Welcome to the Wilcox Family weB LOG, your source for the latest Wilcox news, anecdotes, and rants; and, as Jack Benny quipped on his first radio show (March 29, 1932), “There will be a slight pause while you say, ‘Who cares?’â€â€
Or, “A Match Made Where?”
Way back in October, Nichelle and I traveled to Florida for my brother Paul’s wedding. There’s much I could say here, like how Paul had to wear makeup after opening the truck door into his forehead, or how they “accidentally” played the Imperial March as they walked down the aisle together at the end of the ceremony.
Skvid = SKit on VIDeo
Last week our pastor asked me to put together a video skit to help illustrate a sermon in a series of lessons on stewardship: What happens when we overwhelm ourselves with choices and activities? Of course, it also illustrates beautifully the quirkiness of the Wilcox family.
I did the video in Windows Movie Maker, a free download for Windows XP. I had to overcome a quirk that kept locking the software up, discovering that previewing clips in the preview window wouldn’t work correctly, unless I dragged the clips to the timeline first. I can’t explain that, but wish I’d found the answer hours earlier. Movie Maker isn’t bad, but I need something that will let me treat the audio track from the video separately, as well as add more audio layers.
The film was shot entirely out of sequence, in order to meet the availability schedule of the actors (my kids), over the course of a very busy Saturday. The Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back clip was created by shooting our own HDTV, the quickest way I could think of to get the piece I needed.
Background music includes Ella Fitzgerald’s, “I’m Beginning to See the Light,” and the title theme from Back to the Future.
Overall, it’s a tad too long at just over 6 minutes (the goal was 5 minutes), and I never got around to including any video transitions. I may tweak it a bit in the next few days, especially if I try out a more advanced software package, and hope to get it down to 4 to 4.5 minutes. I recall seeing George Lucas talking about an old filmmaker adage, “Films are never finished, just abandoned,” and how he had the technology (and money) to keep going back to his films to finish them the way he wanted.
Back in September, Nichelle, Isaac, Phil, and I participating in our church’s extremely informal, annual skeet shoot. (I know not all churches go shooting together, and one certainly won’t find the Apostle Paul writing about it, but we do, after all, live in New Hampshire.)
Neither Nichelle nor I hit any of the clay pigeons with our 12-gauges. Phil nicked one or two, but didn’t really fare much better than we. Isaac, however, managed to nail three of them (putting him in 5th place for the day), with a more-his-size 410.
We also did some handgun shooting. I found that to be highly invigorating. (Translation: “Quite the rush!”) Target shooting is also a little easier than skeet shooting, so doing that last helped rebuild my shattered ego after being trounced by Isaac.
; "Nichelle finishing a set of bench presses.")
A couple of weeks ago, Nichelle had a dream about weight lifting.
In the dream, she was doing bench presses, and having a great time. A friend came up to her with a concerned look, and said, “Uh, Nichelle, you’re … dead.”
Nichelle responded, “You mean, I’m dead, and I can still do this? That’s awesome!”
Isaac and David spent two weeks this year at Game Camp Nation, which has been operated for a number of years by our friends Phil Luchon and Steve Deyesso and their staff, originally under the name of “Camp Turing.”
[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”11″ gal_title=”Game Camp Nation, 2007″]
All the photos from those weeks can also be viewed here on Google Photos.
David and Isaac were among the first students to test a new curriculum designed for younger students. They developed games using the GameMaker software, which allows sprite-based games to be created using a relatively simple properties-panel-driven model. (Game Maker also features its own scripting language, and the ability to do more advanced things, even as much as a 3D FPS game.) Game Camp Nation also offers courses in game programming using C++ (which will probably be switched to Java next year), and 3D modeling and animation using AutoDesk’s Maya.
Each student gets his own computer to work and play on all day. Attendees also have some non-computer time to play board games and enjoy meals. Still, this was more of a “Geek Heaven” kind of place than one might be expecting in a summer camp. (I wonder if any of the children noticed that the conference room the hotel gave them didn’t have any windows.)
Isaac and David Outside the Conference Center used by Game Camp Nation for their Waltham, Ma., sessions.
Both weasels enjoyed camp immensely, and readily learned to create and debug games. They were up before I was every morning, and I let them stay late almost every night to participate in the network gaming tournaments that the camp runs at the end of the day. David got so tired one day that he fell asleep in the car in the morning, and then on the couch in seconds when we got home, sleeping there nearly 12 hours through the night.
Isaac and David with Game Camp Nation staff members Chris, Steve, and Joy.
We Have a Weiner Winner!
The game tournament is open to all camp attendees, whether they stay overnight or not. To keep things balanced among different types of games, they played FPS games (Halo and Call of Duty), RTS games (StarCraft and Command & Conquer 3), and Motocross Madness 2. Scores were kept all week, and the winner each week got a $50 gift certificate to Best Buy.
Of course that meant that Isaac and David were staying until 8:30 every night, but I figured it was worth the effort for two weeks.
Isaac came in first the first week, despite my dragging him out early one night. During the second week, he was leading by 100% of the second-place person’s score. Steve decided that dominating by that much for two weeks in a row would be called “Isaacing.”
Isaac with the huge Lego set he purchased, #7662 Trade Federation MTT
; "The Wilcox Family (almost), Moultonborough, NH, July 2007.")
Our boring, personality-less family.
Well, we’re back (again) from our now-annual trip to Moultonborough, New Hampshire.
Highlights:
, and it was wonderful. While the others went slowly down the first part of the hike, Isaac and I really pushed it to get to the summit, but the view was worth it. The trail back, only 1.9 miles, seemed much longer. I couldn’t have done any of this without the 6-day-a-week weight training program my beautiful Nichelle has me on. (The hike was a great leg and cardio workout; the next two days I could feel muscles I didn’t knew I had.)
We’ll post a Picasa Web Albums slide show after we go through the pictures.
I have to be the proud parent and brag about this one. A few days ago, NaNi—who won’t be four years old until October—grabbed an old Sunday school art project off the refrigerator, took a pencil and proceeded to write her name on the back. She didn’t copy it, she just printed the correct letters.
; "Above, Naomi shows off her writing.")
Naomi shows off her writing.
; "NaNi shows off her writing.")
What’s even more interesting, after months of her writing upside down capital As, is that she still hasn’t learned all her letters—she can’t even correctly name all of the ones in her name yet. She’s been able to type her name for a couple of months, and she can recognize a few letters, but we haven’t been doing anything to actively show her how to write her name.
; "A closer shot of NaNi's first attempt at writing her name.")
A closer shot of NaNi’s first attempt at writing her name.
; "NaNi did these on Sunday. When she has lines, she writes her name quite neatly.")
NaNi wrote these on Sunday. When she has lines, she writes her name quite neatly.
Well, we’re back from vacation and what an amazing and wonderful time we all had.
To start off the vacation was Mom’s wedding. What a lovely couple Mom and Dad make! They are truly in love and so very sweet together. (Pictures taken by our “official” Wedding photographer Mike Matheson are available here.)
We spent a few days with Mom, Dad and family before heading to Orlando, where the Hinxmans arranged for us to stay at a borrowed apartment. They also are tireless park-attenders, and took us around Disney World and Sea World on a six-day sprint.
; "NaNi tells Cinderella a story about a ball she is going to attend.")
NaNi tells Cinderella a story about a ball she plans to attend.
What an amazing time, jammed packed and loads of fun. So much to share, too late now to do it, but you can check out the pics in the Picasa album. We have loads to share so check back in a day or two.
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; "Isaac and David pose with Stormtroopers at the last of MGM's Star Wars Weekends.")
Isaac and David pose with Stormtroopers at the last of MGM’s “Star Wars Weekends.”
Most of you are aware that Nichelle has been healthy since early last summer, after two years of severe pain and a long list of inexplicable symptoms (and a decade of similar, albeit less severe, problems).
In addition to being the mom she’s always wanted to be, being selected from New Hampshire to compete in the National Chicken Cook-Off (which will happen in only 1.5 weeks!), and being a constant testimony to the grace of God in her life, Nichelle has been eating healthily, doing Tae-Bo (nearly every day), and weight training (4 days/week). Take a look at the results:
; "Nichelle, comparing July 2006 with April 2007."){kind=spacer}
For more images of this amazing transformation, check out this Picasa Web Album!
I started experimenting with Picasa’s (Google’s) free Web Albums last night. One gigabyte of storage, seamlessly integrated with Picasa, which is the free photo management software God would use if He didn’t run Linux.
Check out our new Picasa Web Albums, which I’ll be updating over the next week, and which are also linked to our sidebar. You can even subscribe to them via RSS!
And, here’s the photo I promised of my Mom and her fiancé, George Fortini:
; "My Mom and her fiancé, George Fortini")
And here’s another image of NaNi, the world’s cutest 3-year-old. She’s got the Wii controller in her hand, and is beating nearly everyone at bowling. This was taken at Nichelle’s birthday party in March:
; "Another image of NaNi, the world's cutest 3-year-old. She's got the Wii controller in her hand, and is beating nearly everyone at bowling.")
