The Jack Noodle Journal

Hello, hello.

Wow that mountain of snow totally vanished with one good warm day didn’t it? It’s raining right now. The snow adventure was fine for awhile but I’m glad it’s gone now. We went a little stir-crazy but it wasn’t too bad. The snow plows kept the street in front of the house fairly maneuverable. We stuck to main streets and the highways for our traveling so we were fine.

Baby had a fun Christmas. The holidays were pretty entertaining for us all. I’m going to put together a video of baby’s first Christmas here hopefully sooner than later.

I’m feeling distracted today. Does it show? Maybe I am a little sleepy.

I wish, I wish I was was taking vacation days between Christmas and New Years. Getting just 20 hours in this week is going to be hard. I’m not into it.

Hey yeah, so much for 2008! Adios amigo!

2008 was a pretty eventful year. I’m going to check out some of the year in review articles on the internet and relive some of the events. An election year, voting for a new President, the economy crumbling, what else? Oh yeah, the Olympics, blah blah.

I need to form a Noodle year in review. We had a pretty awesome year. Most of which was due to the Little Noodle joining our family in April. Everything revolved around that guy in 2008. We actually probably missed some of 2008 due to being oblivious of things happening outside the house for much of the year.

I won’t be doing a best of music list this year I don’t think. I really wasn’t paying much attention to music this year. I listened to a lot, but didn’t actively go out and pursue anything new. Towards the end of the year all I listened to was the Nine Inch Nails catalog, Interpol’s “Our Love To Admire” and Bright Eyes “I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning” . The last two weren’t even released in 2008. I did quite enjoy TV on the Radio’s 2008 album, “Dear Science” though. I will have to take Metacritic’s word for it this year when it comes to best of lists.

I’ve got a pretty good plan for some New Year’s resolutions. It feels like finishing off 2008 calls for a good starting over, new plan, new vows for 2009. Let’s start on a new page. I’m glad the new year is coming. I’m feeling like really getting some shit going!

I’m going to act more like an adult.
I’m going to read and write more in 2009.
I’m going to figure out some sort of hobby that isn’t anything like what I am currently into.
I’m going to get deeper into photography and digital video.
I’m not going to drink as much in 2009 and get a handle on some of my other self indulgent vices.
We’re going to have a good yard and garden year.
I’m going to try and not get angry as easily.
I’m going to take a closer look at my career paths.
I’m going in to see a doctor for a check up (I haven’t been since ‘94).
I’m going to actually read our bills in 2009 and get some sort of responsible budget going with the cash.
I’m going to continue to be a good daddy, and even more so in 2009.
I’m going to make art for art’s sake.
I’m going to have even more fun and enjoy myself more than I did in 2008!

Hmm… I’m sure there’s more.

How about that snow huh? It’s been coming down nicely all morning long. We are snowed in! It’s very soothing watching come down.

We went to the company Christmas party last night. It was pretty fun. We had a pizza party downtown at Old Town Pizza. We took the G Man along. He was a hit. I’ve got a pretty fun bunch of coworkers. They are alright.

I am going to cook my dark sticky stew again today. Okay, right, Jamie Oliver’s dark sticky stew. Hey it looks like he has the recipe up on his site now. I don’t think it was there before.

I know I mentioned it before but I get a lot visitors to this site through “dark sticky stew” Google searches. I think I had the top spot for a while.

Me cooking anything is pretty big news as you know. I don’t cook. I don’t enjoy cooking. Actually, it’s pretty fun once I am actually doing it.

I do make a pretty mean potato salad.

The sticky stew is going to be great. I can just about taste it. mmmmm.

How has the holidays been treating you? We have been having a pretty fun time so far. I Haven’t done any Christmas shopping yet. Uh, Christmas isn’t about the gifts right? You won’t be upset that I didn’t buy you anything because the real joy that comes during the season is the joy that we share in fellowship and enjoying each other’s company. Right? If you must have a gift, go out and buy yourself something pretty and say I gave it to you. Would that work? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

My nose is running.

Next year we are going to act like grown ups and get brand new windows for the house and add some serious insulation. This will be the last year of unweatherized living. This is just silly.

We are looking forward to spending time with our friends Mat and Niki who will be in town soon!

yep!

Happy birthday to this Noodle. Yes. 36 years ago today I was born. Oh dear. How old we get so fast.

Thanks to all of you well wishers! Your condolences were so very appreciated and needed.

The thing I am thinking about this year and wasn’t last (wait let me check… Hey we were in Shelton for my birthday last year? Sweet.) is that when Gilby is 36 I will be 71. Argh! 71? Is the math right?

What will my little boy be like when he is my current age? What will I be like when I’m 71? Was my dad wondering on his 36th birthday what I would be like at 36? and on and on and on….

I will say the feelings of adulthood I was getting hints of last year has continued. I AM all grown up now. I think April’s joy of childbirth has slapped me forever to the big kid’s table.

It is very good. I have a lot to be happy about! I feel like there is going to be some really cool stuff popping up in the near future.

I promise to ramble even more during my 36th year.

Baby’s First Snow from Jack Noodle on Vimeo.

It’s pretty icy out there this morning isn’t it? I don’t have to go into the office today and K’s school district is closed for a snow day. Woo hoo. Yeah, and good luck with that if you have to head out.

Alright already! We know. Oregonians can’t drive in the Snow or ice. So what? We don’t want to live in a place that requires ice driving skills. We have our one or two days of staying home for snow days and we like it. Perhaps some of these foul weather driver maker funners of should move back to the Midwest where people enjoy ice skating with their cars.

I hope it snows more today.

The Little Noodle turned 8 months old yesterday. He is growing up so fast. He is developing so rapidly now I’m finding that I have to pay close attention to every single moment for fear of missing something. He’s also moving on to new things and not doing some of the old stuff anymore. I think I have a pretty good record of the old stuff he’s grown past doing now but I’m going to have to really sit down and think about it and write some notes. I don’t want to forget anything.

It’s good to have this journal (as I have said a million times before) because you can go back and find posts like this when G was just over a month old and I was freaking out. Things aren’t as dramatic or dire now as they were then. Sure there are freak outs, but I’m pretty sure now that this whole baby thing is going to work out fine.

He’s definitely a different baby now. Sure, I guess I’m a different daddy as well.

Uh, okay. My feet are freezing! I must go find some clean warm socks.

Oh man, was I in a foul mood this morning! I’ve been slipping down into a funk of grumpiness and anger as this week winds down to a close. I know it may be hard for you to believe, but I do have some anger management issues from time to time.

Yeah, I don’t know what the deal is. I’m feeling quite annoyed. I didn’t sleep very well last night and that is probably most of it.

Looking up Google searches this week for “babies acquiring worms from dogs” and “appendicitis” doesn’t make for much fun either (Neither are cause for your alarm. We don’t think).

I talked to a couple of you this week and you were mentioning that you were feeling a funk as well.

Much apologies to the poor souls who crossed my path earlier (you know who you are).

I should snap out of it. Stop being a baby Noodle! There’s lot to be happy about during this time of year, right? The holidays! blah blah!

I am looking forward to the weekend. Oh yes. It’s almost here! Only a few more hours. I’m on my lunch break now typing this. Don’t worry. Off the clock, Man (note capital M). Oh, I’m eating a bag of chip crumbs for lunch. I ain’t gots no money for a proper lunch. Maybe being hungry is adding to my grumpiness?

I just popped my head up over the cube and see that the rains are coming down. hmmm.

I am feeling better now at this hour.

I am listening to OutKast’s album, “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below” right now and that is helping to lift my spirits tremendously. It’s a good one.

Earlier today I found the set list from last Sunday’s NIN concert. Wow. 31 songs. I made a playlist of all the songs and put it on my iPod. Without the magnificent visuals it’s easier to see how masterful an order and selection it was. Very good spirit lifter.

What’s on your list for the weekend? I hear tale of a get together out in Marcy land celibrating a couple of birthday boys. That will be fun.

Just keep it together for a few more hours…

Yeah, these cell phone photos don’t do any justice to what the stage show was like at all. I put them up anyway because I kind of like the cell phone look of them.

I just read last night on the NIN website when I got home, that they had a relaxed camera / camcorder policy for the show! I could have brought my HD digital video camera if I would have read that before the concert. Oh well. I’ll keep a clear mental movie camera image of it in my head. I wouldn’t have been enjoying the show if I was filming it anyway.

The Nine Inch Nails concert last night at the Rose Garden Arena was pretty freaking amazing! That was the 4th time I have seen NIN in concert. I just found this long rambling post where I think my review of the last Nine Inch Nails show we went to is.

The Music was excellent of course. It was cool to see the “Year Zero” and “The Slip” songs played live. There was also a couple of variations of the oldies that were great to hear as well. Trent’s voice sounded great.

I appreciate what they were trying to do with the 3 or 4 song chunk of “Ghosts” instrumental songs mid-show. The visuals were gorgeous (oh I’ll get to the visuals) the songs were beautiful and they actually brought real instruments out on stage! A glockenspiel? (oops, marimba) Unfortunately about 25% of the audience that were only at the show to hear “Head Like a Hole” and “Closer” weren’t as impressed with the Ghosts set. Yeah, audiences. What are you gonna do? I will admit that the Ghosts songs did slow things down a bit but good for Mr. Reznor trying something different out. I think the Ghosts songs work better in more intimate settings.

The light show absolutely stole the show. I usually try not to say “stole the show” very often either. The computer graphics, lights, video clips, curtain of pixels, bits and bytes literally stole the show! I was shaking my head at times in disbelief at what I was seeing on stage. It was the best lighting display, special effects, computer wizardry that I have ever seen at a concert (yes Seth, even better than Zoo TV!). I looked over at my concert mate a couple of times during the show and said joyfully, “Oh that is just ridiculous”! I don’t think he heard me though. A couple of times the lights were flashing so fast and furious from every direction that I thought I was going to have a seizure! It was kind of like a 4th of July fireworks display that was nonstop and all finale.

It was amazing.

The lights, graphics, and pixels were all tied together with the music so the band could actually play their instruments and manipulate the visuals at the same time. A couple of times Trent sang into this camera on stage that transformed what the camera was seeing into a dot matrix image blown up giant on the translucent pixel curtain display that sometimes covered the stage. Boy, I’m not describing it so well…

Oh okay well, here you go. Here’s a making of video that explains some of it. Gosh, I’m glad I didn’t see that before the show. It would have killed a lot of the surprise.

The effects during the song “Only” were mesmerizing. It looked like the band was fighting to walk their way through a tornado of static. Then it looked like light poured up through the stage floor and then dripped down from the ceiling.

It was very cool.

Papa had a great time! Thanks again for nudging me into going, Chris.

We went and saw the movie, “Twilight” last week. It wasn’t bad. Pretty good actually if you look at it in the correct light. It’s an absolutely awesome movie if you are or recently were a tween girl.

Our intention with catching the movie (besides seeing cute twenty somethings dressed up like vampires) was to see if we could spot our house in any of the scenes. Yes, Twilight was filmed here in Oregon and in Washington. They filmed some of it at the big old folks home around the block from us. Remember? I wrote here in the journal, on Cinco De Mayo of this year, about the film crew descending on the neighborhood.

We didn’t see our house in the movie. I think that the interior scenes at the hospital might have been us. The old folks home is starring as the hospital. Here’s a YouTube clip (spoiler alert) of the scene where I can kind of imagine that hallway being in the old folks home.

It was a good enough movie that you had a hard time paying attention to the setting. There were some nice shots of Multnomah Falls.

I have been listening to the latest Interpol album, “Our Love To Admire” nonstop for the last 2 weeks. Hold on, let me go start it up again right now. It’s really rubbing me the right way now for some reason. I like it a lot more now than when I first heard it. Wait a second, that album was released last year. Gosh, I remember the first time I saw them at the Blackbird as clear as if it was only a Noodle Journal post click away.

So that Little Noodle is nonstop! He is everywhere. He is crawling all over the house. NOW he has started pulling himself up onto stuff and getting into a standing position. You have to keep an eagle eye on him now because he keeps tipping over! Pheeeeeeew! It’s almost impossible to get a journal post written with him falling all over the place. Oh my goodness I may be too much of an old man to be able to chase him around once he starts walking. What are we going to do?

K and my heads snapped around to look at each other the other night when G Noodle said out loud and clearly, “Ma Ma”! We both heard it. First word? The peoples in the know on the internet and various other medias say that around this time in a baby’s development they may be putting the sounds together now without really knowing what they are saying. We have been trying to get him to repeat “ma ma”, but so far we haven’t got much. It might be a little to early to declare first word.

Mr. Baptist has landed at the Noodle Compound. We are quite excited to have him again. He is going about the business of celebrating his Christmas vacation. Let the sleigh bells ring!

Oh yes, and in late breaking, ongoing, currently developing news: Mr. Snethen and I are in talks for the purpose of attending the Nine Inch Nails concert together on Sunday. I kind of knew out of the periphery that the NIN show was coming up, but I wasn’t really thinking I would see NIN for a 4th time this go around. It took Mr. Snethen’s sneaky, matter of fact emails to get my blood really boiling for the show. It sounds like that would be a lot of fun!

Just to get myself even more psyched I am going to watch the video for “We’re in this together“. Oh man. so good.

time to baby-proof the house from Jack Noodle on Vimeo.

Hey did that embed come through? Cool.

Over the extended weekend I had a bit of a freak out. I know. I always have freak outs over the weekend. I was annoyed, frustrated and saddened by my computer and the state of my gear. My digit farming tools are starting to show some cracks! The computer was filled to the brim and overflowing. Some simple tasks were being weighed down due to the glut.

I was also frustrated in the overall rustiness of my attacks. I really am better than this. Let’s get this stuff going!

Then YouTube made me angry.

Finally around Sunday I ended up on Vimeo’s door. I have always been impressed with the quality of the Vimeo images. I had been seeing more and more Vimeo clips pop up on the cool kid’s pages these days. Gilby’s friend Ari uses Vimeo and that is one cool dude.

I got all hooked up to Vimeo and finally uploaded that there video up there of G Noodle. Uploading videos to Vimeo was a much more pleasant experience than trying to upload video to YouTube. They actually have count downs and progress bars to let you know how your upload is going all along the way. I don’t know how long I’ve sat and stared at the YouTube screen wondering if anything was happening.

The picture quality is much better than my last, “Gilby Speaks” YouTube endeavor. Still a little dark, but that’s me on the camera end not adjusting the settings for the inside of our dark house.

I guess what I’ve been trying to do with internet video the few times I’ve done it, was get a system down on my side of the equation that made it as easy to upload video as it is to upload photos to Flickr. I think I figured some good stuff out over the weekend.

It’s all about the compression! If you can get a nice, clean, small video at the beginning then you are golden. I have struggled with compression my whole life. This time around I found this page and scribbled all of the figures down on a notepad. I then went to Final Cut Pro and Compressor and found the settings in Compressor that most closely matched the target figures. It was a bit of a chore actually. I really need to get serious about learning FCP and Compressor. My life would be so much easier.

If you’ve gotten down this far in the post and want more details on my compression journeys, send me an email and I’ll see if I can help.

I had a “well, duh”, “oh my god how could I be so stupid”, “that makes perfect sense” moment over the weekend that makes it all worth while. It seems so simple now. I don’t need to capturing video into the computer at 1440 x 1080 if my final output size is 1280 x 720! No wonder my computer was having such a hard time breathing and sweating so badly! I was doing all my editing work in hi-res then compressing it down. I should be capturing my footage at the appropriate smaller size starting out and then save hours in compression. Well, duh!

I know, right?