Four months ago I blogged about the frustrations of using HTML5 video. I said at the time that I have to transcode the video into 4.1 different formats (mp4, ogv, webm, flv, and jpg). However, I was reminded today (at NC Dev Con) that Flash supports h.264, which is to say, MP4. So I don’t need to transcode to FLV for the Flash player fallback; I can just send the MP4 file to the flash player.  So I’ve updated the player on my site to drop the need for FLV. I’ve also switched my flash player from OSFLV to the nicer Flowplayer. Not that you would notice any of this, unless you’re using IE 6/7/8.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here. What can I say, I’ve been busy. If you’re interested, I’ve put up several new photo albums: Easter, May-July 2011, Beach Trip 2011, Grayson’s first birthday party, and some old photos that I never took off my old digital camera from Thanksgiving 2009.

And I’ve also got lots of videos to share. First up is my role as Cat In The Hat at Emma’s third birthday party:

Here’s a random video of the kids playing in the backyard:

Here’s a video of Grayson eating cake at his first birthday party:

Here’s Grayson opening a present at his party:

And last but not least, here’s Grayson playing in the pool during his pool party:

I apologize for the videos from Grayson’s birthday being so dim. For whatever reason, when recording video, my camera uses the exposure compensation setting from the last time you were in manual settings mode. And usually when I’m in manual settings mode it’s because I want to try a long exposure, which always turn out too bright, so I turn the exposure compensation all the way down to -2.

I finished Donkey Kong Country Returns a few weeks ago and I thought I’d share a few thoughts. Overall, it’s really really good. The most notable thing about it is the difficulty. When a patent filed by Shigeru Miyamoto was discovered a few years ago, describing a system where the game would help players get past tough parts, it was pretty harshly mocked by the gaming community. Since then, the feature has come to be known as “Superguide” and it has been included in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Super Mario Galaxy 2, and now Donkey Kong Country Returns1. The last two in particular have shown that the feature doesn’t result in super-easy games aimed at the lowest common denominator. The effect has actually been pretty much the opposite—Nintendo has been able to make really challenging games that they can still market to a broader audience. So getting back to DKCR: the game is really challenging. But it’s not challenging in the same way that NES games were, throwing things at you just for the point of killing you. In those games, when you fail you usually feel like the game was designed in a way that was bad or just unfair. In DKCR (or SMG2 for that matter) when you fail it is usually your own fault. I’m not sure I articulated that well enough. I guess what I’m trying to say is the game didn’t feel cheap. EXCEPT...

The bosses were universally awful. Just the worst. I find it hard to believe that these are the same guys who did boss design in the Metroid Prime games.

The Rocket Barrel stages were also awful. The whole control mechanism felt like it was introduced late in the dev cycle and just didn’t get enough testing and tweaking. The worst example was level 4-5: Crowded Cavern. I died something like sixty times in that level.

Another thing that was nice about this game was that I could play it when Emma was in the room. (Most of the other games I have played lately focus on creative murder, which is inappropriate for 2-year-olds.) One of Emma’s favorite things to do was see the “monkey house” in the very first level. And this is something too cute not to share.

It’s been a few months since I posted some video of the kids, but that’s all about to change! Here’s a video of Emma making Grayson laugh. It reminds me a lot of the video of Emma laughing while playing football, although Emma was three months older in that video that Grayson is in this one. In any case, I think you’d be hard-pressed not to smile during either. You’ll also notice that Emma feels the need to say “jump jump jump jump” while she is jumping. In case you weren’t aware that is what she was doing. :)

A few months back I saw a YouTube video (embedded below) simulating what the sky might look like if Earth had rings like Saturn. I think it’s pretty cool, but when I thought about it later I realized that we probably wouldn’t think anything of the rings in the sky if we had them. Imagine, if you will, that the Earth had no moon. In that alternate reality, I would probably be blogging about a simulation of what it would look like if Earth had a moon. But in our reality we don’t pay much attention to the moon. Anyway, enjoy the video.

Here are two short videos from our Labor Day weekend in New Bern.  First, we have Stephanie and her mom playing with some 18th-century toys. This is the kind of thing kids did to pass their free time before video games.

And second we have a video of Emma “sweeping the yard.” I guess they didn’t have rakes back then? Also, I introduce Emma to a philosophical discussion, continuing the work of Mark Twain, as to how to discern between work and play.

I’ve been asked to post more pictures and video of Grayson, as it has been over a month since I last shared anything. The problem is that he’s still at the age where he doesn’t particularly do anything... besides eat, sleep, poop, and cry. But we tried. I’ve also posted eleven new photos of Grayson and Emma from the past month. And I also have two videos. The first is a rather lengthy video of Emma playing with Grayson, and the second is actually a video of me coming home from work to be greeted by Emma two days before Grayson was born.

Yesterday morning Grayson Matthew Robinson—the handsome little boy shown below—came into our lives:

The last time I managed to write about Emma’s birth within a few hours, but this time around I guess I’m a little late. Mark my words, someday when Grayson gets rebellious and I ask him, “Son, why did you drop out of school and get all those tattoos and start a Metallica cover band? I mean come on, no one liked Metallica songs even when Metallica performed them, and even before Lars Ulrich had that gender-reassignment surgery. The only people who ever liked Metallica are in their eighties now. It’s just a poor decision.” And he’ll reply “I did it because I wanted to be first. I always got second best, Dad! Look at the day I was born, you couldn’t even be bothered to write a blog post about it! Emma got a blog post. Emma got to pierce her nose. Emma got to go to Harvard.” Then I’ll tell him, “Son, the only reason you didn’t get a blog post that day was because I was so busy falling in love with you.” Then he’ll say “eww gay.” That’s just how teenagers talk.1

All kidding aside, I actually was somewhat concerned that I would never be able to love him as much as I love Emma. But I quickly learned that your love for your children isn’t meted out in discrete quantities from a finite supply. I already feel like I have just as much love for Grayson as I do for Emma. It is very surreal. It seems to be multiplied somehow when I see how much Emma loves her brother too. The video below shows just that, with Emma holding Grayson for the first time.

It has surprised me just how much I can already tell that Grayson has a different personality than Emma. For one thing, he loves being held much more than Emma did. Even as a baby, being held didn’t do much to console Emma. She’s never been much of a snuggler (except when she’s sick). Grayson, on the other hand, is very content to be held. He’s also generally quieter than Emma was at this point, though it remains to be seen if that trend will continue. Emma I’m sure was a little extra fussy because (as you may recall) she was born with a black eye.

In any case, I hope you’ll join me in welcoming Grayson into the world. You can find pictures from his first two hours of life on this very website. I’m sure more will be coming later, but probably not until after we are back home from the hospital.

For those of you who don’t follow us on Facebook, I have added two new photo albums. First are pictures from Christmas/New Year’s in Newton.

And second, we have pictures of me pushing Emma around in a sled in the three inches of snow that we got here in Concord last night.  I also have a short video of me pushing Emma around in her sled. Enjoy!

I got a fancy new DSLR camera for Christmas, and got a chance to try it out while spending Christmas at Myrtle Beach with Stephanie’s family. I got a ton of pictures, but I have only put up 113 of them.

The camera also records video in HD (720p 30fps or 1080p 20fps). The video below is one I recorded at 720p, though here it’s displayed at only 360p (which I think is equivalent to YouTube’s “HQ” setting). I would have trimmed the video more, but my recent upgrade to Windows 7 left me very surprised to find that Windows Movie Maker has been removed. Supposedly it has been replaced by Windows Live Movie Maker, a completely different program that lacks a lot of features that were in the Vista version of Movie Maker. I guess I need to install Premiere or something. I haven’t needed it in the past for what little video editing I do for this site, and I’ve been doing pretty well at using only legally-acquired software for a while. Oh well.