Ian's New Room

7 month after Ian is born, we finally got the baby room in shape. Next step is to move the crib in here. Ian seems to really like the new room with the open play area.

Latest Ian pictures update

We started feeding Ian some solid foods and attempt to get him used to the potty.

這幾天開始喂雅硯吃東西，也開始練習坐馬桶。

Ian's new hat and first time on high chair

Been taking videos with my new iPhone and uploading directly from the phone. Makes it a whole lot easier to share!

新手機可以錄影然後直接上傳，很方便！

Last minute Ian picture uploads

Only home for 1 more hour before heading out again, just uploaded a bunch new pictures.

From Ian Pictures

From Ian Pictures

From Ian Pictures

From Ian Pictures

From Ian Pictures

新手機

終於下決心買了iPhone，有手寫中文的功能，現在就從機場寫。這個禮拜會很忙。

Ian's passport photo 雅硯的護照照片

Took Ian to get passport last month, and had his photo taken there. He was crying pretty much the whole time.

上個月帶雅硯去辦護照，沒帶照片，在那邊臨時照，雅硯哭的很厲害，邊拍照邊哭。

From Ian Pictures

New videos

Holiday Inn to the rescue!

Alright, I knew this trip was gonna suck being Salt Lake City and all, but I didn't think it'd be this bad... Customer requested that I book all travel through their travel agency and go by their rules, so I ended up with Southwest Airline, Enterprise rental car, and Comfort Inn, instead of my usual United, Hertz, and Holiday Inn Express. I am fine with Southwest, it's actually my second preferred airline, and a rental car is a rental car...

So it started with the flight delayed for 30 minutes, then sit through a full flight with a sweaty guy next to me, walking seemingly endlessly to my rental car, and spending the next 45 minutes looking for my hotel. That was Google's fault, by the way. Somehow it thinks the Comfort Inn is waaaay south of where it actually is, so I found it the old fashioned way: ask.

Just when I thought the night is over, I checked into the hotel at 11:20PM, carried luggage up to my room (no elevator, room at the farthest corner, of course)... and the room was NASTY. It had a weird smell that reminded me of the worst hotel room I've ever been to in Long Beach, it's almost like someone smoked in there and they tried to cover it up with chemicals, mixed with body odor.

That was the last straw, so I picked up the phone and called Holiday Inn's reservation line and checked myself into the nearest Holiday Inn Express. Much nicer.

I have enough points saved up so I was able to use them to get free nights, since I know the customer will probably not be happy with my picking my own $130/night hotel rather than the $60/night hotel they picked for me... but that's what these points are for, to get me out of yucky dirt holes like Comfort Inn.

Let's hope tomorrow (really, today) will be a better day.

Ian videos update

Free upgrade!

My most recent business trip to Los Angeles spanned over a weekend. After a long week in training, a delayed flight, hungry, and given a car location that is at the farthest corner of the lot, I was not in a good mood until I saw the car they gave me: a convertible Mustang! All those days of suffering in a Kia or a Ford Focus has finally paid off!

I was fortunate enough to have some time over the weekend to enjoy a ride around town, it must have looked weird to other people to see a slightly overweight geeky guy NOT wearing sun glasses driving in this thing...

From Misc Photos

Sears Portraits

We received a gift certificate for Sears portraits studio (thanks John & Karen!), and since we've got family in town, decided to get everyone there to get some pictures taken.

Funny pictures and videos

Some more funny pictures of Ian.

Visit from Ahenzi

From Ian Pictures

From Ian Pictures

From Ian Pictures

From Ian Pictures

Ian learning to sit

The big thing in the last few days if that we are trying to let Ian learn to sit on his own. It's really for our amusement, we don't actually expect a 3 months old to sit on his own just yet. I have some fun photos of Ian:

From Ian Pictures

I am such a cruel father, I snapped a few pictures while he's frowning (ready to burst into loud cries in seconds):

From Ian Pictures

... and my current favorite, this is snapped a few weeks ago when Ian just discovered his feet and were fascinated by his right foot for about 30 minutes while we were out taking a walk. The photo was snapped with the crappy camera on my cell phone.

From Ian Pictures

Ian turns 3 months old

And more pictures of Ian. I am in the process of uploading more pictures, but currently coming down with a cold from my trip to Chicago (lovely city by the way), so it may take a little while for me to get them all uploaded and posted.

In the mean time, here are some more videos:

New videos

As usual, you can get all videos by going to my youtube page: www.youtube.com/user/joshkuo

Ribs, ribs ribs!

We saw an ad in the mail for ribs on sale at Von's, $10 per box. We checked it out, and the box was actually the original packaging imported from Ireland... We had seen these boxes of pork ribs a few weeks ago when Swine Flu was scaring everyone, and thought maybe that had something to do with it (that people are afraid to eat domestic pork?) Anyway, we bought a case just because it is so cheap. I opened it up, and it contains 6 racks of spare ribs! Awesome deal! I am thinking of going back and purchase more, if I can manage to make some room in our freezer to store these...

More Ian videos

At long last, some food pictures

Haven't been able to post much food pictures since Ian was born. Here's something I cooked up Sunday night. My new favorite simple spice rub is a combination of chili powder and brown sugar (and whatever other spices I like, such as cumin powder, garlic powder, and cayenne pepper), mix that with some apple cider vinegar and water and a little salt, that's my basic marinade. I soaked the chicken for only 30 minutes (didn't really have time to plan this out), and baked it in the oven in my trusty 12" cast iron pan at 425 for 45 minutes. It formed a nice sugary glaze in the pan, to which I added corn and blanched collard green (my new favorite green vegetable).

From Food

More adorable Ian pictures and videos

I wonder if I was this cute when I was little...

Ian Pictures

Photos from Ian's first month

Really from week 3 to week 6:

Ian's first month photos

Ian is 1 month old today

... and we are still behind on the birth announcement cards. Oh well, being parents didn't really fix the procrastination parts in us. I am also waaaay behind in uploading pictures.

Ian's Chinese name has finally been decided: 郭雅硯

Granpa keeps trying to wake Ian up for photo

Granpa keeps trying to wake Ian up for photo

人家剛洗完澡想睡覺，阿公一直吵我！

Endless fun with baby

Grandma is holding Ian, who dozed off for a while, and had the look of "who the hell are you and why are you holding me" look when he wakes up in the second half of the video.

可愛又好笑的影片，死盯著外婆！

My YouTube link

Since now I figured out how to encode HD videos correctly to upload to YouTube, I am going to start uploading all of the videos one by one, and instead of posting every single one here at the blog, I will only select a few to post here. If you want to see all of the videos, go to the YouTube link below:

http://www.youtube.com/user/joshkuo

Adorable and funny sleeping video

真會睡！

First doctor's visit

Took Ian to the pediatrician for first check up, this is also his first time out of the house.

第一次看小兒科醫生（檢查），也是第一次出門。

HD video, yay!

Finally figured out how to transcode MTS format to something that YouTube will take. One of the big problems I had before was the audio-out-of-sync issue, and it has been solved after getting the latest development version of ffmpeg (from reading this post http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=529871&page=2). I compiled with the --enable-pthread option and installed it in /usr/local, and created a quick bash script called 'my-encode' as follows:

#!/bin/bash
INPUT=$1
SIZE=hd720
OUTPUT=`echo $INPUT | perl -pe 's/\.MTS/\.avi/'`
/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg -i $INPUT \
-s $SIZE \
-acodec libmp3lame \
-ab 256k \
-ac 2 \
-vcodec libxvid \
-sameq \
-aspect 16:9 \
-b 3000k \
$OUTPUT

Then, it's as easy as running a one-liner to start transcoding all MTS files:

$ for i in *.MTS ; do echo "--Working on $i--" && my-encode $i ; done

Here is one of the many HD720 videos that I an uploading to YouTube:

Today's baby pictures

Ian is sleeping much better today, now that we figured out to feed him more.

今天睡得好多了。

From Ian 2009-03-16

My own baby pictures for some comparison

My parents sent me some of my own baby pictures to do some comparison with Ian.

我自己小時候的照片跟兒子做個比較。

From Baby Josh

From Baby Ian

More first videos

Ian was placed under the warmer right after his birth, the little heart-shaped thing on his chest is the thermometer.

新生兒要放在保暖器下，胸前的是溫度計。

Home

We were released from the hospital yesterday afternoon, and spent our first night at home with Ian. Thanks to everyone for your blessings, it will probably take me a little while longer to post all the pictures and videos.

If someone can give me some easy instructions on converting MTS (or really M2TS) format from the Canon VIXIA HF100 HD camcorder to either mp4 or avi, that would help me speed things up... I have been using ffmpeg in Linux to do a quick batch processing of all the videos with minimum parameters (something like ffmpeg -i INPUT.MTS -sameq -s hd720 OUTPUT.mp4), but audio is out of sync, and the video is slightly choppy. I want to produce 2 types of outputs: a HD-ish output that I can make available digitally online, and a DVD-quality output for obvious DVD burning and snail mailing them out like AOL coffee coasters.

Ian is great when he's not crying.

Update on new mommy

Some of you have asked, Cynthia is doing fine. Her delivery was a little rougher and longer than expected, and the doctor is keeping us here a couple more days to be on the safe side, but she is recovering very well. Thanks to everyone for your caring thoughts.

Ian's First Breakfast

He ate for the first time this morning.



I took all of the footage with my spiffy new HD camcorder (Canon VIXIA HF100), and I am still trying to figure out how to upload HD videos up to YouTube... BTW, Google Videos will soon discontinue the upload feature.

Now if I can just get better connectivity here at hospital...

Baby Ian

Baby Ian Keoni Kuo finally came out after nearly 20 hours.

From Baby Ian