June 27, 2005
Solo Flight
The confinement lady's daughter called on Friday night many times. We never answered the phone until Saturday though, because I don't answer the house phone and Ling was busy. The next morning we find out that the Confinement Lady's (CL) next baby-job just gave birth. Now Ling is already sort of tired of this woman. It's grating having a third person in the house. So we're both thinking it's time to get on by ourselves so I said, "ok, she can leave for her next job, but she's got to stay all weekend so that we can have dinner out on Saturday and I can go Kayaking on Sunday. I think there was some haggling in Chinese (well, actually there wasn't, because I was inflexible -- she could work till Monday or she could work till her scheduled date (July 2) but she wouldn't be leaving me to unexpectedly hang on Saturday.)
She shipped off this morning and now Ling and I are almost like real parents. Ling's brother and I dragged the crib upstairs to boy's nursery and got him settled. Right now I am listening to the AM hum and random electronic
June 25, 2005
Sign Language
Everyone seemed interested in our plan to teach Luke sign language early on, so that he can communicate better and cry less.
Our first lesson...
June 24, 2005
It'll be official next week...
CQ CQ DE 9V1VK 9V1VK
I thought it sounded nice, sharp and clear to say.... "Nine victor one victor kilo"
I also liked the syncopation of saying it.
I'm now a two-handled ham....ladies form a queue.
Little boy
Little boy is doing fine this week -- no exciting news. He just sleeps and eats. He's got a ferocious and impatient temper.
June 20, 2005
A camera accessory with leverage
It's a bit silly that I own a Canon 1dmkii but then my flash is a six? year old 380EX -- about the most basic E-TTL flash you could find. In fact, for all these years I used it so seldomly that its guts rusted out and I had to get it refurbished ""under warranty.""
Last time I was in Japan I picked up an accessory that I'm growing to love -- an offshoe camera flash cord that allows me to stretch the flash away from the camera.
It sounds like no big deal, but the ability to bounce light off other surfaces suddenly makes many of my shots tons better.
I always hate onboard flashes, which is what this essentially is. The 380EX only fires forward, straight up, or at one or two other angle adjusts between 0-90 degrees. It tends to blast out a lot of light and cast shadows.The lighting is harsh and unnatural.
But now I can bounce it in any direction I want and the results are dramatically better. You lose the shadows, you get nicer tones, and in some limited ways can make the light seem light studio directional.
It takes a bit of practice to be able to hold a five pound camera with one hand and manage the flash with the other, but it's worth it. The other trick I've been resorting to is diffusing the flash with a white t-shirt.
This is a relatively unknown accessory that I highly recommend. It should be a $10 cord, but since it is a Canon peripheral, it costs $50, but it's still worth it.
June 19, 2005
It's fashion week
...and the model is a diva.
Today's collection is sent by Aunt Megan...
...coming soon, part of the Aunt Shannon collection.
Technical Improvement (of note to Eldridge and Hollingsworth especially)
Matt and Dave get countless emails from me of the format
FROM: Blutig
TO: dbh/mw
SUBJECT: hahahahaahahahah fucking hell
BODY:
http://foo.bar/fuck
END
I'm sure they get tired after the fifteenth of the day.
I've got a solution -- I've made it a pull rather than a push
Delicious is a "social bookmark manager." It's like Flickr for web urls and works almost as well. The brilliant thing I can do is add tags to the urls (like 'mwe' or 'dbh') then Matt (mwe) or Dave (dbh) can, when they feel like it, look at all the urls I tagged for their attention online (mwe tags) (dbh tags). If they're part of the Web 2.0 (knock knock Matt, Stanford CS Phd), then they can even watch these tags with an RSS reader (mwe) (dbh).
Of course, you don't have to be mwe or dbh to see any of these tags, and in fact you can look at everything I've added to del.icio.us
Now they'll have fewer emails and can view those urls only when they want.
The only thing the site lacks is a way to add comments to urls. That means it's harder for Matt to send back the email replies like, "yeah, that was really fucking sick" etc.
June 18, 2005
One step closer to 9V-
After a month+ wait I finally got a letter from the Infocomms Development Authority that my Elecraft KX1 CW transceiver has been given one-off approval for use in Singapore.
The final step is to get my license issued. This involves them sending someone to my house to check my setup and make sure it's not doing something heinous.
Hopefully that takes less than a few weeks.
June 11, 2005
Stupid silkscreen experiment
Boing Boing ran an link to a site explaining how to do t-shirt silkscreen with wax paper. Sounded cool.
Of course, it didn't work for shit.
Firstly, my waxpaper apparently had wax on both sides. There wasn't a paper-like side to it at all. Thus I made a big mess with my printer. The ink just beaded up and made a mess.
So I instead printed my design on paper, taped a fresh sheet of wax paper on it, and traced it with a sharp pencil.
Cutting out the pattern was tedious but basically worked. (Although I don't know how I could do a small design at all).
The next step is to put the wax paper on the t-shirt, and iron it onto the t-shirt, melting the wax to hold onto the t-shirt. Afterwards I was intended to paint over the stencil I'd melted onto the shirt.
Ha. Fuck. Neither side of the paper would adhere to the shirt. The little wax there just melted and absorbed into the paper I was using as a buffer between the iron and the wax paper.
How stupid. Literally nothing worked at all.
Luke Blutig gets his Chinese Name
Ling got her cesarean stitches removed today, then afterwards we had a nice Japanese lunch with lots of the raw fish that she couldn't eat during pregnancy.
During lunch we discussed Luke's Chinese name. I didn't have much useful input aside from, "the name probably shouldn't have any X or Q's in it because westerners cannot pronounce those sounds."
So we went to the Geomancer after lunch to choose his name.
"Disciple Yee" gave Ling a prepared document, sort of a Chinese birth certificate, for Luke and a second piece of paper with twelve names for Luke. He highlighted the suggested name and two other good ones.
The suggested one was based on the fact that Luke is a fiery boy with plenty of temper (as determined by his birth time) [and of course, he's got a mom and dad who each have a bad temper]. The name he suggested has two words. The first represents discipline and good upbringing. Since Luke has a 'hard bark' to him, we are supposed to use a soft touch on him, because otherwise he's too stubborn. The word is supposed to compensate or neutralize some of it. The second word is something like "head to tail" which means he's very thorough and doesn't leave loose ends.
The gave us other names. We're supposed to burn the list of twelve names because it is apparently not good to have many names for a kid, so I guess I am not supposed to tell the other names.
After some discussion at a local coffeeshop afterward we decided which of the names to use. We ended up going with the first recommended name, keeping in mind my suggestion that we avoid 'Q' or 'X' in his name.
And the official name is?
Xun Qi
doh!
yeah. I guess I wasn't logically clear and everyone heard me say we should avoid 'Q' xor 'X'.
I won't really try to even attempt to tell you how to pronounce it. It's something like 'chun chi' but this is a hideous transciption. Maybe our resident expert RogerWarez can give a better transciption for english speakers. (He also probably would know the simplified versions of the character too)
So Luke's full name is going to be: "Luke Lim Xun Qi Blutig"
The Geomancer told Ling a few other things, too:
Flying chicken juncture: Within three [4 in western terms] years avoid watching the killing or slaughtering of livestock.
Well juncture: Beware of leaving unattended with any water which may cause drowning within the age of five [6 in western terms]
Apparently the well juncture because Xun Qi's 'element' is fire. I am not sure what the Flying Chicken Juncture (isn't this one of stas's favorite Tekken moves?) is based on, however.
So that means when I send Luke to Camp Aunt Mary you'll have to kill the pigs in the barn and make sure Xun Qi is not around.
June 10, 2005
Tomorrow Luke Blutig gets his Chinese Name
So tomorrow we goto the Chinese geomancer in a dodgy, rundown part of Singapore to see the list of twelve Chinese names he 'calculated' by a function involving Luke's exact date and time of birth. Then we'll select one of those twelve for him.
They have to be three-syllable names, and I didn't want him to transliterate 'Blutig' so we're going to use Lim, Ling's family name. So his name will be something like Luke Lim XXX YYYY Blutig. This will afford him many disguise names...
Luke Blutig: All American Boy
Lim XXX YYYY: All Chinese Boy
L L X Y Blutig: Pretentious British Aristocrat
XXX YYYY Blutig: Bohemian Boy
He'll probably curse us for this every time he fills in an application expecting first name, last name, and middle initial.
June 09, 2005
The Hot Kid
A friend gave me a copy of the latest Elmore Leonard Novel, "The Hot Kid." Set in 1930's Oklahoma, it's kind of a cross between his modern novels and his westerns. I think it's one of his stronger recent novels. The dialogue is great, especially the first chapter.
"It did. I wondered why he didn't believe I'd shoot." "He saw you as a kid on a horse." "He knew stealing cows could get him shot or sent to prison, but it's what he chose to do." "You didn't feel any sympathy for the man?" "Yeah, I felt if he'd listen he wouldn't be lying there dead." The room was silent. Now Virgil asked, "How come you didn't shoot the other one?" "There weren't any cows on the trailer," Carlos said, "else I might've." It was his son's quiet tone that made Virgil realize, My Lord, but this boy's got a hard bark on him.
Baby Boy Updated
I've been getting grief from all sides about not providing Luke Blutig updates frequently enough.
The Delivery (Thursday, June 1)
So Ling's labor was 'induced' early Thursday morning. She had en epidural (spinal block) so she felt nothing for the twelve hours of contractions. Near the end of the day she started spewing green puke like the exorcist and it was clear to the doctor that Little Boy was not going to fit. Emergency Ceaserean. $9000 later (double charges for the wards, anesthetiologist, etc) we had a brand new baby boy.
Ling sat in the hospital until Sunday
We came home at lunchtime. The 'confinement lady' arrived as well. Chinese custom is for a month of 'confinement' for the new mother. A host of awful superstitions to prevent her from getting sick. Maybe it made sense in northern, frozen china 200 years ago not to take a bath for a month, but it makes no sense today. Maybe it made sense in northern frozen china 200 years ago to not drink any water, but it makes no sense today. And on and on and on.
Anyway, there are plenty of modified customs they still like to follow, including eating lots of ginger and sesame oil-based food. (yuk) The confinement lady's purpose is to do this specialty cooking, take care of the baby, and let the mom rest.
I guess the woman is ok. Ling likes her. The woman only speaks Cantonese and Hokkien, so we can't communicate at all. She makes this 'pft' sound to shoo away Mister and Mona. Monday morning I said, "hello" to her and she made the same noise at me, so I have ceased trying to warm up to her.
So that's what we're doing. Namely, I'm doing nothing. Since I neither express breast milk (like Ling) nor have the experience of raising nine kids of my own (like the confinement lady) there is little I can do but admire Luke when he is not bawling, make decorations for his bedroom, and take photos.
June 08, 2005
Great Collection of antique mugshots
A great group on flicr, collecting antique mugshots. 32867 looks like a cross between Hannibal Lechter and an Elmore Leonard western villain.
June 06, 2005
Wardrobe Consultant
What if a specialist came to your house with a crate full of clothing. Not just random clothes, but a carefully selected set of high quality apparel for all occasions and styles suitable for the next eighteen months?
Would be pretty cool, right?
Well, that's want Aunt Shannon did for Luke. We got an enormous box in the mail. It looked like a inventory delivery for the Macy's childrenss department was accidentally sent to our house instead. There is every sort of goodie in the box for Luke, running the full gamut from cute to biker, from infant to eighteen months. He's literally sorted out for the next year and a half!
Thanks Aunt Shannon!
(Luke will be modelling these cute clothes this week, however first they must be washed.)
Friends' photos
Many friends visited us in the hospital last week. Kelvin and Geraldine were kind enough to post the photos Kelvin took.
June 04, 2005
June 03, 2005
If you thought I posted too many photos of our dogs...
...now there's Luke.
Rather than bothering trying to maintain all his photos inside the Movable Type's atrocious, primitive, pathetic image handling abilities, I am going to keep them all on Flickr, one of the coolest photo systems ever. If you aren't using Flickr and Picasa for your digital camera photos, you are missing out.
Look here for more pictures of the boy.
June 02, 2005
Blutig++
What better way to to start off a long, rich, loving relationship with my brand-new son, Luke, than to feed a picture of him, ten minutes after birth, covered in blood and slime, swelled with edema, and stretched like a monkey, to Google, where it will remain accessible to the universe for the next three hundred years.
You can thank me later, Luke.
The poor little guy looks like Ling tried to extrude him through the closed end of a Pringle's can. Ling was about that successful, too.
After twelve hours of sitting in a room with a tube leeching anasthetic into her spine to mask the pain of contractions, she started spewing green puke like the Exorcist. The doctor came in, checked how big the baby was and how small her hips were, announced, "well, unfortunately this isn't going to work -- the kid's too big -- emergency caeserean in twenty minutes."
Ling was shocked and disappointed, but the doctors took over, rolled her into the surgery theatre and then i sat in the lobby sms'g people and listening to "Horse With No Name" over and over. It and a Japanese Koto Folk Music song were the only non-hyper and non-ArtBell selections on my Ipod.
Some thirty minutes later a nurse wheeled out a baby to take elsewhere. As the elevator arrived she said, "Lim Tien Ling." then I realized that that big pink baby must be mine. Sure enough he was. I didn't have my camera with me, so we all have to suffer with these handphone camera shots until tomorrow, but I guess, like those few Normandy Beach D-Day photos, they'll have to do.
He was 3.91kg or 8.62pounds. I don't know how long he is, but I do know that when i look into the nursery of 20 babies, I see 19 tiny babies covered in thick black hair, and then i see one giant, pink, mostly-bald baby that is 15% bigger than anyone else. Every time I look in there I laugh.
So anyway, more photos and news tomorrow.
June 01, 2005
Important update...
...on my video graphics adapter card and its failure to work at 1024x814 resolution:
So Ling checked into the hospital this evening. They gave her some medicine to start the baby avalanche rolling. I went in to see her. She was otherwise fine except for the giant rubberized maxipads they gave her for a pillow. They were the most hideous things ever. So I drove home, collected her nice down pillows, and brought them back.
By the time I returned she was connected to some gigantic baby seismograph which was recording her and Luke and detecting contractions (faint so far). It was fun to whack her stomach with the pillow and set the seismograph going nuts till the nurse came in. Then visiting hours were over.
Tomorrow she gets woken up for a charming 0530 breakfast and then more drugs I presume. They're supposed to call me when the action gets going. In the meantime it's me and the dogs staring at each other, wondering what the fuck is going on.