Wrapping up an excellent – but sad – 10 days with relatives in Minnesota. Excellent because Minnesota is always excellent this time of year, lush and verdant, with endless trails and meadows fed by those famous 10,000 lakes. Excellent because it was wonderful to see family and because I really needed the downtime. Sad because we were there to say farewell to my father-in-law, who passed away a few weeks ago and is deeply missed by all of us.

Click Replay for hike animation

Wrapped up the visit with a lovely 3-mile walk through Carver Park Reserve with the family and kids through rolling hills. Returned with a few tics and lots of great memories.

Farewell Ben – we’ll always miss you.

Had some freaky food fun today… cut hot dogs into segments, pushed pieces of dry spaghetti through, boiled. Despite the faces in these shots, Miles loved them, said they looked like Cerise Tinh from Star Wars… without a face.

After clicking Play button, click icon at lower right of slideshow to view full-screen.

Flickr set

Miles’ cosmology, cont’d.:

“A ball of fluff falls into a black hole, and out comes me, a ball of fluff!”

Why having a 6-year-old around the house is the greatest experience in the world:

That’s not our house, but minute-to-minute life isn’t far off from this girl’s wonderful stream of consciousness existence.

Came across these photos in family albums a while ago. They’ve been hanging on the fridge. Thinking it’s about time it became public knowledge that I used to be hairy and play guitar on street corners in San Luis Obispo. These are circa 1984. Mother of Pearl, that was 25 years ago! Now it’s all I can do to keep my hair short enough to not emphasize the bald spot that’s growing like a hole in the ozone layer.

Perfect for the last day of the year – Dill Pixels’ Flickr collection of “The End” screens from famous movies:

Quick recap of 2008 for the Hacker/Kubes family:

Miles started 1st grade and is barreling full-steam ahead into an amazing childhood. Watching a child go from knowing his letters to being able to read full-on books aloud is a delightful experience. His ideas are still mind-bending, his physicality still awesome. He doesn’t just ride a two-wheeler — he rides it long distance (he and Amy surprised me on bikes at work one day – a five mile trip each direction). Two days after getting a pogo stick for Christmas, Miles logged a record-breaking 23 hops (love that recovery at the very end of the clip). He’s sweet and thoughtful and loving and every minute with him is a joy.

In sadder news, Plato – our family cat of 17 years – finally reached the end of his comfortable life. We had him put down late summer after he could no longer move comfortably or hold his bladder. Plato’s been a staple of my life with Amy since I’ve known her, long before we were married. And he was the cat Miles was born with – his first relationship with an animal. Losing him was tough.

On the work front, I’ve transitioned from webmaster for the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism to webmaster for the Knight Digital Media Center, while staying in the same chair (and realized I’d been sitting in the exact same chair for seven years running). Taking that job meant spending a few months learning Python and Django. A long ramp-up, but absolutely loving Django now, and using it for more and more side projects as well. Birdhouse Hosting also started offering Django this year.

With the Knight Center, I’ve been involved with a mission to help newsrooms across the country figure out how to address the challenges of crumbling revenues and massive layoffs, as the distributed web continues to threaten the traditional/localized newspaper. News organizations are going through massive mental shifts, becoming increasingly technology focused. The center runs week-long workshops for visiting journalists, who come to have their heads crammed with ideas for ways to create innovative and compelling content online. Year after year, my association with the J-School proves challenging and rewarding, and never sits still for long. I feel extremely lucky to have job security as this ugly recession settles in.

Other misc: I’ve been writing occasional music-related pieces for Stuck Between Stations, which I run with a few friends. When time allows or the weather/mood command it, I’ve been strumming away on the ukulele. And, perhaps a bit sadly, Twitter all but killed my urge to blog. I feel bittersweet about that – on one hand, Twitter is a much more fluid experience than blogging, and can be done in the margins of life without requiring big chunks of time. On the other hand, I do miss the more in-depth expressive capacity of the real thing. But writing regularly is important; I promise not to let the blog die, no matter how much more convenient Twitter may be.

Amy too has a new job. After a year of being a regular parent participator at Miles’ school, Amy applied for – and got – the job of 2nd/3rd grade classroom assistant. And just a few weeks into that gig, she was asked to be the official math teacher for the 3rd grade class. On Fridays she teaches visual arts to the combined class. She’s jumped in with both feet and is loving being with the kids. I built a brand-new web site for Miles’ school this year.

Also in 2008, I made several trips to Morro Bay to help my mother move out of my boyhood home and into a new life with my father in the mountains. The change was a long time coming, went smoothly, and had a happy ending, though it was tough to say goodbye to my childhood home. But the change is all for the better, and has brought new unity to our family.

Looking back, 2008 has been a year of small revolutions and grand plans, satisfaction and warmth. Life is good. Love and best wishes to all Birdhouse readers, and to my extended families on both sides.

Miles’ first close school friend moved away about six months ago. Though they seldom communicate, he’s constructed an elaborate long-distance relationship in his mind. Details change daily, but he consistently refers to “Master Patrick” and to being a member of “Master Patrick’s Army” (which is funny because Patrick is the most peaceful, charming little boy you ever could meet). This morning, Miles gave me a full run-down on how they keep in touch.

I communicate with Master Patrick by electric toilet paper. How does it work? Your voice gets stored in the walls. Patrick has to sit in a electric costume box at his house and the sound comes out of the box. The people in the walls help move the information from the electric toilet paper to Patrick’s costume box.

On the other end it goes into the tube which stores information and when I turn the light on, press inside of it and turn it off, and when I throw up they take out their swords and cut up the germs.

The people who live in the walls are basically … the grownups are from your desk up to here (points to height of an iphone). The children are from your desk up to here (points to the height of a glue stick).

At Christmas they get presents too, from Santa. They like rocks, wood chips, and leaves. There’s a hole in the chimney and some of the presents miss going down the chimney all the way. They go into the hole instead and that’s how the little people get them.

Wherever I go, they go. They jump inside the suitcases when we take a plane.

I’m moving all my Master Patrick stuff from my bedroom to my Clubhouse #1 which only kids can go inside.

If you’ve been following my geocaching rants for a while, you’ll know that my son Miles (6) has been my constant caching companion for the past couple of years. Since he was 4 1/2, I’ve been able to blurt out “Let’s go grab a cache!” and he’s been ready to hit the trail at the drop of a hat. Rain or shine, urban or deep woods, he’s been game to go. When he got old enough to realize that most geocache prizes were more like geo-crap than actual hidden treasure, it didn’t matter – he knew it would still be an opportunity to climb trees, get muddy, play with sticks, find bugs, vault fences and run scrambling down a dirt track, getting his ya-yas out.

A few months ago, all of that started to change. Somewhere along the way, he began to realize that every hour out hiking was an hour not building Legos or making stories at home. And while he was good for five-milers from a very early age, at some point he figured out he could claim to be “tired” after the first 200 yards, and even that passive resistance (laying down in the middle of the trail) was an effective way of brining an excellent afternoon outing to a grinding halt. I’m not positive, but think he learned this from watching other kids do it on group outings. Big ears, and alla that.

It’s a drag. What for the past couple of years had seemed like the perfect father-son bonding activity had often become a wrestling match when it came to getting out of the house. Of course, he usually had fun once he hit the trail, but his little power plays to resist the very idea of going out have become both more strident and more devious. Along the way we mutually recognized that a certain amount of negotiations would do the trick: “If I go geocaching with you today will you play Lego Star Wars with me tonight?” (an excellent deal for me, since I secretly love playing Lego Star Wars).

But even that tactic may be losing its effectiveness. After Amy informed him that we were going to do a big hike tomorrow, he apparently complained: “The last day of Thanksgiving vacation, ruined by a hike? Why do you guys even think I like it? I’m not even an outdoors kind of guy!”

Ouch. Why don’t you just put me in a resting home right now, little squirt? Our Ultimate Bonding Activity, totally up-ended. OK, so you’re not into geocaching anymore. I can live with that. But “Not an outdoors kind of guy?” Where did you even learn an expression like that? And is that an example of genuine self-knowledge, or just an extension of increasingly sophisticated rhetorical ploys to let you stay home and play? And how can I make hiking feel more like play to you?

Well, Sid the Science Kid recently told you all about the importance of getting a good dose of cardio daily, and you seemed to buy that. But Sid or no Sid, just don’t wound your dear old dad like that, eh? Ouch.

Thanks to YesWeCarve.com, found some excellent Obama stencils. Opted for simpler (read: more do-able) campaign logo background, hoping it speaks for itself (”Oooobama” would have been fun, but Miles’ bedtime was coming up fast). Amy went for the classic black cat (artfully executed), and Miles did a ghost. We’re ready!

Swallowing my heart at the thought that Miles is six years old now. Remembering the day I raced home from work on my bike in the middle of a webcast (2001) after hearing that Amy was in labor. Cliche’ but true, the years between then and now have slipped by in a flash.

Miles has been planning a robot party for months. Wanted robot music. Robot games. Robot pinata. Robot making station. Robot cake. Robot music. The only thing he “planned” but didn’t get was a robot ice sculpture (where he got the idea for an ice sculpture is anyone’s guess).

Spent a Saturday afternoon building a pinata. Amy worked out the ingredients for the robot-making station (I had wanted to add LEDs with attached hearing aid batteries for them to attach, but turned out too expensive to provide electronics for everyone). Had a great time creating a playlist of music that was either about, or sounded like it was created by or for robots. The three of us collaborated on the robot cake making and frosting – tried to reproduce his original drawing as well as we could, typos and all.

Old friends and classmates had a blast.

Flickr set

Miles woke me up this morning by waving an iPod in my face. He had spent 15 minutes writing this note, getting it just right (which in his mind means a period after each word). His writing has come so far this summer; he’s been busily labeling everything he owns with permanent marker. “Dead alligator head.” “The Specials.” “Secret Spy Legos.” Even an equation: “Play + Mobil = [happy face].” It’s amazing to watch how fluidly he’s taken to computers and technology. He can now read enough to navigate the Tivo interface without help. Knows how to launch a browser and type in the URLs for the sites he likes the most, though he was a bit unclear on the concept at first — typed “URL” into Google, said he was trying to get to the Legos web site. Loves the concept of progressively difficult “levels” in games and now talks about life as if it were a game. “Daddy, what level are you on at your job?” We take care to limit the amount of TV and technology time he gets, and to balance it against analog time. But we also see concrete evidence of it making a big impact on his reading and writing skills, so cut him some slack.

Miles has been obsessed with the Legos web site lately. Sits and watches dozens of videos in a row, then watches the same ones again the next day. This just in from Amy:

Miles is flying his Star Wars ship around the house and saying things like, “With the Lego Star Wars Gunship, YOU control the action! Deploy the rockets, put the shields into position and let the air battle begin! All sets sold separately.”

Construction day for Miles and I yesterday, as we headed to Berkeley’s Adventure Playground — a playground built almost entirely by the same kids who play there (the creation of the play structures is the play). Many kids don’t have access to hammers, saws, drills or paints at home, let alone tons of free timber and a safe place to experiment. We’re extremely fortunate to have one nearby, as there are fewer than a thousand of them in the world, and of those, only two are located in the U.S. (as you can imagine, given our litigious nature).

History of adventure playgrounds:

C. Th. Sørensen, a Danish landscape architect, noticed that children preferred to play everywhere but in the playgrounds that he built. In 1931, he imagined “A junk playground in which children could create and shape, dream and imagine a reality.” Why not give children in the city the same chances for play as those in the country? His initial ideas started the adventure playground movement.

Many parents worry about the safety of adventure playgrounds, but don’t realize their safety records are actually better than that of traditional playgrounds. Counterintuitive, but not when you consider that most regular playgrounds aren’t staffed, while adventure playgrounds are monitored by adults who scout for and fix unsafe structures. And kids can’t even get their tools until they’ve found and returned either 10 loose nails or 5 wood splinters or located 1 “Mr. Dangerous” — a nail that’s been pounded through to the other side of an exposed board. Thus, the children are incentivized toward safety right off the bat.

For kids not into building, the structures are as fun to play on as they are to create. The creativity level and learning opportunities at these playgrounds is extremely high. Oh, and there’s an excellent 100-foot zip line ending in a pile of sand.

Had an amazing time as always (though forgot I had set the camera to lowest resolution, so the shots aren’t great), but Miles hadn’t gotten his fill of Hammer Time. When we got home, he wanted to do more building. First he wanted to make a sun-shade. Halfway through, decided it should be a boat, then finally an ice cream stand. Nice opp to talk about the importance of planning. Ended the day with him making banana splits for all of us, beaming proudly.

Flickr set from the day.

Hah!  Came home from work today and was greeted by Miles in his new Tae Kwon Do ghee gi. Had his 2nd lesson today and so far he’s doing great. If you see him, be sure to ask him to show you some “rad moves!”

And remember, a bow is a sign of respect.

I’ve written a few times over the years about Spore, the new life-cycle simulation game by Will Wright (creator of The Sims), with spontaneous/generative music by Brian Eno. The game’s release is now just a couple of months away, and Maxis have released the Spore Creature Creator in advance, so users can get started creating a library of bizarre land, water, and air-borne beings. Luckily for us, the game’s many delays have given Miles just enough time to grow up enough to start appreciating basic concepts of evolution, and to become comfy with a mouse.

Just spent the bulk of a cold grey summer morning playing with the Creature Creator, and my jaw is on the floor. Spore manages so much complexity behind such a simple and intuitive interface. Performance is superb, movement is silky smooth, and the creative possibilities are endless. Working mostly by himself, Miles created HasEverything, Headfeathers, Aquaboogie, and Ezra. This is Ezra:

Yep – in test drive mode, you can build short movies and upload them directly into YouTube, without leaving the game. The resolution here isn’t great, but inside the game, both creatures and settings are stunningly beautiful.

If we’re having this much fun with just the creature editor, I can only imagine what the actual game is going to be like.

Miles’ 6th birthday just three months away, today he informed us of his plans for a robot party:

• Robot ice sculpture
• Robot cake with frosting decoration of two cops chasing a robot
• Robot head-making station with lots of craft supplies
• Robot game (elaborate rules) in which aliens can “trump” both cops and robots
• Robot piñata
• Real robot (life-size)

No prob, Miles. We’re on it :)

Sorry it’s been so quiet around here for a while. One of the busiest stretches in memory. This summer:

- Three Knight Digital Media Center workshops
- Rains-it-pours freelance workload
- Old friend Rinchen back from three years in monastery; hosted big party
- Old friends Will and Sage back from three years in Australia; hosted big party
- 25th high school reunion (coming up)
- Work crazy as always
- Week in Minnesota with Amy’s family (just returned)

Minnesota: Rolling hills and lush wetlands. Summer thunderstorms. Nieces and nephews and grownups. Golf and tennis on the teevee. Floating down Minnehaha Creek on our backs. Geocaching in warm rain. Mosquitos, mosquitos. Orange Julius Jamboree. Steaks and burgers. Solo bicycle trek in the afternoon heat, through the woods and around the lakes, stashing bike in woods while hunting geocaches (hint: mark location of hidden bike on GPS to find it again later easily). Set mother in law up with new 20″ iMac. Ultimate Frisbee in the cul de sac with extended family, finally understand concept of blocking+interception, which I can apply next time I try to watch football or basketball. Blown away watching nine-yr-old niece navigate her social network like lightning. Puzzled by mall culture; impulse to “shop” without going to buy something in particular. Minnesota Museum of Science to see Star Wars exhibit. Read Zora Neal Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God” – amazing, moving. Fireflies. Reeds and rushes. Fish tacos. Humidity sweat, well water, sprinklers sputtering in the dusk. Idly strumming ukulele on the porch. Total recharge, much needed.

Flickr set.

Amy and Miles are on vacation (I’m joining them in a few days), and I’ve been getting regular emails from Miles (he dictates them to Amy). His imagination blows my mind. Here’s a sample:

You know what? Last night when me and Jon were playing soccer, and we were playing a different kind of soccer. When someone, I mean, just someone puts on a disguise, so the person, I mean the other person, thinks you’re like a tree or something, so they try to kick the ball, but then the person jumps out of their disguise, and then, the person kicks the ball. I love you 100 times. HA! YEA! I hope you turn into a duck, so you can swim to Minnesota, and then turn back into a person, so you can be my dad again. Anyway, I hope you think of cuckoo songs and play funny games like smooshing a ball into your ear and then pulling it out the other side. And I hope you climb to the top of the state temple and eat the moon up, so me and my master Patrick can punch a hole in a boat, so the captain will sink, and they will blast out the other side of the state temple. That’s all.

I love you, and I hug you, and I smoosh you, and I beat you up in a really perfect way that might look like I’m cleaning you up with a soapy sponge. I love you. Goodbye, see you next time.

After a waffle breakfast with friends, spent Father’s Day with Miles and Amy at Redwood Regional Park, hiking down to the valley floor to get up close and personal with giant old growth redwoods. Not quite Muir Woods scale, but utterly spectacular. Found a small handful of geocaches along the way, including one locked deep inside a cow femur, which just added to the “dinosaurs have walked this path” atmosphere of the day. At one point near the valley floor, just a few dreamy rays of light were left penetrating to the forest floor. Miles started to get scared, convinced there were ghosts in the trees. Ascending 1,000 feet or so out of there was a much-needed workout, rewarded with eventually walking up and out of the canopy into broad daylight.

Later quenched our appetites at a local sushi bar — a landmark moment for us to be able to go to a restaurant without a kids menu. Stuffed myself on crab and avocado, then chili-infused dark chocolate (didn’t get the chocolate-covered ants I had wanted, but lightly salted Aztec Chili chocolate tiles are complex and dreamy). A glorious day. I love my family.

Amazing day with family yesterday. Up early to join a friend of the family for a two-hour tour of San Francisco Bay on his sailboat. Miles first time sailing, and I hadn’t been on a sailboat in years. Perfect blue sky, 15-knot winds, and a chance to re-learn the difference between a jib and a jibe, a tack and a hank. What a way to start a weekend. Thanks Louis B.! Flickr set, includes a little video of Amy at the helm.

After a quick BBQ lunch, off to the Oakland Museum of Children’s Art for matinee performance of Thundermouth, part of the 6th Annual Matthew Sperry Memorial Festival. Thundermouth was an idea Matthew had had when he was alive – to roll out a giant sheet of butcher paper and let members of the audience write improvised poems. The band, also improvising, would then have one or more singers singing the lyrics as fast as they could be written – sort of improv karaoke. Great to see this idea of Matthew’s finally made real, and a perfect concept for a kids’ matinee. Flickr set here. We still miss you Matthew!

Later, perfected my orange julius recipe.