life according to kathryn

 

loper christmas 2008, originally uploaded by kathryn_rotondo.

from my happy little family to you and yours.

"There is one thing I don't get," I said.

"What's that?"

"How come if your favorite color is blue, you painted your house so pink?"

She laughed. "That was May's doing. She was with me the day I went to the paint store to pick out the color. I had a nice tan color in mind, but May latched on to this sample called Caribbean Pink. She said it made her feel like dancing a Spanish flamenco. I thought, 'Well, this is the tackiest color I've ever seen, and we'll have half the town talking about us, but if it can lift May's heart like that, I guess she ought to live inside it.'"

"All this time I just figured you liked pink," I said.

She laughed again. "You know, some things don't matter that much, Lily. Like the color of a house. How big is that in the overall scheme of life? But lifting a person's heart--now, that matters. The whole problem with people is--"

"They don't know what matters and what doesn't," I said, filling in her sentence and feeling proud of myself for doing so.

"I was gonna say, The problem is they know what matters, but they don't choose it. You know how hard that is, Lily? I love May, but it was still so hard to choose Caribbean Pink. The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters."

from The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

bipartisan moleskine, originally uploaded by kathryn_rotondo.

whatever your party, get out and vote!

apple picking, originally uploaded by kathryn_rotondo.

i thought that i would know when i went into labor. it turns out i was wrong.

the friday before max was born, i had my 39 week appointment with my midwife. she examined me and told me that i wasn't at all dilated, and that i should prepare to still be pregnant on my due date. this was pretty disappointing, since i was excited for max to come. also, the idea of going past my due date brought up fears of induction and caesarian section, which were procedures i wanted to avoid.

to combat my disappointment, matt and i started planning activities to fill the time. i booked a prenatal massage for the following week. matt also took me apple picking on saturday which he knew i really wanted to do. and that night, we walked down the hill to waterfire. it was the third waterfire that week, and we had walked to all of them. a friend had suggested that walking was a good way to not go past your due date, and waterfire with matt is romantic and calming, especially as we savored our last quiet evenings as a couple.

around 5pm on saturday, i started feeling cramping. by waterfire, the cramps were coming in waves that would be intense for a short time, then almost disappear, then come back. we had to walk slowly back up the hill. we figured that these must be practice contractions (braxton-hicks), since the baby was not slated to come yet, and i hadn't felt any practice contractions before.

when we got home at 10pm, we started timing them. they were 40 seconds long, and about 4 minutes apart. we were surprised at how regularly they came. the midwife's instructions were to call her when contractions were a minute long, 5 minutes apart, for two hours. we figured we weren't there yet, so i used the relaxation breathing that i learned in hypnobirthing to get through each contraction. we stopped timing them. matt gave me sips of juice in between, and both of us tried to rest if not sleep. it was a long night.

from 6 to 9am on sunday we timed contractions again. they were now lasting over a minute. so we called my midwife, and it was a relief to find out that she was the one on call that day. she suggested we come to the hospital, and we met her in the triage area. she examined me and told me i was 7cm dilated and 100% effaced, and congratulated me for doing so much of the hard work of labor at home. matt asked, "so this is the day?" and she answered that yes, this was the day, the baby was coming today. (and he did, just after 4pm.)

i suppose in retrospect i knew that i was in labor, but each contraction demanded my focus in the present, so much so that i couldn't think into the future. i am sure i was also protecting myself from more potential disappointment if it wasn't time yet. i am so glad it was time though. ever since we got home, i have been wondering why i waited this long to have a baby. we are so happy that he is here.

matt and i are overjoyed to announce the birth of our son!

maxwell maverick loper
september 21, 2008, 4:18pm
8 pounds, 3 ounces

we are all doing well and resting up, and sharing photos and stories at http://max.loper.org

at work i've been co-organizing weekly code challenges.  these are little 15 minute exercises that allow us to get creative and learn from each other. usually i come up with the language agnostic challenges, while john thinks up the actionscript-specific ones.  

yesterday he ran one by me about animating a movie clip in a figure 8. i immediately thought that sine functions could be used for this, but have to admit that i sought some input from matt over dinner. we figured it out (using cos(t) for x, sin(2*t) for y), came home and coded it up.  as part of our process, we drew circles so that we could see the trail of where the clip had been.  we ended up having a great time riffing on ways to manipulate the trail, changing the color, scale, rotation, and lifespan of the dots. we also tried seeding it with numbers other than 2... here is the result for sin(pi*t):

we ran into one snag which had also tripped me up last week. i was working in a flex project, and wanted to add a sprite to the stage, but forgot that you have to first wrap it in a UIComponent. i figure i may forget this again, so i'm jotting it here for posterity.

here is the code from my script tag (on creation complete i call init):

Continue reading →

last week's multimedia platforms code challenge was:

Use the graphics api to draw a rainbow. Bonus points for making the colors fade into each other.

Colors: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet

here's my rainbow, and my code:

private function drawRainbow():void {
	// sets up fill
	var colors:Array = [0xFFFFFF, 0xFF00FF, 0x0000FF, 0x00FFFF, 0x00FF00, 0xFFFF00, 0xFF6600, 0xFF0000];
	var alphas:Array = [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1];
	var ratios:Array = [115, 125, 155, 175, 195, 215, 235, 255];
 
	// draws rainbow into shape
	var rainbow:Shape = new Shape();
	rainbow.graphics.beginGradientFill(GradientType.RADIAL, colors, alphas, ratios);
	rainbow.graphics.drawCircle(0, 0, 100);
	rainbow.graphics.endFill();
 
	// adds rainbow to screen, positions and scales it
	var uic:UIComponent = new UIComponent();
	addChild(uic);
	uic.addChild(rainbow);
	uic.x = application.width;
	uic.y = application.height;
	uic.scaleX = uic.scaleY = 3;
}

does anyone have recommendations for a wordpress plugin for code snippets with actionscript syntax coloring?

i love how the children seem both delighted by and run screaming from these big nazo puppets. the tongues were just the actors' hands in red tube socks, but from the children's reaction you would think they were the ickiest, most slobbery things imaginable.

over the past few months i have learned a lot about pregnancy. i didn't expect to be so surprised by what i learned!

it turns out that there are two major schools of thought.  one is that birth is natural and that women's bodies know what they are doing (much like mothers in the rest of the animal kingdom), and that people should get out of the way and let nature do its thing.  the other places more trust in science, advances in pain management, and medicine's ability to intervene to help things along.  call me naive, but before becoming pregnant i had no idea things were so divided.

in trying to determine the right course for me, here are some resources i've found really useful:

pregtastic podcast: a weekly radio show where an ever-changing cast of pregnant women talk cheerfully about the ups and downs of their pregnancies, and expert guests address a wide gamut of topics. because it is descriptive rather than prescriptive, this show gives a pretty balanced and accepting point of view on the different choices expecting parents make.  my favorite episodes are the birth stories, where former podcasters come back and talk about their labors and birth experiences.

our bodies, ourselves: pregnancy and birth: a friend sent me this book when she learned i was expecting, and reading it gave me the courage to switch from an OB to a midwife.  it aims to inform and empower women to make choices that are right for them, rather than relying on their doctor's lead or a hospital's standard procedures.

mayo clinic guide to a healthy pregnancy: this book has a really great breakdown of what's happening from week to week in terms of baby development and mom's body.  i look forward to reading what's going on developmentally every single week.  there is also a lot of information on dealing with symptoms, knowing when to call the doctor, and preparing for a hospital birth.

hypnobirthing: the mongan method: the main idea here is that fear and tension cause pain, so knowledge and relaxation techniques can be used to make labor less painful.  the techniques include guided meditation and breathing, and bring you into a state not unlike shivasana in yoga.  you can take birth preparation classes that focus on this technique.

consumer reports best baby products: a great guide to what you need and what you don't, what you can acquire used versus what you should buy new, with detailed ratings of different products on the market. baby bargains is another helpful reference on this topic.

of course, we can't know what our baby's birth will be like, but these resources have been a huge help in preparing to the extent that we can.

we are so excited for our baby to come!

lately we've been rearranging the house, so i suppose it should not be a surprise that i would do a little rearranging of the website as well.

previously, my portfolio was sitting at http://kathrynrotondo.com, with my blog at http://kathrynrotondo.com/weblog. this was silly, because that portfolio was an aging old thing that doesn't represent my current work (it's full of actionscript 2, for goodness sake), and it was the thing most visitors saw. nowadays, the best way to know about my work is through the "code" category in the blog.

so, i retired the portfolio to a subdirectory (http://kathrynrotondo.com/portfolio), and redirected http://kathrynrotondo.com to point to the blog. since the blog didn't actually move, existing links and feeds will continue to work, while the change will make it easier for people to find my current content.

it is nice to have things tidy.