Around Dragon Con

The fact of the matter is that a person really has no way to do everything at a single Dragon Con.  As such, you have to pick-n-choose your battles and deal with the fact that you will have collisions.  I am always surprised by what I end up attending each year as it is never quite what I planned or expected.  For this year, the general theme of my con experience would be people watching, the gaming room, & attending various panels.

People watching at D*C is the best experience.  In addition to seeing some damn creative costumes, its always a pleasure to share the joy of some bit of nostalgia with a complete stranger.  You hear yourself shouting:  “Holy crap!  Its Captain N!  Hey, Kevinikus” or “No way!  That’s a Tron / Kingdom Hearts crossover!?!?  Fight for the users, Sora!“   Cons are as much about meeting new people and sharing ideas than anything else.  As such, I like to spend as much time as possible getting to know people and, in this case, what inspired their costumes.

Here are a few of the costumes that really nailed some of my favorite characters. 

The Gaming track of D*C is one that I had not participated in before.  Although I love the thought of gaming all weekend, its hard to justify spending time on an activity that you can do at your own home.  This year was an exception for me due to the fact that I was up late/early (Tristan decided that he was done sleeping at 4AM) and because the gaming rooms were in my hotel.  Between hanging out w/ the DnD players, playing several games of Werewolf, & soaking in a MtG tournament, I kept finding myself going back to the gaming room as much as possible.  It was a blast. 

Finally, I did catch some pretty great panels this year.  Of the ones I caught, the best on was the Sword and Laser Live panel featuring Tom Merrit and Veronica Belmont.  If you are not familiar w/ the S&L, the are an excellent Sci Fi & Fantasy book club.  In addition to covering some awesome books, they try to interview each books’ author.  For D*C, they were able to interview R.A. Salvatore.  They did a great job in keeping the session light but meaningful, switching between writer’s tips, making up for a wookie’s death by killing Jar Jar, and telling how the Drizzt story got its beginning.  Of course, the show was recorded, so please do check it out! 

Also, this happened while I was waiting in line:

BAM!

Walk of Fame

Every year, D*C attracts quite a few guest celebrities.  In addition to attending panels and being open for questions, many of the celebrities are completely approachable, down to earth, and a pleasure to speak with.  For me, personally, this was evident as I was walking getting a signature from the cast of The Guild.  At the time, I had Kitara with me and she was not in the best of moods.  Rather than just signing a photo and rushing the man w/ the cranky infant on their way, just about every cast member took time to try to cheer her up.  Between funny faces from  Jeff Lewis & Sandeep Parikh, the free prints from Amy Okuda, and kind words from Felicia Day & Robin Thorsen , Kitara left a happy toddler.  That is awesome. 

Also, Crystal and I were able to get a few pictures w/ our favorite guests:

To all the celebrity guests at D*C (who will never read this blog post), thank you for being so kind and approachable.  In particular, The Guild cast (Felicia, Vincent, Jeff, Amy, Sandeep, & Robin), Sam Trammell,  Colin Ferguson, & Veronica Belmont – you all were so kind to your fans.  Thanks!

The Masquerade

This year’s trip was a little different than previous ones due to the fact that we now had Kitara and Tristan as part of our family.  As a way to balance the kid-friendly and adult-friendly aspects of the con, my parents graciously agreed to watch them for the 1st half and then bring down the kiddos to join us for the 2nd half.  This was VERY exciting due to the fact that Kitara was just old enough to participate in the Masquerade. 

As appropriately geeky parents, we wracked our brains over what to dress her as and finally came up w/ a version of a Dalek dress.  Of course, we also decided to do this think “the right way” and create the dress from scratch, starting only w/ fabric, thread, and a sewing machine bought from Amazon reward points. 

Needless to say, the making of the dress was painful but rewarding.  In fact, I found that I appreciated the mathematical aspects of the dress design quite a bit.  Honestly, it is much like wood-working  or even construction – which I did not expect.  I hope that Crystal and I can continue to dabble in this and use it as a tool to help Kitara learn practical applications of general math, geometry, etc.  It was a fun way to be creative.

Here’s the dress in process (its quite a bit harder than it looks):

With the dress created, we packed it to D*C and signed Kitara up.  I will not belabor the details, but I would be remiss not to point out the amazing staff that works so diligently to make the Masquerade happen.  From signup to the end of the show, they were 100% engaged and worked to make sure that we had everything that we needed.  In particular, Lee, the man who was working w/ the children and toddlers division, was both on task but amazingly kind toward the children.   Thank you, Lee!  In fact, thank you to everyone who helped make that even possible.

Long story short, Kitara was able to participate in her first Masquerade and she did wonderfully.  Typically, when presented w/ a new thing, Kitara can be a bit timid and shy until you ease her into it.  However, when it comes to stages, she goes all-out.  When we set her loose on the stage, she launched in to jumping and running to the other side.  Much to my amazement, she giggled and laughed the entire way and then ran back across for another turn.  I was a proud father and it was a pleasure to hear so many people take delight in her antics.  After her performance, she was awarded as the best in the toddler division!

Due to the pace of the evening, Crystal and I didn’t get to take any pictures of Kitara during the time of the show.  Thankfully, there were tons of photographers around there at the time and I hope that I can track some of those down. 

UPDATE:  The Daily Dragon did a write up of the event and had a small mention of Kitara:

This year each of the children’s entries were both wonderfully costumed and…  …uniquely talented.  The large Adipose from Doctor Who, the little girl in the Dalek Dress, and Kid Cyber and the Easy Bot were among the more memorable of the children’s entries.  via the Daily Dragon.

Other Highlights

So, this post is already running overly large, so I’ll condense all the other highlights in typical list fashion.  Some of my DragonCon 2012 highlights include:

• Watching Grant Imahara speak to Kitara on stage.
• Being caught in a elevator w/ John Rhys-Davies .
• Watching my mother get excited about the DragonCon panels she was planning to attend (and watching Dad roll his eyes).
• Catching up w/ friends!  (Dylan, Henry, & Devon – Sorry for not catching up more) 
• Bumping into Lee Arenberg at a red light.
• Breezing past Alice Cooper in the hallways.
• Having every female within 10,000 miles stop me to see & play w/ Tristan. 
• Watching Crystal swap parenting tips & stories w/ Sam Trammel.
• Listening to a 2AM drunken Karaoke version of Purple Rain. 
• Catching up on some incredible indie horror films!

I consider this my best DragonCon to date and I look forward to not only going next year, but also including Kitara & Tristan in the fun as they get a older.  I am already counting the days to D*C 2013!

First off, it is something of a cliché at this point to talk about how much time flies.  Everyone talks about  ‘getting old’ and ‘never having enough time’ but, honestly, I had no concept of what they meant until Kitara.  Looking back, I feel as if we were just taking her home from the hospital.  I distinctly remember that feeling of panic and awe over the fact that these people left the care of this precious, amazing life in a bumbling fool’s possession.  What were they thinking?  Now, Kitara is saying a plethora of words, toddling about the house, learning how to manipulate everything from remote controls to her father, and is developing more of a personality every day.  When did all this happen?  It’s an amazing process.

The pictures below are in sequence, each within a month of two of each other, of the past year’s worth of Kitara growing up.

Looking back, I have to say that there were several key milestones during the first year of her life.  Roughly speaking they fell into:

• 3 Months – When she developed a neck.
• 6 Months – When she discovered feet, hands, and objects around her.
• 9 Months – When she learned to crawl and speak.
• 12 Months – When she learned to walk and started to develop a personality. 

At this point, we are really able to do almost everything with her.  She eats our own food (just smaller bites), she drinks whole milk rather than formula, and she is able to appreciate many of the same things that I do, including playing outside, animals, cartoons, etc.  In general, she is becoming a little person with her own ideas and behaviors – some of which are sometimes rather amazing.  Just today, she decided that she was going to start blowing kisses at people.  I have NO CLUE where she picked that up as Crystal and I never practiced that with her.  Its amazing how small things can sometimes have lasting impressions.  Of course, her random memory is not always a good thing as I am pretty sure she has already said her first curse word (a few times) as well as managed to pick up “shut-up”.  Thankfully she does not know what they mean yet.

Here a few pictures during her 12th month.

All in all, I have to say that it has been a great year.  The time has flown but, honestly, I can’t remember a time in which I felt more alive.  I can’t even imagine a time when I did not have a child depending upon me.  It’s a good thing to be needed – if a little stressful.

Finally, Crystal and I must be loving it quite a bit as we recently discovered that #2 is on the way!  Rather than announcing it via the blog this time, we waiting until Kitara’s birthday party to tell our friends and family the great news.  Kitara is going to have a sibling and I am going to be the father of 2 screaming children now.  If I had any hope of trying to recover some of the precious hair on the top of my head, I think it is gone now. 

Nevertheless, I guess its worth it though.  Lovin’ it.

She has underwent massive change since I have last posted about her.  Every morning, she is like a new little person, learning new behaviors and expanding upon old ones.  There were a ton of firsts for her in this span:

• First time to stand by herself, without leaning on anything.
• First time to take a step by herself (She took two steps and then fell… )
• First time to ride a camel.
• First time to eat “adult food” – chips, squash, cake, cheese, etc.  (might have been some beef jerky in there too…)
• First time to curse.  (We are still debating if she picked this up or just happened to make the noise.  Seems like she keeps saying, “Asssssshooooooleeee” – just like in the movie. )
• First time for her to be sick and, related, the first time I have had to scrape poo from my chest with a comb… 
• First time to bite.  (Sorry about that, Dad)
• First time to read by herself AND to read to others!
• And many, many more.

So far, I love every minute of being a parent.  I can’t even recall what is was like to be otherwise.  It is hard work – quite a bit harder than I had anticipated – but it is also very rewarding.  It changes your life, turns you upside down, and gives you a new perspective on so many different things.

With all that being said, I have to post pics about her from the last two months.

Despite all the change, one thing is still true.  Her favorite word is “DaDa.”  She’s precious.

One of the neatest things about Kitara right now is that she is starting to be able to interact w/ me on a daily basis.  Sometimes she will mimic my actions or even listen to things I request of her.  It is really quite amazing.  Along w/ the fact that she is now crawling everywhere, I am having a blast learning and growing with my daughter every day. 

Along with these new capabilities come a few new challenges as well.  Kitara is FAST.  She is not fast-fast, but she is sneaky-fast.  She lulls you into a sense of complacency and then zooms off to some forbidden part of the house.  Of course, her favorite activities are currently pulling down heavy objects on top of her head, chewing on power cables, and, my favorite, trying to yank the fur off the cat.  Needless to say, Crystal and I are scrambling about a bit more now, but we are learning to be smarter about how to watch over her. 

Anyway, there are a few awesome video / images things that I want to share. First off, check out this video that Crystal got of Kitara a few weeks ago.  We have been learning to play Patty-Cake:

Even learning simple things like that still amaze me.  I still remember her as the eating-pooping machine.  Where did this learning / personality  thing come from?  Do I want to encourage it?   

Finally, here are a few pics of her at 8 & 9 months.  As you can see, she got to have her first taste of snow, lol.

Having a blast! 

Over the years, I have made a few checklist items that I use to gauge whether or not I need to take a new project on.  Generally speaking, I like to ask these questions:

• What is the overall goal of the project?
• What do I expect to gain from the project? (aka what’s in it for me?)
• What can others gain from this project if I participate?
• Am I really the best fit for this project or do I know someone who’d be better and have interest?
• What is the logical conclusion of this project? (This one is critical, btw.  Never participate in an open-ended project.  Ever.  There is never a ‘feel good’ way out.)

Typically, as I go through this process, the only projects that survive are either good causes, such as GiveCamps or KnoXNA, or venture endeavors such as co-authoring books, teaming with good friends to write applications for profit (someday, Gabe), or starting a new business.  These are all great things and I love doing them, but sometimes they can also be very wearing.

With all this being said, I am happy to say that I am working on new project.  In addition, I am more excited to say that this project completely breaks the mold of what I call my “typical endeavors”.  (Which, btw, completely invalidates the previous couple paragraphs, lol )  Of course, this project is AnimeRoundup.

The whole point of this project for me is to basically enjoy sharing experiences and information about a secret passion that I have – anime.   That’s it.  This is just about me (and John) having fun at things that we enjoy.  Of course there are more fun aspects to this beyond watching anime and hanging out with John.  I get to finally mess around w/ some heavy video editing, different video recording scenarios like lighting and camera angles, and…  green screens.  Not sure where we will go with those, but those of you who have seen my Halloween videos know how much I like tinkering with these things.  (Btw, I saw this great way to make 3D movies a while back…)

To be honest, it feels somewhat selfish to dedicate time to something that does not help others or does not have some kind of future-proofing aspect.  Despite this, I feel that this project will bear a different kind of fruit for me.  Also, it really fits into one of my goals this year, which is to be focused when I need to be focused but to take time to enjoy things more.

I hope you all have a chance to check out our show.  We will be running it bi-weekly and posting it to our site on AnimeRoundup.com.  Also, if you are an anime fan, we always welcome suggestions, questions, complaints, lewd remarks, or any other kind of feedback.  I hope that this project can be as fun for you as I know it is for myself.  Our first show was released yesterday and covered Evangelion 1.11!

Finally, I would be remiss to not mention a few other endeavors of those people around me.  The folks at GameMarx have been great in helping John and I get some of our ducks in a row.  IIRC, it was actually Mike that talked me into buying my camera in the first place.  If you have any interest in XBox gaming (who doesn’t?) and, more specifically, playing indie games, you should really check out their excellent reviews of the XBox Indie Game scene. 

Also, John (and I to a much lesser degree) is involved in the Chainsaw Buffet podcast.  This unique type of podcast focuses on… well…  I’m really not sure if we have a focus other than Conventions, interviewing different voice actors, taking on the gallon challenge, reviewing horrifically bad movies, etc.  It is a ton of fun!

Fun times!

I am excited to say that I am going to be contributing to a Wrox Press book! 

Needless to say, this is a great opportunity.  First off, I get work with 5 other excellent developers. Some of these guys already have several books under their belt.  I have been gaining a wealth of experience from these guys – probably at the expense of their sanity.  In addition, Wrox is a publisher that I have read for years and years. In fact, I am pretty sure that my first book on Asp.Net and C# was a Wrox publication.  It is really a little surreal to be writing with them now.

So, what’s the subject? 

I am going to writing on developing Android applications leveraging a upcoming technology called MonoDroid.  If you are a developer, you have probably heard about MonoTouch for iOS development.  Basically MonoDroid does the same thing from Android applications in that it allows programmers to use .Net, C#, and Visual Studio to develop Android applications.  It is a significant tool.

Until just recently, MonoDroid was a closed alpha / beta.  However, you can now sign up for the public beta and get started playing with some code today.  You can check them out at MonoDroid.net!

Also, we have gotten far enough that our book has an Amazon listing.  You can see it at: http://amzn.com/1118026438 .  The only downside is that the book image is currently a placeholder and it also only lists the lead author’s name at the moment.  While this is great for Wally, this will be updated in the near future to reflect all the author’s names. At that point, I will be free to stick a printout on Mom’s fridge.  

BTW, please feel free to pre-order it now while supplies last. >.>

So, what is in the future for me?

I am going to be focusing my extra time on writing.  Over the next few weeks, I hope to begin a small series of beginning with MonoDroid posts.  Finally, writing a book is one of the items on my bucket list.  As I go along, I plan to capture my thoughts on the writing process to see how much I love it 2 months from now. 

At the moment, I am very, very busy but I am still having a blast.   What a great way to start out a new year! 

Take care.

After spending loads of time updating my blog and finally getting it the place that I wanted, I was ready to start posting about new and exciting content.  Content that I have not posted about before.  Posts about a plethora of coding topics that will blow your mind.  Posts about the deep insights that I have from day to day.  Since the blog was complete, I was going to crank them out like crazy!!  However… I have not gotten around to those just yet… 

Until then, how about another round of awesome baby pictures?  (Admittedly, she is much more interesting than anything I would have written anyway)

So, Kitara is now a little over 7 months old.  During her first few months, I remember anticipating a time when I could have a more active role in her life beyond simple feeding and cleaning.  I can still distinctly remember that divide between me and her 1 month old self where we had zero means of communication other than crying on her part and frustration on mine.  Suddenly, things changed.  It was as if we put her down to bed one night and received a newer, more interactive baby in the morning.  Thinking back, I can remember two times in which this happened.  The first time was at 3 months, when she finally developed a neck.  The second just happened  as she approached 7 months.

One thing that has changed for her is that she is – just like – a little person.  At this point, she has personality, laughs and giggles, pouts and throws tantrums.  In addition, she is already developing likes and dislikes that make her a little distinct from other children her age.  In fact, there are times when I can look at her and see her puzzling though different scenarios or basic cause and effect when something happens.  I have no doubts that I am probably giving more meaning to these changes than what is probably reality, but I am so very astounded by the process.  It is magical to me.

Her range of expressions and emotions are pretty incredible!

Finally, I love the fact that we can now give her her own space to interact and play with things.  Some things are still a bit of a worry, but she now has enough strength and vigor that we can back off a little bit and allow her to experience the world w/o Mom and Dad holding her non-stop.  Of course, we are still within inches, but, even at that distance, she seems to achieve a different perspective of the world.  She is beginning to work out how things work in small areas such as buttons on devices, what the statement NO! means, and how things are composed.

Here are a few shots of her at work on figuring out the world. 

I find myself wondering at the wonder that is a developing mind.  Babies are just amazing, aren’t they?

Between the old version of my site and this version, I am pretty sure that I went through several iterations:

1. A complete overhaul of the site code using Asp.Net 3.5 (with the new Linq features!!)
2. A complete overhaul of the entire site using Asp.Net MVC (it’s the new hotness)
3. A small attempt to rewrite the site using rails (it was a fleeting fancy)
4. Several quick attempts to try other .Net CMS’s such as Orchard, BlogEngine.Net, and Subtext.  (Already ruled out dasBlog, DotNetNuke, and Community Server)
5. And.. finally… a complete concession and upgrade to WordPress.  (I tried so hard to not like it)

So, why the all the iterations?  In the past my philosophy was to try out new technologies by writing a blog in them.  I already had a great data set, it had some beyond beginner features like handling sessions and authentication, and I already new the story very well.  It allowed me to really focus on the technology rather than the subject.  However, the major drawback to the entire process is that I never wanted to post anything to my blog because I was working on that next version.

Why WordPress?

Simply, I strongly feel its the best out there.  Between the very large support for different themes and templates as well as the massive amount of plugins, it is clearly a very strong platform.  With the additions of the Web Platform Installer and PHP support in IIS7, it was a simple process of setting it up and running with it. 

The theme that I have here is a very modified version of a theme that I found from themeforest.net .  The site is a great source for some advanced looking themes and are often a cut above the standard free templates.  The downside is that they do charge for these themes, but $15 – $30 dollars is a small price to pay, I think.  In regards to this theme, I have to say that its creator was nice enough to assist me w/ my PHP noobage.  I could not be more pleased.

So, it’s a new blog.. what else is new?

This go-round, I was pretty picky on what I wanted with this blog.  Due to this, there are some neat things that I made sure of.  Since I love lists:

• Separation of Blog and Code posts – Although there is technically a single posting tree on this blog, one of the reasons that WordPress was appealing to me was that I can offer an RSS on anything.  This way, I don’t fee to guilty when posting about covariance and contravariance or about my latest attempt to kill myself with fireworks.  As of now, I have feeds for All, Personal Blog, Code Posts, and, of course, Comments.
• A separate subdomain for static resources – This is big!  Not only does it offer great performance oppurtunities, but it also makes it so easy to migrate my blog.  Although I hope to not do this again, all of my images and such are mapped to a different location.  This means no more search and replace of URLs, reposting of posts via LiveWriter, or any other such nonsense.
• The Splash Page – Although splash pages are sometimes overdone, I have always liked them.   It feels like a website welcome mat. 
• An contact form  – To those people who kept giving me crap over this, you can stop now.

So far, the only downside is my extreme laziness in regards to porting old comments over.  I may get around to it, but I am not in a hurry.

What’s Left?

Nothing much.  If you are an RSS subscriber, your old subscriptions should work fine (let me know if they don’t, btw) but you may want to subscribe to a different RSS setting.  Other than that, what do you think?  Do you like the site?  Although I am a big fan of the wood background, I did get some pointed remarks akin to “nothing says I married my sibling like wood siding".  That’s funny.

Of course, one is never truly “done” with anything b/c once you get everything perfect, that’s when things start to break.  Its all good though as the work is good work and, as Dad always said, it builds character.

Anyway, as I was working, I discovered several tree shoots throughout my yard.  Since I was intending to plant trees anyway, it was convenient of Mother Nature to do some of that work for me.  In an effort to help me decide which trees to keep, I have enlisted the help of Mom to identify some of these trees – thus part of the reason for this blog post. 

So, try out your skills and see if you can identify these trees.  A couple of them I know already, but most of them are ones that I am hoping Mom can identify for me.  I’ll post what trees are what as soon as I figure it out myself. 

Btw, some of these pics are actually vines, not trees.

  Good times!

Ain’t she a gem?