The butterfly effect is a metaphor that simply states that small differences in the initial condition of a dynamical system may produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system. The flapping wing represents a small change in the initial condition of the system, which causes a chain of events leading to large-scale alterations of events like a domino effect. Had the butterfly not flapped its wings, the trajectory of the system might have been vastly different. (Thank you Wikipedia).

I have children.  SIX of them.  Then there are cousins that come over and friends etc.  So there are few things that startle me these days.  HOWEVER, I was walking to the office to start my day when I stepped on a small plastic thingy.  When I first picked it up I thought it was a button, but the back had two little posts on it and then written across the front it said, “DO NOT REMOVE”.  ummm, well, uh oh.  I have NO idea what this came from, but it’s got to be bad. *flap, flap, flap*

It’s only about 46 degrees here in Arizona, so it’s really not THAT frightful.  I did however have to put on a long sleeve shirt with my shorts.  To help get me in that wintery holiday spirit my friend Jeff pointed me to Gizmodo for some wonderful photographs taken by a guy from Helsinki, Finland who goes by Avanaut over on Flickr.  He has combined Lego, Star Wars, Hoth, and some wonderful photographic techniques to make this photo simply irresistible.

I believe that this image is created all in camera. No fixing it later, no adding the snow in photoshop, just point and click. Well, it’s not really that easy. From the explanation on the Flixr page, the photographer has taken an old transparent CD storage box, filled it with some water and added a lightbox for lighting. He then put a gray Lego baseplate in the bottom and glued it down so the Legos wouldn’t float.  With the Lego in the water, he used reacted plaster of Paris to simulate the snow falling. Check out this behind the scenes photo. Simply brilliant!

One of my friends over at the RebelScum forums just pointed out the connections between the Star Wars Celebration V (tee hee), Orlando Florida, the 30th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back, and then I added Orlando Bloom to the mix to create the photoshop masterpiece below.

Sometimes when I look back at baby pictures of my kids, it’s hard to tell which baby I’m looking at.  They all look so similar!  It’s equally entertaining to compare photos of me as a child with photos of my kids.  So it comes as no surprise when they start ACTING like me.  Falling asleep with Star Wars toys and grabbing a straw to get every last drop of syrup seems perfectly natural to me.  :D

For those of you who may not know it, I have the best wife ever!  She has kept me organized and on the straight and narrow for 13 years now.  She further proved how wonderful she is by opening up our home to help her sisters out making a grand total of 17 people living together.  So one day, we were walking through Michael’s Craft Store a few weeks back and she saw the photograph taken by Charles C. Ebbets on the 69th floor during construction of the GE Building at Rockefeller Center in 1932.

With her sisters and their children in the house, this dangerous scene titled “Lunch Atop a Girder” reminded my wife of meals at our house.  :D   So I did a little research and I found this Volkswagon ad promoting the Crafter in Europe.  They manipulated the famous photo and removed all of the people to add the line at the bottom, “Volkswagen Crafter only € 15.200.  Unfortunately the word has already spread.”

With this Blank girder to work with, I took the kids out in the scorching heat and had them line up for a photo.  I took about 9 pictures so that I could get a good pose from each one of them.

I put them all together and ordered a 30×20 print from CostCo for around $15.00!  Unfortunately the print has to be shipped to us, so I made some 8×10s to have on hand for Mother’s Day.  Now to head back to Michael’s and get a frame to hang it in the dinning room.  Here’s the finished photo.

The alarm went off at 6AM.  I stumbled into the bathroom to put on my work clothes and head out to clean the pool.  I could hear my 2 year old open and close my bedroom door.  Then I heard him trip and fall and cry.  With my wife and baby still sleeping I rushed out and scooped him up to snuggle him back to sleep in my bed (besides, he was up too early).  Then I felt the blood.  I hollered to my wife, “HEAD WOUND!”  and rushed back to the bathroom.I grabbed a clean washcloth (heh a WHITE one) and started to apply direct pressure.  We got a little ice on it but it looked pretty bad.  We went downstairs to comfort him by watching the Spectacular Spider-Man while we found a butterfly bandaid to pull the wound back together.
Everything seemed to be going fine, but when I dropped off some of the kids for school I noticed the bandaid was slipping.We stopped off at a friend’s house (THANKS WENDY) and put on some sterile strip tape to seal things up.  We decided that it might be to large of a wound to just tape.  It turns out that our pediatrician doesn’t do stitches so we went to the ER.We got there and there was NO ONE WAITING!  I was thrilled.  So here we are getting ready to go see the doctor.  Note the Spider-Man Bandaid right in the middle of his head is just a comfort bandaid.  :D

We had our vitals checked and then watched Curious George.

We had to take off the sterile strips and then start to numb the area for the stitches.

I laid down and held him with the help of one of the attendees.

and now we’re all better!  Right now he’s sitting with me in my office watching the Clone Wars Cartoons on my iPod while I type.  I’ve got a feeling this boy is going to be spoiled a little bit for the next few days.

Reid Richards aka Mr. Fantastic from the Fantastic Four makes gray hair pretty cool with those racing stripes running right above his ears.  I’ve noticed that I’m getting more and more gray hair, but not like Mr. Fantastic.  My gray hairs make racing stripes on the sides of my NECK!  I posted on Facebook that I was getting gray hair and many people commented that it was the kids that were aging me.  I think that the stress that comes with Fatherhood and adult life can cause gray hair, but it can also keep me young.  Here is my evidence that I am actually a Seasoned Youth!

The Duct Tape Bandits rummage through the recycle bin for resource to manufacture Intergalactic Cruisers.

Who can argue with a boy that wants to dress up the Snow White costume with a pirate hat?

  What are you going to do with a boy that dresses as Tinkerbell and goes out to fly on the trampoline?  Maybe I’m going gray from playing with all these kids!

This piece of awesome is from Gizmodo.

Speaking of Stormtroopers… I saw this post on Gizmodo (via the Star Wars Blog) about some new tilt shift photos.  I wrote about tilt shift in an earlier post, but the idea is to make the subject of the photo look tiny by creating a narrow depth of field.  Photographing people dressed up like Stormtroopers and making them look like they’re action figures is an incredible idea!

When I was looking at the photos I noticed that the photo was filtered through TiltShiftMaker.com.  It looks like they’re using a filter to create the shallow depth of field created by the tilt shift lens adapter.  Upload a photo to their site and run it through the filter and your done.  I used a similar technique when I was creating the Background for the CarboTron animation.

I’m all done with my Hot Rod auction and I’ll be writing about my experience shortly.  Here’s a little photo I found at Jalopnx to hold you over.