First Day Of Snow

To celebrate the first snow in town (Salt Lake City, 2008) here is an old photo from the Teton Valley area depicting two men in a horse drawn sleigh.  The sleigh is a low slung type typically used for hauling freight or timber, as opposed to a passenger sleigh for jaunting across the Russian countryside.

Ann in the Kitchen (Early Morning)

The Night The Plants Attacked!

So I was just minding my own business, and the papas grass in the front yard attacked me. Luckily, it turns out not to be a green hand grenade, but this katydid. In many ways-even considering my sedentary lifestyle-the katydid does a better job of imitating a plant than I could.

Cowboys on the Plains

A dozen cowboys out on the plains. See below for a detail.

The State of Utah Wine Affairs Bureau, 2008

We are happy to present the state of the Lamberti Bocca Noir grape harvest for the 2008 growing season. One of the most successful harvests in recent times, we pulled in a hair under 150 pounds of grapes, de-stemmed and crushed for 16.6 gallons of must for the initial fermentations.

This is up from 70 pounds in 2006 (a late season hail storm damaged about a quarter of that crop) and 48 pounds in 2007 (birds, heat, and ???). This year the protective nets got on early, and the vines were well maintained. For the record, Growing Degree Days (10 C base, March 1) was 3165 at time of harvest (Sept 28, 2008). Heating Degree Days (SLC station since July 1) cumulative was 27 at time of harvest compared with 7 last year. For what it's worth. More stats to come.

Likewise, a good turnout of wine grape pickers, destemmers, and stompers. More photos of the 2008 Wine Stomp can be seen below:

The Passion of the McCain

To celebrate my short film "The Passion of the McCain" breaking 60,000 combined views across YouTube and Machinima.com, this post will mirror some of the design decisions and content for the film. The recent increase in views is largely due to the inclusion of the film in the 2008 Cambridge Film Festival, where "Passion" was invited to be screened as part of a special program on machinima styles and techniques. Reviews so far have been mostly positive.

It is interesting to read the comments on YouTube, et al where available. Those who approach the film from a typical machinima's viewer's perspective (i.e. a typical gamer) tend to not like it, because it hides the underlying video game characters and style. they tend to prefer films made wholly within a particular game's reality, which is nonsense, as most games tend to have a fairly boring and conformist world-view. Shoot this, dodge that, escape[ist] here. I, on the other hand, believe that because it hides the underlying game, it is inherently better than stock characters in stock situations. Halo's Master Chief doesn't event have a visible face, so how can he act?

Regardless, the film was fun to put together. Take a look for yourself here, here, here, or below:

Men Sawing Lumber