Flying with Four

We have just returned from an 11 day trip across the country.

First we flew to Bald Head Island, North Carolina. Milo was reunited with his Richmond cousins again. We had a bed and breakfast all to ourselves and a couple of babysitters to help out. We got around the island by golf cart. The weather was nice and warm, not too hot.

Milo made more big strides in swimming at the pool and overall he did really well, playing with his cousins and acclimating to the new environment. Ben had trouble getting used to the new location. We had to sleep train him and let him cry it out all over again. Fortunately our room was at the far end of the hall. It was a very nice retreat and turned out to be quite relaxing.

Next we flew to Chicago and spent the night at a hotel. The following day we drove to Michigan City, Indiana where we rented a big house on Lake Michigan with four other families. The occasion was a reunion for Merritt and her Duke friends and their families. Ten adults and 11 children ranging in age from 3 months to 6 years old all under the same roof. The house was nice but it was still quite crowded.

Again, Milo did exceptionally well, playing with new friends, enjoying the pool and the beach and sleeping well in a new bed. Ben continued to struggle with his sleep and both he and Milo had a cold. Milo complained about his ear hurting and we took him to the urgent care clinic where they said he had an ear infection.

Although at times chaotic, we all had a great time at Lake Michigan too and we were grateful to be able to see old friends again. The last night of our stay, there was a major hail/thunderstorm, complete with a tornado siren going off and loss of electricity for twelve hours. When we drove out the next morning we saw many full-size trees that had blown down, trunks cracked like matchsticks.

The trip home from Chicago O'Hare airport was miserable. First we drove at 7:15am through heavy highway traffic to get to O'Hare for our 12pm flight. This flight was delayed until 2pm, so we hung around the airport for several hours. The previously mentioned storm had delayed many flights in and out of Chicago. Finally we got on our plane and waited to take off. And waited. And waited. Eventually they announced that the flight was cancelled. The flight crew were on the ground for too long and legally they couldn't fly the plane. So we all had to get off the plane and scramble to get on another flight to San Francisco.

Milo was unhappy but soldiered on. Ben was a mess. Merritt was quite upset. I did my best to keep it cool.

I managed to get us on a 8:30pm flight to Oakland airport in First Class. The bad news was we had 4 hours to kill. So we went to the adjacent Hilton Hotel and splurged on a day-rate hotel room where we ordered room service, watched TV and calmed our nerves until 7pm. When we got to the airport we saw that our flight was delayed until 9:30pm. Then it was delayed until 10:30pm. It was well past Milo's bed time and he was barely holding it together (thank god for the dvd player.) Ben was trying to sleep in the baby bjorn on Merritt and Merritt was on the verge of packing it all in and heading back to the hotel. But they did finally board us on the plane and the plane did take off at 11:30pm.

We arrived in Oakland at 1:30am Pacific Time which was 3:30am for us on Chicago time. We arrived at our house at 2:00am and promptly fell into bed.

Needless to say, the entire family is glad to be back home again. Ben is back to sleeping almost normally now. Milo is doing great. Merritt and I are breathing a sigh of relief that the return flight is finally over.

TV is good for the gums

As I've blogged before, I'm a big geeky fan of Battlestar Galactica. I bought my brother in Vegas the first season dvd set. Then I sent my brother in Nairobi, Kenya my dvd set so he could get hooked on the show too. It worked.

As adults, my brothers and I rarely communicate with each other because we don't have as much in common. Having our own families changed that some but now that we're all hooked on Battlestar we email each other more often about the show. I even bought us all BSG logo t-shirts. Yes, I did.

I'm pretty amazed at the quality of writing these days on television. In the 70's there was some pretty groundbreaking stuff which are re-imagined into films because Hollywood can't find any original ideas elsewhere. In the 80's it was pretty darn shite. The 90's was mediocre at best. But at the turn of the century all of a sudden we have serious shit on TV. Writers have the freedom to take chances with their characters and stories. Maybe it's because of cable and HBO, maybe it's because studios are more willing to loosen up because they're losing eyeballs to the internet. Whatever.

I don't have time to watch all of the acclaimed dramas on TV. I catch the syndicated "Law and Order" and it's "SVU" counterpart every now and then because it's essentially on 24/7. "House" is on reruns until the fall. One new show called "Rescue Me" is pretty darn funny. My wife likes to watch "The Closer."

The point is, I like TV.

The Comfortable Gig Question

Since I left Yahoo! in 2001 there have been waves of people who have left and then there were single exits. I loved it while I was at Yahoo! It was an exciting time, like the wild west, where we were launching stuff out the door left and right. Much of it was crap (designed by yours truly). Some of it was ok, a few were gold. But I learned a ton and worked with lots of completely different product groups. As Yahoo! grew and grew I felt like it was becoming more of a traditional media company in one respect - it's become a comfortable gig.

There's nothing wrong with being comfortable. If a company is paying you well and you got lots of options and you're vesting, and/or you can work from home once or twice a week, still have the great bennies, vest, etc etc. - it pays to stay (golden handcuffs and all.) Again, nothing wrong with that. It's a good gig, a comfortable one.

Everybody has a risk vs. reward meter especially when it comes to making professional career choices. How highly does an employee value the comfort of consistency?

How does that affect the culture of a company?

the Switch

I am changing my focus in school from Animator to Storyboard Artist/ PreVis. The process of making a film in a very rough nutshell:

1. First there is a Writer who writes a Script.
2. Then there is a Storyboard Artist (or Story Artist) who takes the script and stages it into visual sequences.
3. Then it gets passed on to the Actors or Animators who put the performance into the scene

In between 2 and 3 is a rising discipline called PreVis which is someone who creates 3D animatics. Animatics are animated storyboards. It provides not only camera angle and staging but also timing as well.

Also in animation, the Story Artists work in the Story Dept and are essentially the Writers. Storyboard Artists can go on to direct their own feature or short feature.

I felt pretty torn about this decision since I really enjoy animation. But I think Story is where I really want to be.

"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" Review:

I loved it.

While Superman was an fairly good movie that was too long, POTC:DMC was a great movie that was also too long. Yes, it was too long at 2 and half hours. But, boy was it fun! Some of the great action special FX sequences were actually too much, too draining. And yes, the plot was convoluted, twisting and turning as much as the stuntmen did. But boy, was it entertaining.

The next movie I'm looking forward to seeing that has been getting a lot of very good buzz is Monster House. This summer may turn out to be a great movie season after all.

"Superman Returns"
I was very excited to see this movie. It was the one of two big movies of the summer I was psyched about. Initially the buzz was excellent. But after last Wednesday I was reading a few bad reviews. Then I started talking to people who'd seen it and they were underwhelmed. Both mentioned the length of the movie at 2 hrs 34 minutes. That's long.

Superman was a very long pretty good movie. not a long bad movie and not a long great movie. Shave off 20 minutes and it would've been a really good movie. The major action scenes were AMAZING. Brandon Routh did a fine job, Kate Bosworth was so-so, Spacey was good, Parker Posey was surprisingly excellent. Some people I know had issues with a big surprise in the middle, but not only was I not surprised by it (kind of expected it actually) it didn't bother me that they didn't resolve it completely.

"Cars"
This was the other big summer movie I was excited about. And it was good. Not great, but good. The second act had too many equally weighted subplots and it was hard to believe the change in character of the protagonist, Lightning McQueen.

But the racing scenes were great and the ending still pulled at my heartstrings. The look of the film was absolutely incredible.

Tonight we've rented "Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl" since my wife hasn't seen it and we're planning on seeing "Dead Man's Chest" this Thursday.

TABBED BROWSING IS THE ONLY WAY
I want to be able to log into anyone's Firefox browser and bring up my own bookmark buttons for tabbed browsing.

GOOGLE HOMEPAGE THOUGHTS
The Google homepage ONLY has the searchbox on it. Simple. They're notorious for not putting anything else on that page, neither advertisement nor other Google product. Smart.

If they were to link to Google Maps, for example, from their homepage, then they'd immediately invite all of the problems Yahoo! has right now - "We want to be everything to everybody, so let's flood the page with links to everywhere."

Right now, they're about one thing - search. Search leads to all things anyways. They are so right to bury all their products on the Labs page. Let's see how long they maintain that wisdom.

THEMERY
What is annoying to me is all these themes. I know users LOVE it and it's essential to provide it, but I find it, well, annoying.

WHAT I'VE BEEN READING
What I've read this summer so far is Bel Canto and Everything Is Illuminated. Both good, recommended. By far the best book I've read in the past year is Kite Runner. About to read Interpreter of Maladies.

I'm back from a week in southern california. It was a good trip in that we had a great time but the boys didn't sleep very well and Milo was particularly testy. We went to 3 theme parks which I'll rate below...

1. Legoland - the best of them all, the best ease of use experience, very much designed with families in mind. I'd go here again and again.

2. San Diego Zoo - also very good, more low key, recommend going on the bus tour first.

3. Sea World - it was ok but also frustrating in that there was very little shade in the entire park. The shows were nice but not sure I'd come back here until Milo's a little older.

I recommend getting your tickets online so you can skip the ticket lines and getting there earlier the better. Again, Legoland was the bomb.

Every morning, my son Milo likes to watch the Sprout channel on TV with a sippy cup of apple juice and a bowl of Puffins. He will wake up anywhere between 5:50am and 7:00am. My wife just got a clock from the Discovery Channel (pic above) that is also a nightlight that glows a different color for every hour. Milo can't tell time yet, but we'll tell him that he can't get up out of his bed until the clock turns (whatever the color for 7am is). Very cool item. We just got it tonight, can't wait to see if it works.

Meanwhile we're off to southern California for a while. Four days in Irvine with my folks, then a week in San Diego for a little family vacation. Going to hit the San Diego Zoo, Legoland and Sea World. We're renting a little house in La Jolla which is a block from the beach as well as close to stuff we can walk to. Looking forward to it.

The day after we get back to SF I start my summer semester which I'm also looking forward to actually.

I love our cleaning lady. Her name is Shirley and her husband's name is Gilmar and they rock. They are from Brazil. A few years ago they went back to Brazil saying they would return in a month. In the interim they had a replacement cleaner sub for them. They were not very good. Nothing could compare to Shirley and Gilmar. Then we received a note saying that Shirley and Gilmar were staying in Brazil indefinitely due to unforseen circumstances. We let the replacement cleaners go and hired a new woman named Maria. Maria was better but still she was no Shirley and Gilmar. Then about 6 months ago we heard that Shirley and Gilmar were back in the States. We fired Maria and immediately re-hired Shirley. That made me happy. If you or anyone you know needs a great cleaning person in SF let me know and I'll ping you their contact information

I'm falling in love... with Yelp.com! Every Thursday, my wife and I go out on a date. It's hard to come up with new and interesting places to eat or see that we've never been to before. I used to use Citysearch.com which was okay but I recently started to use Yelp and I've been hooked ever since. Excellent UI. Looks like Yahoo! Local (also great ui redesign job btw) but it's better cause it's completely user-driven. And users are more motivated to review since Yelp has a clever reward system in place. So it's more reliable reviews and not just spam. I've made some nice discoveries and love to browse not just for restaurants but other services too. Go Yelp!

At the Academy of Art's 3D department you're in one of three majors of interest: character animation, visual effects, modelling or games.

* Character animation: responsible for anything that has a personality, moves, talks, lives.
* Visual Effects: responsible for things like realistic fire, water, explosions etc
* Modelling: building everything in an environment from the paper clip to the 18 wheeler to the people to the animals.
* Games: all of the above but at a lower resolution, substitute character animation with game design.

Places like Industrial Light and Magic, Rhythm and Hues are special fx houses. Pixar, Blue Sky and Dreamworks make movies (character animation) both types of places hire modellers. Then there are many game studios all around. I'm learning more about who does what and who hires whom as I get more semesters under my belt.

My take on the school continues to evolve as well. I think it's a good school if you know where to look. I was lucky to get the good Maya I teacher this past semester. The way it works at any school is the more you put into it the more you get out of it. Still it amazes me how much the faculty let students get away with. If the teacher were an employer and the student an employee, more than half of all my classes would be fired within a month. I sound like a crotchety old man.

A review of Yahoo!'s new frontpage design by a former Yahoo! Gooey...

First, I really like the new visual design that Yahoo! is standardizing, first with 360 and now with the frontpage. It's clean, simple, elegant and minimal. It lets the content pop off the page and doesn't call attention to itself. I like it very much.

As far as layout goes, I like the left column listing the major properties and I guess I like the rest of it as well, all except for the masthead.

I think it's a fairly bad decision to offset the Yahoo! logo with the search box to its side. By offsetting the logo, it minimizes its prominence, importance and brand. By putting it alongside the searchbox it seems like a weak attempt to bring more prominence to Yahoo!'s search. But now you have two elements that are weaker by being side by side. Plus it throws the balance of the page as a whole out of whack.

If you want more people to use your search engine, build a better search engine.

I was driving on the highway in San Francisco and I saw a billboard in the distance. It was a guy holding up a sign with handwriting on it that said,

"Some day I'll RFID my 70 kittens."

Wow, I thought, that's interesting. When I got closer I realized I misread the sign and it was really saying,

"Some day, I'll redo my 70's kitchen."

Oh, not so interesting. It was a Wells Fargo ad about saving accounts or something.

Personally, I think it would be a far wiser investment to RFID the kittens. Especially if you had 70 of them. How else would you keep track of them all? Which would you rather have, a 70's kitchen or 70 kittens? What the hell would you do with 70 kittens? RFID them, that's what. And if you dont' know what RFID is then this post is not funny. Nope, not one bit, so go back to your 70's kitchen. How would they RFID the kittens? I'd use a staple gun. Who the hell picked that illegible handwriting font anyway. Giving commuters a baaad trip.

This post by Kelly inspired me to write about my own age issues. It's a little bit of a sore spot for me that I look like I'm 18. On a good day, 24. After people get to know me then they guess 28, tops. I'll be 34 this October goddammit!

Now that I'm a student again, I feel way older than my peers because, well, I am way older. But they don't know that. Just the other day, during a break in my Maya I class, I got into a conversation with one of my classmates. I asked him whether he lived in campus housing and he said lived in Belmont and that he takes CalTrain to class every day. Then he asked where I lived and I said the Inner Sunset. He wasn't sure where that was and I explained that it's a neighborhood in the city.

Kid: "In an apartment?"
Me: "No. A house."
Kid: "Really?"
Me: "Yeah, with my family."
Kid: "Oh, that's great. That you have family in the city to stay with and everything."
Me: "No, no - my family. You know, with my wife and two kids. That's what I mean."
Kid: "Oh, uh-huh. [Pause] Oh! Ohhhhhh. Huh."

He didn't say anything after that.

When I was 25 I was travelling with my parents somewhere. The airline attendant was moving our seats around and he was going to put me in the emergency row on the plane. Of course you have to be over 18 to sit in there, so he asked me for ID. The dude carded me to sit in the emergency exit row. My parents got a big kick out of that. Laughed the whole rest of the plane trip. Goddamn airline attendants.

semester sum-up

History of Character Animation
Basically we watch a ton of animation from 1918 to the present tracing the history of animated characters in film and television. It's a great class and I' ve learned a lot from it. The teacher is the Director of my 3D Graduate program and he's been around, worked for a while at ILM and has met many of the animation greats. Really digging this class.

Storyboarding
This is more like a story theory class and less of a storyboarding class. Meaning that we're learning a lot about story structure and plot points than how draw and visually solve problems. Still a very important thing to learn and definitely a good tool for putting together my senior thesis which will be a 1 to 2 minute animation.

Maya 1
The teacher is good but sometimes he gets bogged down in tangential details which is easy to do because Maya is such a complicated honkin piece of software. The modelling bores me but the animation is fun.

I have to rant a little about this new product Yahoo! is promoting the heck out of on their frontpage... Yahoo! Answers. Why would I ever use this? If I want to know about something, I SEARCH for it. SEARCHing for it is pretty simple: you type in a keyword you get results. With Y! Answers there are at least two more steps to complete to get an answer! And then it's from a human being...!?? This probably sounds ironic but I trust a search engine more than a human because the human could be an idiot while I know the engine is just an engine. With the engine I have more control to decipher the results, with the human I'm taking my chances.

Before I left in 2001 there was Y! Experts and this looks like a revision of that same product. Dude, Y! Experts sucked. You know why? You had to trust that the human on the other side knew what they were talking about. Why not browse search results and decide for yourself whether the links are trustworthy or not - a much quicker proces.

I would LOVE to see the stats on this product and get a sense of how it's doing. I'm really at a loss as to why Yahoo! would be promoting it so heavily. If anybody has had a good experience with this product please let me know.

I read the Economist. I don't understand everything I read, but I can feel my cranial capacity expanding every time I finish an issue. If nothing else, it's very well written. I find the New Yorker to be hit and miss while the Economist is so dense there is bound to be something pretty interesting.

On my DVR list are shows which I ingest and delete almost immediately: PTI, House.
Then there are shows that have rotted in the queue for months now: Chappelle, Charlie Rose, Office, My Name is Earl.
Then there are shows that I just recently started to record: Robot Chicken.

I eat a few regular podcasts: Slate's Political Gabfest is consistently entertaining, Ebert and Roeper is always satisfying, CNet is hit or miss and nowadays I ignore most of NPR's Story of the Day. I used to regularly listen to This Week in Tech but now I find those guys to be fairly out of touch, catering to the grumpy geek mostly. I really appreciate the synopsis text blurb which I can browse before deciding whether an individual podcast is worth listening to.

There are two great animation podcasts: The Animation Podcast and Spline Doctors. Podcasting is a great medium for animators to share information, interviews and experiences. For some reason animation knowledge is not well-documented and this technology is beginning to correct that.

Ooo. Me likey Google Video.

I've been wanting to show the work I've been doing in (animation) school but the files are so big I can't email them or post them on my website... until Google Video. I would've posted it on YouTube because that site kicks butt (especially for catching SouthPark episodes that no longer air Tom Cruise trapped in a closet) - but they have a 100MB limit. Google has no such limitations because they plan on storing the entire multiverse's personal information so they can do evil one day. Lots of evil.

Here is a pencil test (rough animation) called Man vs. Frog.

Here is an animatic (animated storyboards) called Heart.

Enjoy.

Merritt and Milo bought ladybugs to put in the garden. Usually Merritt places the ladybugs on the plants but this time Milo wanted to. He ended up with ladybugs all over his hands and sleeves so Merritt had to brush him off.

Later that afternoon I come home and we're all sitting in the basement. Milo's on the piano bench when he says, "Mommy, I head wind in my ear."

Immediately Merritt suspects, "Uh-oh, maybe a ladybug got in your ear." I'm doubtful but I quickly check and looking into his left ear I see the bug's face looking back at me. Then turn around and crawl in.

Milo was pretty freaked out.

It wouldn't come out so we went to the hospital ER at UCSF which was less than a mile away. Fortunately we had already booked our nanny to come that night and she was looking after Ben. At the ER, the nurses took his vitals and then we had to wait for the Pediatrician to arrive. While waiting, Merritt noticed that the ladybug was trying to crawl out and held Milo's hands so that he couldn't scratch his ear (which was probably what was keeping it in there for so long in the first place) and it came crawling out on its own.

As someone who hopes to work at Pixar some day, people have been asking me what I think of Disney buying Pixar. Something like this was inevitable and it makes sense that the buyer would be Disney. Pixar needs the powerful marketing and distribution experience Disney has for children's media, only Nickelodeon can come close and still Disney is the best. Disney needed Pixar's content which was making them money when they took 50% of the profits.

I hated Disney. But that was then and this is now and the difference is Michael Eisner ain't the big cheese no more, it's Robert Iger. Iger is not Eisner. He made the bold move of distributing ABC television shows on iTunes. Then he bought Pixar giving Jobs, Catmull and Lasseter big positions in the stake of the company. Now he's offering the TV shows for free in iTunes in May.

The man has balls of brass.

Now the question whether he and Jobs will continue to get along. And the whole animation world is waiting to see what becomes of Catmull and Lasseter's new positions and how it affects (or doesn't) the new content to be released by both studios.

Personally, I'm optimistic.