.: bistan.net :.

My sister got the opportunity to ask Clark Howard a money question . . . and get her two minutes of fame.  This was obviously before she had her baby.  Check it out:

This video is over 8 years old, but I recently converted it from VHS to digital (apologies in advance for the low-quality).  My sister and I went skydiving with a friend from college in 2001.  I had to go with Vimeo because YouTube sucks.  First, there were length issues and then they didn’t like the licensed music.   Enjoy this flashback!

Skydiving from Jonathan Davis on Vimeo.

Last night, Tristan and I went “mountain biking” on some vacant land in our neighborhood.  Half of the land is county-owned and the other half is the remnants of a defunct subdivision, thanks to the economic crisis.

We had a great time, until Tristan had a spectacular wipeout, as seen in the video below.  It was his first time on the “hills” on a big bike.

This is one of those things that he will laugh about later.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that we attended part of the taping for the Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade.  I also included a few of the 500 pictures I snapped and one of the videos I shot.  Here is a tilt-shift video, created by Disney of the Christmas parade.

As you can see, tilt-shift is a cool technology.  I consider it analogous to HDR photography, but even cooler.  Here are links to two other tilt-shift videos with short explanations by Disney if you are interested in the technology:

Magic Kingdom Tilt-shift
Epcot Tilt-shift
Tilt-shift Explanation

Here are some screen shots from the video, so that you can see where to find us in the parade.  It airs tomorrow, Christmas Day, at 10:00 AM on your local ABC channel.

For the second time in my life, I was able to take part in the taping of a very popular Christmas special.  In 2007, Kimberlie and I were a part of “Oprah’s Favorite Things” and were showered with overpriced merchandise by a television diva.  Other than that, there is only one other holiday television special that I would love to be a part of, and somehow I managed to pull it off this year.

This past weekend, we were invited to be part of the taping of the Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade.  Basically, they entice you to come be a part of the crowd with free entry into the Magic Kingdom for the day.  We were unable to make the Kris Allen (American Idol) taping on Thursday or the Celine Dion taping on Friday due to work and school schedules, so we decided to go down for the Jonas Brothers on Saturday. 

The Jonas Brothers sang a three minute song called Summertime Anthem, but it took us four hours to shoot the performance.  The director made them sing it no less than 10 times.  Part of that was teaching the 5000 member audience to break out into a flash-mob style dance routine towards the end of the song.  It was awesome!  By shear luck, we ended up at the very front of the stage!

The parade taping was another grueling six hours, because performers had to perform over and over and over for the perfect camera angles.  Steve Rushton (singer) and the Santa Buddies (dogs from a new Disney Christmas movie) were there and all of it was hosted by Kelly Ripa.  No Regis this year due to surgery!  And by shear accident, we ended up on center street, where the performers performed.

Of course I shot over 500 pictures and 3 videos.  Here is a small sample:

Check out the video to see how close we were to the action!

Be sure to watch the parade Christmas morning on ABC.  There is no possible way that they can show the parade without including some very good shots of us.  You should definitely watch for the shot of  Tristan and me dancing (above) during the “Move it, Shake it, Celebrate it” portion of the parade.

Last month, I uploaded this to YouTube and posted it to Facebook.  I just remembered that at least one of my readers probably hasn’t seen it.

Everyone knows that I’m as unpatriotic as they come.  My child, however, is the complete opposite:

Happy Monday everyone!

The folks at Disney have made a 3 minute video of this January’s marathon. Of course, it took me a lot longer than 3 minutes to run it — but the video certainly motivates me for 2010.

I guess this is better late than never.  I’ve been swamped with projects at home and work.

Last Thursday, Tristan graduated from 4K and both of the kids had a program called “It’s a Small World”.  I guess all of those Disney trips paid off because my kids learned that song really fast!  Below are photos and video from the event.  Enjoy!

Tristan:

Mackenzie: