more. It was surprising how healthy he seemed. I know that he was still feeling okay at two thirty when Dominica and I had our lunch because he cleaned our dishes in the kitchen (we had mac and cheese for lunch.)
The only possibility for him getting into something that he should not have, as I think about it, was on our morning walk he was spending some time sniffing under a boulder (we have a lot of those here) and with his nose burried in some leaves it is possible that he ate something in there of which I was not aware. I did not think that he did but looking back it is theoretically possible.
We will just have to wait and see tomorrow. We were all off to bed around midnight.
So much for sleeping through the night. Going to bed so late did not help things and instead of sleeping for about seven hours Liesl barely slept at all. She was awake all through the night which, of course, kept us up. Dominica tried to let me sleep some but it isn’t easy when Liesl needs things and Dominica needs me to pick her up for her.
Liesl got up at seven thirty this morning which was close enough to the time that I needed to start work that I just got up, changed her and headed down to the office to get to work. Six and a half hours of irregular sleep isn’t very much after working a double and I think that Dominica is quite a bit more tired than I am even though she got a great, multi-hour nap in yesterday afternoon without any interruptions.
It is dark and rainy again today. The rain has not stopped in three days at least. There is standing water on the patio, in the grass, in the parking lot. Westchester is saturated with water.
Lot’s of layoffs at the office yesterday. Some of the first that really impacted people that I know directly and work with everyday. One person was emailing me in the morning and then just stopped responding to the emails. Turns out that she was layed off during our email conversation. I am told that London is being hit very hard with jobs being relocated to low cost centers rather than insanely expensive London itself. Few people will be willing to relocate out of London so those turn into layoffs rather than relocations. A handful of people will choose to move, I’m sure.
I found out that I am scheduled to work tomorrow again. I think that this is three Saturdays in a row. I’d complain about the amount of time but given the current situation we sure can use the extra money. Liesl doesn’t really fit into the Mazda PR5 so we are kicking around the idea of buying another car (and trading in one of our two current cars.)
The deals right now are really good but buying a new car is still buying a new car. We would really like the Mazda 3 but it is unlikely to be enough bigger than the PR5 to make a difference. The 6 is pretty expensive for a second car. We don’t really like the 5 and the CX series aren’t what we are really interested in although Dominica did drive a CX7 as a loaner and it wasn’t too bad. It’s an option.
The problem is that once we start getting past the price of a Mazda 3 then it starts making us wonder if it wouldn’t be better to put the money into a BMW instead. When I bought my Mazda 6 I got five years with 0% APR and they are not offering that again. Now they are just offering 3 years with 0% APR and a small customer loyalty bonus. The deals are good but not as good as they used to be back in 2002.
By late morning we actually had a little sunlight. This is the first that we have seen in days.
Dominica spent most of the day in the living room watchnig Kate and Allie. She is up to the third season now. While I was working I did some editing of Dominica and my footage from Walt Disney World’s Animal Kingdom Lodge from 2007 (yes, two trips ago) and am working to get it collected into a finalized video so that I can finally post it.
I discovered, while preparing to compress my home movie of Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge, that Handbrake 0.9.3 has released. The new Handbrake is much more flexible and solves a lot of the problems that I have had in the past plus it runs faster and, in theory, produces higher quality output. Anyone doing video conversion to Xvid, MPEG4 or h.264 (or Ogg Theora) should definitely download it and give it a try. I have to use a tool like Handbrake becaue Pinnacle does not produce h.264 output, output for AppleTV nor does in dei-nterlace – all which are critical to producing even the most rudimentarily useful output for video today.
I saw an add for the Honday Insight today. Their first hybrid car is scheduled to return next year and it looks pretty nice. I would be interested in driving one. In their add, though, they lead off the add by asking “Who introduced the first hybrid to the United States?” This got me thinking. I knew that Porsche introduced the first hybrid ever, in 1901, but I also knew that they didn’t sell it in the US. So I did some quick research and the answer is The Woods “Dual Power” of 1915 – 1918. Of course, the Honda add claims that Honday introduced the first hybrid vehicle to the US in 1999. I have a feeling that there were dozens of hybrid vehicles on the US market before 1999. The Prius is from 1997 but was not sold in the US until 2001. My guess is that Honday uses that one, single latecomer to the market as their basis for being “first”. Rather like South Africa claiming to be the first country to put someone on the moon in fifty years after Russia, China and the EU have already done it but before Ethiopia does.
I worked until around eight this evening. Then Dominica and I spent the rest of the evening watching The Dick Van Dyke Show on Hulu via PlayOn on the PS3 in the living room. It was around midnight when we finally convinced Liesl that it was time to get off to bed.
The video turned out pretty well. It is about twelve minutes long and is just footage from Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge’s Savanah. Kind of boring but it is also a pretty amazing sales pitch for the Animal Kingdom Lodge considering the entire thing is shot from out hotel room balcony and a few shots from the central observation platform by the restaurants. Now I just need to figure out how I can get it posted online for people to see.
My work starts tomorrow at eight in the morning. This should be the last busy weekend for a while. At least busy from a work perspective.
Liesl slept pretty well last night but Dominica and I did not. We tried putting Liesl into her own bed/positioner thing that we then put between our pillows. Being in the positioner made her toss and turn all night, though, and she kept making sounds that caused us to wake up all throughout the night. So even though Liesl slept through the night pretty well, Dominica and I did not sleep much at all. Apparently we need to work on “sleeping logistics” even more than Liesl does.
It’s another warmish but very rainy day here in Peekskill, New York. My kind of weather. Light rain that never stops. Constant overcast. Dark grey. The kind of day that doesn’t hurt your eyes and provides nice, cool, even lighting lowering eye strain in every possible way. The only downside is that it is so dark so quickly that by four in the afternoon it had might as well be midnight.
Dominica had a morning doctor’s appointment, just a checkup. I had to drive her down since she still cannot drive herself. That meant that today is my very first time completely alone with Liesl. I am now dad and in charge and responsible for keeping my daughter alive and healthy.
Liesl and I stopped off at the Gulf station on Crompond to get gas. It is full service there which is handy when you have an infant in the car. Gas is down to $1.99 here which is extremely low for Westchester even if it is one of the highest prices in the country.
We got home and I raced around the house attempting to work and to keep Liesl happy as much as possible. I tried putting her in her car seat and having her on my desk next to me but she was very unhappy about that situation (this was her very first trip to the basement of her own house.) So I moved her back to the living room and put her into her swing. She always likes her swing.
Liesl was still very unhappy and it was escalating so I decided that she must need her bottle. I started preparing her bottle. I turned on the PS3 and PlayOn showing Knight Rider off of Hulu to provide some background noise for her while I was getting her bottle ready. By the time that I got back to the living room with the bottle she had fallen asleep to the sound of the television and remained asleep until Dominica called for us to go back downtown and pick her up from the clinic.
Lunch was more prepared food from Stop and Shop that we picked up last night. We tried their baked macaroni and cheese but it wasn’t very good. We need to just make that at home if that is something that we want. It isn’t hard to make. Dominica didn’t even eat her portion and just threw it out. I didn’t think it was that bad just rather bland.
My day was incredibly busy at the office. This will probably continue for at least another week. This is the busiest time of the year and it really is exhausting.
I took a break after the main part of the day was done and went up and had dinner with Dominica and we watched a little of The Dick Van Dyke Show before I headed back down to the office to get back to work.
What a long day. I ended up working about sixteen hours. A full double. I was really exhausted by the end of the day. It was well after midnight when I got a chance to wrap up and head off to bed. After getting everything ready and feeding Liesl it was around one in the morning when Dominica and I finally went to bed.
Liesl slept though the entire night last night! She went to bed with Dominica at eleven when she had her bottle. She didn’t wake up until after seven this morning. What a blessing. We are now getting real sleep again.
I got pictures from yesterday edited and uploaded to Flickr this morning. The Liesl Flickr set is now up to 111 images, and I haven’t even had a chance to start using the new 50mm lens yet that arrived yesterday.
My morning was completely crazy. I worked until one thirty in the afternoon without any break at all. Major problems at the office keeping us all on our toes. Not a fun day. Not interesting work just cleaning up after things have broken. The worst kind of work.
This afternoon was Liesl’s checkup at the doctor’s office. My morning was so crazy that I didn’t get to shower or eat or walk Oreo before we had to go. We took him with us and he had a quick walk on the way to the car but that was all.
Liesl’s doctor’s appointment went well. She is up to eight pounds now which is very good. All of her signs are very healthy. Her umbilical cord fell off this morning so he got to inspect that as well.
After we got home, Dominica made me some lunch while I got back to work and then she started playing the original Fable on the XBOX. She had started Fable 2 the other day but then realized that we had the original game as well so she went back and is going to play them in order.
It is a dark and dreary day here today. We are into the darkest few weeks of the year plus it is very overcast and has been raining all day. So there has been practically no natural light at all. One of the problems of having a baby just as we head towards winter is that there is so little light with which to take pictures.
Pinnacle Studio Plus 12 arrived today. I wanted to update to the latest version now that I will be taking videos of Liesl on a regular basis. I already have one video that I attempted to post to Flickr just to discover that Apple’s faulty QuickTime wasn’t able to play the audio on the file but that once it got to Flickr it had audio of people talking in the background that I have to fix.
I got the first video posted. Pinnacle has not really improved at all in this latest version. I am very disappointed. It was cheap and will work for me for now just fine but down the road, when I get a high def camcorder for recording Liesl, Pinnacle completely falls apart. In Pinnacle’s extreme wisdom they have decided to completely block the use of 1080p output (even though practically everyone shoots in this for home use these days and needs it for viewing on their televisions) as well as h.264 compression (the only practical compression solution for anything online) so that you are limited to old, bulky compression algorithms at artificially low resolutions maxing out at 1080i (but who has a monitor that handles interlacing without having to convert to progressive – and even progressive is a misnomer since LCD displays it all at once!)
I’ve heard a rumor that Adobe Premier Elements doesn’t have these artificual cripplings so I will be able to use that to make my “basic home movies” that even Pinnacle can’t handle properly 🙁 (Just to open videos taken with my over-a-year-old Kodak digicam required me to upgrade again to Pinnacle 12.1 and to apply an h.264 license!)
For now by highest definition camera is my Kodak Digicam which is only 720p which Pinnacle can handle. I have to output to somewhat bloated MPEG-4 files and just work with those or else output to super low-compression MPEG-2 and use a third party conversion utility to transfer into h.264 files that can be handled by AppleTV or for other online download purposes. The worst part is that in the Pinnacle forums everyone defends Pinnacle Studio’s shortcomings by claiming that no one can use this stuff online – as if AppleTV and FrontRow on Apple products, iTunes, and the like’s default settings (which are pathetically low IMHO) don’t even represent real users!
Not to mention shows like Mariposa which has been available in 1080p for years now and is doing well. Part of the problem is that everyone assumes a tiny slice of possible usage scenarios and thinks that everyone else wants to do the same thing. They point out in the forums that services like Vimeo don’t go to such a high resolution and ergo those resolutions don’t matter. But Vimeo is a single, free, Flash-player service. What about RSS based background downloaders and Torrent users? There are a lot of us out here ready to consume 10-100x the bandwidth that videos are currently be offered in but no one is providing any content.
I took Oreo on a very long walk this evening. We went up the hill and all the way out to the main entrance of the complex and back along with a short side trip too. He was very excited and very hungry by the time that we returned home.
The Ralstons are planning on coming down to Peekskill the weekend after New Year’s. We haven’t seen them in months. They are planning to stay two or three days. This is their chance to see Liesl. Ramona is coming next weekend to visit Liesl (that is the the weekend after this weekend coming up in a few days.) Liesl has a lot of people looking to come visit her.
I am working on getting the first Liesl video cross-posted to Vimeo but am having some problems getting their uploader to accept the file. I know that the file is good because it worked fine on Flickr. I tried YouTube but they are down for maintenance at the moment.
Dominica, Liesl and I all went out to the Stop and Shop tonight for some serious grocery shopping as we are out of everything at the house. This is Dominica and Liesl’s first trip anywhere other than the doctor’s office. Liesl did really well barely making a sound the entire time that we were shopping – which is good because it is totally unfair to force a crying baby onto people in public unnecessarily.
We got a ton of food and supplies. We should not need to go back to the grocery store for some time now. At least a week, I hope. We had to go today because Oreo is just about out of food and needs something to eat tomorrow.
For dinner we picked up a ready to bake pizza from Stop and Shop and cooked that ourselves. We put on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and watched that before going to bed. No video games for me today. Dominica did get to put in a few hours on Fable.