The Holiday Loot

Depending on how you look at it, having a birthday in December is either a blessing or a curse. Either way, at the end of December I have lots of new possessions that should satisfy me (supposedly) until the next December when it happens again. And, depending on the year, by March my most prized gift from December is finished and gathering dust while the unexpected gifts I didn't even include on my initial list are the ones I get the most enjoyment out of.

But this year is different.

This year I changed things up a bit and did not include specific gifts on my list (such as specific games or DVDs); this year I asked for themes which are consistent with this blog. Themes such as "better dress apparel", "bachelor food items", and "art books", etc. And that is what I received! After a few weeks of testing the gifts in real world situations I can safely say that this is probably the most productive gift set ever! And, even more surprising, it is also the first December where I did not receive a single video game since 1989. I'm not saying there is a correlation between those two facts, but it does show a change in my tastes and desires.

So what did I get?

The lion's share of gifts this year involved my looks. In previous years I hated getting new clothes. I liked my old clothes, I didn't need new ones, and I rather play with new entrainment items than care how others saw me. This year, those statements are reversed.

In December, I received 3 pairs of shoes, 3 hats, and a scarf. In one month I received more items in each of those categories than I usually receive in multiple years. more of any one of those items


I love the different options these items allow me. Along with various new shirts/sweaters/pants I pretty much changed my entire wardrobe in one month. Expect a post in the future detailing the different new looks.


Another surprisingly useful item I received was a front pocket wallet.When I first started carrying a wallet at age 14/15 I was but a wee lad. I placed my wallet in my back pocket and the wallet was so big on me that over half the wallet hung out of the pocket. After it fell out of my back pocket for the umpteenth time (basically each time I sat down/stood up) I put it in my front pocket and never looked back. For 14 years I dealt with a giant lump bulging out of the front of my pants leg (yes, the wallet). Now I finally have a wallet designed for the pocket that is relatively hidden when I wear it. Although I was forced to clean out some of the larger items in my first wallet in order to fit only the essential items in this one and I found some very old pictures/cards that dated back to early college. Yikes!



Finally, my last gift which has been used on a daily basis is the Rocket Blender. I'm not sure how I lived without this. Basically it is a small blender where the container is just a regular cup in which you attach the blade. It creates single serving blends, you just put the food into your drinking cup, attach the blade, put it in the metal base which automatically starts to blend (no buttons), remove the blade, and drink. It is extremely easy to clean (and this is from a bachelor) since it is nothing more than a plastic cup and a blade attachment. Considering I live 3 blocks from Northern California's largest collection of fresh fruit, this was the perfect addition for my diet. I go to the Berkeley Bowl and pick some random fruit from the thousands to choose from, toss a random variety into the blender (along with some yogurt), and have a new flavor of fruit shake every day.

And that is the essentials of my Holiday Loot. Granted I received more items (dvd, books, pictures, tech gadget) and really enjoy them. But they didn't quite change my daily life like the above items did. And it goes without saying that what I loved most about December was buying the perfect gifts for my loved ones but that will be a post for another day (my kids were the most fun to shop for).

Christmas Photos: pt 1

Not much to say other than trees with lots of lights are very pretty, and fun to play around with using the camera' light settings.

Whistle while you work

My company recently released a "We're Hiring" video full of entertaining footage of all my friends:



To the regular viewer I bet this video looks awesome and nothing seems odd about it (other than the totally fun/craziness we have at work). But when I watch it I cringe at the timeline of the shots they choose: there are shots that happened years apart that flow into each other. Not that it is a bad thing, it just bothers me because I can see the different stages of my physical transformation over the past 4 years happen in a random order. In a few short scenes I go from being a normal weight, to gaining 40 pounds, to skinny in normal fitting clothing, to losing some weight but wearing baggy clothes that don't fit. And my hairstyles... oh man. One of my most prominent shots has me with a mustache which I literally did for 1 day (Halloween, I was a cowboy) but it looks like a normal day in the shot. My hair grew long and unkempt, got short, and then nearly completely shaved; I had a full beard, no beard, goatee; and my sideburns were short, long, and then 70's ultra long (in prep for Mr. Darcy). Make up your mind Jay! What do you want to look like? That being said, I'm not the only one with wildly changing hair over the past 4 years so at least I am in good company. Oh hey, a pun. Awesome.

My kids make brief appearances too! We are the Waldo family at 3:42 and baby Raeleigh is shown with Cowboy Jay at 4:23. Also check out Groovy Sideburns Jay at 2:49, Full-Beard-(nearly)-Shaved-Head Jay at 4:16, baggy-clothes-from-losing-weight Jay at 3:28, and I-just-ran-2-miles-at-the-Marina Jay at 1:16.

Quickie: I love pranks

Too early to disclose the specifics, but 2010 already has its first office prank underway. This one is a multi-day one (if I can make it all month without getting discovered, even better) and the victim is perplexed. Here's a hint: have friends join the prank so when you are the prime suspect suddenly the victim is hit by the friends in a way that makes it impossible for you to have done it (like you are in his presence when it happens). Good times.

(blogging about it may not be the best way to avoid getting caught, but if he is smart enough to search my blog for possible answers he would also be smart enough to check the printer logs to see who keeps printing those random pictures)

Twas quiet in the church...

Consistent readers of the blog may have noticed that the daily posts have recently become less... daily. But fear not, that will change in the near future. As discussed in previous posts on this blog, I set aside a certain amount of time each day to update my blog but recently I have been using that time to upload Christmas photos to my Facebook account (which many of you read already and discovered this site from it). Once that is done those photos will be uploaded here and posts should be more frequent (although not daily, as I am splitting my blogging time between more sources than just this site now).

Oh, and having a baby and spending family time in states abroad also turned out to be time consuming. Who would have thought?

New Year, New Goals

2009 was one hell of a year. It started off interesting, got crazy, and ended in a positive direction I was excited to go. 2010 looks to continue in that direction. As is the popular tradition, I created my own resolutions for this year and will continue to work towards them much in the same fashion as I did the latter half of last year (which birthed this blog). When the sun sets on 2010 this blog will be a delightful documentation of the successes of those resolutions. Here we go!

Head of the House - 5 Final and Progression

Well, the Animation Mentor Polish and Portfolio term is over. :(
But now, 12 weeks later my work has improved by leaps and bounds. In the end I polished over 25 second of animation which isn't as much as I hoped when I starte (30 secs was my goal) but hey, my son was born during the term so I was a little distracted in the final weeks, :)

Much like my Get Out piece I have compiled some videos for my Head of the House shot.

Here is the "final" shot:


Here is the comparison of the final shot and where it was at the beginning of the term:




In the end I probably reanimated every single frame in the shot. I have yet to find a frame or pose the was not changed in some way. The man's excited preparation at the beginning and the entire dog walk are complete new animation.

Other major changes are the overlapping of the hands and frisbee as he jump (notice how they flow up and down after the body jumps and falls), better timing on the jumps, more exaggerated poses and heights of jumps, overlapping in the dog's tail, head, and ears, and the feet are more in sync with the music.


Finally, here is my reference.

Jay's playlist: Carol of the Final Fantasy Belles

Welcome to my playlist, where I discuss the music which is currently entertaining me. Below you will find a video, press play to begin the song and then read my feelings on the album.



This playlist is a little narcissistic since I'm the one who arranged and performed the piece, but since it is the only (recorded) piece with those qualities I'm not too worried about posting it. "Carol of the Final Fantasy Belles" is a piano arrangement which mixes Final Fantasy themes (usually the heroines/belles' themes) with Carol of the Bells and the orchestral theme to the (relatively) obscure game Parasite Eve.

My passion for playing the piano began in 1999 when I discovered sheet music for a video game piece from the game series Final Fantasy called "Tina" (or "Terra", depending on the Japanese translation). As the years went on I learned many other pieces from Final Fantasy and my other favorite composers, and when sheet music did not exist I created it.

By 2003 I had a nice repertoire of video game/George Winston/movie theme arrangements and I began noticing common themes in my favorite pieces. A few days each week I would experiment playing one piece and immediately transitioning to the next. Eventually this practice led to improvising the different the piano arrangements in one hour long mega mix each time I sat at the piano. Since it was my Senior year in college and I knew I would no longer have the opportunity to play the piano once I departed for California I decided to record myself playing my "mega mix" to archive my experiments long after I lost the ability the play at that level. The condensed version of this recording became "Carol of the Final Fantasy Belles".

My inspiration for the piece primarily comes from the piano arrangements of Tina by Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy VI Piano Collections), Carol of the Bells by George Winston (December), Parasite Eve theme Orchestral by Yoko Shimomura (Parasite Eve OST), and Carol of the Bells by Mark Hayes (a professional piano book). Also included are brief themes from Rydia (Final Fantasy IV), Mambo de Chocobo (Final Fantasy V), Aerith and Tifa (Final Fantasy VII), The Extreme (Final Fantasy VIII), Vamo alla Flamenco (Final Fantasy IX), and To Zanarkand (Final Fantasy X). During my time at Pixar the following year (while going through severe piano withdrawals) I created a nifty logo in the Ratatouille art style and wrote out sheet music which included a snippet of Eternity from Final Fantasy X-2 (don't ask).

One of these days I will own a piano again (I did purchase a weighted keyboard but it just wasn't the same) at which point I will begin my mixes again. One of my biggest disappointments is not being able to perform this piece at this level any longer. There was a time I was working with the (now mainstream) video game concert producers to perform this for a Christmas concert but, alas, I couldn't reach the performance level necessary. Martin Leung I am not. But I will always have this recording to bring me Christmas (Final Fantasy) joy each year.

Bonus Song
The following pieces are the original inspiration to Carol of the Final Fantasy Belles:

Parasite Eve theme orchestral


Carol of the Bells (George Winston)


Tina (Final Fantasy VI piano collections)


Finally, the video the inspired me to post this:

I did a search for new Carol of the Bells arrangements and games and, low and behold, one of the search returns was of a guy still playing my piece 4 years after I released it. Seeing him actually pressing the keys to perform this (and skipping some of the more difficult sections) reminds me of how crazy I really was back then. This arrangement is not easy.

The Return

Well, as you have noticed this blog has not been updated since the birth of my son, Elliot, in late November. Needless to say life has been busy and I have spent the past few weeks traveling between California, Arkansas, and Texas to juggle the duel roles of taking care of family and professional work (as well as continuing to progress in my personal studies). Once 2010 rolls around I'll be able to update this site on a regular basis again, but the next few weeks are going to be crazy! But, as you may guess, I have lots to post about in all aspects of life. So stay tuned!

Elliot's first video

Elliot's first video:


Bonus:
Mia's first video


Raeleigh's first video


You can find more videos of Raeleigh and Mia here