Personal

Ramping up

This year, we hosted a small party focusing on the little ones in Amber's life: a few of her friends from day care, and a friend from up the street.

The amazing cat cake

Lynn used the same carrot cake recipe as last year (nice and tasty!), but this year it came in the appearance of Amber's favourite animal.

She blew out the candle herself. Self! SELF!

Blowing out the candle was a huge success.

Cake distribution went smoothly

Very little cake was wasted in the making of this birthday. Most of the cake was consumed rather than applied to faces or clothes.

Daddy and Amber wound down with a book in the window on a rainy day

Thanks to everyone for their cards and calls and emails celebrating Amber's birthday!

We don't watch a lot of TV; maybe four hours a week. But we noticed in the past year or two that a few of the shows we enjoy have muddy soundtracks due to speech being mixed over top of background music and various sound effects that makes the words almost indistinguishable. My hunch was that it was due to the increasing popularity of surround sound mixing, so much so that the producers had chosen to disrupt the viewing experience of plain jane viewers relying only on their television's built-in speakers. But for various reasons (largely - having better things to do), I never bothered to confirm this hunch.

I took advantage of a Boxing Day sale to pick up a set of surround sound speakers and a Dolby-enabled amplifier; nothing fancy. After many hours of threading wires behind drywall and through the basement (reminding me that I really do have better things to do), we sat down to watch an episode of one of the offending shows (Torchwood). And the difference in clarity (largely due to the separation of the sound into front left, center, and front right channels; the back left and right channels have much less impact) was immediately evident; Lynn mentioned it within five seconds of the beginning of the show.

Our household has entered a new age of audio-visual enjoyment. I know I've been manipulated into buying more electronics, but at the same time - wow, what a difference. It makes me want to watch all of season one of Battlestar Galactica again.

You've heard of the SNO (Sudbury Neutrino Observatory) before. This morning we were treated to the SCO (Sudbury Comedian Observatory) project; while walking through the Farmer's Market, Lynn spotted a familiar face at a table. It turned out that this single table had Deb McGrath, Robin Duke, Teresa Pavlinek, Jayne Eastwood, and Kathryn Greenwood sitting at it. Talk about comedic gravity! I'm surprised that the Farmer's Market, and Sudbury itself, didn't collapse under the sheer density of the celebrity presence in such a small area.

They were in town putting on a couple of performances of Women Fully Clothed as part of the LOL Sudbury comedy festival. I lamely told them that although we weren't going to be able to make their show due to a severe lack of babysitter, we did watch them on TV -- and that I had grown up with SCTV (referring here to Robin Duke, of course). Which, in retrospect, might have been a bit of a nasty thing to say. But hey -- how often do you get to see a comedic hero in person? Okay, but in Sudbury? It was pretty cool. Kudos to Lynn's sharp eyes.

Amazing. 365.25 days have flown past and Amber is now a walking one year old featuring approximately six teeth, fuzzy / curly hair, and an extremely expressive personality. We held a party for her on her birthday and were lucky to have family and friends visit and call to share their love for Amber. Here are a few pictures from yesterday's celebrations:

Lynn made this absolutely delicious carrot cake and pink icing from scratch.

Amber enjoyed the icing, but didn't eat too much cake... she didn't even smash it to bits or smear it all over her face. Crazy kid. I'm not sure how Lynn happened to end up making carrot cake, my personal favourite, when she usually isn't a big fan of it. I guess I'm just really, really lucky. This cake was so good, though, that Lynn liked it and would consider making it again -- YEAH!

Amber had the most fun rolling the purple ball around the floor.

The ball in Adam's hand comes from an amazing shape-sorting machine that features lights, sounds, music, and acts as a walker. It seems to have almost magnetic powers to attract the Amber unit. Big thanks to old man Uncle Mike, Christine, and Adam for getting something right up Amber's alley!

Lynn, Calev, Amber, and Deirdre all participated in the opening of presents.

The pink jeep in the foreground was originally Abby's -- thanks David and Karen! Calev is going to get to enjoy his first birthday in just a couple more months, so this was good practice for him. Calev lives up the street from us, and there's hope that maybe early contact with other children her age means that Amber won't grow up to be as curmudgeonly and anti-social as her dad...

So... thanks to everyone who sent cards, called, emailed, or dropped by to share in Amber's first birthday. We really appreciate it, and Amber certainly felt the love. She's very lucky to be growing up with so many people who care about her.

Update

Our baby is growing up so fast. Near the end of February she tottered a couple of tentative steps from me to Lynn.

Last weekend, she walked right across Jason and Kelly's kitchen floor. You can see for yourself if you don't believe me!

Update:

By popular demand, I've posted this video on Google Video. No more worries about codecs! Of course, Google owns me: my searches, my email, my programming projects, my RSS feeds, and now my videos. Curse them for being so competent!

In a post on the priorities of Canadian academic insitutions on academics vs. sport, Ted Schmidt wrote a number of words that I agreed with, among which were:

200 spectators watching a beautifully coached University of Toronto team take on the Laurentian Voyagers in the biggest city in Canada. 200 spectators.And therein lies the difference between Canada and the USA.

However, I objected to the following statement:

What was more impressive was to see 13 of the 15 players on the U of T team were from the Metro Toronto area. No embarrassing recruiting here. You need real marks to attend this school. Sadly the Laurentian team had three players from Saginaw, Michigan.What’s that about? We have to go to Michigan for scholar-athletes?

Unfortunately, I was unable to post a comment on his blog due to some requirement to log in to wordpress.com, so I have to post my reply here.

Let's see. Metro Toronto has a population of approximately 3 million (based on the 2001 census). The Greater Sudbury Area has a population of around 200,000. "That" is probably about wanting to field a competitive team (which is one of the ways universities get brand recognition, and which is arguably more important to smaller universities than to massive research universities), which means that smaller universities have to expand their recruiting efforts outside of their given geographical boundaries if they want to avoid a continuous run of embarrassing losses... with perhaps an occasional miracle thrown in.

You seem to be suggesting that students shouldn't go to a university that's not the closest one to their home town. Perhaps the Saginaw students were attracted to Laurentian's Sports Administration program, or the Kinesiology program, or want to specialize in mining-related research. Maybe the possibility of attending lectures by TVO's 2007 Best Lecturer Competition winner was a draw. Or perhaps they are interested in participating in a bilingual university. Maybe the ruggedness of the Sudbury landscape draws them. Sure, it's probable that they were recruited -- but it's also probable that they had other choices of universities that they could attend. They chose Laurentian, and they chose Sudbury. We're happy to have them.

I'm a big fan of CIAU basketball (ah, dating myself there, I guess it's CIS now); I used to cover it for the student newspaper when I was a student myself, and went all the way to Thunder Bay to cover the CIAU finals. And yes, it is good fun if it is relatively competitive. Back when the women's basketball team at LU was continuously headed to national finals, it was not fun when teams suffered horribly one-sided losses to them. That wasn't really fun for anyone. So, yes... let's keep it competitive, let's encourage the exchange of ideas and the movement of students between academic institutions and cities, and let's celebrate the Canadian academic culture without slighting people and institutions that contribute to that culture.

2006 was a year full of change - wonderful, exhausting change. Here's a month-by-month summary of the highlights of 2006:

January

I did a whole lot of work on the PECL ibm_db2 extension, reviewed a good book on XML and PHP, and finally fixed up my blog a little bit. I've got a few more book reviews in the works for 2007, and hope I can spruce up good old Coffee|Code a little more.

February

I live blogged a few WWdN invitational poker tourneys, wrote about Larry Menard's work on building an ADOdb driver for DB2 based on the ibm_db2 extension (which is now officially supported), documented my installation of a bird feeder (update: Spook was happy because a few chickadees visited, but Amber hasn't really noticed yet), announced that I was leaving IBM, and apologized for having to back out of some engagements due to the change in jobs. I also promised to write up some fixes to PDO_ODBC and spread out my documentation efforts for PHP, neither of which really happened in 2006 (8 commits to phpdoc ain't all that) -- but I recently made use of the xmlwriter extension in implementing MARCXML support for File_MARC and noticed that xmlwriter badly needs a tech writer. So maybe I can pull it together in 2007.

March

More live blogging of WWdN tournaments. How did I manage to have this much time in the first month of my new job? Amazing. I also helped horny teenagers find relief with GTA: San Andreas. But, in the middle of all that completely trivial stuff, our friends Mike and Kelly threw an incredible baby shower for us. It was amazing to be surrounded by so many friends who were actually happy that we were procreating! I do wish that we could visit more often, but based on last weekend's shenanigans this travel thing is starting to take more of a toll on Amber and her parents.

April

Lynn and I attended an vaudeville-style horror show. Who says Sudbury doesn't have culture? I took my readers on my walk to work, and I should note that within a couple of months of taking on the new job I had lost a bunch of weight. Activity is good! I live-blogged a couple more WWdN invitationals, and Lynn and I waited and waited for the baby to arrive, including such fine events as attending Earth Day and the inaugural Nickel City Triathlon Team barbecue.

May

We continued to wait for Amber to arrive, and managed to fit in a viewing of V for Vendetta during pre-labor. Eventually Amber did decide to join us in the outer world (saving me from having to run a 10K--yay!), and I posted the pictorial evidence. Oh, and I live-blogged some more WWdN tourneys.

June

I rode around Sudbury, posted some more Amber pics while putting my antisocial tendencies on display, and rather shockingly announced my departure from online poker. Shortly thereafter, the withdrawal symptoms kicked in and I unleashed in my first library-oriented post about our library system vendor. Looking back, I can't believe it took me almost four months to publicly snap at our vendor.

July

I started my parental leave, and oddly enough wrote two blog entries in all of July. I guess I was actually spending significant quality time with Amber -- cool! On Canada Day, I ran my first 5K race in about five years. Unfortunately, the other entry dealt with the loss of my co-worker, Alain Letourneau. I found out later that some of his friends from library school only found out about his death through my brief memorial to Alain, which is a bittersweet result I suppose. Tomorrow, a new librarian who was hired to fill Alain's position is joining the library; we won't forget Alain, but in a way it will be nice to have someone new moving around that office so that I don't have to walk past that empty room and locked door anymore.

August

During the second month of my parental leave, I focused a bit more on communicating to the outside world and posted some more pictures of Amber (although I still have to install that baby gate correctly) and pictures of the French River bridge and Bell Park dragon boat races. I kicked off my efforts to build a MARC package for PHP, which ultimately spawned another package to implement a basic linked list structure. Lynn, Amber, and I made it to a couple of bad movies, and I finished my first sprint duathlon. Lynn gets the top kudos, though, for running in a Try-a-Triathlon just three months after bringing Amber into the world. This year I'm hoping to do an Olympic distance triathlon, although I understand that some swimming skill is required for that...

September

I started out the month a little bit bitter after responding to a call for a wiki on the MARC listserv, only to be told later "thanks but no thanks, we're working on something ourselves". Eventually it ended up getting hosted on pbwiki where everybody shares a single user account (shrug). Lynn, Amber, and I ran another 5K in our neighbourhood. I wrote about some recent examples of how open source works based on the PEAR proposal process and PHP ext/filter API discussions, and noted how pseudo-open-source doesn't work after I found that IBM developerWorks had completely pulled the Mapuccino project. Come to think of it, I never did find a good open-source Web site visualization tool. Late in the month, I reflected on the role I'm fulfilling as a laundry list system librarian. That kind of role satisfies my generalist nature, even though it's a bit overwhelming at times.

October

I attended Access 2006 and felt like I had finally met other members of my own species in the flesh (although I had previously met many of the same people on #code4lib, it was nice to put names to faces and share thoughts over food). After taking a ton of notes, I called for all future Access conferences to require presenters to make their presentations available. I took a trip immediately after Access 2006 to Huntsville, Alabama for a week of training by our library systems vendor, and noted how horrible their customer experience was for sales and training pitches. Maybe their new owner will take a gander at some of their customer surveys... My PEAR proposal became an official PEAR package, and I revised File_MARC based on the results of the Access 2006 Hackfest (where I learned that loading a 500 Mb file into memory and then parsing it doesn't work too well with most systems).

November

Amber dressed up for Hallowe'en, and File_MARC became an official PEAR package. I discovered that Archimedes uses Apache Derby as its database of choice, but was disappointed with the "guessing game" user interface that broke all known usability rules. I took a bus/train journey down to Windsor for the Future of the ILS Symposium, got a sneak preview of what BiblioCommons is up to, and pressed Mike Rylander for details on how Evergreen / Open-ILS supports internationalization. I began trying in earnest to build a VMWare image running Evergreen, first with Ubuntu and then with Gentoo, before stalling out somewhere in early December. This is one ball I intend to pick up again in early 2007 -- we badly need a backup OPAC. Somehow I failed to mention the week that Lynn, Amber, and I spent in Cuba for my sister-in-law's wedding.

December

In December I was fairly quiet, as I was highly focused at work on finishing a number of projects that I had artificially set year-end deadlines for myself. To be honest, I just didn't want to spend my Christmas break thinking about them... I noticed that SirsiDynix made an odd press release on December 22nd, and indulged in wild speculation over what that meant. Library Journal picked up my blog post and quoted my creative conjecture, spawning several other posts on the topic, and I resolved to take the power of the blog a bit more seriously in the future. On December 21st I started responding to an LWN article that I felt misrepresented the state of PHP security; although I wondered at times if the holiday egg nog had me tilting at windmills, the author of the article ultimately agreed with me. On Christmas eve I gave the present of more Amber photos.

So, all in all, it was a pretty full year of geekdom, some regular exercise, a bit too much poker, a ton of travel, and a whole lot of change. There wasn't nearly enough Amber (of course there can never be enough), even though I have her all to myself a couple of mornings each week. But I'm living with the people that I love, doing fulfilling work, and that's all I can really ask for.

Okay, okay... I've heard the complaints (which have been streaming in over the past couple of weeks). The general tone is something like this:

So I've been checking this site that is dedicated to celebrating all of the wonder that is Amber, and all I've seen is a bunch of beep blippity boop database beep doo bloop library bip blop open source blippity bleep which I couldn't care less about. I want to see some some pictures of Amber! Where are the pictures of Amber?

May I remind my gentle readers that, should they wish to defend their fragile eggshell minds from my ruminations on the techno-info-library-drivel that fills up my working days, that there is a link on the right hand side of the page which allows you to only see blog posts about Amber. You can bookmark that link and never read another word about Apache Derby, PHP, or MARC... unless, of course, Amber decides to follow in Daddy's footsteps. Which, given her interest in bashing at the keyboard, seems entirely possible.

I'm afraid I can't do too much about the (in)frequency of postings. My natural anti-social tendencies can only be suppressed so much. And, just to implicate Lynn, I have offered to show her how she can post entries to the blog multiple times now... for some reason she prefers to send the occasional email pretending to be making up for my own lack of effort in keeping family and friends up to date on Amber.

Err, umm... I love you honey!

Anyhoo, we do happen to have one or two photos of Amber from the last couple of months that you might be interested in.

A little too adorable, don't you think? (October 2006)

Amber and Daddy kick back and enjoy the Grey Cup. (November 2006)

Zombie Amber: "Brains! BRAINS!" (December 2006)

Possessed by the spirit of Santa. (December 2006)

No candy for Amber this year... just unbearable cuteness!

Her first tooth is poking through her gums, and it was a bit of a tough process for her, but she always has lots of giggles and smiles for us.

Every once in a while I'm allowed to get hysterical, okay?

According to CBC Radio in Sudbury, there's a 150 kilogram black bear prowling around our neighbourhood, tearing apart garbage and causing great concern for residents. We've brought it on ourselves, though. Apparently my neighbours are so filthy that they've been leaving out garbage that is much more alluring than the bait that the ministry of natural resources uses for their traps.

I, for one, welcome our large, furry, omnivorous new overlords. Although I might reconsider some of the late-night walks that take me through wooded paths that offer almost no visibility. Or I'll bring a flashlight and some jingly bells.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia. Yeah, big surprise...

Lynn and I ran a 5K (the Ramsey Lake Tour) this morning with Amber in the stroller. The route was pretty much the same route I take to work, so we opted to walk over to the University for the event. Of course, we were running late thanks to Missy Amber so we walked at a fast enough pace that Lynn ended up getting a bit of a stitch in her side on the way over. It was a little more of an intense warm-up than we had anticipated.

The race itself went well; we decided to make it a true family event and stayed together throughout the entire event. Even though half the course was over a gravel path, the stroller didn't hold us back much at all; we posted a time of 30:19, which isn't too bad given that my previous 5k result sans stroller was only about 2.5 minutes faster. Lynn and I finished well back in our categories, but I'm sure Amber took first place in the infant category! She certainly seemed to enjoy being in motion; her only complaints came when we were standing still waiting for the race to begin, or hanging out post-race shooting the breeze with some of the other participants.

The 5k run, and corresponding 5k brisk walk to/from the venue, wasn't enough though. This afternoon, I helped our friends Andrea and Richard move a few large, heavy objects into their new house just a few blocks down the street. One of the objects was a restaurant-quality stove/oven that would have been an absolute bear to move via the brute force method, but happily Richard had rented a dolly that made light work out of the job. That being said, I suffer from the delusion that as long as I'm wearing gloves I can lift anything... and I was wearing my gloves. So it's just as well that I didn't have to put that delusion to the test.

Amber watched her first film in a real theatre(1) this morning. She had slept straight through You, Me, and Dupree two weeks ago, but insisted on paying attention to today's showing of Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby. Maybe it was the NASCAR action, maybe it was the redneck hollering; maybe it was the unrelenting onslaught of product placements, or maybe it was simply Wil Ferrell's kind, gentle, and let's not kid ourselves, downright handsome face blown up to twenty-foot dimensions, but she was riveted to that screen.

I'm glad we're taking the time to expose her to these cultural influences early; so many people waste their children's crucial first formative months with mindless noise like Beethoven. When my darling baby girl grows up, she's going to be able to say with pride "My daddy done taken me to that there picture show when I was nothing but a squirt in a diaper -- soooo-EEEEE!".

1. A local cinema offers a bi-weekly screening of a popular film in a baby-friendly environment. They turn down the volume, leave the lights on dim, provide changing tables and diapers, and nobody minds if the babies cry or if moms are breastfeeding during the flick. It's pretty cool. If the gods are kind, maybe Beerfest will be up for viewing in a month or two...

Although my fingers are pretty sore after writing this entry.

Over the weekend, our household participated in the Orillia Triathlon, Duathlon and Try-a-Tri. A couple of weeks ago, Lynn decided that she was ready to jump back into the triathlon waters with a Try-a-Tri (350m swim, 10k bike, 2.5k run). The Orillia event also happened to be the provincial athletic championships where triathlon clubs could compete for an infusion of cash based on their participation rate, and given that this was the Nickel City Triathlon Team's first year of existence Lynn wanted to support our team and ensure that Sudbury would be known for more than mining. Aside: our team actually came in third for participation points at the event, so we won $300 for the club -- yay team!

Lost in the wake of her enthusiasm, I decided a few days before the event to join her: partially because I wanted to support the team in more than just a "I paid my membership fee and got a Web site going" way; partially because I wanted to cheer Lynn on; and partially because I totally screwed up the date that our friends were hosting a going-away barbecue and I suddenly found myself with a free day. So, because someone was going to have to look after Amber during Lynn's race, I was going to have to choose either the sprint triathlon or duathlon for my own event. Not having put much time into swimming practice over the summer (and by "not much time" I meant three swims of over 250m), and knowing that I would have to breast stroke the swim portion and face the ridicule of my fellow athletes, I opted for the duathlon instead.

Just wanted to post a couple of pics we took during the past few weeks.

Walkway over the French River

About a half an hour south of Sudbury on highway 69 is the French River information centre. The centre is brand new and boasts an impressive display on the origins of the area and its importance as one of the early routes for the fur trade in the 17th century before the Northwest Trading Company asserted itself and redirected almost all trade through Hudson's Bay instead (which pretty much relegated the French River community to a well-regarded tourist area). Okay, so if history isn't your thing then you simply have to be impressed with the view of the French River itself. Well worth a twenty minute stop.

Dragon boat races on Ramsey Lake

Bell Park plays host to Sudbury's annual dragon boat racing competition. We took Amber for a stroll on an intensely hot day along the boardwalk that borders Lake Ramsey's western edge all the way from Science North to Bell Park and, along with thousands of other souls seeking the comfort of the beach, watched the colourful dragon boats vie for fame and glory. Those poor paddlers must have been roasting in the sun. Parts of Bell Park turned into a campground for the contestants, so at least they had some respite under the tents when they weren't getting ready for their next race. In the background, you can see some of the Laurentian University campus buildings. I was / still am on parental leave, and I must admit that on that beatiful day I didn't think about work once.

Change your spots?

We have a few different kinds of frogs that visit our backyard; this leopard frog is just one magnificent specimen. All of the shots of the grey tree frogs that like to hang out on our deck have turned out fuzzy so far, and I have only heard the spring peepers -- but I'm down with anything that eats bugs. Particularly black flies and mosquitos. Hmm, any chance that amphibians getting a taste of human blood second-hand will suddenly develop an unslakable thirst for my crimson vitality? As Mr. Bush said, bring'em on!

Dear Amber:

Little girl, you have a lot of people interested in seeing you; there is no doubt that you are well-loved by friends and family.

Great-grandpa, a.k.a. Dennis

Your great grandpa travelled all the way from St. Catharines to see just how poorly you're being treated here. You two had a lovely time together, and you saved one of your best morning moods to curl up in his arms in this photo.

No, Amber's neck is not broken!

Then there's Auntie Jama (on the left there, with you and Lynn): she drove up from Barrie one morning just to visit with you for a couple of hours, then drove all the way back that afternoon! That's love (well, love, and a hectic schedule with work and buying a new home where you are absolutely going to be thrilled to visit in a couple of years--I can already predict the tears that will flow every time we have to leave Jama and Terry's place out in the country).

Yeah, they're a little too photogenic, if you ask me...

Oh, and how about your Uncle Jason and Aunt Kelly? They were willing to leave their beloved puppy Hanna behind for a weekend to spend some quality time with you. Kelly pushed you in the stroller all the way to Nepahwin beach and back, and we all did a lot of sight-seeing in the Sudbury area (including the obligatory shot of the Big Nickel).

"Uh, I think we're going to need a bigger binder to collect this here nickel."

She loves the Peppa Sloppy... a lot.

So how about just a simple shot of you to appease those who haven't been able to make the trip (or who have, but haven't made it up for a while?) The papparazzi are swarming, you might as well give in to the pressure. Let's see if we can find some good killer cuteness shots... Thank you, Colleen, for sending the killer cool environmentally friendly fair trade Peppa Sloppy our way. Amber loves to have it tucked under her arm as she naps, and she naps a lot.

Targeting... targeting...

At almost three months, she's also impressively strong. Amber has been able to lift her head since day one, and is constantly threatening to do damage to our lips, chin, nose, or other soft squishy parts of our body when she throws it around. In this shot, she's demonstrating her ability to lie on her belly and check out the world around her. Tummy time is no longer an automatic descent into frustration and tears. On the whole strength thing: she has massive thighs, and can support a good chunk of her weight on her legs. This leads us to the fear that she may learn to walk before she can crawl, resulting in a mad dash to baby-proof our house.

Speaking of which, I rushed to install a baby gate at the top of our stairs this weekend because Ian and Christine were visiting with Emma (their 4 year old) and Maria (their 2 year old). Mental note for my future self: even if it's late at night, you're tired, and there is no good light in the area that you are working, use the level to ensure that the latch side of the gate is level. And do it twice. Fortunately (well, relatively fortunately), this installation was a temporary measure anyways as the top of the stairs only has drywall on the wall side. So I'm going to have to cut out the drywall to expose the studs, install some two-by-fours between the studs as braces, and run another two-by-four vertically between those horizontal braces to have a nice solid place to mount the baby gate.

But I have to wonder: the previous owners had a couple of daughters. Were securely mounted gates at the top of stairs optional accessories in the eighties? I wonder if they also had one of those crazy walkers-on-wheels that were banned after the drug haze of the seventies cleared up and people realized that those devices were a spectacularly bad idea...