He sets off on his own...

I remember the day when Chloe went on two-wheels on her own.
On saturday (May 24th, 2008), Tucker decided he wanted to ride his on
his own two wheels...

Way to go buddy!

sundae night...

we usually combine 'movie' night with 'sundaes' -- the kids love it...
particularly when it is super hot out. We had a series of really hot
nights lately. kids had a hard time going to sleep.

Lori was smart to get the little dishes... it makes the ice cream taste better.

She's 8... and is super funny

Every day I see more and more of Chloe's personality come to life.
She's now 8... which means that she hears more, says more... and is
becoming an independent spirit. She laughs when she wants to, she
shows her distain when she wants to.

I love this young lady she is becoming.

On this day in Los Gatos, it was HOT, and her cheeks were red. She had
been chasing her brother around the playground. She stopped and had a
conversation with mom as dad and Tucker threw the frisbee.

A special mother's day program

on this day, T-man sang a bunch of songs to the mothers. Each mom got
a special rose. We can't thank our mothers enough...

All Smiles - Happy day at the Zoo

After T-man and I spent a few hours at the SB zoo, I put him on my shoulders and we did a power-walk once more through the park... like a review of the things we saw. It's a really small zoo, so it was easy to do. A few times I would ask him to smile and i'd blindly point my camera up, guessing if he was looking at the camera (or not). This was one of those images that turned out just fine...

Tucker Feeds a giraffe

Tuck and I spent some time at the Santa Barbara Zoo... and one of the
highlights was that he got to feed a Giraffe!!

it was totally cool. Tucker says, "I was happy to feed the giraffe. I
was surprised his tounge was black! I was kinduv cool. I would giraffe
again."

fun times...

Remembering Cole...

I was going through some pictures today and came across a photograph of a card I had taken.

It was a picture of a dog named Cole.

 

Cole touched our hearts in 2003. Chloe had just received an operation on her foot. She was in the recovery room after a very hard night of pain management. Her little soul was sad…

 

Then came Cole, a sweet dog that would visit kids in the hospital. She was amazing. Chloe lit up and I’m certain it helped in her healing process. This posting goes out to Cole, his owners and all of the volunteers that take their time and their compassion to help those in need.

 

Thank you for helping a little girl with a smile in 2003.

 

 

Photoshop Express went Live today...

I went to the Photoshop Express Online site today (along with every other person in the world) and did some magic on my photos. Super cool site. Lovely Interface. I was able to bring in my photos from Picasa, Facebook, and Photobucket really quickly.

It's a really nice way to edit a photo from a remote location and save it back out.

Here's my own gallery page they gave me...

Kites over Washington

03/01/08 ::: I spent two days in DC last week for some meetings. I
got to walk around a bit. It was FREEZING cold and the wind was
blowing really hard. I liked this shot... kites flying over the
capital. The light was really amazing.

Spending the ENTIRE day with Chloe

Today was a treat, because...



Today I got to spend almost the ENTIRE day with Chloe. It was a rare and wonderful thing. Tucker was home sick with mom, and so we just had an all-day daddy-daughter date. What did we do?

Well, not that much, but we DID spend our time (about 3 hours) on a walk with Heather. She rode her bike and I walked Heather. We talked about school, I told her some Scrat stories, then a few about when I was young.

We laughed about 'Walk much?' when she tripped over some rocks. We seemed to appreciate eachother today.

After that we dropped Heather off at home and we went to lunch. We got her favorite burrito and ate it outside at the Memorial park. She played, waved and went down the slide. We ran some errands for mom at the store and came home.... a beautiful, simple day.

We held hands. Thanks Chloe for being my daughter today.

love, dad.

Our little Tuckerman has the flu...

The good and the bad...
poor little T-man has the Flu. Without his medicine, he's pretty
miserable. He gets the chills and the poor little guy is so very
sad...

Get better buddy!

A Visit to Westmont - and a Collage

I was invited to Lecture at Westmont College as a guest of the Computer Science department. I gave a lecture on "Mashup Culture" where I explored all kinds of trends, behaviors and observations into Mash-ups.

Prior to the talk I spent about 35 min. shooting the campus, whereby I created a collage for the class, as I demonstrated the new VUVOX Collage tool, which is now in Beta.

This is what I created.

A Trip to Westmont...

02.01.08 ::: Today I visited Westmont Collage to give a talk about 'Mash-up Culture' -- I walked the campus and shot (and built) this collage for the talk...

I started some of it prior to the talk (about 35 minutes worth of work) then began to finish and author it as a live demo...

It was fun!

see the collage

We've had fun over the last couple of months walking our new dog, Heather and riding our new scooters. Here's some more images from our adventures:

Family Walks

A collection of walks that we've done over the last couple of months....



A new dog and a new scooter helps move things along...

see more of my photos

The imagination of a Child - Jedi Style

Tucker has had fun the last couple of months as I’ve introduced him to a few of the Star Wars movies. A day doesn’t go by where he doesn’t want to become a Jedi or pretend that he’s fighting for the freedom of the galaxy in some way.

When we wrestle, he tells me the color of his light saber and proceeds to wrinkle his nose and hold an imaginary saber, all the while making the spark and clashing noises.

All I did was visualize what I could only imagine was going on inside his little head. Way to go Tuck man! Love my son…

Re-arrange a room

This weekend we re-arranged the kids room... taking it from a bunk-bed to two individual beds. Toy consolidation was a must...

Designing a Disney ride (around the dinner table)

Last night at the dinner table, the kids had an imaginary exploration at the dinner table.

They each explained what they would want to design if they were in charge of a BRAND new Disney ride at Disneyland. It was fun to hear their ideas…

Tucker: His idea included a Star Wars ride where he could meet all of the characters, have dinner with them and ride in a space ship.

Chloe: Chloe’s elaborate idea involved riding real live horses and meeting all of the princesses, including princess Amidala (new).

Daddy: I wanted a ride based on the Ratatouille Movie, where you could explore Paris, riding through the sewers of Paris and exploring an underground world. You then grab a ticket and get in line to cook your very own meal, where a personal chef and you work together to make your own lunch. The entire ride takes place under ground. From above, the people above can look into the gigantic kitchen (like Remmy did in the movie)… it would be cool to lay on the thick glass and look into the kitchen and watch all of the commotion. Water ride, shopping, eating… does it get any better than that?

The next time we’re in Disneyland, the kids will have a new appreciation for the Star Wars ride in Tomorrow land.

Follow the light...

Sometimes the light seeks you out. I looked over and knew the light would be nice along the wall. This time Chloe was generous. she said 'sure dad, I'll take some pictures for you' -- and then Tucker joineed her.

The most remarkable thing about light is that when you see it... you know that the picture is going to be good, even before you take it.

Pure Joy...

I took the kids for a walk today... they had so much fun playing on
the track & the jump pads... I got some sequences of Tucker running
towards me.

this one was my favorite...

Scrat Stories...

I've been telling Choe Scrat stories on the way to school lately. She
LOVES them. Today's storie was about Scrat going to Germany and
getting filled up with Streudel.

some of her favorites?

- the time Scrat went to New York City
- The time when Scrat got married
- the time when scrat was a secret agent (and kept humming the MIP soundtrack)

... just to name a few.

My Very first picture withthe D40x

It was important to me that this was my very first photograph of the camera.
Thank you sunshine...

Movie night!

It's the first day of my new camera (Nikon D40x) and it's 'movie
night'... Tonight we watched Return of the Jedi and I couldn't help
but take a few shots...

Automatic Reflections

I went to dumpr.net (nice name) and tried a few of their quick visualizations.

I'm not sure what use some of them were, but I grabbed an image and itautomatically made a reflection. Here it is: reflected

Sometimes you hand over the camera

On this day, I handed over the camera to my daugher, Chloe...

She did a great job, aligning the shot and asking me to smile.
It was fun for me to get back to the computer and see the shot she had composed...

Using Picnik for layout

I did some experimenting with picnik tonight with their text and layout tools... kind-uv ho-hum, but I see there's some potential here. What I like more is that I'm posting it directly to blogger from their site... nice.

An example of the photo mosaics app

I found this mosaic app on facebook. I like creating new galleries of photo mosaics as interesting new visuals... Here is a link to my mosaic gallery on facebook

Scooter flow - Fuzion

Christmas day ::: Chloe got a Fuzion scooter for Christmas from Santa.
The thing just 'flows' along the pavement. It's unbelievable how much
more she enjoys going on walks and how she loves to go outside now.

thank you, nextsport.com

Amazing Words....

I was given this card by my daughter Chloe the other day. It truly
brought a smile to my face. It was one of those things that made my
entire week.

thank you Chloe. dad loves you.

The Sunken Cowboy -

Here's a painting that I've always liked. It's about the irony of having 'fun' taken away by someone... and for a reason that is sometime... unknown. I painted this originally in 2001 and I've returned to the idea in 2003 when I painted this for a show in Seattle.

The Sunken Cowboy -

This is currently hanging in my daughter's room.

more paintings are located on Dane's portfolio website

Welcome to Visual Experiments

This is the latest of my experiments.
Welcome to the place where I do some visual experiments.
I'm experimenting with embedding a variety of things, including the VUVOX collage tool