The Death of Pixar?

It was announced earlier this week that Disney purchased Pixar animation studios. Mrs. Pickles and I were initially very sad about this event. Why? Pixar has created some of the best Hollywood movies (not just the best animation) during the last 6 years. They tell moving, moral stories that are entertaining and engaging; films that attract both children and adults. I think their films can also have a positive influence on the culture--especially within Hollywood. When was the last time I could say any of those things about Disney? Treasure Planet was a good movie (though it surprisingly flopped), but I don't think it's as good as nearly all of Pixar's films. We own every Pixar film made, and we've loved each of them.

Pixar knows to put substance before style. My brother-in-law made an insightful comment about the difference between movies released by Pixar vs. those from other animation studios. When you look at the marketing for Dreamworks' films you see the names of the notable actors and then you see the characters they play. With Pixar, you first see the characters, and then you see the name of the actors. Dreamworks leads you to the theatre with the names of notable actors--like nearly every other film. Pixar leads you to the theatre with their characters and great stories.

I do have some hope for the deal. From the article:

"I think this is great for Disney, not only to have Pixar be part of the
company, but to have Pixar influence the company," Disney Chief Executive Robert
A. Iger told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday after the deal was
announced. "It's also possible we'll look at Pixar and see not only how well
it's run but how well it lives and seek to overlay that influence on some of our
other businesses."

and

Key to spreading Pixar's influence will be Pixar President Ed Catmull, who will
serve as president of the new combined Pixar and Disney animation studios, and
Pixar Executive Vice President John Lasseter, who becomes chief creative officer of the animation studios and principal creative adviser at Walt Disney Imagineering, which designs and builds the company's theme parks. (italics mine)

There does seem to be some humility and recognition for Pixar's greatness, so I do have some hope that its influence will reign. It will take about 3-5 years to know for sure. Here's hoping and praying.

(PS For the picture starved, my dear wife is getting some of our Christmas pictures together for our blog, now that her delinquent husband finally uploaded them to the PC. There are mucho pictures, so it'll be worth it.)

I love my job.

Today while putting the girls down for their naps (praise be that they nap at the same time now!), I let Katie rat around in the room while I prayed with and sang to Miriam. After I kissed her goodnight, Katie toddled over and started blowing kisses at Miriam (she's very good at this -- although she will blow them from her eyeballs instead of her lips...). Miriam kept giggling at her, which encouraged Katie to keep it up. Then Katie leaned over with her lips puckered (Miriam's mattress is on the floor), and she and Miriam gave each other a good night kiss. It was SOOOOO adorable! I finally picked Katie up (after she started whapping Miriam on the nose), and as we were leaving the room, they kept blowing kisses at each other, and Katie kept waving "na naaa! [night night!]"

It's moments like this that make me feel like a million bucks -- I must be doing something right if my girls love each other this much! I only hope this relationship lasts through their teen years....


btw, sorry about the delay in getting a Christmas blog up -- we'll post some pictures as soon as Mr. Pickles uploads them from his computer... (HINT HINT....)

Merry Christmas

Isn't this the most beautiful image ever?


Morgan Weistling -- "Kissing the Face of God"

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, everyone! We'll post again with lots of Merry updates soon!

Snow day!

Last week we had our first snow! I bundled the girls up & took them outside so we could play.


snowbunnies

I wasn't sure how Katie would react, since she had just woken up from a nap and was still a little groggy.

what IS this stuff?

I needn't have worried -- she was FASCINATED and loved it! She kept eating the snow on her mittens (when she was actually able to keep them on...).

aww, snowbaby

Meanwhile, Miriam kept begging me to make snowballs for her. By the time it got too dark to stay out, her mittens were just coated in snow!

snow princess

Katie loved patting the new snow boots I got her a couple days later.

boots!

There's just something magic about that first snow, especially seen through the eyes of a child who's experiencing it for the first time! What I love most about it is that it transforms the ugly, bare, brown world into one of crystalline beauty and grace; when every twig looks individually outlined in pearl.


snow

God is a poet. It's most evident at the height of each season.

More random cuteness

We've been collecting lots of quips and photos that are blog-worthy, and now that I've filled up the memory card on the camera I thought it was time to post them. :)


We forgot to mention in our anniversary post that we would practice our dance steps while putting Katie to sleep (yes, we still walk with her -- she is only 17 lbs. after all!). She seems to prefer the Fox Trot -- it works like a charm. :) She loves dancing herself -- whenever she hears music she'll start bopping along.

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We have such pious children. Katie now says grace with us. Well, that is, she always smiles and claps her hands, because she sees us putting our hands together, and we must be clapping, right? And Miriam now has our special Advent prayers memorized -- she was holding the booklet and pretending to read it, when I realized that she was reciting the prayers Mr. Pickles says when we light the candles. Kids have amazing memories.

Maybe Miriam is just aurally gifted -- she now has most of the songs from a new favorite musical memorized: the 1957 TV version of Cinderella with Julie Andrews. We've watched it a total of 3 or 4 times, and already she'll correct us if we get a line wrong. It's a great musical with some really fun lines -- I think Mr. Pickles' and my favorite song is when the two ugly stepsisters (who were hilarious) sing about what's the matter with a man who prefers a "frothy little bubble, with a flimsy kind of charm" to "a sturdy girl like ME!"

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Here's Katie playing peek-a-boo with the Baby in the Mirror (a bday present from Nana):

peek-a-boo!

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Many households with pets experience the phenomenon that whenever the can opener is used, wherever the pet is in the house, it will come running. With our Katie, it's the sound of the dishwasher opening. She has a fascination with the silverware basket, so whenever she hears us opening the door, she'll come running so she can grab handfuls of spoons and forks before we notice her there. She's fast, too, the little goober.

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Proof positive that all our children are going to be certifiably nuts:

ha ha!

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Some of Katie's other recent accomplishments (aside from throwing clean silverware on the floor) include closing doors. She loves this. The other day she closed herself in the bathroom upstairs, with the lights off. I just waited to see what she would do when she found herself stuck in the dark. After a few seconds I heard an inquisitive little, "Doh?" as in, "Where'd everything go?"

Katie is also getting very communicative. She's growing up so fast, I still can't believe she's 13 months already! Sigh. Anyway, she can nod and shake her head in answer to a question. A few weeks back she was whining and just generally having a hard time dealing with life, so Mr. Pickles asked her rhetorically if she wanted to go upstairs and go to bed. To our very great surprise, she headed towards the stairs, nodding her head and rubbing her eyes! This is the fun stage where we get to see how much she really understands. (and where she gets to assert her will by shaking her head "no"!)

To facilitate early communication, I had planned to teach Katie some baby sign language to help overcome a lot of the frustration that occurs at this age, when little ones have definite needs but don't know how to express them, and as parents we spend a lot of time trying to figure out what pointing and "unh unh!" means, while said little one is working herself into a frustration tantrum.

So, even though I wasn't able to teach her as many "baby signs" as I had wanted, we tried at least to do "more food" (fingertips touching together) and "more drink" (thumb pointing to mouth), and "diaper change" (patting diaper). The food signs both became her pointing with her index finger to her mouth, but that works. We just interpret it as "Put something in here!" I've also started with "please" (rubbing chest) and "thank you" (like blowing a kiss, but without the kiss). This morning at breakfast she had snarfed all the eggs on her plate, but noticed some left on mine. After noticing that her pointing and saying "um! um!" was being ignored (I was attending to Miriam) she decided to pull out all the stops, and signed both "more" and "please", unprompted! I was so impressed. After such a display of intelligence and cuteness, how could I refuse? :) Yesterday she was practicing saying "thank you" while I fed her little pieces of orange (we do drive-by meals now -- it's the only way to make sure she eats enough!). She would come up with her mouth open like a baby bird, I'd pop in a piece of orange, and she's spin around and take a couple steps away, then turn back and blow a kiss (albeit from her chest), saying something which sounded an awful lot like a baby version of "thank you". She's picking up on things so quickly -- we can really see her little brain just soaking things up.

Katie can also say something that sounds like "hi". I know that is what it's supposed to be, because she'll grab our old dead phone, cradle it in her neck, and yell, "Aiii!" She loves phones. If any of you ever call us and you hear chortling and shrieking in the background, that's Katie -- she's fascinated and highly amused by the talking, glowy-button thingy. She also loves saying and waving "bye-bye" -- whenever I put my shoes on, or even grab my keys, she'll start energetically waving her hand and exclaiming, "bu-baaaaaa!" She loves standing at the screen door to watch whoever it is leaving, so she can wave to us.

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For sisters, Miriam and Katie get along pretty well together. It's so nice seeing them playing well together:

"playing" a "game" "together"

I can tell they're also going to get each other into trouble. This is what happens when Mommy is on the computer too long:

caught!

Like all older sisters, Miriam of course exercises her prerogative to be bossy (I can say this because I'm one!). Several times I've had to remind Miriam that I'M the Mommy, not her, so she can't do X to Katie, such as feed her large chunks of food, carry her around, and various other life-threatening activities. Yesterday when Katie needed a diaper change, Mr. Pickles teasingly asked Miriam if she wanted to do it, and Miriam explained rather loudly, "No, Dad! I'm NOT the Mommy!"

Well, I'd love to blog more, but the laundry basket is full, so...

time to do laundry!

Thanksgiving pictures

This post is going to be extremely short. Why, you say? Wasn't Thansgiving a huge reunion of the Eastern half of the family, complete with babyfest and more cuteness photo ops than a grandparent and great aunt/uncle could ever wish for? Of course. But unfortunately, we forgot the camera! I considered committing the post-digital sacrilege of purchasing a disposable camera, but just couldn't quite bring myself to do it.

Well, it was a fun time, once we finally got there! Mrs. Pickles' brother Dave flew up, sans winter coat, from sunny Florida, and then we drove to Ohio the next day. We had a bit of an adventure right before we arrived -- it had been bitterly cold for most of the drive, but only just started to snow about an hour or so from our trip's end (or what OUGHT to have been an hour!). Uncle Dave, taking a turn at the wheel at this point, got a taste of driving in REAL weather. :) The roads were just awful -- not a plow or salt truck to be seen. About FIVE MILES from our destination the traffic suddenly came to a standstill, right after an exit, naturally. We moved about half a mile in the space of an hour. It was crazy. We could have walked there faster! We finally inched our way to the next exit, pulled off the highway, and took a back road past the blockage. There must have been a major accident sprawling across the highway to make the traffic stop so completely. It wasn't surprising, either, considering what a terrible condition the road was in! Fortunately the girls were extremely well behaved. I just kept feeding them graham crackers to keep their mouths busy, b/c it was past suppertime and we were all starving.

The most interesting part about our wait was trying to find a traffic report on the radio. We got broadcasts from Chicago, eastern Pennsylvania, New York, and Vermont, but nothing local!

Anyway, we finally arrived safely (after an interesting little spin at the last corner -- thank goodness for Uncle Dave's racing reflexes!) and had a fabulous weekend. Good food, good company! I hardly saw Miriam all weekend -- she spent the whole time playing with Edy.

We made it home in good time and without incident, other than the usual travel headache Mrs. Pickles always seems to develop around Hagerstown.

It was fun getting some extra time with Dave, too, and hearing him give our piano a real workout! :)


yay for Uncle Dave!

I like this picture because even though my girls are such total opposites when it comes to complexion, they both have that same mischievous look in their eyes...


Katie also got some more fun birthday presents. Here she is enjoying one from her Aunt Katie2:


whee!

By the time she was done she had quite the pile of tissues around her! First she practiced blowing her nose. Then she proceeded to try to put them all back in the box. When she started trying to eat them I decided she'd had enough fun, even though she didn't agree and protested when I cleaned them up. :)

Okay, so maybe this post wasn't as short as I thought it was going to be...

Goose Egg

goose egg

You can hardly even see the welt (the big purple spot above her left eye), especially when I cover it with her bangs, so hopefully I won't be getting a call from Social Services. The poor child has gotten so many knocks on the head -- if she doesn't get into Harvard or win the Nobel Peace Prize we'll know why.

My trip to Staples

Well, the story begins with me realizing that even though Katie is over a year old, we still do not have a copy of her birth certificate. Usually airlines like to have some proof that you're not trying to cheat them out of fares by pretending your three year old is still under two, usually in the form of a copy of the child's birth certificate. When we flew to MN Katie was only 8 or 9 months old, so that wasn't an issue. But now that she's walking, even though she's petite, a childless ticket window employee wouldn't necessarily know she's as young as we say she is.

So, to make a short story long, I went to Staples today to make copies of my I.D. for the mail-in certificate request. (not that I actually expect it to come in time, but you never know.) While perusing the aisles for some other items, I momentarily turned my back on the basket with Katie sitting in it. Mistake. Next thing I hear is, CRASH!! ...eerie silence... "Ow!" "Shriieeeeeeeeeeeeek!" Miriam had tried to climb into the basket, and instead pulled it over on top of herself, knocking Katie out of the seat, who went flying (because there was no buckle) and landed on her head. I rushed to pick up Katie and sent Miriam to time-out in an office chair, while someone asked me if Katie was okay. Miriam then started shrieking b/c Katie was shrieking and she felt guilty. So we processed, two thirds of us noisily, to the restroom, so I could apply a cold compress to the goose egg now swelling rapidly on Katie's forehead.

After a few minutes of wailing, in stereo, both girls quieted down and I was able to finish my shopping. At least Miriam, feeling properly chastised, was the very model of obedience for the rest of the trip.

Sigh. Isn't shopping with small children FUN?? Never a dull moment.

I'm sure you're just smirking right now, Mom.

Par-tay!

Here are some pics from Katie's birthday party a couple weeks ago.


ooh – presents!


wha?


A cupcake for our cupcake!
(note Miriam poised and ready to "help" blow out the candle)


yum!

Fortunately, she didn't make nearly as much of a mess with this one.


oh joy

I love her dress. I was so happy I found it! Gotta love Laura Ashley. (Gotta love consignment sales!)


bday girl


bday girl, again

This one is slightly blurry because she kept trying to run off!

baby face

Enjoying some of the spoils...

bubbles!

Adventures with Google

The internet is such a fabulous tool for research. The number of resources available to you is simply amazing. Pick a topic, and you're likely to find some information about it using the Google search engine.

Recently, I've been looking for some technical papers related to the research project I've chosen to complete my Masters in Statistics. My topic is a method called Iterative Proportional Fitting (IPF)--also known as Raking, RAS, SPREE, and a few other titles.

Here's the process in a nutshell. Imagine that you have a statistic (such as average income) that is given for different groups, such as age and sex. Let's say that at 20 years-old, men make more money than women. If the difference between male and female income changes (i.e., the difference approaches 0) as age increases, then we have a relationship (or interaction) between age and gender. IPF is a very simple method for updating estimates with new information while preserving relationships between different, specified groups.

Most of the resources I have are about 20-30 years old (some are older), so I'd like to find some resources that are a little more recent. (Cue Google to enter stage right. Play triumphant music. Cue loud record scratch noise.) Some of my attempts were less than successful. Here's a list of my searches and results.

1.) Iterative Proportional Fitting

Result: This search initially offered the best results. Unfortunately, most of the hits resulted in documentation on IPF in different statistical packages. There were a few decent articles, but nothing substantial. There was also some lame SAS code. Overall, this search was somewhat disappointing.

2.) IPF
I've often heard the procedure mentioned with just its acronym. Of course, so many things in government are referred to simply by an acronym, but I still thought it was worth a shot.

Result: International Powerlifting Federation. ..., ah, no.

3.) SPREE
This is a term coined in the early 80's by some researchers. I've seen it referred to in other documents, and it could be used as a keyword in a paper, thus increasing the chances of finding a good site.

Result: Unfortunately for my search, Google doesn't do case sensitvie searches. That is, "spree", "SPREE", and "SpReE" are all the same search. Think of all the phrases that include the word "spree", and you'll get an idea as to how wide from the mark I ran. I ended up with over 9,000,000 links, and links that ranged from shopping spree to Spree candy (I had forgotten about those candies. There's a website that sells "old-time" candy, and it sells Spree).

4.) SPREE statistics
I figure that that ought to narrow the search and make it a bit more specific.

Result: The first website discussed the proper way to rank players in online first-person shooters (top choice is the kill-to-death ratio). Another site gave statistics for killing sprees for online players of Castle Wolfenstein. Definitely not what I'm looking for, though it was kind of interesting.

The IPF method will be used with relation to particular statistics like death or unemployment, so I tried those words next.

5.) SPREE statistics death
Result: Some pro-death penalty and pro-gun websites.

6.) SPREE statistics unemployment
Result: Once again, a few useful articles, but nothing substantial. I'm now down to about 87,000 links. Since I started at around 9,000,000, I'm definitely improving. At this point, I'm hoping for a pseudo Google whack (pseudo since it will involve more than 2 words).

7.) SPREE statistics categorical
I decided to use this hit since SPREE is also defined by that fact that it uses categories.

Results: At last some useful material! I found a couple valuable papers with this hit. I got my search down to about 560 sites--not the 2 I need for a Google whack.

At long last, after about 60-90 minutes (I spent too much time on the first-person shooter stats) my adventure ended, and I had 3 additional papers to read through in my attempts to acquire greater knowledge on the subject.

All in all, it wasn't a bad experience. While it took a little searching, I did find what I needed, and some hard work is usually required to get what we need.

My experience could have been much worse. It could have been an interview with Ask Jeeves.