Music Monday

In recent days I have come to listen more closely to a band my younger sister has been trying to get me to listen to for years. You guys ever see the treadmill video? That band, Ok Go, seems to REALLy enjoy what they do. For example, here are their Two, yes two videos for their new single, This Too Shall Pass. The first one is a giant Rube Goldberg Machine. The other video is with the marching band from Notre Dame.





While I do like this band, I'm going to recommend caution when getting into them. I recommend this song, and I'll post a couple others later for you to enjoy.

A Tale of Two Daddies

Lilly discovered the mirror recently.

Her initial response to the mirror was rather hilarious. I held her up to the mirror, she looked into the mirror and made eye contact with my reflection. She grinned in the most adorable way. Suddenly, her head whips around. It takes a couple seconds for the little baby gyroscope in her noggin to compensate and for her head to become stationary again, but when it does, she looks right at the real me, just about jumps out of my arms with excitement, and grins even bigger. The she swings her head back around, grins at me in the mirror again, and nearly laughs. It was so cute. I would have thought it a fluke if she had not done the exact same thing the next day.

How she reacts the rest of the time seems to be based on how you hold her. If you hold her down low, all she notices is the other baby and she smiles all the time at it. If you hold her up near your head, she tends to get a little jealous of the other baby with the other daddy. Once she screamed and took a swipe at the mirror. Unfortunately she connected and there was more screaming involved. Another time she just screamed and buried her head in my neck so she did not have to see the other baby. Ah, so cute.

Izapa, Mexico

I'm on the tail end of the first phase of an interesting project. Back when I presented this project:


To my Digital Design class, there was a Proffesor working at the back of the room who saw it and went nuts. He asked more questions about the project than my classmates did. A couple of weeks later this Proffesor, Dennis Lisonbee, approached me about a short documentary he was working on with a BYU Proffesor about some ruins in Mexico. Garth Norman has made a life's study around Izapa Mexico. There is significant evidence that the Mayan Calendars were all refined and organised here. This place has special alignments, places where 3 or more monuments and mounds line up with various zeniths, equinoxes and seasonal events. I have spent much of my spare time over the last 4 months reproducing this place in detail, right down to the topography for use in a short documentary.

I know know more than I ever thought I would about Mayan/Olmec cultures. There is a potential that through this short documentary I could get more similar work. I really like this Digital Archeology thing. Following are a few of my renders from this project that I use with permission.

Stela 8, 9 and 10 on the front of mound 30

Stela 5, the "Tree of Life" Stela

Stela 5 detail, upper portion of the "Tree of Life"

Zenith Sunrise

Central Alignment (left) and Plaza B (right)

Music Monday

So, technically the wrong time of year to post this, but there is no way I'm going to remember it in July. I love this song. Done by a publishing company, apparently someone asked the question what would it have been like if pop singers had been involved with the Continental Congress. So to answer that question, we now have "Too Late to Apologize: A Declaration performed by"TJ and the Revs".



The band, from left to right:
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Franklin
John Hancock
John Adams
Sam Adams (hence the beer)

Spring Layout.

I'm making changes again. I decided our normal template looked a bit wintery, so I have come up with one for the spring, and will have a summer and fall one too. They all follow the same theme, just different colors. Why change a good thing? (Read, why do more work than I have to?)

Teenagers

If I could go back and be a teenager again, I would like to:
(1) Do an interpretive dance to tell the story of the Peppered Moths
(2) Ask for help from a teacher until I understand
(3) Stop and help a mother with a young child spread compost around her yard
(4) Be nice to the weird kid in the class

Today, I had the pleasure of seeing all four of these acts done by adults under 18....
I laughed with #1, cried in sympathy with #2, cried for myself for #3 and smiled with #4.

Thank God for good people. I want to be one of them.

Lilly-dini

Little Lilly has a problem. I have had to invent no less than 6 different methods of swaddling in the last month. The reason for this is that eventually, somehow, she figures out how to get her hand free.

As we have previously discussed, if she is not swaddled she has a tendency to hit herself on the head. When she hits herself on the head, she wakes herself up. So we wrap her in such strange methods that she cannot get her little arms free. These new methods work wonderfully for a couple of nights. Then all of a sudden, one morning you will come in and she will be wide awake with her little fist poking out the covers next to her head.

We even tried one of those velcro-swaddle thingys they sell at the store. By the end of the first night the velcro would not stick anymore.

It's not like she hates being swaddled. When she gets tired, she will cry and scream till you wrap her up. Then she will sigh and slip off to dreamland.

But when she is not wanting to sleep and you swaddle her, she gets this crazy mischievous look on her face. She will look at you and smile. Then, still smiling she starts to wriggle. It's possible, even infinitely likely that she enjoys being swaddled. But it is infinitely more hilarious to look at her and think she is planning her escape, enjoys the game, and knows she will win eventually.


Note: the strip is from my new favorite series "Dog eat Doug". It fills the nitch "Calvin and Hobbes" Left empty. You can find the whole series going back to the beginning at the author Brian Andersons Site: Dog Eat Doug.

Music Monday

Record companies occasionally invent a history for up and coming bands that make them sound more interesting. I've heard this to be the case, so it must be so.

The reason I mention this is because despite what the record company this band just signed with may tell you, they are local. Like Provo kinda local, not Salt Lake even.

My Audio Essentials Teacher introduced us to them. He recorded their first album for them in his private studio. He's proud of these guys, and this song is really catchy. I present to you, the song "Animal", by the Neon Trees. (I'm not sure, but that looks like Lake "Pal" in the background...)