A snow day

It must be the third day of this Winter which snows. It beautiful to wake up & see the powder white snow slowly falling from the sky. Well, only if you can stay inside, sit near a fireplace & read a good book. For me, I had to wake up the kid, prep him & take him to school. The driving was not bad, the high temperature kept the snow from sticking on street surface, which is good.

Got to talked to a head hunter about a programming contracting job, and then a potential interview with Daon. Daon is a company doing biometric solution for many customers & agencies, so ... quite interesting. Looking forward to an interview. This afternoon, I also have an interview with CACI, will see how that pans out.

Overall, this is a good week, with two interviews and few more in the pipe line. If one of those can land me a job, then I would not feel so edgy & worry. I know, I should not feel worry, should keep my focus & positive thinking, but it's just hard to do when both of us are out of job. Each day goes by, is another severance day gone.

Don't know what to do

I went in to work today, just because staying at home is so difficult to focus, can't have anything done.

I've tried to open up the Visual Studio at home, trying to get some framework for the Silverlight & C++ modules up, but still ... way too hard to focus. My mind is racing at 100MPH, ton of questions, but could not find any acceptable answers. Cigarette helps a bit to calm me down physically, fingers less shaking, but still it does not help my nerves.

Don't know what to do!

Homework

Watching Huân doing homework is just a wonderful sight.

The Age of Autism

A while back, when I was discussing the rate of autistic children increase with my sister, a PhD at UC Davis, and she pointed out that the result is fairly inconclusive due to the fact that the diagnosis for autism is getting better, thus able to identify more children diagnosed with autistic. Well, it was a reasonable argument.

On Jan 7th, 2009, UC Davis M.I.N.D. Institute study shows California's autism increase not due to better counting, diagnosis, since 1990. So how can we answer to that? The study shows the increase is "seven- to eight-fold"! If this does not raise an alarm in our government, I do not know what else.

Wii

Bảo likes it, Thuỵ likes it, other autistic kids love it; but not Huân. Video games are so sophisticated and attractive even for adults; and I though Huân would like it, but it's not the case. Huân looks at it, watches his brothers play, but not participate. We have tried few times, Bảo & Thuỵ chose the appropriate or easy games for him to start, but he did not show any interest. He would hold the control if it was given to him, or asking him to hold; but after few try of pushing the buttons, he would let go, walk away and back to his Thomas trains.

But I am not giving up just yet, I have one more try: Wii fit! Yeah, the kind that you have to move or balance your whole body; not just the fingers. So, I am looking forward of getting the wii fit & the balance board for him to try. But before getting the game, I need to learn how to get him open up to try with anthusias, he must be the one who wants to play and not playing because we want him to.

Cold day

It's cold & raining today. That just make me want to stay home, curl up in bed, read a good book or watch a mindless movie. You know, the movie which you can take 5min break and still able to figure out what's going on; the kind of movies which does not requires viewer to think or pay close attention. When I have something to do, a book to read or need to think, I like to put that kind of movies on, and then do what I need to do. Over the time, I learn that I become more productive, and less stress. The movie acts like a background soothing environment for me, setting the backdrop for me to think. After an intense thinking session, all I have to do is glance over to the screen, that eases my mind, allowing me to get back to thinking or continue reading.

Got to work today, and my colleague's email caught my attention. It's a link to a web page, which shows pictures of frozen soap bubbles. Kind of neat. If it's cold this Friday or weekend, I will definitely try with my kids.

Last day of 2008

We are at University of Virginia to pick up Thuỵ at the end of his summer camp

Today is the last day for year 2008, and I spent few minutes browsing through all pictures that I've took in the year, trying to find one which I can sum it up for a year coming to end. This year must had been a year that we've been travel, going to places the most. Many of these are just short trips, places that we went and stayed for only one or two days. Sometimes, they are just a day trip. Most noticeable is that we spent with the whole family, which is a good thing. Family quality time, to me is always good, does not matter much where we visit, as long as time we can spent with the ones we love.

Nags Head Sand dunes, North Carolina, Thanksgiving 2008. - Now, who did that?

Browsing through the pictures, good memories are gushing back, a wonderful warm feeling for a cold blustering day like today. Here is another one, when we spent a short vacation in North Carolina during Thanksgiving holidays. We were on the sand dunes, enjoying the sun and cool sand under our feet. I can still recall the cool sensation of sand under our bare feet. Having a good laugh when we could not figure out who just broke-the-wind! We all suspected Huân, but in fact that was a stranger, out of frame, to the left of us. He apparently did not realize that we all heard the noise he made.

National Arboretum, Washington DC, May 2008

Here is another one, when I took my brother & sisters to visit the National Arboretum in Washington DC. We recognize plants which we were familiar when we were kids or when we growing up in Vietnam. Seeing the plants, also bought back memories, the place where we grew up, and time when we were living in Vietnam. Just a wonderful feeling to recognize the quality time we had in such a short moment inside that beautiful giant glass house.

Looking back at those time, I feel so fortunate that I had those time; for I know those are the treasures for me to keep forever. For 2009, I wish you all have a wonderful new year; more time to spend with your love ones, and enjoy every moment of it. For me, I just wish to have another year full of quality time with family and friends, just like the one I had in 2008 and more.

Family portrait

Family portrait on December 24th, 2008

Every year now, we try to take family portraits; pictures which give us sense of time and family. Pictures bring us back in time as well as pull back the curtain to show the packed emotional, well hidden inside the subjects. I like those pictures. The emotional portraits, the ones which do not focus on the beauty, shape of the jaw bone, flattering lighting, skin tone, or long curve eye lash; but the ones which reveal the feelings. It's really fun to watch the viewer looking at an emotional photograph; you can see that sentiment leaps from the picture on to the viewer's face. If I can see that little smile, ever so slightly, when a viewer looking at my picture. That's when, I feel that I have successfully taking an emotional picture.

When I showed my wife this picture, I can see that little smile on her lips; even though when selecting a favorite one, she went with a different picture, the one which shows her in more dignify position, serious expression. Oh well, as long as I have other pictures for her to choose, I am happy. As for me, I keep the picture that she is laughing, both inside & out.

Shooting Ice Hockey Games

Arlington's Cool Cats vs Montgomery's Cheetahs at Rockville Ice Rink

Taking picture of ice hockey games is all about equipments and knowledge of the game. For the equipment, it's no mystery here. The lighting condition in the ice rink arena is just so dreadfully dim. Adding on top of that is the fast action pace sport. So, to freeze the action of a slap-shot or a wrist-shot, you need to set the shutter speed to 1/250th of a second or faster. I like to set it at 1/500th second on my D70. Which by the way is not the best camera for sports shooting, due to the level of noise at high ISO. Fast shutter speed demands fast lens, that means: do not bother with anything slower than 2.8f lens. On my first attempt, I went with 80-210mm, 4.5-5.6 Sigma lens, and got terrible result. That's when I discover the level of noise my D70 makes. Here is the forewarn: setting ISO level more than 800 is just not worth shooting. The noise is just too much, even with noise reduction software could not make the picture any better. (Please Nikon, can you just be nice to a brand-faithful photographers and do not sell something like this next time?). On the second shooting opportunity, I went out and rent a Nikkor 70-200mm, constant 2.8f, AF-S VR-ED at Penn Camera for $35 a weekend. What a beautiful lens. The lens is fast focus, and evenly sharpness at all range. Few things that learn from taking pictures of ice hockey game:

• Get there early, get the permission from the arena's manager & stroll out to the player's box.
  
• If you have a mono-pod, use it.
• Shoot with 2.8f or better lens.
• Shoot at 1/250 shutter speed or faster if light condition permits.
• For D70 camera, set 800 ISO or lower if light condition permits.
  
• If shooting individual player, fill the whole frame.
• Shoot with the puck in the frame, to get the feel of game.
  
• Shoot action pictures, much more interesting.
• Wear something warm, because you are going to be there for whole duration of the game.

For the next game, I want to try with 105mm, 2.5 prime lens, which I have since the film day. Will see how my manual focusing skill vs. camera's auto focus mechanism pans out.

A green wedding?

Once a week, I put out some time catching up on my favorite's blogs. I do not have a big list of blogs, only about 5 blogs, so within an hour I can be up-to-date with all of them. In Anne Ruthmann's blog she described an idea of Green Wedding photo services, in which it reduces or eliminates possible wastes. For example, do not print a photo unless it's going to be framed. Do not send out photo products, but create photo slide show or put up high resolution photos online instead. It sounds unreasonable at first, but the more I think about it, it makes sense. However, this would not work for my mom. The computer mouse was not design to compensate for her trembling hands. So, how could I convince her to use the online album instead of stack and stack of photos bound by rubber bands?

My mother still favors prints of the grandson's wedding over the online slide show I made. She also has her own system of organizing those 4x6s, so she does not need standard photo albums. For past time, my mom performs her own artistic cropping of pictures. No need of the Photoshop's aid, just a pair of scissor will do. She can put together a 11x20 photos collage, with each picture carefully trimmed out by hand just to show the interested subject. Together one by one, she has photos of the whole family root to cover the wall.

Each time I visit my mom, I always want to check out her photo products. And each time, I notice a bit of new thing. Whether it's a face of a grandson or nephew, she cut it out of its own print and paste it on a larger print. So, I think, just for my mom, I continue to make prints and feed her the raw materials to keep our family photo root tree up-to-date.