Videos
A collection of short videos capturing life on the go: cycling along Vermont’s Colchester Causeway, pedal‑blending smoothies, lightning storms and the occasional wildlife cameo. These clips are little windows into our travels and everyday adventures.
This is how we wish every MN United home game ended! Wonderwall! 🤩⚽️🖤💙
I dig this FLÎKR Fire that we got in Vermont. Great ambiance! 🔥
One minute at Oval Beach, Saugatuck, Michigan.
Time-lapse video going through Lock 32 on the Erie Canal.
I’m so happy to have our Andrew Carson wind sculpture back up after being in storage a couple of years. It is one of my favorite pieces of art. It is the centerpiece of the raised garden beds.
Fifty Puzzle
Tammy enjoys doing puzzles. The kids and I have started a tradition of making her a custom Christmas puzzle each year. This year we decided to do one for her “big birthday” and we decided to take a completely new approach.
Here is the final version and I’ll share with you how we got here.
To make this we started with a hand drawn image that Mazie framed out and then her and Tyler filled in. This allowed them to work with pencil and paper and the clear borders for the initial idea. Puzzles are pretty close to 8.5x11 ratio, but not exactly. After scanning I do a stretch on the size to get it just right.
Now that we scanned the original pencil drawing, we needed to recreate the entire image in digital format. We loaded up Procreate and put the original scan on a layer and made it 50% transparent, and then used the iPad Pro with Apple Pencil to trace a copy of the image on a fresh layer above. This made a perfectly clean digital version, and allowed us to clean up the image a bit. There were detail areas that were too small to do with the pencil but by zooming into the canvas on the iPad Pro they were able to get it just right.
After the image was traced we created two layers for coloring. One layer was “under the lines” and is where most of the coloring was done. We had another “over the lines” layer for select sections. We also segmented off the backgrounds and the “50” numbers into their own layer.
One of the super cool features of Procreate is the ability to share a video fo the drawing being created. Here you can see the entire process unfolding, as well as the couple of versions we tried for the “50” colors before we landed on the rainbow. Our creative process took 3-4 weeks and here you get it in 9 minutes.
The project took a while but the finished product worked out great. Plus the kids got to learn how to create digital art and got really adept at working with multiple layers and understanding how to use them to create different effects. Mazie got into the various brushes as well.
The only mistake we made was mine. I forgot that I needed to create a margin on the edge for the printer. We didn’t factor that in, so the finished puzzle lost about 1/4" of the image on all sides. On the top we had sky so that was fine, but on the bottom we had this cool seascape and a lot of that got trimmed off. Next time I’ll remember to mark a “safe zone” there so nothing critical is in that area.
Mazie finished her LEGO Grand Piano build today. It is one of the most intricate LEGO I have ever seen.
You can connect it to your phone and it will respond to, or move, the piano keys.
Managing Global Tech Teams During a Pandemic
Presented by: Jamie Thingelstad, Shivani Stumpf, Amy Patton, Teddy Bekele, and Jadee Hanson on September 15, 2020.
Today’s technology teams thrive on collaboration and agile processes to deliver innovative solutions. Managing a mix of on-site and remote professionals was easy, but what happened when everyone suddenly was remote. How did management change? What was easier? And harder? Hear from local technology executives about their highs, lows and learnings during this time and what changes they predict are here to stay. They’ll address how they hired, onboarded, trained, and promoted individuals, as well as how their solutions stayed on course and how they spurred innovation.
I find wind generators mesmerizing. 🌬