Sweet Kicks

Straight outta Back to the Future 2, The McFly's are a bargain at only $850 a pair... c'mon we're talking cinematic history here...

munks

Mmmm. Purdy.

This AM I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth... "wow it does rain a lot here, I don't mind it tho..." as I looked out over the rain-soaked lawn. Turning to spittle, I heard wifey holler from downstairs "Look out the window". The rain had instantly morphed into giant 2" diameter snow flakes gently floating in a dense shower. It dropped for maybe 3 hours, tho not much collected on the ground. I woke Adeline and she rubbed her eyes and reminded me "Daddy, you better bundle up!" as I left to go get the truck serviced. Good stuff.

where in the world

New and Improved bp360 (Now with even more DNA)

Been a crazy year. Gonna try to get back to archiving it here. Here's a quick recap in descending order:

1. New baby - Wesley Bradan Pearson born Jan 6th 2010 (sweet.)
2. The Berns finishes school - potentially forever (jeah boi.)
3. Snowed In on Spanks Gubbings in Big Bear with Cole n Mike (rad.)
4. Adeline was a non-scary lion for halloween (raaaa.)
5. Saw a dear friend have a dear wedding in her backyard (nimby.)
6. Went to Roma for a month (chow & ciao.)
7. Adeline turns a whopping 2 years old (terrible?)
8. Started working with a great group of smarties on a fun project (imho-licious.)
9. Stood by while Miguel gave his vows to Cole in NY (good times.)
10. Wrapped another solid to quite-solid UI Foundry project (killer finance.)
11. Finally got paid by an old client without hiring lawyers (cha chinggg.)
12. Best manned my best friend at his nuptials in Santa Barbara (burn baby burn.)
13. Miscellaneous awesomeness

Bubba Supreme

Poor Trays

Some quality portraits taken by mr. martin. We generously got gifted a family portrait for xmas from the padres on the isle so we opted to get a little creative. I'm not a big fan of the standard mall-style glam shots where peoples wear groovy sweaters and look like apple pie n such. Fortunately the berns was down to do something a lil different and Martino caught some good shots of the moments. These are still mostly pre-post - so the idea would be to add some interesting (or non-interesting) background, color, or texture - but I'm liking some of them quite a bit. here's a few. so. enjoy. Top is me and ma sis Spammalamma, then theres me n the fam and an introspective portrait of the little bubbs.

Seasick Steve

Seasick Steve - A Take Away Show - Part 2 from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.
For those of you I have yet to rave about 'The Take Away Shows' here is a nice lil example. This frenchie Vincent Moon started filming cool artists in france just sorta impromtu - limited planning - mostly accoustic - hard light - raw sound and look - there's purt-near a hundred of em now - some by other cinematographers - but most are pretty interesting - find more here.

And in other news - JG is the proud father of baby gabriel 2 - Finley - ding - gratz - ty - np.

And in other other news - we're almost to XMAS - then we're off with bubba to snowy Orcas Island. Should be good times... Mom made German Sour Cream Twists, and Aunt Laurie might be rockin the Peanut Budder Fudge. w00t.

The Hunt

There we were. Just me and this tree. The wife and kid were off gallivanting around, safely among the 2 footers, but this thing... man - must been 8 feet tall standing up. I had the standard issue bow saw, rusted and worn from a few tough trunks that came before me. I can't say I wasn't intimidated. The site of a living breathing Noble Fir had me trembling from both the nerves and the excitement. I knew what I had to do. It wasn't gonna be easy, nor would it be pretty - but when a man comes face to face with tree like this theres only one possible outcome. Beyond a good 25 minute battle with the 5" trunk and a coupla hand blisters later - I had slain the beast. I claimed its life in honor of the baby jesus and my family. After field dressing it I dragged it back to my wife and young child. They gazed in awe at my victory and we mounted the carcass on the roof racks of my fine German Sport Wagon. This tree would feed our christmas spirits for a good 3 to 5 weeks. I was proud to serve my family, but one hollow part of me dreams of a world where man and tree can coexist peacefully. Maybe another place at another time... not this place... not this time.

Oh Yeah, Me.

So. This "bloggo personalis" has swiftly turned into the Baby-girl Show. Thats ok - she consumes most of my world these days with her bright smile and curly red locks. But I figured I should put a little more about me up in this peese. Turns out tho, the only other thing I do these days aside from have fun with the fam is work. Which is a good thing. I explain.

Nine months ago I partnered with an East Coastian named KG. He's real good at what he does, and he does what I don't - so we started UI Foundry in an effort to slowly take over the RIA Design/Dev world. So far so good - at least before October Madness swept the globe. Our first few projects went really well - and some recognition came our way. We were proud of our work and had the luxury of turning down stuff we weren't interested in. We were quietly chiming along on two nice projects and were just about to start on a third when all of a sudden. Click. Like a light switch, the bottom fell out. One customer had trouble raising funds and could no longer pay us, another customer deferred the rest of our project, and the work that was slated to begin locked up in a spending freeze. (Zoiks)

We scrambled for a little bit - sent out a bunch of feelers - and near 2 weeks later - no real answers. (Double Zoiks) I was watching my 401k drop through the floor, and had no work - only a few weeks after turning down good paying work. What the hell happened? Oh. RIght. Global Financial Meltdown...

Well we came out of it ok, at least for the near term. My good-buddy JG predicted whence I spoke to him that in '13 days' I'de have something - low and behold - on the 13th day 3 things dropped at once. Coupla phone calls and an email later we were chasing three solid leads. Another week and we closed a nice project with a believe it or not) financial services software company - yeah we got a deposit this time... We beat out a solid competitor for the work who was directly referred by Adobe - so we felt pretty stoked to get it.

Moral of the story? Avoid Global Financial Meltdowns - and when you can't, make sure to save your pennies just in case. Hindsight we couldn't have done much to protect ourselves but we're back to looking towards the future and trying to gather that full head of steam back, despite the doom and gloom that may lay ahead.