Dan called me over the other day to show me what he called “our little pink dinosaur.”
I’m not sure how much Mio appreciated Daddy playing with her hoodie and our chortles that followed… but you have to admit, she does look pretty funny.
Dan calls this moment her “dinosaur roar.”
My brother Ted and his girlfriend Elisa came to visit last week, but much to my dismay, I forgot to take pictures! Mio got some quality time meeting her uncle, though. 🙂
Here are some other recent photos….
Mio is an adorable 8 weeks now.
Daddy reading Curious George to Mio. (She looks so focused!)
Apparently, she didn't like the story.
This past weekend, we started to transition her to sleep in the crib instead of the bassinet. So far, so good — she’s had no issues dozing off in the crib.
Since Mio was around two weeks old, we’ve been giving her 5-10 minutes of tummy time every day. From the beginning, she seemed to have pretty strong muscles and she’s been able to lift her head during tummy time, albeit for only a few seconds (and with a fair share of grunting).
This week, she surprised us by rolling over from her tummy to her backside! She’s done it a few times already, but I haven’t been able to capture it on camera until now. Even so, I was only able to capture halfway in, when she had already made it onto her side. Pretty impressive for only 5 weeks!
We can’t wait to see what other things she’ll start being able to do!
For a couple of weeks I’ve been working on upgrading the camera jib that I built a few years ago. The overall steel design will not be dramatically changed. But there will be some improvements in the cable management, digital servos, and inline remote controller. Most of which I do hope to talk about in the future. This portion of the project focused on the cable management. Having the aluminum tubes running through the jib head’s frame will allow several small cables to pass through (BNC, mini-hdmi, RCA, and even power cables. Ideally managing unwanted resistance to the movement of the servo motors.
Here is the original setup with the HVX200.
The tubes are 3/4″ OD aluminum with their 3/4″ ID collars to mount them.
This project required 2 special bearings: the roller bearing which rolls outside of the tube…
..and thrust bearing supporting the weight of the camera.
This has been an ongoing project for 3-4 months with several revisions and mistakes. But as of now, the result is a semi-complete working prototype. The project was first started when I needed focus control on a DSLR camera for a film festival contest. When on the jib (a camera crane) the camera focus ring was impossible to access. Any focus points had to be preset prior to the shot. This wasn’t a problem with the original camera on the jib, the HVX200, due to its tightly integrated inline remote system. Everything was already motor driven directly on the camera.
The project started with a Hitec Remote Control and a special servo motor that can turn 3.5 times. I will spare you all the technical details, since the pictures may work more effectively.
Last Tuesday, on September 28th, I had the pleasure of seeing X Japan in concert at the Fox Theater in Oakland. I actually did not start listening to X Japan’s music until after they had disbanded back in 1997, but I’ve always liked their music, especially their powerful ballads, and have respected them as one of the most revolutionary rock bands in Japan. They reunited in 2007, albeit without their guitarist hide who passed away in 1998, and when I heard they were doing a North American tour this fall and that their second stop was Oakland, I had to go! X Japan is a legend in Japan, and their popularity is so huge that it would be impossible to see them in such an intimate venue back in their home country, where they constantly sell out their stadium tours — many of their Japanese fans have flown across the Pacific just so they can see them up close during their tour here in North America.
The concert was opened by a thrash band called Vampires Everywhere whom I neither knew about nor cared about, and X Japan didn’t take the stage until well into an hour after the concert had started, but they put on a performance that was worth the wait!
A huge thank you to Mariko, who got the tickets — we had pretty good seats: front row of the loge area, so we had a great view of the stage from above, so we could still sit and enjoy the concert without getting pushed and shoved by the hardcore fans.
Yoshiki takes the stage.X Japan's first performance was "Jade."Yoshiki on drums with vocalist Toshi.Yoshiki's piano performanceYoshiki on piano and Sugizo (formerly of Luna Sea) on violin.X Japan at the end of the concert - Pata, Heath, Yoshiki, Toshi, Sugizo. Yoshiki said that hide was performing with them that night, too.End to an awesome concert.
The set list was mostly made up of their harder, metal rock songs, punctuated by piano and violin solo interludes by Yoshiki and Sugizo. I was impressed that even though it’s been over a decade since their prime in the ’90s and all the band members are now significantly older, Toshi’s voice was still the same, and the band as a whole put on solid performances. Since I’m partial to their softer ballads, the highlight of the show (for me personally) was towards the end of the concert, when they performed “Endless Rain,” and stopped playing/singing repeatedly to let the audience sing back to them. It was really beautiful.
Here is a personal video I took of the end of the concert, when X Japan was taking photos against the crowd, and then exited the stage (throwing multiple water bottles into the audience in the process). I was a little disappointed that they didn’t actually sing “Forever Love,” and only ran the recording of it at the end, but it was still a great concert!
