It ain't all a bucket of roses, kid.

Bath time is totally awesome. Mostly because most towels for infants these days have animal shaped hoods, and there’s really nothing cuter than seeing your lil guy’s eyes stare out at you from a super kawaii frog towel. It rules. Also their hair gets all fuzzy and they look like little monkeys. Also of note, they smell less like pee. Tips after the break.

Yes, bath time is pretty much wins and high fives all around for everyone, except for the baby. When you first bring your baby home, you’ll be sponge bathing the little primma donna like an ancient slave, and you’ll thank him for it too, because HE’S JUST SO DANG CUTE. That lasts until the umbilical cord nub bids it’s final adieu, and the belly button emerges. From then on it’s tub bath city, or at least partially submerged cleaning/party time.

But even though they spent the first 9-10 months, or less, in a big watery, goopy, warm, cavern inside their mom, they might not like the idea of being plopped down into your sink for a little sensorial trip down memory lane. Here is the one thing that saved us from a lot of fussing, and two other tips for a happy soggy baby.

1. WRAP A TOWEL AROUND HIS/HER CHEST. We really struggled with our first few baths. He was NOT happy. And he let us know–almost by growling. Well, more like screamgrowling. It was not a good noise for anyone to hear. Then my wife found a tip in a Japanese magazine. I’m not sure if this tip is Japanese in origin or just some common folk wisdom that I’ve never heard of, but it works. Something about having a washcloth or small towel around his chest really seems to soothe him while hes in the sink tub. It’s like the pacifier of bath time (Yes, I use pacifiers, and no I will not apologize. They are life savers.)
2. MAKE THE WATER WARM, BUT NOT TOO WARM. This one is pretty obvious I guess–it’s dangerous to put a baby in hot water. They have trouble regulating their own temperatures. Babies don’t like cold water either, for much the same reason, but they like it a little cooler than you probably do. Makes sense, right? So really, spend a little time getting to know the right temperature, and try using your forearm or something other than your hand or desensitized finger tips to gauge how comfy it will be.
3. HAVE A CHANGE OF CLOTHES, HAT, AND WARM THINGS READY. After the bath, and I’m sure you can figure out how to do that part (clean the baby gently with a soft cloth and some baby soap), you’ll need to get him dry and changed ASAP. Because they are learning to regulate their own temperatures, and because they are rather like frail, mini-old-people, they get chilly pretty quickly. Now the important part is that you really don’t want your newborn to shiver. Shivering burns calories, and babies need all the calories they can get to gain weight. They need those calories to grow up and never disappoint you, and love you forever (stay positive!).
4. Ok, so I promised three tips but I’ll throw this one in as well. Similar to the diaper changing tip, you may want to keep a pee shield handy. Just like everyone else, water and temperature changes are more like than not to make your baby think about a lil pee. And when that geyser rises, you’ll want something to defend yourself with. I tend to use a separate wash cloth just in case.

note: The trend of dad blog style posts increases! If I had more than three readers, I’d start just a daddy tumblr, but since I know pretty much all of my readers personally y’all will just have to suck it up!

So, a documentary I’m helping shoot that surrounds Perkins School for the Blind and one of its students brought me to Anime Boston 2011. While I’m no stranger to anime, I’d never been to a con before. I have to say it was awesome! Some of the CosPlay blew my friggin mind right out the ear holes. I just love being around passionate people! Here are some pictures I managed to snap between takes.

update: @daenyth sent me a link to his gallery! Check it out. Thanks Daenyth (and the internet)!

Babies. They pee. A LOT. Sometimes it doesn’t stay in the diaper, where it should. Clicky to see my top 5 tips so far for having a dry baby boy, and avoiding leaky diapers.

     1.) POINT THE PENIS DOWN. This one is for boys only, so I apologize if you have a little girl and find this tip inaccesible. It shouldn’t work on a girl. If it does work on your little girl, you may consider getting a new doctor. Then again, you may be able to use this on yourself in your twilight depends-centric years, or on your enfeebled husband! Always a silver lining.

It is common sense, of course, to point his little prodigious winkus at the absorbant pad in the diaper, but when you have a newborn, especially your first, you’ll probably find the whole thing overwhelming and forget a thing or two here or there. This one is really pretty key.

2.) MAKE SURE THE DIAPER WEBBING IS AROUND HIS BUTT. This next one is for keeping Mom and Dad, and anyone else who holds the baby (sorry uncle Andrew!), as dry as the baby. Many a times in these early weeks I’ve been snuggled up with my baby, only to realize later I have a large, continent shaped pee blot on my shirt, and his onesie is sopping wet . Sometimes I think this is just a volume issue–if you were on a liquid diet your pee stream would probably over power any diaper you threw at it, but also sometime they just have to be put on right.

Most diapers have an inner webbing/liner the fits snuggly around the baby’s legs and cute little bummy wummicus. I noticed that sometimes these things just sort of get mashed up in there somehow, and don’t really come out and do their work unless you guide them into place. Again, it’s common sense to make sure the diaper is on properly, but when your little baby is squirming around or crying, and especially if it’s about 3:30 AM, it can be an easy step to overlook.

3.) KEEP A PEE AND POOP SHIELD HANDY. This one is again aimed at keeping Mom and Dad dry and as poop free as possible. Often times when you’re changing your newborn, you’ll think, “Well, there is no possible way they could have more poop or pee up in there. This diaper is heavier than a blackhole.” But guess what, doctor, YOU’RE WRONG! Beware of the second wave. Guard your flank. Just when you think you’re safe, you’re likely to catch a stream in the eye or get a smelly present on your hand.

My mom’s way of dealing with this is to immediately place the new diaper under the baby after taking the dirty one out. Just keep him lifted by his ankles and clean him up. If anything goes awry, you can just clamp the new diaper over your papers geothermic power source and wait it out. I get annoyed doing that, so typically I just keep a receiving blanket under him while changing and use it in a similar way. I can just lift up the corners to shield myself or any area that needs shielding, and it helps keep the mess to a minimum.

4.) USE PLENTY OF DIAPER CREAM. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I have not had to deal with the horrors of diaper rash, but I understand it’s quite nasty for all parties involved. The reason I’m suggesting it is because it just seems soothing for the baby. Neither my wife nor I had ever changed a diaper before, and we thought Butt Paste, or diaper cream was just as a reaction to rashes. My dad kindly instructed me to “slather it on”, and it really seems to calm my little guy down, and hopefully will save any further hassle.

5.) MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT SIZE. A snug diaper is not always the best diaper. Sure, it’s important, but the you also have to make sure the thing is capable of getting the job done. You wouldn’t use a napkin to clean up an oil spill, so even though you might think your adorable lil yellow water factory doesn’t quite fit in the next step up in diapers, you might be surprised at how absorbant the pad is. He might also feel a little more comfortable.

I’d love to hear tips and tricks from anyone else!

Roman Rooftop from Matthew Dorris on Vimeo.

More info on how it was made after the jump.

My friend Campbell (check out his photoblog it frikkin rules! and I were in Rome shooting interview with the tour directors for Go Ahead, and found ourselves on a hotel rooftop for three days in a row. During a break in the rain, and a brief break in filming, I was able to shoot a little timelapse.

It was shot on Canon’s 5D with the canon intervelometer and the L series 24-70mm lens. It was edited in after effects with a little tilt shift effect, so saturation boost, and a little contrast added via curves.

A quick look at a video I made for my friends over at Nomuda Games!

NOMUDA Ident from Matthew Dorris on Vimeo.

I’m super excited to play their first game, Reedu!

So until the 5D mkIII rolls out, I’m sticking with my 7D, and have decided to upgrade my kit. I’ve been lusting, for about a year now, for a decent rig, but as many of you know, the entry price barrier on many of these things (zacuto and redrock) is really quite intimidating. Paying more for the system that holds my camera than the camera itself is not a premise that sits well with me. So for months I’ve been sort of resigned to just making do with a pvc based shoulder mount and looking like an idiot while doing run and gun. With my baby boy keeping me up nights, and my shooting schedule filling up (thank you summer!), I’ve been spending nights trying to figure out how to get started. But where? How can I even think about a follow focus when there’s two thousand dollars standing between me and a sick set of zacuto rails?

Enter Gini Rig. As far as I can tell, Gini Rig is out of South Korea, and is essentially a super awesome Zacuto knockoff company. And like Canal street in New York, you can expect to pay much, much less for your fakey than you do for the real thing. Unlike Canal street, however, Gini Rigs seem to provide a quality product. I’ve only had my rig for a day now, but it is really holding up to the testing I’m putting it through. I got the DSL-17 Magic, and I’m in love.

The aluminum is really solid, and not too heavy. It’s definitely seems a little heavier than the Zacuto rigs I’m used to working with, but it’s not killing me. The tightening clamps are extremely well constructed and are screw based, and don’t really show any sign that they will loosen or slide in the future, which is a concern with some of the other cheapy rigs out there. The screw turns a tube clamp instead of screwing directly against the rail, which minimalizes slippage, and most importantly keeps your rails nice and shiny and smooth.

One thing I’m not super huge fan of is the articulating arm that comes with this kit–it’s a semi bastardized version of an israeli arm, and lacks the total freedom and control of a traditional israeli arm. I’ll be upgrading this soon I imagine.

I had a lot of trouble finding Gini’s website, but came across their ebay store easily enough. I would strongly recommend ordering off the website, as when I ordered from ebay, I got shorted teh counterbalance. Now if I want the counterbalance it’s another $75, which seems strange since the rest of the rig cost only $299.

I’ll be shooting with this very soon and I’ll update with any changes if I fall out of love with this thing.

Meantime, I need to find a follow focus, and EVF, and a mattebox without going broke. Any suggestions anyone?

Small logo. Big power!

Another quick review, this time for iOS: Battleheart! I played this game on the Ipad 1.

In my seemingly never ending quest to find an RPG i want to play thorugh to the end on the Iphone or Ipad, I recently jumped on the bandwagon and downloaded Battleheart. This is a game that doesn’t need any more press–it was game of the week on itunes, afterall–but I couldn’t stop myself from wanting to write a little piece on it.

This little killer kawaii strategy/gauntlet/rpg has been keeping me up later than I should be, and comforts me when I have trouble falling back asleep after changing a diaper. Made by Mika Mobile, Battlheart is so cute, and it’s gameplay so addictive, that it put a smile on my face. For the first few hours.

Battlehearts premise is simple–you are a group of adventuerers and you have to travel around killing monsters. Not really sure why, or what the goal is, but hey–you’ve got a heart for battle, so just go battle already!

The gameplay is deceptively simple. Essentially your party of four sits in a stationary battle scenario, and is assaulted by waves of enemies. Characters are moved by tapping on them and dragging to the destination, or if you drag to a monster your character will attack that monster. Tanks tank, DPS dpses, and healers heal (if you are unfamiliar with those terms, just ask in the comments and i’ll explain them!). Actually getting your characters to do this, and using their special cooldown abilities to control the field is where the challenge and fun comes in. You might be hit with a huge wave, and send your ranged dps and heals to one corner of the screen, slow/snare the mobs with your mage, use your monk to aoe them quickly while your tank gathers the slowed mobs, and pop some defensive cooldowns until you’ve downed a few monster.s

Loot and gold play a big role, but not big enough to be a Blizzard/WoW/Diablo style lootfest.  You may get lucky and get one drop per battle, but most likely you will use your hard earned gold to buy loot at the merchant between battles. The loot is appealing enough that you may grind a battle once or twice to get enough gold to be comfortable, and with only 4 slots per character you can get a nice feel of customization without being overwhelmed by micro managing everything. I like it.

This game is cute. I really can’t stress that enough. It’s really, really, really cute. It’s all flash animation looking fantasy cute overload. The heros are cute. The monsters are cute. The backgrounds are cute. I almost felt bad killing the cute bad guys in such cute areas, but that didn’t stop me from meteoring a few slimes into the ground. There are a few tense moments here and there, and the game seems pretty well balanced. I say that with the caveat that I died only once or twice in my first few hours of gameplay, but I am actually pretty terrible at video games.

So what’s stopping me from picking this game back up after a few days in love with it? I can’t figure out a reason why I should. The gameplay is fun, but after a dozen maps it’s getting a little old, I guess. The biggest reason is that there is no story! If they had just added some equally cute dialogue and cut scenes, I would be saying that this is the best game for iOS. But without it, it’s failing to keep me interested. That is largely due to the kind of gamer I am. You’d never see me playing Angry Birds. I need a carrot on  a stick, be it loot, story, an interesting combat system, or characters i love. Battleheart has two of those four things, but for some reason, that’s not enough to get me through to beating the game.

LOOKOUT BioWare circa 1990!

I’ve decided to start a new category of review. Necessity is the mother of invention they say, and in this case, the mother of my child necessitates that I only play games here and there, at least while our baby is in swaddlin and peeing rivers hourly. So, I’ll just give a brief look into the games I do play when I get a chance.

The first of these reviews will be of Avadon, a fun little indie rpg I discovered while digging around in the OSX App store. It’s been tough going for me in the past few weeks. I quit WoW after finally getting into a raiding guild again (I just can’t handle HAVING to sign on to play twice a week). My in laws are in town and hogging the tv, so no console games. When they aren’t using it my wife is watching Japanese TV DVDs with our son. I’m looking for new ipad games. Looking for new mac games. I’m looking for a great plot, and easy to moderately challenging action.

So, when I found Avadon I was happy. It’s a throwback to the Ultima and Baldur’s Gate days, with kind of shitty graphics, lots of text based conversation trees, clicking to move, and a sprawling epic world. I’m only a few hours into it, and despite it’s complete lack of modern features, I’m fairly hooked.

It’s obvious from the very beginning that this is a deep, deep world that someone has put a lot of time and effort into imagining. There is a lot of history everywhere, and it seems like interesting back story and detail that brings the world you are in alive, or at least makes you curious to know more. It seems like most modern RPGs are focused more on the main characters, which I can’t fault, but they often leave me wanting to know more about the world they live in: the political systems, the classes, the religions, etc. Final Fantasy just hints at these things today, and it may be what has kept me from finishing one since FFIX.

The writing is most likely no going to set your mind ablaze with Tolstoyan delights, and the characters play on familiar tropes that we are all used to, but Spiderweb Software manage to meld the expected and unexpected in a way that is keeping me very very happy. Some of the responses from NPCs are unexpected. Being a nice guy doesn’t always engender love and respect, sometimes it causes suspicion or mockery, which is a refreshing change.

The story starts out with you heading to Avadon, which is the headquarters of “The Pact”, a treaty between five neighboring nations to use their combined military might to protect the whole, and crush anyone outside the pact, all in the name of self preservation. When you arrive, as a young Hand (Protective Agent), Avadon is in a state of chaos. Something has happened and you are needed to round up escaped prisoners in the catacombs beneath the tower. While eagerly jumping into your new role as a soldier of the pact, you discover some disturbing trends in prisoner management, which leads you to feel a little uneasy about the Pact’s leader, Redbeard. This unease paints the backdrop as you settle into your place as a cog in a machine that may be more corrupt than you thought.

Combat is turn based, and pretty fun. Right from the start you can tell that positioning and smart use of spells and cooldowns are going to make for some rich and deep strategy. I had a mage and a warrior in my party, which and opened most fights by sending in the tank, then casting a group disorient on the crowd of mobs, and assist training the dummies down one by one. I’m hoping to see the enemy AI use some similar techniques on me and seeing how I can get out of it.

There are rumors of an Ipad release, which I think would be amazing! I’ve been searching for a good Ipad rpg, with lots of story. Let me know if you can recommend anything!

I’ll try and come up with a more advanced review when I’ve played more than a few hours, but in the meantime I say go and download the demo! It’s free, and the game is awesome.

My wife, who is from Japan (and yes her family is fine thankyouverymuch you’ll have to look elsewhere to feel personally connected to the earthquake drama), was determined to have our baby while her parents were visiting us. Due to the cost of tickets, and our need for a sage like mother figure to guide us with a lantern of awesome dinners and having our laundry done daily, they booked their trip for a two week span surrounding our due date. The problem with this, of course, is that first time mothers are often one to two weeks late. My wife, who I will call Mayo, was up nights filled with horrible visions of having to entertain her parents while super duper pregnant, and giving birth the moment they returned to Japan.

With the due date come and gone, and no baby in sight, we decided to try out a few folk remedies for triggering labor. We brewed raspberry leaf tea (make sure you let it steep for 10 or more minutes!), we ate spicy food, and we went for long walks. One day, while I was out at a shoot, she went on a death march with her parents, to go shopping at a mall two miles away. They walked there and back. Still nothing.

The next day, the four of us went for a nice stroll along the Charles, took some pictures, and chased some geese. It was a lovely day, and Mayo and I were sort of resigned to enjoying ourselves and not worrying abou the baby. We decided to go out for a meal, as we knew soon enough we’d be eating at the kitchen table for a few months without reprieve (something I don’t mind as she is a kick ass cook and I am not too shabby either).

We decided to hit up a place we love, Muqueca, and ordered up some delicious seafoody soupies. Mayo’s parents go apeshit for seafood. I think if her dad had his way, he’d decimate the lobster population in a single sitting. After waiting an excessively long time, Mayo’s eyes begin to bulge when she saw people who had arrived after us being served before us. After the second table of johnnycomelately’s was casually served she began to foam at the mouth slightly and said in English “don’t fuck with the pregnant bitch”. We all laughed nervously. l

As our food was finally served (it was discovered the culprit was our ordering of an atypical dish), I put a dose of hot sauce on Mayo’s shrimp and yucca. I tasted some myself and nearly coughed up my toes. I warned her of the extreme spiciness of the dish, and she tried some anyway. A few minutes later, whether from the previous day’s death march, the gallon tank of raspberry leaf tea consumed on the day, the hot sauce, or the stress of poor customer service, Mayo began to look pained and uncomfortable.

I should stop here for a second and say that Mayoka, even at her due date, had no idea what a contraction was supposed to feel like. By some miracle she’s never had a menstrual cramp in her life. She had experienced weird pressures during the last few months of the pregnancy, but assumed it was just Momo resting a body part here or there. It wasn’t until that morning, during a routine check up, that a nurse told her by looking at the monitor that she was having a contraction. And Mayoka said “oh, wow, so that’s what that is.” We had assume it was a Braxton-Hicks, which is to say, a practice contraction that does not lead to labor.

As I sat across from my wife, with her parents next to us, I saw by the look in her eye that something very new, very real, and very strong was happening. It was an exciting moment. After nearly 10 months of knowing I was going to have a child at some point in the nebulous near future, I knew that within a day, or possibly hours, I would be holding my son in my arms. I didn’t know what to feel, what to say, or what to do. I was pretty sure that various liquids were about to emerge from every orifice on my body. I took a deep breath, reach for my wife’s iphone, and fired up her contraction counter.

It didn’t take long to figure out that she had base jumped right into serious labor. The contractions were coming anywhere from 4-7 minutes apart, and were lasting over a minute. Those are the numbers the doctors tell you means it’s time to go to the hospital, after telling you in countless ways to not come before then, as they’ll just send you home. I had been predicting a pastoral 5-10 hours on our couch at home doing breathing excercises and watching movies while we moved slowly towards point break. Instead here I found myself toe to toe with a dragon when I had been expecting a trip to the petting zoo.

I began to scramble, and call for the check. True to her character, Mayoka made us wait while she ordered desert to go. The contractions continued strongly on the way home, and when we arrived she sort of half kneeled, half curled up on the floor and began to breath like a sick animal. I called the doctor, who kindly said, “Well, you only live a few mintues away, why not come down. If we send you back, you’ve only wasted a few minutes. Or you could just wait at home longer. Whatever you wanna do…”

It’s always nice when a medical professional says something like “Sure, why not?” or “It’s your call”. Once in college I had an ear blockage and the doctor on duty looked in there and quietly said under his breath “Holy shit.” That was NOT cool. But regardless of this anonymous doctor’s cavalier attitude, I knew we had to go in.

NEXT:

THE HOSPITAL, or HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE EPIDURAL.

momo sleeps just after his birth

I had a baby! He’s awesome. If I can be super cheesy for a second, I feel that I never knew love before. I thought my wedding day would be the happiest day of my life, which had beat out the day I got my SNES as a youth, and now my appreciation for love, hormones, life, and all things delightful and ineffable has increased tenfold. I honestly feel blessed.

Anyway, I want to start including some stuff I’ve learned or researched in my blogs (what blogs?) but I’m going to try anyway.