JCanimator.com
Internet Home of James Clarke, Animator

Man I really need to update my site don’t I? Happy Holidays 2015 to all. Things are still going great, keeping busy which is why I’ve been lacking updates around here. My LinkedIn page is certainly more up to date than the HTML resume I have here, running logs two years out of date, about page three years old, etc. If you’re in KC come on out to our next AAUGA meeting, whenever that may be. Always love digging in to 3dsMax issues, writing MaxScripts and generally helping folks do more cool new things. As usual shoot me an email or a tweet, I’m still around despite a lacking number of new WordPress posts…

Boy if only I knew how much my previous post title, “Changes” would really come true in 2013. After the group I was in at HNTB being dissolved in April, my wife and I welcomed our daughter Vivien to the world in May, I chose to spend the month of June at home with them because I accepted a new position at a new company, Burns & McDonnell, and started there in July! I’m titled a “Senior Applications Specialist” and am happily providing visualization services to our 11 different global practices from the Design Applications support group within IT.

What a wild ride – 2014 has some big shoes to fill if it’s going to be just as exciting (I’d be okay if it wasn’t even!) as I venture into the new territories fatherhood brings and continue to widen my engineering visualization portfolio.

I’ve kept up with the running too through some of that (just updated my running log page and discovered I’ve ran a total of 20 half-marathons now, cool!). I made another failed attempt at a sub four hour marathon in KC last October too, maybe I’ll give it another shot this year. Maybe even after another Pike’s Peak Ascent run! We’ll have to see how spring goes first though as I’ve signed up to complete the Heartland 39.3 series for the third year in a row. Beyond that, just hoping for lots of training runs as I may have taken it a bit easy this winter. As always, don’t hesitate to give me a shout & take care, -James.

Lots of changes going on around these parts lately –

• My wife and I are expecting our first child (a girl) in May!
• The HNTB Incubation Center I was a part of for the past 7 years has effectively dissolved. I have now transferred over to HNTB’s National Sales Office and am excited to join back up with the old gang and focus back in on high-end 3D visualization and creating tools for the 6 other 3D experts in the group.
• My wife and I just welcomed 6 new members to our family – baby chickens! 2 Ameraucanas, 2 Buff Orpingtons, and 2 Rhode Island Reds – all hens (we hope!) that we’ll raise for eggs.

Three bullet points sure doesn’t seem like enough considering the significance of everything, but I think that’s enough to last us quite a while!

I’ve been digging pretty deep into expanding my photography knowledge lately as my wife’s freelance business McClarke Marketing was able to pick up a Canon 7D this past year. I’m currently in the process of getting my flickr account up and running, at which point maybe I can start putting some images online here too. Stay tuned, or as always, feel free to drop me an email.

I’ve been planning a longer post for quite a while, needing race reports after successfully completing both Pike’s Peak Ascent, and my second ever full-marathon, along with a host of other running related activities – but in the absence of time to do that, I’ll just add a note here that I’ve updated my Running Page after hitting a goal I wasn’t sure I even had until partway through this year: setting a new PR in each major distance in 2012. Excited to be getting faster…

Given the Facebook and Twitterverse I don’t often have cause to post updates on here, but I am constantly updating my Running page, so look up top and head there if you want to meet up at an event sometime! Currently, I’m in the last stages of prep for the Pike’s Peak Ascent! After that, I’m hoping to go for my second ever marathon in October (and actually train & run the thing this time)!

Wife and I inspected our ‘Verona’ behive today and I think that has to be hands-down the  best inspection we’ve done to date. First real detailed bee work we’ve done this year, and probably a more thorough inspection than we’ve ever done. We swapped the bottom and top hive bodies for this season and took out the medic strip that was in the bottom hive (already took out the top one earlier this week.) What is now the bottom hive body had about 60% filled frames of honey, and the other 40% was mostly filled brood combs. Plus! We found the queen on this one, first time we’ve found our own queens anywhere. The now top hive body had a lot less filled comb, you can tell that was on the bottom for winter and they ate there first. A couple of frames of pollen stores, a frame or two of partial brood and larvae, and the remainder was partially filled honey frames.

All in all they look to be doing great, this was around 2pm in the afternoon, around 70 degrees outside turning to overcast. Had to use minimal smoke and no one ever got upset with us much throughout the whole ordeal. Queen excluder and one super placed on top and they’re back in business!

Well, after setting up WordPress on a variety of other sites off and on for the past year, I finally got around to installing it on my own website! More to come in a bit, plus I hope to migrate my pages from my old blog over to this as well just for history’s sake.

Alright, with a sudden desire of ‘out with the old in with the new’
I’m off to backup this handful of posts from over the years
and install wordpress. The first steps to completely
revamping my domain. Stay tuned!

Edit: Woah. SQL exports, csv file editing, xml formatting.
Conversion may be more difficult than I was initially hoping!

I’m starting to dig into different blogging/CMS systems lately.
Drupal and WordPress mainly. Might change things around here
and update with something I’ve done more recent than 6 years
ago. Anyway I just wanted to update and say that my webhost,
Hostrocket.com is amazing. Best support I’ve ever received.
If you need a website, go there. Seriously.

Time for another update. This time my site was invaded
by some hackers and redirected a bunch of stuff to Russia.
Exciting.

Still working at HNTB as a 3D Visualization Team Lead.
Focused on R&D and have stepped out of the day to day
project production work. Looking at integrating workflows
across groups, scripting solutions, training/support/troubleshooting,
investigating new tech. Lots of fun stuff.

Been married a year now, bought a house. Lots of good things.
Haven’t been spending any time developing my website because
of the myriad of other things to do around work/home/play,
but I’d love to hear from you, just drop me an email.