clearcubic.com blog

clearcubic.com backend update

2015-04-28T22:53:00.000-04:00

After leaving clearcubic.com infrastructure alone for several years, I finally took some time to bring it more up-to-date.

* Updgraded Django 1.4 to Django 1.5. Django's latest version is actually 1.8. But 1.5 is the latest that Google app supports. :(
* Replaced jQuery Mobile with Foundation 5.
* Upgraded Photoswipe version 3 to 4.
* Added Angular.js (only some parts of the sites were converted to this.)

clearcubic.com backend updates

2012-06-08T00:45:00.001-04:00

Previously, Google app engine (GAE) only allowed for Python 2.5. Some time in February, 2012, Google finally added support for Python 2.7. Along with the latest version of Python 2, official support for newer versions (1.2 and 1.3) of the Django framework were also added.

Since the Python 2 branch is pretty much at its end-of-life stage, I wanted to move clearcubic.com's code to the latest version of Python supported by GAE and as of today, clearcubic.com is using Python 2.7 and Django 1.3.

Besides the backend changes, there is one small user noticeable change that I made. When viewing full size photos in albums, the largest available resolution for the photos is now shown instead of the previously set smaller fixed resolution.

MS SQL job monitor

2012-06-06T12:30:00.000-04:00

At my job, we run many MS SQL jobs for crunching data. And on rare occasionally, we'll see jobs that would get stuck in its running state for unknown reasons. Since we do not have external softwares to monitor the SQL jobs and I do not wish to check the job results daily, I created a solution that would allow us to at least know whether a job has exceeded its expected run time. That way, I can just go and check that specific job and if I feel that it's indeed stuck, I can stop and restart it.

My solution was another SQL job that would monitor the specified job. :) I know what you are thinking, what if the job that monitors the other job hangs? Well, I do worry about that as well but I'm hoping these monitor jobs are simple enough that they will not hang (the jobs that got stuck have been complex and usually long running.)

How does my solution work? I created a stored procedure that takes in name of the job to monitor and the expected duration as parameters. As a first step of the job that I want to monitor, I would call this stored procedure and a new job would get created. The newly created job's only task is to check whether the job specified in the parameter is still running after the specified duration starting from the time that it was created. And if the specified job exceeds the specified duration, I send an email out to notify the developers in our team.

When I was searching for a solution on the internet to our job hanging problem, I didn't find too many things. That's why I thought it might be helpful if I post my source code out there for other people to use.

The source code is on github.com. A link is also provided on the clearcubic.com projects page.

Taiwan 2012

2012-05-28T10:00:00.000-04:00

Two years, that's how long it has been since the last time we went back to Taiwan and Joy has been longing to go back to visit her families, friends and enjoying all the delicious food that Taiwan has to offer. So it was decided months ago that we, including my parents, would fly back on 4/12 and stay there for two weeks.

Since this is the first time that we are taking both Cadi and Cody on a long trip together, we didn't know what to expect.

Cadi and Cody both loved the airport. It's got so much room for them to run around and so many things to see. For the plane rides, even though Cadi has experienced it once, but she she was only a couple months old back then and we weren't sure how she would handle it this time. Fortunately, Cadi and Cody handled it pretty well. In fact, Cadi didn't cry at all on the plane; I was definitely surprised by that. Cody gave us a little bit more trouble but that was mostly due to us restraining him from running on the plane, lying on the floor and kicking the back of other passengers' seats. There's the difference between a boy and a girl.

After we landed at Taiwan, since my parents weren't staying at the same place as we were, Cadi and Cody were left with just Joy and myself. Because our arrival time was pretty late, the originally plan was to call taxi to take us to Taipei. But Joy's friend, 林燕芳, her husband and son, made a surprise appearance. (Thank you guys so much.)

When we arrived at Joy's parents' place, as expected, Cadi and Cody went into defensive mode. For the next two weeks, Cadi pretty much will only stick to her mommy and as a result, I had to take Cody.

The weather of Taiwan's April felt warm and humid to me and it got warmer and more humid the further south we went. I'm glad it wasn't the hottest month in Taiwan and I was able to have 75% of my appetite intact. However, since I was the one taking care of Cody, it meant I could not have eaten as much as I could have without the children. :)

At this time, I would like to thank a couple more of Joy's friends. First up, 李俊宏 and his wife. They drove us around the town to have lots and lots of good eats...several times throughout the two weeks. Without them, our taste buds would have suffered greatly. Second, 吳美鈴 and her husband 顏永文 for arranging and taking us on a two day sight-seeing road trip of Kaohsiung. While we were still in NY, when Joy told me that we would be going to Kaohsiung to sight-seeing, I was like "What? Where can we go and what can we do in Kaohsiung for two days?" Well, that road trip turned out to be a very good one. Since I grew up in Kaohsiung, the Kaohsiung as I know it has definitely changed a lot. Ever since I came to NY 20+ years ago, I've never really gone back to visit Kaohsiung (other than the "Love River"), so I should have expected it.

Another road trip we took this time was to Tainan. We were planning to go somewhere else previously but Joy's mom thought it would be a good idea to visit Joy's grandparent in Tainan, that's how this came about. Joy's brother was the one who drove us there and back to Taipei. He took a couple days off from his work in China and went back to Taiwan to see us. Thank you, Ray.

Because my parents take care of Cadi in NY, so Cadi's pretty good with them. However, when we visited my grandparent's (mother's side) house in Kaohsiung and met up with my mom, Cadi would still cling to Joy and would cry/scream if my mom tried to do certain things with her such as giving Cadi a bath. However, when we got to my parent's house at Pingtung the next day along with my mom, Cadi became at ease once again with my parents. So I'm not sure what happened to Cadi when we were at Kaohsiung.

So, did Cadi ever open up herself to Joy's parents or sister? She did, on the day prior to the one we leave Taiwan, to Joy's mom and sister. That was only an illusion though. After only a couple hours of sleep that night and being waken up to go to the airport early in the morning, Cadi seemed to have forgotten all about it the next day.

Cadi's almost 3 and before the trip, Joy was thinking of potty train Cadi this year when summer arrives. After we come back to NY, a couple of days later, Cadi became 90% potty trained all of a sudden pretty much on her own. And as of 5/28/2012, Cadi is mostly without diapers except at night when she sleeps and when we are going out. She doesn't speak English yet but we are hoping to start teaching her soon. Not really sure what's the best way though.

And for Cody, he's going to be 2 in four more months. I believe he has finally got his drooling under control. He still doesn't speak too much and still can't seem to speak two different Chinese words together. He really likes to follow his sister around nowadays. Wherever Cadi goes, Cody wants to go too. And if you don't let him, he'll start complain by crying.

Since my Nikon D70 was already broken before we went back to Taiwan, the only camera that we have left is the Canon S95 point-and-shoot and that's what I used for the entire trip. At times, I really missed having a DSLR as it was very difficult to capture low-light and action photos using the point-and-shoot.

When we were near Tainan, we stopped by a bird watching place by chance. And next to the main road is a ditch with lots of small crabs. Here, Joy's father is looking for one to show Cadi and Cody. And yes, he did catch one.

At the "Salt Mountain", the place was selling lots of food with salt added. Egg, coffe, popsicle, etc. We let Cadi have a popsicle all on her own since it was so hot in Tainan.

Cadi helping Cody wiping ice-cream off his face.

Joy's grandpa had a store selling Chinese herbal medicines. Now it's Joy's cousin that runs it from day to day. When Joy's cousin took out dried goji berries to put in medicine packs, Cadi and Cody tried them and liked them immediately. When Joy's father heard about it, he got a bag full of the dried goji and gave to the grandchildren as snacks.

Garlics. I'm guessing this is the stage before they are sold on the market?

The room that we slept at while in Joy's parents' house. The children and Joy sleep on the mattress and I sleep on the wooden bed surface. The sacrifice a father makes. :)

My first time at this night market called Snake Alley (華西街夜市). If you know the Taiwanese film, Monga, this is one of the many places that the film took place. It's certainly different than other night markets because it's got a few expensive full restaurants.

As I mentioned, Cadi would not let most people hug her during this trip, this is one of those rare exceptions.

Joy's friend took us to this place that only sells pork sausages (shown in the photo) and one type of noodle. When we got there, I think there were only 4 pork sausages left. We bought them all. They were good...but I'm not sure how good if compared to other places.

I think some one promised Cadi to buy her an umbrella and Cadi would not stop asking about it until she actually got one. She picked out a yellow SpongeBob.

We went to Taoyuan for a day and stayed at Joy's friend's house. This was around 6 am, and we were preparing to take Taiwan high speed rail to go to Kaohsiung.

The boy behind us is the son of Joy's friends. While his parents are next to us, he liked tagging along with our family instead. On the high speed rail, he constantly wanted to sit with us and you'll notice that he showed up in quite a few of our family photos. So, naturally, we called him our "older son".

When his parents told him to sit down next to them, he wasn't too happy about it.

I like this photo. The wall says Kaohsiung Museum of Labor but that's only for that building. I don't remember the name of that area but it was a nice location. Seemed to have to lots of interesting stuff to look at and lots of photo opportunities.

Unlike Cadi, Cody weren't as resistent to letting strangers hug him. It was a good thing because that meant I get to relax a bit.

Everyone on the Kaohsiung trip except Cody and I. I was holding the passed out Cody in my arms when I took this photo.

And another early am photo taken in the hotel in Kaohsiung. We didn't come back to our room until close to 11pm the night before. :)

This seemingly simple food is really tasty (at least to me). it was from Pingtung.

Got to see Han, Ophelia and their new born daughter. Can you tell that they are a family from this photo?

When the children were still rather afraid of their grandpa after a couple of few days, grandpa decided to use his secret weapon, balloons. They worked wonders.

Cody willing to let his grandma giving him a bath.

And Cody strike a happy pose after the bath.

Not sure what got into Cadi. On the night before we leave Taiwan, this is what Cadi did to feed her aunt.

2011 Cancer Walk @ Central Park

2012-03-27T22:47:00.000-04:00

It's been a few years since we've gone to a cancer walk with the NYYAD. Now that Cadi is able to walk by herself, we thought it would be fun to take Cadi to go for a walk. If Cody goes too, it would be too much "fun" for us, so we decided to leave him at home.

Because we woke up late in the morning, we met up with the members of NYYAD about half way of the cancer walk route. So for the actual cancer walk, we actually didnt do that much. However, we did do a lot of walking afterward.

Cadi preparing to leave the house.

Cadi enjoying some snack and drink after she crossed the goal line.

Cadi and a few members of the NYYAD.

During lunch, Cadi pretending Karin isn't around her.

My Nikon D70 with "Err"

2012-03-18T21:39:00.001-04:00

On 2/20/2012 (President's Day), I gave my D70 camera to Cadi to play. After only a short while, she gave it back to me. I thought to myself, "Well, that was quick", and I just put the camera away. The next day, when I tried to take a picture with it, I realized why Cadi gave it back to me so quickly. It's because the camera can no longer take a picture. When the shutter button is pressed, only an "ERR" message is displayed and nothing happens. So my plan to let my children break the camera for me finally worked. Now I have a "reason" of getting a new one. Hooray!

My camera with the "Err" message when the shutter button is pressed. Sad and happy at the same time.

2011 Oyster Festival @ Oyster Bay

2012-02-10T00:58:00.001-05:00

Sometime in Oct. 2011, our friends were planning to go to the Oyster Festival @ Oyster Bay and asked us if we wanted to go too. Since I've never been to one, I thought it would be interesting to take the children out to check it out. Because the festival turned out to be pretty big and because the weather was great on that day, that made our first time experience a positive one.

Because the line for raw oysters was too long, we got raw clams instead. We did get some other food before that but those were a meh. ALthough that was probably due to us being hungry and didn't want to wait for long lines for anything at the time.

When my sister heard that we are planning to go to the Oyster Festival, she said her friend said that it's a small festival so I wasn't expecting a whole lot of people. When we got there, the place is packed and it wasn't small. Her friend must be talking about a different location or something.

From left to right, Kyleen, Cody and Cadi.

When we left the festival, we stopped by an ice cream store opened by our friends' friend. The children loved it of course. Cody didn't get any though. He fell asleep. :)

2012-01-02: Random Cadi & Cody photos...from 5 months ago

2012-01-02T16:36:00.000-05:00

Just eight more photos of Cadi & Cody from 5 months ago. LOL. Two months ago, I said I would be able to process photos faster but that has not been the case.

Cadi loves to go down to our basement nowadays. Not really sure what's so interesting down there but today, for the very first time, she chose to go down to the basement instead of going grocery shopping with us. That's amazing. What's Cadi learning nowadays? Her grandfather is teaching her to memorize multiplication tables and some ancient Chinese poems or something of that sort that even my sister, my wife and I don't know.

Cody loves his sister and will pretty much follow Cadi around the house. If he sees Cadi going somewhere and he is prevented from following, he may start screaming at a higher pitch than his sister did. Cody also likes to imitate Cadi. After Cody learned how to walk, he pretty much stopped crawling altogether. But not too long ago, Cadi was crawling on the ground and after Cody saw that, he started crawling with her sister too.

Comparing the personality of Cody to Cadi, Cody is definitely more outgoing. When outside, Cody will get acquainted with people and his surrounding fairly quickly and start wondering off on his own (a bit troublesome in my opinion).

Now, some photos.

Grandma sawing something back to Cadi's dress.

Cadi feeling happy on a lovely bench found outside a store near Union Square.

2011 ShopRite LPGA Classic

2011-11-09T00:06:00.000-05:00

Back in June, thanks to my sister's company being a sponsor of the event, I got a chance to go see a golf tournament.

On the day before the event, I mentioned to my sister that I would bring my camera (and of course, my telephoto lens) to take photos. To my dismay, my sister said that cameras are not allowed.

While sneaking in a DSLR may be possible, using it in the golf course would be difficult to hide. So, I decided to bring our small point & shoot camera, Canon S95, thinking that I would have a better chance of being able to use it on the golf course. That proved to be not the case. You see, I never knew one would be surrounded by many other spectators on a golf course. Well, that's not true, I've seen golf tournaments on TV before so I should have known. But for some reason, that did not occur to me before I stepped on the golf course myself. With so many people around me, it was quite difficult to use the camera even if it was small and this resulted in an album with mostly photos taken while I was in my sister's car.

The only photo I took while I was in the golf course. LOL.

Yani Tseng (in pink). A famous Taiwanese professional golfer that we followed throughout the day. I believe she came in 4th on that day.

A NYC view from highway. It's not often that I get to take these type of photos since I'm the one driving most of the time.

clearcubic.com v.3

2011-10-31T01:02:00.000-04:00

After a couple month of on and off update for clearcubic.com v.3 on development, it's finally reached a state where I think it's good enough to go live.

This update gives the site some new colors. Optimized the site for monitor and tablet viewing (mobile phone viewing is still not that great but I will work on that when I have time). To see a comparison among the different views on the different devices, use this link "clearcubic.com front-end v.2 vs. v.3"

Now that this update is live, I'll finally be updating the photos again soon. Joy has been complaining.

Steve Jobs passed away

2011-10-06T00:16:00.000-04:00

Steve Jobs, Apple's cofounder, passed away at the age of 56 today.

I got my first PC when I was 13 or 14 years old. It was a DOS only machine. Then Microsoft Windows came out and I have been on that operating system ever since.

In 2003, I decided to purchase my first Mac, a 12" Powerbook. I purchased it mainly because in my opinion there were no other portable computers out there that looked better than the Mac's design and because OS X seemed to fit my needs for having a good graphical user interface and is an Unix-based operating system. Although much slower now, this computer is still in use today for web browsing and watching youtube by my mom.

After I bought my first Mac, I started to follow the company because I was always curious to know what Apple would do for its next notebooks. Overtime, as I have learned more about Steve Jobs, the more respect that I have for him. I truly believe that Apple is what it is today because of his leadership and now that he's gone, I'm wondering if I'll be able to see another person that will do what Jobs did for the technology, music and mobile industry. I certainly hope so.

Just a little update on what's going on

2011-09-28T00:40:00.000-04:00

I'm pretty behind in terms of getting the photos up to date...at least 6 albums behind. Main reason being that I have been spending time working on a version of this web site that works well on mobile devices like the iPad and iPhones. I have an iPad and it pains me to see this site not working well on it.

I do not have an album update this time but I wanted to have some updates on Cadi and Cody. Cadi celebrated her 2 year birthday a couple months ago and Cody celebrated his 1 year birthday just a couple days ago. Cadi is now speaking Chinese sentences and she's able to combine different words that she knows to form a sentence. She's a bit more willing to listen to what we tell her to do now although still doing things she shouldn't do occasionally, like throwing soaps into the toilet. Still, this is good because it's Cody turn expressing his curiosity in the house and it would be extremely difficult if we have to watch those two carefully at all times.

Cody has learned to crawl a while ago but now that he knows how to walk, he prefers that. We are supposed to reduce his formula intake to around 500 ml a day but since he doesn't suck on pacifiers and needs the bottle nipples (non-empty bottles to add) to fall asleep, we don't know how we're going to reduce the intake. Use water instead of formula maybe? Cody also has more face expression now. Not as many as his sister but at least it's not the similar look that he always had when he was younger. :)

No albums but here are 4 photos of Cadi and Cody.

Didn't want Cody to feel left out because of the girls were wearing these skirts made by Joy for Cadi's mini birthday party. So, I put one on Cody too.

Passport to Taiwan Festival 2011

2011-08-07T23:34:00.001-04:00

Posting an end of May album in the beginning of August, yap, I know I'm fast.

So, we heard about this "Passport to Taiwan Festival" event at Union Square, since we've never been to one and it's supposed to have vendors selling traditional Taiwanese food, we decided to take the children to go check it out. We arrived there before the food vendors began selling, so the crowd at that time was not too bad. When the selling started however, in a very short amount of time (around 30 minutes), the place became packed.

Maybe it's because we go back to Taiwan every once in a while, we didn't find the Taiwanese food there that special. I was certainly disappointed in the lack of varieties to really represent Taiwan. Besides food, there were performances and many other booths that presented things, in someway, relate to Taiwan. While I didn't find the event to be a great one, it was still nice to see that many Taiwanese gathered in one place and hear some really traditional Taiwanese being spoken. :)

We were there for mostly the food but this is the ONLY photo that remotely relates to it. Why? Because there were simply too many people gathered around the food vendors and it was extremely difficult for me to get close to them especially with a stroller (Joy did all the food buying). What you see in this photo are not even real cakes. They are towels made to look like cakes, quite nice. I think these "cakes" can make some interesting wedding favors.

Cadi drinking winter melon tea. It may not sound good, but I love it. Cadi too but children will drink anything sweet. :)

Love what Vivian is doing here to Cody and love Cody looking at Vivian curiously, thinking "What a weird aunty".

There are certain shots that I just can't say why I sort of like them. This is an example. I just don't know why. :)

Looking at this, I guess it can be classified as "food related" as well. "Union Square Cafe" is supposedly a pretty nice (and not cheap) restaurant located around, well, Union Square. Because of it's price, we've never entered it and so can't confirm how good it's food is.

Wanted Cadi to stand still. She didn't want to cooperate.

小小's 1 year old birthday party

2011-07-10T23:53:00.000-04:00

This is the first birthday party that Cadi and Cody attended. Since I didn't want to bring my big camera, I used Joy's Canon S95 digital point and shoot. This little camera has gotten good reviews but since I have been using a DSLR for so long, I just didn't feel very comfortable using it. My gripe with digital point and shoot cameras has always been that they are slow to shoot, the Canon S95 is of no exception. But really, it isn't fair to compare a digital P&S to a DSLR. Besides, having never really used any other digital P&S and having just started using this camera, I'm not in a position to judge this camera...yet. :)

This is the birthday girl, nicknamed 小小 (Little Little). I don't remember the real reason for her nickname but she really is very small compared to other children of her age so this nickname suits her perfectly. :) As you can see from the decors on the wall, 小小 turned 1.

We did not have an elaborate birthday party for Cadi when she turned 1. So I took this photo. When Cadi asks in the future, I can say "Yes, mommy and daddy gave you a very nice birthday party when you reached the age one. See this photo for proof." =D

All these kids are sort of close in age. Cadi is the oldest. Second oldest is the girl on the left side of the table. Third is "Little Little". Fourth is the boy, Thomas, on the right side and Cody is the youngest here. Even though Thomas is the second youngest, he is bigger than all but Cadi. He's a 100 percentile baby. Finishes drinking his formula in one shot. I wish Cody can do that.

2011 Planting Fields Arboretum Park

2011-06-13T00:46:00.008-04:00

Decided to go to the Planting Fields Arboretum State Park again this year on the Easter weekend because it really is quite a nice place that's close to our home. What's different this year is that there's Cody and that Cadi can walk by herself now. Since Cadi didn't want us to carry her while we were in the park, that meant she walked on her own for a large portion of the time. Later that night, while sleeping, Cadi woke up crying. When Joy asked Cadi why is she crying, she pointer her hand to her legs. Guess what? She walked so much during the day that her legs were hurting. You know, it's like how your muscle feels sore when you don't regularly exercise and decided to do too much of it in one day. This was her first long walk by herself after all.

Our first stop in the park, the greenhouse. I would have liked to stay in the greenhouse longer but the weather was pretty warm that day and being inside the greenhouse made it even worse so we didn't. And Cody sweated like his dad did, which is quite a bit.

Slipper orchid.

Don't remember what this was. Think it was a type of cactus (top view).

Cadi likes to help out people carrying out various types of tasks. This was one of them.

Unlike last year, the cherry trees were blossoming this time we went. Had to take photos before this beautiful tree.

Not sure what Cadi thinks she is doing. Using umbrella to rake leaves?

Got a whole series of photos taken on the open ground that I liked very much. Had a hard time deciding what not to post as they all were somewhat similar and yet different per Cadi's expression in each. Love, love, love the two dual-toned photos of Cadi.

The Riverside Church of New York

2011-05-11T00:57:00.000-04:00

View from the New Jersey side.

2011 Cherry Blossom

2011-05-11T00:49:00.001-04:00

Now that the Winter is finally over, it's time to take the babies to enjoy the outside world again. Our first major stop for 2011, the Cherry Blossom at Branch Brook Park in NJ. I don't remember how many times we've been there but it's been quite a few.

Before I continue with the cherry blossom photos. Let me give some updates on the kids.

Cadi, she's learning to say words a lot faster now and is able to imitate sounds a lot better and today (5/10/2011), Cadi learned to say her first English word "apple". The way she tries to pronounce the other English words that I tried teaching her are hilarious. It's too bad that there's no way to capture that in photos. Cadi also started to sing a little. Although it doesn't sound too good as there's no real melody to it but it is still funny seeing and hearing her sing. Cadi doesn't seem to cry any more when strangers trying to hold her but if there are adult strangers around she will refuse to smile.

And Cadi likes to do this nowadays. LOL.

Cody, he has already learned how to roll over about a month or two ago. Started to eat things other than formula. Doesn't crawl yet. Always has this "huh?" look on his face. Still smiles a lot more often than his sister. Starting to recognize people and will start crying when strangers hold him although he seems to be a lot better than how Cadi did when she's at his age. Is getting heavier and taller (obviously and hopefully) at a faster rate than Cadi was (a boy thing I believe).

Now, back to cherry blossom. It rained a week before we went to the park and so we were afraid that the cherry flowers would be gone again just like last year but luckily they stayed on the trees for us this time.

We asked Cadi to smell the flowers but she didn't seem to understand the word "smell".

My attempt at painting using a camera. Looks a bit like oil painting to me.

A very normal photo but I would like to point out how it was taken. Didn't ask anyone to hold the camera nor was there a tripod. I placed the camera on the stroller. So I learned that strollers are useful for more than carrying children. :)

I just like the look of this (abandoned?) pole.

The Facebook 'like' button

2011-04-24T00:11:00.001-04:00

Facebook, while I don't find it that essential, it's certainly one of the most popular web site on the Internet. So when I received a comment suggesting me to add a Facebook button, I decided I'll add one. Not only are the blog posts shareable through a couple social networks now, I've also added the FB 'recommend' button to the albums on clearcubic.com.

I thought adding a FB 'like' button would be easy but that turned out to be not completely true. While the process of adding a normal 'like' button is fairly simple, I learned that there are several ways to do that and depending on which method you choose, what happens on FB can vary after a user clicks the button and that part confused me for a while. Anyhow, the 'Recommend' button is now on clearcubic.com photo albums and I just want to have a blog entry on the date that I added this feature, 4/23/2011.

Oh, and while in blogger.com today, I found out that blogger introduced a new way to view blogs. I thought the new ways are pretty cool. Use the following links to check them out.

New Views To Read Blogs - http://clearcubic.blogspot.com/view/

Cadi & Cody 2011 - First batch

2011-02-25T00:55:00.000-05:00

See, that didn't take long at all, only two weeks after my last posting. Now, what about the next update? The answer is "I don't know". I have processed everything I have and I probably won't have new photos to add for a while.

I can't think of anything new to add so I'll jump straight to my favorite photos.

Cody, what's up with the girly hand gesture? And Cadi, please give the pacifier back to your brother.

Look at what Cody's wearing in many of his photos and you should notice the many girlish clothing that he wears. Ya, the "advantage" of being the second child and having an older sister who's not much older than you.

Look at the TV screen and see if you can tell what was on. Super Bowl XLV, Packers vs. Steelers. Cadi's first Super Bowl experience.

No little toilets. This is the REAL potty training.

Joy bought these clothing for Cadi but unfortunately they were too small for her. We had to give them away but since they looked so cute on Cadi, I had to take photos.

Never before had I found the purplish tint work well with a photo. This is a first.

2010 Cadi and Cody last batch

2011-02-13T01:07:00.000-05:00

Three months have past since my last photo posting. It's probably the longest time that I've not posted anything. But you know, having a baby who does not have a regular sleep pattern and who drinks slowly will take a lot of time away from you. (Yes, Cody, I'm talking about you.) The good news is that Cody FINALLY started to sleep through the night after 4 months and his drinking speed has improved a little.

After some complaining from Joy, I've finally finished processing the last batch of 2010 Cadi's and Cody's photos. And while I'm at it, I've also started on the 2011 photos. So the next update should be much quicker than 3 months. =D

Cadi has picked up a couple more words now but they are still all single syllable words that are pronounced twice. My mom also started to potty train Cadi and had seen a couple of successes. A photo of Cadi sitting on a toilet is coming up in the 2011 album. :)

Cadi likes to take her shoes and socks off whenever she gets a chance. We eventually replaced the ones in this photo with ones that she can't take off easily. Her hands gesture here means "No more shoes and socks" and you can see she's happy without them. :)

I'm sure most children like to explore. This is part of what Cadi does when there's no one watching her.

Stool from Ikea. She pulls them out whenever she's brushing her teeth. She has 6 of them as of now.

One can never be too young to start racking leaves.

The first of a couple BIG snow blizzard that we received in NY in 2010. Joy and I couldn't get to work that day and right after our failed attempt of trying to go to work, I took Cadi out for her first snow experience. In this photo, Cadi almost fell because of the strong wind blowing against her.

She didn't know what 'snow' was at first but she grew to love it after a while. She loved it so much that when I wanted to bring her back into the house, she started to scream.

Cadi and Cody's Christmas presents, Crocs shoes, from their aunty, Camy. Pink is for her and yellow is for him. Cadi should be able to wear hers within a year? Based on the size of the yellow ones, we don't know when will Cody be able to. They are BIG. -_-

There aren't that many photos of Cody at this time and still won't until Cody can start moving on his own because that's when the fun starts. One running and one crawling around the house? I can't wait.

Finally, some Cody photos

2010-11-28T01:29:00.000-05:00

It's been a little over two months since Cody was born, thanks to this 4 day holiday weekend, I finally have a chance to put some photos of Cody (and Cadi of course) up.

Some updates.
Cadi is starting to speak better now. She very occasionally is able to imitate the words we say and she seems to "sing" sometimes now.
Cadi loves:
* To go up to our house's second floor.
* To wear only a single adult's slipper and walk around the house.
* Her grandma and grandpa and brother.
* To eat (still).

She does not love:
* To wash her hair.
* To change diaper.
* To be alone.

Cody is quite different from Cadi in terms of feeding, sleep and awake schedule. Cadi was very regular since the start, not so with Cody. As a result, Joy and I have been sleep deprived for quite a while now. One new thing about taking care of Cody is that one has to be careful changing his diapers or shower him as there is a chance that you'll be attacked with shooting pee.
Cody loves:
* Staying awake and not let his parents rest.
* Falling asleep several times before finishing drinking his milk.
* Move his arms and legs.

Cody does not love:
* Can't think of any right now.

Cadi has always liked her little brother since he came home from the hospital. This is the first day that Cadi saw Cody.

Cadi finishing her shower waiting to get clothed.

Joy's mom came her for a week and brought Cadi two pairs of the walking shoes. This is first time Cadi trying it on.

I LOVE Cadi's look in this photo.

Joy and Cody is inside the room with the closed door. Cadi really wanted to go see Cody (I think) and had to resort to checking what's going on inside by peeking through the gap under the door.

You can see how much Cadi loves her brother here.

A rare look from Cody that was a signature of Cadi.

nyyad.info

2010-11-04T00:16:00.000-04:00

In 2004, I created the nyyad.info website for, well, the BLIA New York young adult division group. :) Since my "retirement" from the youth group from around two years ago, the site has largely gone unmaintained and is really showing it's age. Today, Nov 3, 2010, it has finally reached it's end of life.

The nyyad.info site was created before the blogging platforms become really popular. After my youth group "retirement", I've already thought about create a blogger.com site to replace what I created. My thought was that using a free and updated solution that's maintained by Google would at least keep the site alive even when no one continues to maintain the site, pay the web hosting and domain name, etc.

A couple of months ago, I saw that my web hosting contract is going to end in November, 2010, knowing that I'm not going to renew my contract, I decided to create a demo nyyad.info site using a readily available blogging platform and let the current NY YAD members know about it as an option when my web hosting contract ends. Rather than using blogger.com for my demo site, I decided to use WordPress, which is a much more powerful blogging platform than blogger.com. Combined with free hosting, which I believe is enough for NYYAD's website, we'll have a low cost solution going forward.

With the nyyad.info reaching it's last day, now what? Well, the current NYYAD members decided to get the nyyad.org domain name (which I think should have been the site's domain name from the start but I was young and didn't know. =P) and use WordPress to replace the original site.

nyyad.org

Sep. 19, 2010

2010-11-01T20:33:00.001-04:00

Since I took some belly photos of Joy when she was carrying Cadi, I've been wanting to take more belly photos of Joy this time as well.

On Sunday, Sep. 19, just a couple of days before Cody's due date, I finally picked up the camera and took some photos. Joy wanted to have photos of Cadi with her belly this time but due to Cadi's age, it was impossible to instruct her to sit still. So no photos of Cadi playing with the belly. :(

Only two photos made it to the albums, Cadi's presence has something to do with this too. :)

Larger (top) this time. Compared to the first one (bottom).

The next morning, after waking up and preparing to go to work, Joy said she thinks her water broke. So rather than going to work, I took her to the hospital. Eleven hours later, Cody was born. Talk about great timing, huh?

Cadi and Cody

2010-10-02T00:45:00.000-04:00

Cody, Cadi's little brother came out recently. It's a good thing that Cadi seems to like her little brother...so far.
People say that the first child gets lots of photos and any subsequent one gets less and less. It might be true for us too but only because with two babies, there won't be as much free time as before to take photos.

To celebrate the birth of Cody, I'm posting a photo here to compare the look of Cadi and Cody when they were just born.

From top to bottom. Cadi, when she was born. Cody, when he was born. Cadi shows her affection toward her favorite new "toy".

What can you do with a toilet paper roll?

2010-09-28T00:00:00.001-04:00

This is something I would have loved to do when I was little.

They look great when given the right light treatment.

Miniature Art on Toilet Paper Rolls by Anastasia Elias