Posts tagged Hobbies
Published by Bear
Thursday, May 21st, 2009
View My Newest Creation before reading.
It's the Web 2.0 and by now most of you have seen or heard of Wordclouds (aka Tag Clouds). I created the subject of this post to jump start my recent lack of extracurricular education. Though not technically a Tag Cloud -- it's horizontally aligned as opposed to a cloud-like grouping -- it fills much of the same mental desire.
It's ecstasy distilled to continuously refresh the page and see the array of colors and word formations. It would be doubly good if I could figure out a useful way to properly rotate the words so that they fit into a nice formation.
If you have a block of text you'd like to use as a seed, Wordle makes it so easy a caveman could do it. Take this post for instance.
Brought to you by The Lab.
Published by Kizi
Thursday, May 7th, 2009
Guys, this movie is amazing.
Published by Bear
Sunday, March 1st, 2009
Those of you I've talked to know that my Home Theater PC (HTPC) has been done for a while now. Problem is, I've been too lazy to post the pictures I'd taken online until now.
I uploaded them to a flickr set so everyone can head over there and check them out. I keep threatening to do an actual photo gallery system here but haven't found the time. In all honesty I have plenty of time but I use it working and playing World of Warcraft.
Molly and I are canceling our cable this week so in about... a year the computer should pay for itself. I'll take some pictures of my current entertainment system and post them up here soon.
Published by Maida
Friday, September 26th, 2008
Nevermind ....
.jpg)
So I gaffed when I asked both Garvey and Kizi to post. The offer is still up for you, Kizi, to unleash your creative potential upon this site and it's ... many ... readers. Of course, standard rules apply. One of those rules posits the requirement of interesting and not really weird or utterly useless content. Sorry Garvey. Your last post violated all three of those stipulations, and thus you're not allowed to post anymore. Just try to sign in. You can't!
Kidding. Garvey, we miss you. Just know that if you post something inexplicable, you will get trashed in the comments by the authorized bloggers on this site and it's ... many ... readers.
Musak
I recently obtained access to the Kings of Leon's new album, "Only by the Night." Rolling Stone awarded it 3 stars, but as Jon pointed out, "yeah; those reviews are becoming suspect though; The Jonas Brothers get 4 stars? wtf?" I've heard only two songs off of the album - "Sex on Fire" and "Use Somebody," and enjoyed both. Can't vouch for the rest of it, but hopefully it has some hidden gems. Note: "Sex on Fire" is currently the #1 single in the United Kingdom, so I mean ... if the Brits like it, it's probably good. They're more sophisticated than we Americans, and thus everything they like is better than what we like, unless the two likes are identical.
Secondly, I've been listening to Kasabian, a fairly popular British band. They've got two albums out so far, one self-titled, the second one called "Empire." The only song I can recognize is "Club Foot" from their first album - good driving music. With fairly limited experience with these albums (I know, it's like I just listened to a few songs and then recommended three albums ... cough), I suggest Kasabian sounds like a cross between a modern-Beatlesish sound, Linkin Park, The Clash, and the Dandy Warhols. I emphatically point to their song "Me Plus One," off of their second album, Empire. It lacks the Linkin Park elements of their other work, but I dig the harmonies. Old-School meets New-Skool.
Sleep Study!
So two nights ago I travelled to Baptist Medical Center in downtown Jacksonville to spend the night covered in electrodes. As some of you might know, I've been struggling to sleep for the last three months. Trouble falling asleep, trouble staying alseep, no energy, the works. Interesting experience. I get out of the elevator, and walk into a dimly-lit room with two chairs. A sign reads, "please ring the bell." There is no bell. I idle confusedly for ten seconds, then a voice booms, "How may I help you?" I state my purpose. "Ah yes, Joseph, here for the sleep study! We'll be right there." A nurse shows up and directs me to my hospital room. It looks like a hotel room - hotel bed, hotel table with hotel chair, hotel television with a hotel-like number of channels. My own bathroom and a window I can't open. For roughly an hour I sat at the desk, studying for my Torts midterm next week, until the nurse reappeared. 6 electrodes were placed on my scalp to read brain waves, 1 electrode was placed on either side of my eyes to detect REM, 1 electrode was placed on either side of my mouth to detect jaw grinding, 2 electrodes were placed on my legs to detect leg movement, and a breathing monitor was placed just above my mouth. All the while, a camera watches you while you sleep.
Creepy moment: At around 1:30 in the morning I woke up, fumbled with the wires next to me so I could turn to my side. A minute later, the nurse booms in on a microphone by my bed. "Is there anything wrong, Joseph?" Negative. "Okay, just checking on you."
Finally, they woke me up at 6:30 with a free-breakfast voucher. Free grits and fried eggs!
I should get my results within a couple of weeks. They can't come too soon. I'm desperate.
Published by Nick
Thursday, July 24th, 2008
Edit2:Big ass yellow dude came by today while I was pinching off dead buds. Pretty rad looking. Here he is getting high off Pentas.
img95.imageshack.us/img95/898/butteryflyyellow1xp7.jpg
img95.imageshack.us/img95/3894/butterflyyellow2jn6.jpg
Edit1:more butterfly pictures. Linking out so Maida doesn't cry.
img247.imageshack.us/img247/9376/zinniafly2jf4.jpg
img261.imageshack.us/img261/4183/echinaceaflypi7.jpg
Worked a lot more on my mom's garden. Yeah I like flowers.
Most of the Vincas I originally planted in the front row died. I think it was root rot so I planted everything else with a nice padding of perlite under it to drain better. Anyway, we gots in thar (middle out):
Front row - Melapodium, Zinnia, Vinca, Mexican Heather.
2nd Row - Zinnia varieties
3rd Row- Butterfly bush, Pentas
4th Row - Purple cone echinacea, Cleome.
Also, butterflies chill here all freakin day.
Really crappy example, but there's one.
Anyway, the gnome needs a name. He's jolly and sullen. Yeah that's right. Any suggestions?
Published by Nick
Friday, June 20th, 2008
Patrick and I got some serious sculpting done for Muriel's birthday presents.
I made the pipe smoking lizard and Patrick crafted the Hippopotamus with down syndrome.
Her Birthday isn't til tomorrow so don't tell.
Published by Maida
Wednesday, June 18th, 2008
After much incubation, bug-fixes, theme tweaks, and other neat things that I don't even know about, Firefox reached it's third iteration yesterday, June 17. I must say, it was sad to let my Minefield (Mozilla's name for pre-release nightly builds) go, but it'll be nice to use a finalized browser for the first time in months. Some fairly significant changes under the hood should hoist this browser as top dog for the foreseeable future.
Maida's favorite new features (aka the only new features Maida has noticed, uses, or understands):
1) It's prettier.
The Vista theme looks way nicer than the default ugly-as-shit Firefox 2 and 1 themes. It's more integrated into Vista's native look, and frankly, it's just shinier. No word on whether Mac, Linux, and XP users are pleased, but I have a feeling they prefer this to earlier native appearances.
2) It just runs faster.
Firefox clearly loads web pages with greater speed, beating previous firefox versions and Internet Explorer 7 in just about everything. I'm not sure if it beats Safari 3 in Javascript, however.
3) It uses way less RAM.
Maybe I should lump this guy into point #2, but then I'd have a smaller list.
4) Add-ons Manager way better.
Like way better. I can check which ones I'm using, disable/enable them, and find new ones within a much more streamlined interface. Maida cheers silently.
5) A Password Manager that actually works the way it should!
No more saving of wrong passwords! Hurray!
Published by Bear
Sunday, June 15th, 2008
Today was a good day. This morning, around 9 o'clock, my dad and I set out for a river adventure. We had decided the night before that it might be fun to try a long ride in the kayaks (weather permitting). The forecast looked good so we packed lunches and set off to paddle around Grindstone island. This was to be an adventure in three legs.
.jpg)
Leg 1 was fairly uneventful and fell between the hours of 9 and 10. We started off from the house and paddled straight across the channel to Picton island. Hugging the eastern shore, we made our way North and completed the first leg of our trip by stopping at Canoe Point for a banana. Hurray for potassium.
The second leg proved equally as calm as the first. We came around the North-East point of Grindstone and made our way West through crystal clear water. We'd started to develop a steady rhythm in our strokes that made miles pass without notice. We ended the second leg by beaching the kayaks at Potter's Beach to enjoy our sandwiches in the sand.
I wish I could say the the rest of the trip was just as pleasant and peaceful but I'd be lying through my teeth. After we left the beach, the wind had decided to ride in from the West. To clarify, the westernmost edge of the St. Lawrence is bordered by Lake Ontario which is very large and provides many miles of open water for wind to build up speed. We did not anticipated the difficulty of our next challenge.
The last leg was one hell of a paddle. We turned the South-West corner and met rolling white caps in the channel. Since we weren't going exactly with or against the waves, the boats kept turning off course. The two boats have a skeg and rudder but we were afraid to deploy them should the waves grab hold of either and tip us over. We put the meat to the paddle (as they say) as we navigated our way down river to Bluff island. We got to Bluff well after noon and the midday boat traffic was in full swing. Now, in addition to maneuvering the waves, we were constantly reminded of the speedboats, cruisers, and barges flying past our bows. Upon reaching Bluff, we rested for a moment, turned the corner, and started the last section home.
Minutes after 3 o'clock we reached the dock for a total time of just over 6 hours. The round-trip distance was estimated at approximately 14 miles. We cracked open a couple beers at the water and rested for a few moments before heading back up to the house. The next feat of strength (and arguably the toughest) was entertaining extended family for a father's day dinner.
Today was a good day.
Published by Nick
Friday, April 18th, 2008
Finally finished up this sucker. Need to touch up the claw a little and then add some flora, but it turned out decently. I broke about 4 of my feathers today ><
Published by Maida
Sunday, March 23rd, 2008
Dearest Robots, I've finally begun streaming content from my PC onto the television in the Media Room upstairs. Glorious, glorious, glorious. The Xbox 360 can stream only WMV and MPEG-2 video, which pretty much eliminated my entire collection of videos. Then came Xilisoft! All Hail Xilisoft and their grandiose video conversion software! Next up, .mkv files (which house my HD movie content, like Saving Private Ryan, The Matrix, and No Country For Old Men). Since my Xvid Avi files can be converted quite easily (though it takes some time), I should have all my videos ready to watch in no time. South Park and Family Guy marathons abound!
Oh, and Happy Easter, you fucking atheists!
Published by Bear
Thursday, March 20th, 2008
There are officially five, yes five, days remaining before the first chance of "correct taste" for our latest homebrew beer. Maida has insisted on opening a bottle after one week of waiting (tomorrow) and I can only pray that we are not disappointed.
We have followed every direction as precisely as possible and yet I have a growing suspicion that something will go (has already gone) terribly wrong. With our anal-ity for directions in mind, I can only assume that any misfortune is a direct result of God personally damning us both.
I will comment/repost when the abomination has had time to fully mature. Please put us in your prayers.
On side note, I saw There Will Be Blood for the first time last night. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it all day and I don't expect tomorrow or the next to be any different.
Edit 3/23/08 - Jon just told me that an inside source informed him that Porters and Stouts need to sit in the bottle for around 2 months. So... T-Minus 1 month and 21 days?
Published by Kizi
Friday, February 22nd, 2008
Little Black boys are innately hilarious.
Published by Maida
Sunday, February 17th, 2008
God, what a miserable title. Almost as miserable as the movie "Jumper," staring emotionally flat (how does he get work? Actually, how the fuck did he land the role of Anakin Skywalker? Oh, wait...) Hayden Christensen and a slowly-decaying-as-a-worthwhile-actor Samuel L. Jackson. Anyways, I digress.
A few things I'd like to talk about today.
Number one, I've purchased a book by Todd Perkins, called Adobe Flash CS3 Professional. I'd like to get proficient, or at least somewhat useful, with Flash and ActionScript in order to provide all you readers out there with some interesting multimedia content. Right now I'd be happy with a working button, but as it stands I have a beautifully shaded (thank you, gradient tool!) circle and nothing else.
Secondly, iTunes 7.6 has been on my proverbial nerves. The latest edition has brought even more bugs into an already-slow application. I've always noticed that the sound-quality on iTunes lagged behind Winamp, at least on my system, and today I switched back over to Winamp. The latest version, build 5.52, runs smoothly, and sound reproduction is superb - far better than iTunes, and I'm not sure why. How come iTunes lacks the beauty and elegant functionality of the iPod and iPhone? Can't say I'll be switching for good; I don't trust 3rd party applications with my iPod.
I feel like a poor man's Andy Rooney right now.
Finally (and the reason behind this post), I stumbled upon a fantastic physics-based game, reminiscent of the "falling sand" and "crayon" games I've played in the past. It's not really a game, per se, since the only goals are those you set for yourself. I wouldn't say it's as addictive as SimCity or Counter-Strike, but it is, well, phun.
You can find it here (it's not browser-based, and won't work on a Mac just yet): www.acc.umu.se/~emilk/downloads.html
Enjoy!
Published by Bear
Wednesday, February 6th, 2008
I've shown this around in the past but I recently dredged it up for a few front and backend improvements. I came up with this baby back when I started learning a bit of Javascript. Play around with it and tell me if you think we should incorporate it into this site.
Some features to play with: (1) navigate through the images by using the left and right arrow keys, (2) going left on the first image takes you to the last and going right on the last image takes you to the first, (3) clicking the large image will take you to the original image file for downloading or bookmarking, and (4) in order to leave the gallery you simply slick the back button once. Suck it down Facebook.
Trial run the Image Gallery.
If you have any constructive suggestions, leave them in the comments.
Update: I made the gallery cross browser compatible.
Published by Bear
Thursday, January 31st, 2008
Restless creator here. I've been fiddling around with some style ideas for the site. I know, I know, I haven't even finished coding the real sections of the site yet and I'm already redesigning it. It's an addiction.
I just love the process of seeing something develop from nothing. Every element can be aligned and shaped in countless permutations. Of the new mockups, the one I'm leaning towards is Version 4. It's fairly similar to how the current design is laid out in terms of the header, content area, sidebar, etc.
Take a look and let me know in the comments anything you particularly like/dislike. The site is currently just a mockup and the only pages you can visit are the main weblog and the admin page. You can also click on the sticky for a hidden reveal.
Published by Nick
Thursday, January 31st, 2008
Tail feathers done. Mixed the medium blue yesterday but just got too tired to finish up the wings/body. Took like 3 and half hours for the feathers so far.
Published by Nick
Monday, January 21st, 2008
The goose is loose!
Yeah, it kinda looks like a goose, but I haven't done the face with the trademark flamingo schnoz yet. At least it's coming to life. I left a groove in the face for the eyes and beak attachment so that part shouldn't be too hard.
Published by Bear
Monday, January 14th, 2008
Late Breaking News: Marion Tinsley, aged 68 years, dies visiting his sister in
Humble, Texas. Tinsley, regarded as the best Checkers player ever, lost only nine times after winning his first World Checkers Championship in 1955. To be clear, nine times means nine games, not tournaments. Several of these losses came at the end of his career when Chinook, Deep Blue's Checkers counterpart, burst onto the scene with the promise of superiority. In the first ever Man-Machine World Championship, Tinsley defeated Chinook four games to two, with thirty-three draws.
In 1994, Tinsley was diagnosed with cancer. During his last tournament, he forfeited the championship title to Chinook after only six draws due to health concerns. Normally I wouldn't need any other reason to write about a master of board games, but, as it turns out, Marion Tinsley was also a professor of mathematics at Florida State University.
"Checkers can get quite a hold on you, Its beauty is just overwhelming -- the mathematics, the elegance, the precision. It's capable of wrapping you all up." -- Marion Tinsley
External Links
- Marion Tinsley, 68, Unmatched As Checkers Champion, Is Dead (NY Times)
- Marion Tinsley: Human Perfection at Checkers? (PDF)
Published by Nick
Sunday, January 13th, 2008
Body complete. Going to add feather layer over part of the back to make up the wings. But first must complete neck and face.
Published by Nick
Thursday, January 10th, 2008
Sounds good enough to be a code name. Bear and I were talking about some polymer clay (like Sculpey) sculptures on a WoW site, World of Raids. Exhibit A - 
For a while now I've been working with sculpey, making decent, albeit highly cartoonish figures for my mom and gifts and stuff. Exhibit B - 
Anyway I figure it's time to bring the quality of the work up a notch, but I really didn't know how, and still have very little idea how to make the figures so sleek, since the clay is often too soft and deformable to get too detailed with. Drawing most of the new techniques I'm practicing from Elvenwork. I started with making an armature from copper wire (not ideal) and aluminum foil. They were too hard to glue together so I tried to bond them with some trash clay. It worked out alright. Here's the result - 
I wicked some clay over night to make the base ready to shape. I think I used too much paper cause it took a ton of kneading to make it workable. The clay was much less impressionable than right out of the wrapper, but a bit dryer than I wanted. This picture is from before I baked the base, which is now set pretty well and looks sturdy. Base - 
I plan on trying to get the body done this weekend, and maybe the neck. P.S. Tiptup bitches! 
For millenia mankind has sat and pondered the mysteries of the universe. Today, we close the book on one that has captured our imaginations: Predicting the Future!
