The Joys of Being Dad
Today was a great day. One of those days that wasn't restful but boy oh boy, was it a great day.
It started off with my daughter wanting to get into a little stop-motion movie making. Additionally, she wanted to get a decent digital camera as her camcorder is nice but doesn't take stills. So we did a lot of Googling about making stop-motion videos with iMovie, and it sort-of worked, but not really as nicely as we had hoped. The minimum frame delay in iMovie HD was 0.15 sec/frame (6.6 frames/sec) and that was too slow for what she wanted to do.
iMovie '08 was not even that good - stopping at 0.20 sec/frame (5 frames/sec). So we did more Googling and found a site that reviewed a lot of stop-motion software for the PC and Mac. One of the packages they talked about was something we had seen in our Googling - iStopMotion. The web site for the software didn't really jump out at us saying "This is what you need", but we took a chance and got the demo. I'm so glad we did.
This is incredible software. There are three versions and we're going to be getting the middle one for Marie as it looks to have the best combination of features. I'd go the 'Home' version but it doesn't allow you to put in the soundtrack. Yes, she can export the video to iMovie, but there are a lot of limitations she's seeing in iMovie HD and iMovie '08, so we'll go with the 'Express' version and get the soundtrack tools. It's really exceptional.
She can take images with her camera... hook it to her MacBook get the photos into iPhoto... open iStopMotion and drag in the images and fiddle with a few things and bingo! She's got a movie. The software will also control the camera or video camera to do time lapse imaging which is really exciting as well. I look at her with this new medium and she's already made two movies today. Incredible.
The second great thing that happened was my youngest has been a skate board nut for about two years now and has been trying to drop-in for at least a year. We go to one of the two skate parks in the village and she rides and rides with her 'posse' and has a blast. Except for the drop-in. It's just the fear of standing at the top of that half-pipe. So Sunday was another day. We went because she was convinced that this was the day. After about an hour of trying, it was time to go home - no drop-in.
I walked up to her at the half-pipe. I had her just jump off it. No biggie - he's played flag football, been in karate for years, she can do this, but she's scared. So I knew what she needed.
I told her to stand on the board and I pushed her up the pipe, held her, and let her go.
Whew! That worked. Big smile.
I did it again - a little higher this time. And then a little more... pretty soon she was at the top of the pipe. Next was the drop. So I told her to get on the board at the top of the pipe and hold on to me. I held onto the board, she stood on it. I slowly rotated the board until it was sitting, wheels down, on the pipe - all the while she's holding onto my jacket. Then I let it go.
The look on her face after doing her first assisted drop-in was something to see. Tears in her eyes and a smile as big as Texas. These are the moments you live for, as a parent.
We did it a few more times and then it was really time to go. Here's a picture of us walking back to the car, with the half-pipe just on my right shoulder. It was a great day.