Month: March 2008

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...And Little E Makes 3 Gaming Television & Movies Toiling In The Pixel Mines

Early spring and lightning

Elizabeth Lister ObservatoryIt’s all around me, yeah yeah yeah. Odd time to be blogging, I’ll admit, being in the middle of a thunderstorm warning with quite a sound and light show going on just outside my window, but I stay awake for these things just in case they wake Evan up.

And speaking of Evan…I’ve got video for you! It’s just not the video I was trying to get. I’ve been a bit self-conscious lately of the fact that I take boatloads of pictures of the kid, and not nearly enough video, which has to be the height of irony since I’m kinda like Mr. Video Equipment. So today, before I put Evan down for his morning nap after we’d had breakfast and read some stories, I set up one of my cameras to look straight down into the crib. Now, one might just argue that the presence of a huge freaking tripod directly above one’s head might just be something that would be unusual enough to merit staying awake. But I waited until he was rubbing-his-eyes tired to put him down for his nap. Did it help? Not even the tiniest bit. I sped up the resulting 10 or so minutes of video to give you a time lapse version of what all he did instead of, oh, actually sleeping. You’d think he would be making a ton of noise while doing all that shuffling around, but no, he just gets good and stuck and then he calls for help. I have no idea where he got that.

While waiting for someone to e-mail me back a JPG or two so I could finish a video project I was working on for them, I farted up a little Doctor Who DVD intro thingie that might also amuse you fellow fans out there. You can watch that here.

I’ve gotten an invite from the Computer Arts and Technology Society at Oklahoma
City Community College to be an exhibitor at the first-ever Oklahoma Electronic Game Expo on April 26, 2008. At this point…I honestly don’t know if I’m up for that or not. There was no OVGE in 2007, which frankly was a bit of a relief (not that I didn’t miss it though), and now that I’ve got a baby that I’d have to make arrangements for, the thought of unplugging a bunch of my crap and hauling it to OKC is just a bit more daunting than it would’ve been this time two years ago. Part of me wants to go, part of me wants to just sleep. At any rate, if you’re in that neighborhood, it’s Saturday, April 26th at the OCCC campus, south of OKC near the Will Rogers World Airport. (“Will Rogers World! Will Rogers World! For all your Will Rogers needs!”) I’ll keep you updated on my decision, whenever I reach it. I might do something, I might not. OVGE folks who remember Kent will be relieved to know that he’s on hot standby for this event – I think he’s been suffering OVGE withdrawals.

Not quite last but most certainly not least, congratulations to Keir and his family on the new baby. I’m glad they got to deliver in an ambulance behind the post office instead of me – you’d think that would’ve happened to us… 😯

Finally, I have to confess an embarrassing truth: I almost pissed my pants laughing so hard at South Park’s Heavy Metal parody last week. If you haven’t already, you really need to catch the rerun of that one, or get it on iTunes or something.… Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Television & Movies

Of toddlers and TARDISes

Sorry for the stretch of non-bloggification there – this time it wasn’t my idea. My hosting service had a bit of a databalse server hiccup, so I could literally add nothing to the site. There wouldn’t even have been an update for theLogBook.com this morning if not for the fact that I’m making a conscious effort to “work ahead”. Given how many upheavals come into my schedule just from being a dad, I’m not sure the site would be here still if I wasn’t ahead of the curve – whatever curveballs get thrown at me right now won’t derail the coming weekend’s update, because I’m 2-3 weeks ahead of it whenever and wherever possible.

In between baby time and household chores, I’ve been watching and/or listening to a lot of Doctor Who lately. Why? Okay, here’s the deal: in April, when the new season begins, theLogBook will be doubling up on Doctor Who episode guide entries, one from the original series and one from the new series each week. In looking over what hadn’t been covered from the original series – mainly from the B&W years – I discovered that there were 13 episodes that hadn’t been included in the episode guide section yet. That’s also how many episodes are in the upcoming season, so I’m watching that backlog of episodes now, writing episode entries as I go, and when we reach the final episode of the new show’s latest season, there’ll be a complete 45+ year guide to the series. Neat how that works out, huh? To be fair, many of the missing installments have been listened to in audio form only while I work around the house or work at the farm, because that’s the only medium in which some of them exist. Shoveling horse poop passes so much more quickly when Patrick Troughton and the Yeti are chasing each other around in your head while you do it. The real irony of it all is that, as you might expect, the one Doctor Who I have been saving for last is the one I want to watch the least. Just today I finished my journeys with William Hartnell; yesterday while working at the farm I said farewell to Patrick Troughton. The one I’ve been putting off, which I’ve seen before and have little or no desire to see again, is…Meglos, starring Tom Baker. Or, as I call it, with apologies to another British science fiction show I love, Smeglos. Now, perhaps my long-delayed revisitation with Meglos will show me that it wasn’t that bad in the first place – I’m open to that – but I just don’t remember it as being too great, the last gasp of indulgent silliness in the Tom Baker era. Still, I have it, and I’m giving myself until the new season starts to watch it in its entirety. Maybe I ought to chase that accomplishment down by going to Lulu.com and turning the whole thing into an “unauthorized! unexpurgated! unbifurcated!” book or something. You know, with all that spare time it probably sounds like I have.

Evan’s teething pains are back with a vengeance, but something even more worrying is asserting itself too: independence. He doesn’t want dad to hold his bottle anymore. He wants to hold it. He’s also scooting himself around on the floor at a pretty good click, laying on his butt and his back and pushing with his feet and legs. (A quick examination of my mother’s baby book reveals that I did this too, thus earning the nickname Scooter.) I know none of these things are on par with, oh, watching him go down the street on a bicycle for the first time, or watching him go off to college or anything, but it’s the first step on that path. It makes me realize how fleeting my time with him is. If he leaves home when he’s 18, and he’s six months old now, that means that 1/36 of my time with Evan is over. It’s gone. That’s a bit sobering. I’m already keenly aware that every moment is precious, every story I read to him is precious, every bit of playtime is precious. I get other stuff done while he’s sleeping, but as long as he’s awake, daddy is all his.… Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3

Half-y birthday, Evan!

Evan - 6 months old!

In about half an hour, it will be exactly six months since I first heard this little guy’s voice, and saw his face, and my life changed completely. It all seemed so surreal at the time, but I remember it all with crystal clarity – the two sets of big double doors. You walk in one set of doors not knowing what to expect, no matter how much you’ve read up on it, and you walk out the other set of doors as a father. It’s as simple and as mind-blowingly complex as that. It seems like it was just yesterday, and yet today marks six months since a doctor handed me a screaming infant who has since become my best buddy. … Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Critters

Hooked on Oberonics

Evan and Oberon chillin'One note that I forgot to add from last night: I had to go somewhere around 8:30 or so, and right on cue, Oberon shot out the door. Again. I followed him as far as I could. Again. (Wearing shorts and sandals this time.) And he got away from me. Again.

I decided to go ahead and do what I needed to go do and just come home, at which point I’d keep an eye out for him. By the time I got home, he had already wandered back to the house and had been let in. Which, you know, is good, but if he thinks we’re just going to concede the point and let him be an indoor/outdoor cat – in an outdoor area where we recently had a dead cat turn up in our yard (thanks, Xena – no, she didn’t kill it herself, but she dragged it into the yard from wherever she found it) – he really needs to readjust the thinking in that one little fuzzy brain cell of his. In the meantime, though, I’m happy to see him more enthusiastically making his way home after getting out. He wouldn’t have wanted to be in that storm last night.

So here’s a picture of Evan and his strangely adventurous cat yet again, taken this morning after yet another adventure into the wild. But at lest Obi’s kinda like me – he knows there’s only one place he can go to see that little face, so he keeps coming back.

Looks like Atlanta got hammered worse than anybody realized at first, so again, if any of my regular readers in Atlanta or any of the other storm-tossed areas of Georgia/SC can check in, let us know if you’re OK. If I don’t hear from you soon, I’m sending Obi out as the search party. And then you’re really in trouble.… Read more

Categories
...And Little E Makes 3 Should We Talk About The Weather?

The end of a week

Was anyone watching the live coverage of the ‘Bama/Mississippi game tonight when the tornado slid right past the stadium? That was fun. I think that was a very, very, very, very close call – a thin line between a basketball game and an Irwin Allen disaster flick. And that’s not something I say very often. (The Hogs beating Vandy wasn’t bad either, but hey, let’s put our cards on the table – it didn’t have God kicking the crap out of the building in overtime. That’s excitement. Trust me, I’ve been to see the stage musical and gotten autographs.) Hopefully the folks I know in/around Atlanta like Dire51 and Atarigirl are OK.

Sorry for the lack of baby pix lately – I actually got ready to take some today, but the little guy kept urping on himself. He went through no fewer than six outfits today.

There’s more to tell, but there’s also a weatherman on TV talking about rotating thunderstorms heading kinda like toward-my-house so maybe I better go. 😯… Read more