Sean Carter Campbell

Two Chopsticks

2011-11-11T11:11:00.000-08:00

Special once in a lifetime dates like today cause a lot of chatter. Here's a true story about my own private 11/11/11 celebration:

Jihyun and I were still dating. As usual, we were taking a drive and lost in a conversation. All of a sudden she stopped and said, "Look at that! It looks like two pairs of chopsticks next to each other!" It was 11:11. From that moment on 11:11 was our "thing."

During our relationship I spent three summers abroad teaching English. We decided that we would each set an alarm for 11:11, and committed to praying for each other when the alarm went off in our time zone. It was a great way to feel connected even though we were far apart.

Fast-forward, we are engaged and sitting in a coffee shop trying to decide on a wedding date. It's early October. Obviously the date 11/11 comes up. We both agree that's way too far away. We decide on February 11th (2/11).

On our wedding day the service started right at 2:00pm. I walked in with my groomsmen and stood anxiously at the front of the church. The doors at the back opened and one by one the bridesmaids started coming down the aisle as Chopin's Prelude was played over and over. Finally, the flower girl made it all the way to the front and it was time for the big moment. I was going to see my bride in her beautiful dress. There was a pause. The doors started to open and my heart beat faster. Then the doors started to close again! What?! Is everything alright? What's going on? A few endless moments later the doors opened (phew) and there she was. The most beautiful woman in the world walking towards me to join our lives together.

The rest of the service went perfectly (except when I forgot the second verse to the song I was singing to her--give a guy a break). When it was all over and we were greeting our friends and family a man from my church took me aside and asked, "did you guys plan for Jihyun to walk down the aisle at 2:11? Because I was looking at my watch and that's the exact time she entered the room!"

Anyway, there is some magic in the number for me. 11/11 and 11:11 will forever remind me of my amazing bride. How much I love her and am blessed to be sharing this journey with her. 11/11/11 is a once in a lifetime anniversary for us. 3 sets of chopsticks. That's one set for each of our kids.

I love you just the way you are!

2011-10-23T14:30:00.000-07:00

Monday, October 3rd, 2011 at 10:04am my world changed again. A beautiful little girl was born into our family named Ella Grace. It wasn't until we were in the post-op recovery room, where the lights were a little bit dimmer; but the first time she opened her little eyes, looked around and locked on to me, I was a complete goner. I'm glad that I have a lot of help in her two older brothers to watch out for her! I can already see her sweet little personality. She blinks like a girl, folds her little hands like a girl, and definitely has her mommy's charisma.

We are so blessed to have Jihyun's mom in town for a while to help us with the kids and really support Ji while she is recovering from her 3rd (?!) c-section. It is not easy to go back to work so quickly, but it's much easier knowing that Ji has backup. Now that we aren't rookie parents any more we know that the babies are the easiest ones. All they need is to eat, sleep, snuggle and have diaper changes. Kindergartners and toddlers on the other hand could wear out a professional marathon runner! Ella saves up all of her awake time for when I get home. We usually sit together and she gurgles to me about her "day." It's kind of awesome.

Usually though, after a full day of work and the sleep deprivation that comes with being a new dad, our evenings look more like this...

So, as my parents were visiting us last weekend (read showering their new granddaughter with a CLOSETFULL of baby girl clothes) we had an after-dinner jam session. My mom snuck this video of us having a good time. This song is our family anthem, and definitely Ryan's favorite: I love you just the way you are. It's great how my two-year-old already knows how to project his voice. He didn't even sit through as many voice lessons as Noah did. Enjoy:

Staying RAW

2011-02-13T20:34:00.000-08:00

This afternoon I was standing in the kitchen, breathing in the peace and quiet that can only come when our two sons are sleeping deeply in their rooms, these fleeting and zen-like moments are hard to come-by, you have to wake up earlier than Noah, enjoy the few fleeting moments when their naps overlap, or find the tiniest scrap of energy left after they are finally snuggled up for the evening. This was some rare and precious time. So, as I listened to the espresso machine humm and whish I began to hear a beautiful, soft melody rising and falling and twirling through the air. It danced lightly and quickly expanded to a powerful mountain of sound and slowly faded back again into a twilight filled with a thousand points of light. I hadn't heard Jihyun playing the piano by herself for a long time--without the impromptu four-hand and sometimes six-hand arrangements produced by the kids, and without her accompanying one of my songs. I had forgotten how just listening to good music can transport you to another place.

By the time the piece was over I had made our coffee and was just sitting at the table, in awe. We sat together and talked about life. I told Jihyun that I really missed hearing her play solo, she said that she missed hearing my voice. That kind of opened a pandora's box. I have really missed singing recently too. I spent five intense years of my life in music school completely immersed in voice and performing, then graduated to teaching voice and scrambling for as many performance opportunities as possible. Life comes at you fast, along with responsibilities and new opportunities and now I can't remember the last time I sat down to actually practice voice (not music, just the vocal technique exercises) that were so critical to keep in shape and continue improving to the next level. Think of an NCAA athlete that made it to the championships in college, graduated, and then except for a pickup game of basketball here and there hasn't worked out or conditioned for 8 years. Yeah...so...

So, I wasn't feeling the best about my abilities when Jihyun brought up wanting to hear me sing again. Honestly, I'd like to hear me sing again too, but everything feels so different and I told her that I feel out of shape, and like I have been missing time, getting further behind, and basically threw myself a great pity party. Then, she does what she always does best...she broke it down for me. If you haven't been to her website--you should--my wife has been seriously into photography lately, and is learning more and developing her skills more every day. So she was able to cross disciplines and bring a nice dish of wisdom to the party.

When you are taking a photograph with a DSLR you have different file-type options. Two of the most popular are RAW files (these are just like they sound--GINORMOUSLY HUGE files of raw image data. You can't save as many of these, obvs) and JPG files (these you are more familiar with. They are compressed so that they are smaller, load faster in a browser, and you can store more of them). So, an important consideration when choosing which file-type to use when saving your pictures: RAW files are huge, slower to load, and they take up a ton of room, but you can do all kinds of Photoshop/Lightroom magic if they don't come out perfect because all of the information is saved there. Say you take a picture in low-light, and it was a really really good once in a lifetime shot, but the low-light made it come out as a bunch of shades of black. All of the picture information is still there. A few magic photoshop enhancements and you can make it look like there was studio lighting involved. However, if you save it as a JPEG everything seems much simpler, much more black and white, but you lose all of the extra "hidden" information in the picture, the shades of grey, they gradients of color, and you're stuck with your inky black blob.

After we finished geeking out about file-types Jihyun got to an amazing point. I was oversimplifying. All of that time and effort, and raw talent are stored as a RAW file type. It's there to access and come back to--to enhance and use in ways and combinations that I never thought possible. But, if I keep limiting myself by believing that it's getting dusty and outdated with disuse or that I will never be able to continue growing in that area I am basically compressing all of that knowledge and experience into a JPG. That's known in photog speak as a "destructive change" because you can transform a RAW file into a JPG, but you can't change a JPG back into a RAW file.

That was definitely encouraging, and made me wonder how many areas of my life I've been trying to simplify into smaller sizes, destructively limiting and changing useful experiences into flat information?

I Protest!

2011-02-01T22:13:00.000-08:00

I recently joined the Twitter bandwagon and was instantly hooked. Being able to constantly check the current pulse of any slice of culture or region in the world is addictive, and eye opening. So, for the past 2 weeks I have been completely rapt by the revolutions and protests in Tunisia, then Egypt unfolding in real-time.

I will be the first to shout out that I am no expert in politics, especially not the politics of another region in the world, especially not one as complex and contentious as North Africa/Middle East. But, watching people peacefully and firmly stand their ground in front of the police, in front of the military and in the eyes of the world just to demand basic freedoms that we take for granted has been inspiring, and humbling at the same time.

When the communications systems were shut down in Egypt, in an attempt to disrupt the gatherings I was offended--along with most of the internet--and was excited when I started to see small pockets of resistance popping up. I don't sign petitions, I always break the chain when a chain-letter comes to me, and I generally like to observe and not get too involved, but with Twitter it is so effortless to click that little icon and RT...

So, I did. I don't know how many people joined in with the Retweeting, but I was actually pretty stunned when I logged in to my account the next day and I saw this...

Which links to this...

Wow. Vodafone took note, and even wrote a nice press release, and gave me a personal invitation to read it. Web 2.0 at work. A couple of issues I take with the response however:

1) Voice services were restored, what about data and more importantly SMS? Definite props for getting basic communications up and running, but SMS messages are quicker, easier and take up MUCH less bandwidth on a system that is probably experiencing a very high load during all of this.

2) I don't now the telecom laws or the politics behind doing business in Egypt, but even the military isn't shutting down the protesters at the behest of the government. The Egyptian subsidiary of a global company based in a democratic country could do a bit more to stretch the issue before completely bowing under pressure.

3) To me, paragraph three makes a lot more sense if you remove the word "employees" and insert the phrase "future profits." I would imagine that there are more than one or two Vodafone Egypt employees who took their day off while the company was shut down and wandered over to Tahrir Square to get their protest on. They might have, if they were allowed to, taken the same risks back in the control rooms as they probably did in the crowds while also keeping their family and friends in touch with one another and the outside world.

I could write an entire post on cool tech that has been helping civil dissidents in countries like Egypt communicate safely and effectively (Tor, Google's new talk-to-tweet, etc.) but wouldn't it be great if some spicy, visionary philanthropist or NGO decided that what could really help democratize the internet for good would be independent ISPs and secure communication networks outside of government control that would be free to access and provide conduits for information to pass freely when stuff like this goes down...

From Seoul Food to Soul Food

2011-02-01T21:13:00.000-08:00

Ribs n' Waffles!

So, one of our birthday traditions in the Campbell family is that the person of the day gets to choose a restaurant they would like to eat at. Eating is SUPER IMPORTANT in our family so this is NO JOKE, and a great excuse to hit some fancy new place we haven't tried yet, or a great reason to nosh on a consistent favorite. This past Sunday, to everyone's delight, Jihyun picked a favorite.

Joe's Farm Grill is a locavore's dream. You literally drive to a farm in Gilbert, where you eat food that was freshly prepared using fresh ingredients that are fresh from the ground, or the tree, or wherever that ingredient normally comes from and you can smell the fresh air being breathed out by the grass and trees all around you. Do you get it? It's fresh!

We all ordered something different so that we could have a taste of each dish. Noah, who is just getting into his Dr. Seuss phase, ordered the Green Eggs & Ham (pesto, eggs, ham, awesomeness), Ji had pancakes with fresh fruit and I ordered Ribs and Waffles. Seriously, the picture doesn't do it justice. Smoky-sweet BBQ goodness on a golden waffle that is soft and steamy inside. Good grief! I'm glad it takes 30 minutes to drive there or I would be in trouble.

The other part of Joe's that makes it worth the drive, the kids can be as loud and crazy as they want to--we're sitting on picnic benches outside. They can knock drinks over, squeal as loud as they want, leave the table and run up and down hills and we can relax and have a conversation while we watch them...try that at Ruth's Chris.

Can't Take My Eyes Off You

2011-01-16T21:55:00.000-08:00

Can't Take My Eyes Off You by seancartercampbell

I have always loved this song. Jihyun is participating in a photography project and this week's assignment was to pick a song and use that as her inspiration to take some photos. This was a great reason to sit down at the piano together and work on some new music. So, we arranged a new version of Can't Take My Eyes Off You together and as we were jamming I used my new SoundCloud app on my iPhone to capture this in one take. Ji added some compression and reverb using Garage Band so that it isn't so dry.

Fast Food, Campbell Style

2011-01-04T21:28:00.000-08:00

The fam and I were driving home this evening when all of a sudden traffic came to a stand-still. There was an accident. Then, all of a sudden, one of the kids let me know that he needed to use the w.c. REAL bad...4 year olds are not famous for their bladder control, so luckily there was an exit coming up. Not far from the exit was a local Korean grocery that we love! We pulled into the parking lot, ran inside to take care of the little one, and 30 minutes later walked out with a cartful of delicious ingredients.

Our fast-food this evening was Korean instant ramen, kimchi and a pint of OB Beer. Who needs McDonald's?

Night and Day

2011-01-03T21:22:00.000-08:00

Night and Day by seancartercampbell

So, Ji and I were goofing around a couple of weeks ago and singing through a few songs by Cole Porter that I was going to perform with my friend Larry Loeber. We thought it sounded pretty decent and decided to bring out the computer and record a track. This song was laid down in one take, through the magic of Mac's Garage Band app.

It was a lot of fun to do, and actually sparked an idea. I am going to keep learning new rep and posting it here. I hope you enjoy.

About Me

2011-01-03T20:47:00.000-08:00

I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up. I do know that I love being married to my beautiful wife Jihyun Campbell, being a father to two adventurous little boys, I have a solid day job that I enjoy and I still get to play around with various side projects including making music, helping people take their work online, and eating really good food.

I have been designing websites for people for more than 10 years. I used to think that I absolutely had to host everything on my own space (blog software, media player, etc.) but honestly, that is pretty high maintenance. This arrangement is a lot like a chef who has been working all day in his kitchen and then when he gets home, he doesn't want to cook for himself. Lazy? Maybe. But I want to save my web-design energy for those who need it, and focus my freetime on other projects. On the plus side, joining communities like Blogger and Soundcloud also connects me to people who may just stumble across my work as they are clicking through the internets (I do that too!). If that is how you got here, welcome.