Gestation 2.0

Our family is pleased to announce something very exciting and here is Lucian to give you the special news!

We Found Nemo!
We just had our first sonogram and got to see the little sea monkey's heart beat and watch it float around. (I swear, it looked like a sea monkey!) It was a very special and exciting time for all of us. Lucian watched the monitor intently. The sonogram technician tried to explain it to Lucian and said, "See the little baby? It's swimming around in Mommy's belly like a little fishy!" Lucian was observant to point his little finger at the screen and exclaim, "Look! Nemo!" So now you know why we'll be nicknaming this baby "Nemo" for a little while. I laughed so hard and it took me a little while to regain composure so we could continue with the rest of the sonogram. (It doesn't work very well when your belly is moving around due to giggling.)

The sonogram printouts are now proudly hanging our our fridge. They all look identical and I wish the picture was clearer, but it turns out we're not as far along as the OB thought we were. Based on the measurements, the sonogram technician adjusted our due date from October 30th to November 9th. I'm still hoping for a Halloween baby though because second babies are usually earlier and if this pregnancy has the same complications as Lucian's then they would take the baby early anyhow. We'll just have to wait and see. (Something I'm not very good at!)

There isn't much to see in the photo, but seeing the heartbeat in action was enough to at least make it feel just a little more real. It's still very surreal. I thought maybe sharing the news might help with that. We're only 8 weeks and 5 days along (not 10 weeks like we originally thought) so it feels odd to share the news so much sooner than we did the first time around, but the sonogram technician said it was safe to share because there was movement and a good heartbeat.

Here is Nemo's very first baby picture!

According to the sonogram measurements, our little "Nemo" is 5.9 cm long. That's the length of my pinky so now I can't stop looking at my little finger and day dreaming just a little.

Standard Gestational Operating Procedure
I've been feeling very tired and have been trying harder to get more rest. That's why this blog and other social places have been quiet or dormant for so long. Lucian has been much more demanding of my time. With a new family member coming, I'm also trying to cherish more of our time together while it's still just him and us. We sleep in and snuggle more in the mornings because Pre School is just around the corner. (and because gestation is hard work!!) I know I'll never get these times back so I like to hold on to them just a little longer now.

It's also why I've been a little more stressed about finances, but I'm sure this is all normal. (I'll go into more detail about other things later.) Another reason I've been quiet is because I hate keeping secrets! I'm good at it, but I hate doing it! I was so afraid I would slip and spill the beans, so now that we've been to our first sonogram I feel a little better about letting the cat out of the bag.

It's still very early and things could go wrong, but after seeing it yesterday, there isn't any point in keeping it a secret any longer. Our family has known now for a couple of weeks. I suppose if something were to go wrong, I'd rather have more support than none at all. These feelings are all standard gestational operating procedure, I'm sure. I'm certainly a lot more relaxed about most things this time around but I think I'm much, much more tired!!

It's hard to imagine I was working full time the first time around. I don't know how I had the energy! Now that I'm a stay-at-home-mom, I have to say, it was nothing compared to working 24/7 for a busy toddler!! You can't call in late to a toddler who wants his breakfast N-O-W just because you'd like to try and hold on to your cookies.

Overall, we're very happy because we've been trying since October of last year, so this is very welcome news for us. I was just beginning to wonder how much longer it would take so I feel relieved since I'm not getting any younger! Luckily, I'll be delivering just before my 35th birthday! Whew!

Back to Blogging
I'm really hoping to get back into blogging about my life. I didn't keep a journal during my pregnancy with Lucian because I just didn't have the time and I was working full time. I really wished I would have because now, more than ever, is when I would really like to reflect on my past experiences to help give me a little confidence boost here and there. Not like I have any more time now, but there is a bit more flexibility so I'm going to give it a try. This blog will still be geeky in nature so it won't be a complete baby diary. I still have plans for other posts, but you know how it is these days, life first and then, if the urge sticks, then it might make it into the blog.

I might also try to write more about some of my past pregnancy and delivery experiences with Lucian. My delivery experience, to me, was very, very traumatic and I haven't yet found the strength or courage to write about it, but maybe it will come. Since almost 3 years has passed, I know I don't remember details like I did when it was happening to me and that's probably a good thing. Anyhow, I'm just going to have to try because writing is very therapeutic for me.

Gestation is hard work, but it's one of the most rewarding experiences a human can experience so I welcome the challenges to come!

Stay tuned for more updates and I hope you feel as blessed and lucky as we do.

Singing the ABCs

Sorry it's been so quiet here lately. Been having some technical difficulties combined with just being so darn busy!
I've been missing blogging and hope to get back into it soon. I have lots of stuff to share. As usual, I'm backlogged. Some things though are just a matter of timing but soon all will be revealed!

Here is a little video Lucian and I recorded today after he got up from his nap. He loved to sing and pretends different objects are microphones.

The video freezes up, sorry about that. We'll try to make some more later when we're done planting our seeds for our new garden!!

twhurple

Hand-Made Mac Tip No. 10
Roll Your Own Color Scheme for twhirl

I love purple. It's my favorite color. It makes me happy. It makes me so happy that when an application allows color customization of some sort, I usually tweak it to some type of purple if I can.

I also love twhirl.

Twhirl has a color scheme called "Purple Rain" but it's just not quite purple enough for me. It's a little more on the pink side, but I really like the way it differentiates different types of messages using different hues. It's a nice feature in the UI that really helps me digest information quickly. I just love UI design and I can tell the twhirl development team has put a lot of work into this application.

I remembered reading somewhere in some support comments that you could change the color codes inside the xml files manually. I didn't know exactly what that meant so I went snooping around inside of the package contents for the application to see what was in there. This was a fun experiment and learning process for me.

I located the color schemes folder and then found the .xml files. I don't even know what xml is really but I'm always curious about code so I opened one of the files up to see if any of it would make sense to me. I always tell people I'm not a programmer type and I could not code my way out of a paper bag but one thing I do recognize is a little bit of html color code. So, I set out to start changing things and low and behold, I developed my very own purply goodiness color scheme for twhirl!

At first, I didn't know what colors corresponded to which design element of the UI, so I made a new xml file, named it "rainbowtest" and proceeded to change the color in each line of code to a different color — as many different colors as I could so that I could see what belonged where.

Here is what that looked like. Remeber, this is not an acid trip, it's just a test!

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Now that I could see what part was which color, I could begin to understand how the layout was constructed and how the colors worked together.

Next, I set out to start picking out a color palette that might work together. This was not as easy as I thought it would be. To begin the idea generation, I used this really great web tool called Color Scheme Designer. This is just an example of how I began thinking about how colors relate to each other.

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Here is a screen shot of my artboard in Adobe Illustrator. It took many trials to pick just the right colors to make sure messages and function buttons were readable. Several times I had to quit and restart twhirl so it could recognize the new xml file I copied into the twhirl/Contents/Resources/colorschemes folder.

I was having a hard time trying to decide two of the text colors. They needed to stand out and be very legible so my eyes wouldn't have to strain reading the small text. 16 point type is the maxium. It turns out, the colors in the twhirl logo seemed to work out nicely so I used an approximation of them based on a screen shot of the logo. I used the eye dropper tool in Adobe Illustrator to get an approximation and then further tweaked the colors to make them more readable against the color backgrounds I chose.

I am pleased with the final result and now have a twhirl color scheme that coordinates with my nice clean, empty (almost always because I'm a freak-job like that) purple desktop.

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Here is the final result without notation and development artboard.



















Here is part of the code that will give you the purple color scheme I created. Just replace the colors with these if you would like the same purple scheme I'm using. Blogger won't let me copy and paste the code for some reason. I shall call it "twhurple" and if you're brave enough to tweak and know what you're doing, I hope you might enjoy it as much as I do. Just don't blame me or twhirl if you break it, ok?

4D2E60
FFFFFF
644874
9D8BA7
CBFF82
FFFFFF
DCCDD5
C7D8D9
CFC8E9
000000
5E1AA0
57878A
57878A
FFFFFF
CBFF82
5E1AA0

If you've found this tweak useful and were able to successfully implement it, I would love to see a screen shot of your desktop if you wouldn't mind. Loic and #teamseesmic are also looking for screen shots of desktops featuring twhirl in action. It would be really fun to see if this could work out for someone else and how many other purple fanatics there are out there!

Have fun and follow me on twitter, seesmic or FriendFeed — all three of these services are available in one place using twhirl! Isn't that great?

Love Is...

My hand-made Valentine to you!
♡Melissa

My Favorite Characters

Hand-Made Mac Tip No. 9
Not the same as Love Potion No. 9, but almost as much fun!

You thought I was going to write about Winnie the Pooh and Mickey Mouse? No, not those kinds of characters! These kinds of characters:
 ✭♡♥❦☮✍✌✓♫♪♺⌘⇧⌫⏏

Depending on which browser you're using to view this blog, you may not be able to properly view some or maybe even all of these characters. Assuming you're on a Mac and using the latest versions of Safari or Firefox, it shouldn't be an issue.

I thought with Valentine's Day here, you might enjoy a nice tip for getting to those cute little hearts and other fancy symbols quickly.

First you'll need to configure your International System Preference Pane and then you'll need to configure the Character Palette to show just your favorite or most-used characters. Once this is done, you'll be just 2 clicks away from accessing the characters you use on a regular basis.

I find this helpful for when I'm trying to communicate a set of instructions in which I can use the shortcut key symbols.

It's also fun to say things like:
I ♥ You. Let's book the next ✈ to New York and go hear some great ♬♪♫

Did you ✔ to see if the tickets are on sale?

Would you like for me to ☏ you at a special ⌚ ?

Did you remember to ♺ your paper?

Step 1. Configure your International Preference Pane available by selecting the System Preferences from the Apple Menu in the upper left hand corner of your screen.

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Step 2. You will see a little flag icon in your Menu Bar. Click on it once to reveal a drop-down menu from which you can select Show Character Palette.














Step 3. Configure your Character Palette by selecting your Favorite characters. Look closely at this screen shot (click to enlarge) and pay attention to each of the areas where you'll need to click. Make your Character Palette look like this. Select a character you want to favorite by clicking on it once to highlight it. Next, click on the cog wheel at the bottom and choose 'Add to Favorites' from the drop-down menu.

Repeat this step of selecting a character and then 'Add to Favorites' for each of the characters you'll use on a regular basis. When you're finished selecting characters, move on to the next step. (Don't worry, you can always keep adding more favorites.)

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Step 4. View your Favorites and now the Character Palette will always show just this section of Favorite characters by default each time. Whenever you need a character, just click once on the flag icon and then once to select 'Show Character Palette.' (two clicks! no waiting for a website to load them!)

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

I hope you find this tip useful!

It's twhirl for This Girl

Hand-Made Mac Tip No. 8
Take twhirl for a whirl and manage your social networking in one place.

I love using an application called twhirl for keeping in touch with my friends on twitter, in seesmic and on FriendFeed. Whatever I tweet as a status update (different than replying to someone) also gets fed directly into my FaceBook as my status there.

I pretty much always have twhirl running and I use Leopard's Spaces to make viewing all of the information manageable. Space 2 is designated for twirl and I give it a full desktop area with the largest font so my eyes don't strain to read the information. I have assigned a key command to Space 2: command-right arrow so I can quickly press that combination and swipe the whole thing out of my way quickly when I'm just checking in. Spaces is awesome once you get used to it and train yourself to use it in your work flow.

Here are some screen shots of my Spaces Preferences along with a view of my desktop on Space 2 featuring twhirl. (I've blocked out a few of the private messages in order to respect communication preferences.) Click on the images for a larger view.

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Sometimes I also use the Orange-Gray color scheme. It just depends on my mood.

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Here is another screen shot so you can see the text better. The color scheme is 'Purple Rain.' For my twitter and FriendFeed panels, I'm using the font Myriad Pro, 16 points. For my seesmic panel, I'm using the font Myriad Pro Condensed, 14 points. I've tweaked the settings to make it the most comfortable for my eyes. This font is the smoothest to me. I wish the color were more purple than pink, but overall it's the most pleasing color set to my eyes.

I decided to position the seesmic panel in the center since it feels the most intimate there for interacting with video recording. When the video recording screen pops up, the proximity is closest to the webcam where I can establish better eye contact.

I've positioned the twitter panel closest to the clock area of my desktop on the far right side. I also keep my twhirl Dock icon positioned in the lower right corner of the screen so my muscle memory is accustomed to clicking there for updating – both reading and writing. The text entry box is also at the bottom since my cursor always lands there.

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Overall, this is my favorite app for viewing these kinds of messages. There are still some things I would love to be able to tweak like customizable color schemes and the ability to make different accounts a different color scheme. You can select from many different pre-existing schemes, but so far you can not change the colors within those schemes. I like the 'Purple Rain' and 'Orange Gray' color schemes the best. I like that there are subtle hues for different kinds of messages and different input areas. The color feedback is very important to me.

You can download twhirl for free and it works on Macs and PCs.
http://www.twhirl.org/

Sign up for a free seesmic account and, if you have a webcam and mic, you can record video messages all from the same application.
http://seesmic.com/

If you want to help improve this application, the development team is extremely responsive to suggestions using http://feedback.twhirl.org/

I hope you've enjoyed this little review and find it useful!