A post from the past:
Last summer, my brother Andrew and his son Chandler came up and brought Chandler’s mini-motorcycle. I rode the kids around on it and Andrew took some video. Fun! Click the picture for a quicktime movie. You’ll need Quicktime to view the movie.
After recieving many great Christmas cards from friends and family, Janet and I decided to try and just snap a pic of the kids and send it out as a card. I have been fairly busy with work, and there was no way we would get to the Sears Portrait Studio like we normally do. Besides, how hard can it be to capture that priceless, timeless, heart-tugging picture of your own beautiful, perfect little angels?
Right.
It seemed simple enough. But unfortunately, if you are reading this you probably already know we didn’t get any cards out this year. However, here are some nice pics we did take plus some funny rejects that we like to laugh about.
First, the better pics.
This is actually the first picture we took, and it is very close to being just what we needed. Emily was looking away, though.
We have a clubhouse in the toy room and I thought it would be nice to get a shot of the kids looking out the windows. This one is very close to being a great shot. However, it’s blurry and Janet has the control-pinch on Ian’s neck.
A great shot of Janet holding Emily.
Janet and Emily again.
While we’re on Emily, here are some nice pics of her on the bed.
Our crew in front of our stockings. Not bad at all, although Keighly is clipped on the edge of the picture.
A good pic of the kids on our bed. If Emily would have smiled this easily would have been a Christmas card!
Now for our top six 2005 Rejected Christmas Card Pictures:
Number 6:
Ian. Look alive there, son.
Number 5:
Emily is not cooperating. Ian is a zombie. Where is our magical whoopi cushion that makes all kids laugh?
Number 4:
Enough!
Number 3:
Emily is tired of this, Ian is shooting the camera, and I smell something.
Emily has left and Ian is picking his nose. Classic!
Number 1:
Torture!
-Matthew
This year we decided to get a live tree for Christmas. We have always used our Charlie Brown style fake tree, but not this year. This year we are going all the way, baby! Join me now, friends, on this journey into the difficult task of perpetuating holiday traditions…
Behold: Eddies Christmas Tree Farm, right outside of Columbia, MS. Looks like good hunting today!
Mmmm. Them’s fine trees. Fine. Nicely shaped, aeromatic, spray-painted evenly.
This is the one! Full. Fragrant. Firry.
Get Busy
After double-checking the height (and the price) I went right to work severing the leafy part from it’s root-bound appendage.
Success!
Free from it’s land-bound life, our tree is pulled in the wagon by Ian to the tree-netting shed.
Ian is strong (3 years old).
That is Eddie in the back. He owns the tree farm. A rather loud fellow, he was constantly pre-occupied with the safety of the children who were scampering about. What seemed to be simple tree-farm items are apparently hand-crushing, finger-cutting, arm-bludgening torture devices when the kids get within three feet.
As the children look on, the tree is shaken to remove loose/dead needles and whatnot. That is Eddie’s wife, I believe her name was Mae. Eddie would yell at her “You’re shakin’ it too much, Mae! Turn it off!” Mae would just do what she wanted and then say “I shake it until I don’t see anything else falling off.” I got the feeling she was very used to his ways and he didn’t phase her one bit.
Netted and ready for delivery!
Oh, yeah! A soccer-mom’s van and the Griswold’s tree!
That’s right. I cut that tree down you see on the roof of my minivan. Move it.
Back home, I get the tree into a strange tree stand Janet purchased. It has a removable bowl with teeth on the outside. You put the bowl onto the stump of the tree, secure it with screws-bolts, then set the bowl into the base. Once you get it standing up where you want it, you step on one of the legs and it secures the bowl by gripping the teeth.
Janet and Keighly removed the netting.
Satisfaction.
I have succeeded in bringing home the desired quarry. Me Krog. Start fire in cave.
And now, for something completely different:
Before.
Yank.
Swish.
After.
You know the drill.
After supper (and a tooth extraction), Janet and the kids waste no time in attacking the decorations.
Janet has a very specific way she likes to decorate the tree.
I had purchased several Christmas CDs and I put them on while we decorated. We even turned off the hypnotizer/mind control box *gasp* (some call it a television, or “T.V.”)
Now we’re really into it.
Keighly and Ian are hanging ornaments at about their height.
Just look at that! Norman Rockwell, I tell you.
It doesn’t get any better than this.
A view from Murry’s vantage point.
Everything was going great,
until……
Timber!
The combination of a wacky-based tree stand and the kids only puting ornaments on one side made the tree unbalanced and it fell over.. Hard.
Sadly, many ornaments that Janet and I made when we first got married did not survive.
Note: Let me just take this moment and thank Janet for taking these pictures. She usually does not think to take pictures first and would rather actually attend to the emergency at hand. Thank you Janet for snapping these before cleaning up!
Well, at least we can laugh about it! No Norman Rockwell, thats for sure.. Our first live tree experience isn’t going so well.
We solved the problem by purchasing a new tree stand and placing the ornaments distributed around the tree better. You can see the new tree stand in the bottom of this pic, it’s like a lunar landar module or something! It cost twice what the tree did! But: our tree hasn’t fallen since, even with the dogs constantly drinking out of the tree stand bowl.
Later, I got some lights up and our little reindeer display. Not much, but kinda festive. You can see our tree through the window on the porch.
-Matthew
A Post from the Past..
Several years ago, my friend Philip worked at Dollarhide Film located at the top of the Lamar Life Building in Jackson, directly across from the govenor’s mansion. During one of our many trips to the roof, I snapped some pics and made this Quicktime panorama in combustion (you’ll need the Quicktime player to view it).
A vintage postcard about the Lamar Life building.
Taken with Philip’s phone, here is a picture of me bagpiping on the edge of the 13th (top) floor! What was I thinking?!?!
I’ve got some other pics I’ll see if I can dig up. It was a great place to go and think, practice bagpipes, or just sit and listen to downtown..
-Matthew
Recently my good friend Philip and I found ourselves in Brookstone in Jackson’s NorthPark Mall. Inside, Philip found a most amazing discovery: the Panasonic Real Pro Elite massage chair!
Here, Philip demonstrates how the chair literally grabs your legs, reclines you, then proceeds to beat up on your back (but in a good way). You have several choices of types of massage. I tried it and I must say it was hard to stop and get out of the chair without letting it finish the 15 minute Shiatsu massage. Be warned: it is VERY expensive.
Elsewhere in Brookstone, I found this HUGE magnifying glass.
Later, Philip stress-tests his brain’s cardiovascular space. Fun!
-Matthew
While shooting tests for an upcoming spot, I captured these frames to show the different resolutions of DV, 720p, and 1080i (HDV) resolutions.. Warning: these files are about 2M each..
This is a full HD frame size with all the clips in view:
http://www.trinitifx.com/wip/HD_Res_all.png
Without the DV footage, we see footage from a Panasonic Varicam 720p camera:
http://www.trinitifx.com/wip/HD_Res_hd.png
Without the 720p footage, we see what I capture straight from the camera via the firewire port(square pixels):
http://www.trinitifx.com/wip/HD_Res_hdv_s.png
Once you set the frame to the 1.33 aspect ratio, the HDV frame fills the full HD 1920×1080 frame size:
http://www.trinitifx.com/wip/HD_Res_hdv_a.png
When we shoot this spot, I’ll be capturing from my Sony Z1U straight into uncompressed HD.. I’ll post another pic then for comparision..
-Matthew
I’m sad to say that our new dog Abby died last night. She had been sick for about a day and a half. Very lethargic, diahrea, throwing up. We thought she had eaten something that made her sick and would be out of it by now, plus we were preparing for a double birthday party today. No idea what happened, we may never know. 
A quick post to say we’re about to go trick-or-treating! I thought this link was interesting, though. A synthetic pumpkin that is carvable but doesn’t rot:
-Matthew
Last weekend, we pulled both of Keighly’s front teeth. They were getting fairy fang-ish from the permanent ones pushing through, and were basically dangling there and ready to be pulled. So we did one on Saturday and one on Sunday. 
Keighly before the yankin.
Janet got me a washcloth, and I started the operation. Note the extreme caution toward germs and general cleanliness (plus the precision cranial cradling).
Hold still there.. (Hey, no baldness!)
Ok, lets get serious here. The problem is the tooth I’m trying to get is behind the other tooth, so it was (as Mattie Ross said when she fell into the rattlesnake pit in True Grit) “in a bad way”.
As Red Leader (Porkins) said in Star Wars: A New Hope, “Almost there.”
There we go! See, nothing to it! (Er, ignore that blood.)
One down.
After a little swishing of warm salt water, all is well.
One day later, it’s time to get the other one. At this point we have named it ‘sole survivor’ after this pair of fake teeth (top right).
Pop! This one was easier to grab, but actually held on better than I thought it would.
Another swish of warm salt water, and there you have it: a vampire!
You can see her permanent front teeth are already visible.
Luckily, she’s at the age where a lot of her friends are going through the same thing. In this blurry pic, Keighly’s friend Michael also shows he is missing his front teeth.
-Matthew
The Incredibealls! 
