The Happy Birthday Dance

After the kids watched Lauryn sing and dance away, they've been all about the singing and dancing. Here they are with a birthday song and dance for me. No big bonk into a big cardboard box, but plenty of falling down... :-)

250,000 super happy fun balls

I never saw this commercial on television (thanks Tivo!), but Sony recently created an ad for its Bravia line of LCD flat screen televisions which featured bouncing 250,000 superballs down a street in San Francisco.

It's refreshingly old school: they actually used real superballs rather than computer graphics. The commerical itself is a master class is cinematography and both sound and video editing.

In a not-so-old-school move, Sony has published a cool Website about the commercial, featuring behind the scenes music, videos and photos. Hmmm....commercials as content: is this a foretaste of the future?

For those of you who haven't taken the HDTV plunge yet (like us), download QuickTime 7 and view the high-resolution videos. Then head on over to Apple's site to view high-def content (incluidng movie trailers).

But of course

Last post for tonight: so I was looking through a list of Top 100 lists of U.S. cities, wondering if our fair city (as Click and Clack would say) would make the list for any of the many categories this site tracked. Safest city? Probably not. City with the youngest or oldest residents? Nope. Shortest commuting time? Give me a break.

Then I finally stumbled across the one category that we made the list for: click it and you'll see it's obvious in retrospect. Sigh.

The entire list of Top 100 lists is available here. Take the lists with a grain of salt: I noticed one city showing up a twice right next to itself, so there's probably some small problem with the algorithm they're using to collage the lists.

All right: a headband!

Well, my big brother's basketball game didn't go that well, but I got a fantastic headband out of it, and it pleases me greatly.

Or at least, that's what I like to imagine that Cameron's thinking. 

First basketball game

Colin played in his first basketball game today. Wow, flashback to my own experiences on the playing field. The other team (which looked liked it featured a few older kids) had two or three kids who actually knew how to play basketball (by which I mean they knew the basics of dribbling, passing, and shooting), which gave them a pretty unfair advantage.

This video pretty much sums up the game, because this play repeated itself pretty much the entire game, over and over and over again. You'll see our team (in orange) valiantly trying to to get the ball down the court. Then you'll see the ringer on other team steal it, pass it to a very tall girl, who would shoot and score. Basically the only variant would be who would do the shooting and scoring (they had 2 or kids who could do this).

Nonetheless, everyone had a very good time -- and Colin got a new Warriors headbead which he came home and shared with brother Cameron, which I'll post a pic of shortly.

In the "you've got to be kidding me" department

The Web has some astounding stuff on it, no doubt about it. I guess a more accurate way of saying that would be, "the world has some astounding people in it, and the Web makes it possible for us to meet them and the things they create."

For those of you who haven't seen Carson Williams's astounding Christmas light show, I offer it below.

• TV fans: you might have seen it over Christmas as a Miller Lite commercial.
• Urban legend fans: sorry, this thing's the real deal. Carson Williams, a Mason, OH electrical engineer put this display up in Ohio and actually had to be discountinued (so sad!) because it was causing traffic problems.
  

Item 2 in the "you've got to be kidding me department" is not quite as flashy but still amazes: it's the Empire Strikes Back in postage sized, Atari-vintage style graphics.

For the nerds: it's literally an 129 x 78 pixel animated GIF. The entire file is less than 212 KB. Two words. Word one: wow! Word two: why?

Up close with Chuck himself

As usual, Colin wanted nothing to do with the large dressed up mouse (just like he wanted nothing to do with Mickey and Minnie at Disneyland). But Katie was game, and I didn't offer Cameron a choice. I'm not sure if he is expressing incredulity or admiration or is just stunned. But it's pretty funny nonetheless. 

Our first visit to Chuck E. Cheese

So we took our very first visit to Chuck E. Cheese. Colin's kindergarten classmate (coincidentally named Cameron) was celebrating his 6th birthday, and kindly invited both Colin and Katie along. Both of them are now insisting that they want to celebrate their birthdays "with Chuck" (with whom they are now on a first-name basis).

The restaurant was absolutely packed that afternoon: there were at least 6 birthdays going on simultaneously. I personally find Chuck a little frightening, but that's just me.

The kids had a great time. Their favorite ride was the roller coaster simulator, and their favorite overall activity was climbing through the tunnels mounted near the ceilings.

Who's linked to this blog?

I was listening to KQED's Forum the other day (when I grow up, I want to be like Michael Krasny), and the topic du jour was political blogging. His guests were folks who blog for reals: they've built blogs with hundreds of thousands visitors a month. When people talk about the blogosphere, they have those big blogs in mind -- not these little family affairs with a few dozen readers (if that!).

But anyway, one of the panelists mentioned the blog search site Technorati, which -- surprisingly -- I had never visited. It's one of the most popular sites in the blogosphere, and it makes searching through blogs a snap.

While I was there, I stumbled across a useful tool that will lets you "claim your blog" and see who's linked to it. For the most part, there were no surprises. But I did discover one unanticipated blogger who randomly linked to our blog in September 2005. Kinda cool.

Anyway, go claim your blog and see if anyone unexpected has linked to yours. :-)

At last: a princess buddy

At last, Katie found a buddy to play dress-up princess with. As you might imagine, Colin's not a big fan. Here are the Princesses Ashlyn and Katie, with Princess Ashlyn striking a royal pose.

Matrix ping pong

All right, I've got an item for all of you fans of ping pong, The Matrix and Japanese pop culture. No, really. Check it out. It's creative and hilarious.

Wobblyball

One of my coworkers uses wobblyball as his IM address: it happens to be an apt description of Cameron as he tries to sit up. But he takes his wobbling about in his usual good-natured way. 

Dribble time (Colin's first basketball practice)

Given our athletic, um -- what's the opposite of prowess? -- Fedora and I never held out any great hopes that our kids would pay their way through college with athletic scholarships. But who knows? Maybe one or two or all three of them will escape their genetic destiny and be world-class swimmers or basketball players or golfers or something cool like that. At least there's no pressure to be the first Chinese kid in the NBA anymore, now that Yao Ming is here.

Anyway, here's the first step in our long journey to figure out whether we can safely squander the kids' college money on a round-the-world cruise. This is Colin at his very first basketball practice. Fedora was quite pleased to report that he quite enjoyed it, declaring, "I wish I had basketball practice every day!

I think they're learning how to dribble. :-)

Be careful with your life savers

I didn't know about these until today (I'm always the last to know!), but I added links to both Wilson & Michelle's blog and Freddy & Pam's blog on the right. Enjoy!

In honor of Wilson and Michelle's recent visit to Legoland -- and Colin's recent light saber battle at Ivan & Teresa's -- check out this amazing Lego-based homage to Star Wars. It's creative, funny, and above all makes you wonder, "wow -- who had all that time to put that together?"

As Colin was watching the video (again) tonight, he was especially enamored by the light sabers because he and Jeremy had a good light saber battle over the weekend. Of course, he called them "life savers" -- which, if you think about it, isn't all that bad a name. :-)

Back Dorm Boys

Google Video now offers NBA games, old episodes of MacGyver, and other video content that will display right in your browser for a buck or two a view.

At Oracle, I actually worked on interactive TV networks and have always wondered when we'd all be connected to a big media jukebox in the sky. Between this and Apple's iTunes, it looks like the day is not far off.

Though I have to say that I'm surprised Google beat Yahoo to the punch here. Of the two search companies, Yahoo has always been the more media oriented. I bet heads are rolling over at Yahoo.

Anyway, Google Video is also making it easier to embed their video content in Websites and blogs. Once you find a video you like, click on the "Put on site" link for HTML you can cut-and-paste into your blog entry.

Here's one of our family favorites: it's a webcast of two Chinese undergrads doing a wildly popular lip-sync to a Back Street Boys song. For more on and from these guys, check on this blog which I found via del.icio.us.

School of fish (video)

Video blogging sites are popping up all over the place. Here's another that's offering free video hosting -- at least for now.

This video is from our trip to the Aquarium of the Bay.

Amazing New Year photography

Fedora and I prefer the quiet, stay-at-home New Years Eve to the raucous outdoor parties (neither of us are a big fan of crowds). But staying at home, we do miss the fireworks and other visual pyrotechnics of the public parties.

Thanks to the Web, though, we can celebrate vicariously via a set of astounding "wraparound" photos made possible by Apple's Quicktime technology. Drop by and see for yourself: there are an amazing set of 360 degree photos on this site.