www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzGo6JnhAXY

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMd8avktg8s

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdrR3Jvo43k

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk4FjMO1VwA

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tgbOwqbTn8

One thing I take especially seriously as a parent is hygiene and home sanitization.  Consider this series of events.

Madi gets a treat

She shows it to the dog

You can have a bite, Mr. Doggie

I’ll finish it, nom nom nom…

http://shitmykidsruined.com

When you talk to most parents about what it’s like having kids, they’ll tell you that it’s a beautiful and fulfilling experience. That’s not a lie, exactly. It’s like that sometimes, but that description does exclude a lot of the truth.

Let me preface this with the fact that I love my kids and am so glad I have them around, but, short of working in a slaughterhouse or public sanitation, I think folks are utterly unprepared for the amount of bodily fluids they’re going to have to contend with while raising children. Let me paint you a picture of this morning.

I’m having a nice Saturday morning at home with the family. My boy was watching cartoons and I was bouncing the baby and snuzzling her belly to make her giggle. That’s when things when horribly horribly wrong. The moment when I realized she had puked on the top of my head was when I went blind. This was initially a result of it running down my glasses, but soon the burning effect of semi-digested formula on my corneas has shut vision down entirely. I was still holding the baby over my head so I decided it was time to holler for help.

Still blind, I could hear my wife coming from the kitchen. My hope was that she would either relieve me of the baby or at least wipe my face off. Instead, all I heard was footsteps heading in the wrong direction. My brief optimism that she’d gone in search of a towel was dashed as I began to see the camera flashes through my closed eye lids. My further attempts to request assistance were squelched by a combination of her laughter and the fact that the vomit had run into my mouth (Note: if you have a baby’s vomit in your mouth, do not attempt to breathe through your nose. The rest of the day will be spent with everything smelling like baby vomit). Eventually, the baby was taken and I got to spend some alone time in the shower wondering if I could ever really get clean again.

So kids, if you’re out there thinking, “I’m gonna have a baby because it will (a) love me, (b) fix my relationship, and/or (c) give me an awesome tax deduction”, remember that the truth involves a lot more vomit than you’d imagine.

Brought to us by the folks at http://bulatov.org, this little guy is what I would have previously considered an impossible shape. It’s made out of steel and I have no idea if it would even have been possible through a CNC or casting process. It was executed using a 3D printer developed by MIT that can use bronze steel instead of the plastics most common in 3D printing. Think of this being built up one thin layer of molten steel at a time. That is freaking cool any way you think about it. I’m usually pretty adverse to buying things for myself, but this completely blew me away.  Some of the other options. It was really hard to pick one.

This is why I picked this particular one. Look how she spins!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW6gZZKA6A8

Ben’s preschool put on a Christmas performance on Friday.  It was adorable.  His class had worked up an elaborate routine that involved randomly shaking bells while Jingle Bell Rock played.  There was also some screaming, crying, and wandering away.  3 year olds are great.  Check out all the pics here.

Ben got some sweet Buzz Lightyear pj’s.

Guess who thinks he’s Superman.

Madi is getting really cute.  She’s got smiling down and is working on giggling.  Right now, it still mostly sounds like she has indigestion.

Ben is not a good hider.  He grasped the concept of hide and go seek yesterday, but he doesn’t seem to get what constitutes a good hiding spot.  His best hiding spots included: under a pillow, covering his face in the shower, and putting a towel over his head.  Check out the full series of pics.

Kim is a ninja.

Ben helped decorate the Christmas tree.  He had a great time and the tree is nicely decorated up to about two and a half feet.  Good job, buddy.

We took Ben to Disneyland again the other day (I love having passes).  He got into the characters for the first time.  It was really cute.  Madi was really digging the Baby Bjorn.

Ben has been really into helping Kim bake lately.  Here’s muffin day.

Ok, I think that’s about it.  At this rate, there will be another post in about a month.

I know I’ve been off of the radar since I left MySpace, and I’m happy to finally be able to talk about my newest project: gravity.com. We’re officially out of stealth now, and it is a great feeling to be able to now talk about something I have been pouring my heart and soul into over the past six months. We’ve assembled an amazing team here, and today we’re unveiling the site and the problem we are tackling.

The online conversation space has been historically undeserved, with outdated tools that create fragmented and unwieldy discussions. Our mission is to help people engage in meaningful conversations about their passions. Be it gadgets, cooking, Voltron, or whatever you may fancy, Gravity will provide users with a place to have discourse with other people who share their interests. Traditional tools like forums, group email lists, and collaborative blogs haven’t offered users with simple, functional, and fun way to interact and share. When we talk about what we’ve built, we like to describe it as a turn-based conversation site. This isn’t about allowing for chatter, but instead about creating a destination where we provide a framework for people to better share and communicate. We’re focused on building out the Interest Graph for the web to help people connect with their passions and discover people and topics that are personally relevant. Additionally, we’re embracing the distributed nature of the web, current movements in open API’s and technology, and are looking at how we open up our technology while inter-operating with others.

Please check out this TechCrunch post that delves into more detail on the company and our mission, and be sure to follow us on Twitter at: @gravity. This is an exciting moment for me personally and professionally, and I can’t wait to share more about the project, and more importantly, give everyone a chance to play with the product and tell me what you think.

The duck tale

One of my college roomates is getting married next month in Phuket, Thailand. As a gift to him and his wife, I’ve designed, fabricated, and painted a pair of stylized Korean wedding ducks. Before I jump into the details, I have to give a big thanks to Steve for providing the idea, guidance and resources that were necessary to achieve a tangible outcome.

So why Korean wedding ducks? Apparently it is a Korean tradition to give a pair of ducks as a wedding gift. Aside from being cute decorations, the ducks are a way to visualize the current state of a relationship: a happy couple points their ducks face to face while a not-so-happycouple points their ducks away. There are some pretty intense ducks out there.

The process got started two weeks ago when Steve and I picked up a band saw from Westwood. Look how happy he is:

Three days later, I met up at Steve’s place to learn the fine art of band sawing and earn my woodworking badge. Here is a shot of Steve showing me the ropes:

Band saw, meet wood. Wood, meet band saw.

Steve’s ducks are on the left and mine are on the right. We proceeded to smooth the corners and faces with a Dremel and fine sand paper. Here is what the ducks looked like post-sanding:

We proceeded to stain the ducks and let them sit overnight in Steve’s garage:

Four days later, I met back up at Steve’s place and saw the dried ducks in all their glory:

Fast forward to this morning when I decided to paint the ducks with acrylics:

I ended up mixing white, orange, and light pink and went to town on the ducks:

I then went ahead and mixed orange and pink together to create some highlights and stripes:

Here is a top down shot:

Here is another shot showing the patterns from the other side:

Making these ducks made me realize how out of touch I am when it comes to working with wood and fabrication in general. Overall, this was an amazing experience to attempt a radically different project. I hope the couple keeps their ducks endlessly pointed at each other.