The Archives

Random, Roanisms
WYR world junior championship qualifiers
03.31.10 | Permalink | Comment?

Last night, Holly and I took Roan and his friend Josh to the YMCA to swim while her and I did our “Getting Fit” routine. On the way home, the back seat turned into a “Would-You-Rather?” arena. Holly and I turned down the radio to listen, and I wish I would have had my camera, or thought to pull out my mp3 player (it has a mic and records up to 2 gb), because it was hilarious.

Roan: Would you rather… eat 100 bowls of slugs, no! wait… 5 bowls of slugs..

Josh: In how long?

Roan: I dunno.

Josh: Okay, let’s say an hour.

Roan: Okay, 5 bowls of slugs in one…

Josh: How big are the bowls? Like regular size bowls?

Roan: Like cereal, ya. Okay, 5 bowls of slugs in 1 hour, or kiss Hannah?

Josh: For how long?

Roan: 5 minutes

Josh: Oh, I’d eat slugs.

————————————————————————————————

Josh: Would you rather… eat that big Canadian flag back there, or kiss (some girl from Roan’s class) for a minute?

Roan: Ew, I’d eat the flag!

————————————————————————————————

Roan: Would you rather… have to live the rest of your life like it’s Nazi Zombies, and you have unlimited life, and unlimited health, and really awesome guns, or…. would you rather be a troll?

Josh: I’d be a troll.

Roan: You would?

Josh: I would get tired of killing zombies, I’d want to take a break.

Roan: Okay, for only until round twenty then.

Josh: How long would that be?

Roan: Uhm, about three days.

Josh: I’d kill zombies I think.
Animals, Photos, Random
Out f***ing
03.31.10 | Permalink | Comment?

Above is a picture of something I found in a toolbox in our storage locker. My brother and I went there on the weekend to empty whatever we could (I was also secretly hoping to find my Kids in the Hall DVDs, but apparently I left them somewhere I shouldn’t have), and when I opened one of the boxes I saw this. It’s hand painted (even numbered), and hangs on the wall. I grabbed it because I thought Jon might want it. I’m not sure who it used to belong to, but I figure he’ll look after it. He loves anything to do with fishing.

There has been a permanent link to his blog(s) on the left side of the chronicles since it’s inception but in case you’re an unobservant longtime cobra cohort, or perhaps a crisp cobra newcomer, here’s a link to his incredibly popular fishing blog which has nothing to do with cobras (but is still pretty cool).
Angry Art, Life, Sketchup
Cobra conniption coming soon
03.31.10 | Permalink | Comment?

I’ve been really busy since last week trying to get the Post and Beam section of James’ book done, before his classes start on Monday. I spent 16 hours working on it Monday, then sent it off to James. He looked at it and loved it, but had a few issues. Luckily I had already noticed the things he was troubled by, and had fixed them before he even called me. He said everything was great and I told him I’d be able to have the finished product to him this morning. I was so pleased to be so close to meeting my goal.

James apparently printed a copy of my rough draft to take with him to the restaurant he was going to for dinner, and while looking it over, he happened to bump into someone who is a bit of an expert on books I guess. This woman said “change this, change that, make this bigger, I need to see this…”, and James wrote it all down. He called me when he got home, and I got the list.

I am so discouraged now, as I have to go back and basically redo everything from page one. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was because I fucked up, but it’s not. The major pain is going to be resizing the text – it grows, text shifts, images need to move – and all I have to do is scale it one size larger. This is incredibly frustrating because I had already created 60% of this thing with that larger text, and then changed it at James’ request. It took me hours to fix then, and it’s going to take twice as long now, considering I have 30% more pages at this point.

I felt like shit yesterday and slept in. My plan was to work on making corrections once I felt okay, but then my brother called and needed help with his project. I needed a break from the book, so I had him come get me and we spent the day modeling busways and support systems. When I got home my brother sent me an email asking me to make changes because we misplaced a busway. I fixed it and sent it back to him, then I played with it this morning to see if I could make an .avi of the walk-through, but my machine kept failing to load a codec and refused to render it.

I chose to just make another animated png (above), but had to leave out over two thirds of the scenes because it was too large to post here. This is just a view of some of the busways and trays. It’s completely useless, but it makes a good companion to this complaint – even more so now that my brother just called asking me to redo a bunch of this stuff over because his group changed things on him. It’s not his fault, but it’s annoying that we spend all that time, and because someone decides to pretend order their pretend parts from a different supplier, we now have to spend an hour or more changing everything.

Everyone should just do things the way I tell them to from now on.
Angry Art, Fuck Sony, Gaming, Sketchup
More cobra colophon candidates
03.25.10 | Permalink | Comment?

Here is my latest rendering of a possible new blog logo. I changed the angle of his cone, and moved the text based on Mary Beth’s suggestion. I like this one quite a bit, but I wish I had a more powerful machine to render this stuff. I guarantee it would look so much better if I could let it render fully, but I need my machine for other things, and can’t do much while anything is rendering.

I’m hoping that once we get a new PS3, I can setup the old one with Linux (with the help of Jon and I’m sure lots of Google), and use it either alone or networked with my machine to render things a lot faster. I’m not so sure it will work, but if it does I imagine it will greatly reduce rendering times. The PS3 is a graphical powerhouse I’ve been told.

I messed around with this image in GIMP for a few minutes while sizing it up for this post, and I made a couple variations I kind of like. It’s interesting to me how I can spend hours rendering something and it looks cool, but then I can click a few sliders in GIMP or Photoshop, and bwammo! it’s instantly even cooler.

And then there’s this one, which I really like, but it’s a weird contradiction. I spent all those hours rendering, and then you can’t even see the details. However, it still looks awesome in my opinion. I want to try making a logo that looks very 8-bit, and very Cobra Triangle-esque

Sort of like this, but better. This is just be tweaking the contrast in GIMP, but it’s given me some ideas for how to make it cooler using Sketchup. It’ll have to wait for now though, as I have lots of work to do on the book.
Sketchup, Timber framing
Resi-dunce
03.25.10 | Permalink | Comment?

Front

Right Side

On top of working on the layout of James’ book, lately I’ve been doing lots of drawings for his residence (which he hopes to be living in before winter I believe). Until yesterday, I thought I was making these images so he could pass them to his engineer, and the engineer could use them to create official drawings. After a phone call with James in the afternoon, I found out he was wrong, and the engineer now wants me to be creating AutoCAD files.

I said that was impossible as far as I know, but gave him some other options. basically the guy’s complaint is that these drawings are too ‘design’, not enough ‘technical’. I agree, but it’s James who asks for these things, and approves them, so I just do what I’m asked.

Left Side

Rear View

These are elevation drawings I did yesterday, while awaiting a response from him regarding whether or not I should do them. He took too long (not his fault, there is three hours between us), so I just did them and had them done before he called.

Originally they were perspective views which looked 3d, but after talking to him I switched to a parallel projection, and made them look more like industry standard elevations. These still need dimensions if they’re going to be used, but I won’t bother with all those details until I know if these are what he wants or not.

Here is a detail drawing of the typical foundation wall, and footing for the house. It’s got a butt-load of rebar, an elaborate anchor pin setup, 2″s of extruded polystyrene , and a pressure treated sill. This drawing also shows the plans to include radiant heat lines through a poured concrete floor, which sits on top a boxed sub-floor. When it’s finally done, this place is going to be awesome.

And here’s a 3d/x-ray view of the footing/foundation wall/rebar/pin/sill for all you cobras who can’t get enough of my super exciting construction creations. I dig this stuff, but that’s because I made it. I can see how this would bore the pants off of most people. If you’re one of those people, sorry. If you’re an engineer and you love AutoCAD, but can’t figure out how to convert a .jpg to a .pdf, fuck you.
Angry Art, Photos, Random
Contemporary cobra art
03.24.10 | Permalink | Comment?

My friend Mike (the legendary Lemon Kurry Klopek) just posted this photo he took on his Facebook page. It’s a painting I did for him about 6 years ago, of the Freedom Eagle! When I saw it, I remembered doing it, but if he had of said – “Hey, I still have that beautiful Freedom Eagle painting you did for me…”, I wouldn’t have remembered it at all.

Then I realized I had proof I did this.

That’s me right there!

After looking at this photo I remembered all kinds of stuff. Most of it good stuff. I thought about all the fun I had during the time we had the shop. I then hear just now, about how a shop in Welland got closed for not having an autoclave. I’m so glad I don’t work in, or own a tattoo shop anymore. Although I would love to spend some time in one getting some work done – one with an autoclave.

I also just noticed I’m wearing the world famous “Taz” shirt, which was designed and donated to The Legendary Klopeks, around the same time by this cobra right here.

Fuck I’m talented. Hear that SVAT Electronics? You better.
Angry Art, Animals, Life, Sketchup
Robobloglogo
03.24.10 | Permalink | Comment?

A while back, Jon suggested I make a new logo for the blog. I had also been thinking about it – wanting to make a robot cobra, but not knowing how to go about it. I talked about it with Holly last week, and started working on one. Here’s a couple samples of images I might use for a new main logo.

Holly hates this one with the pot leaf, but I actually kind of like it. I might try to make it look cooler, but it will have to wait. I have lots to do for James right now, and our gym visits are tiring me out. I have one more logo rendering at the moment, but I have to put it on hold after this, while I make amendments to some drawings of James’ residence.

F.Y.I. cobra commrads, book layout is suck crap.
Photos, Random, TV
Captain cobra
03.24.10 | Permalink | 1 Comment

Yesterday Mary Beth came by for an afternoon visit while I was working. She brought me a model her dad found of the Enterprise (1701-A). Her parents have an antique shop, and her dad comes across all kinds of cool things while going through people’s estates.

Whoever owned it originally made an attempt at completing the model, but seems to have given up at some point and possible started disassembling it. As soon as I opened the box I started putting it together. I can’t decide if I’m going to paint it. I’m not good with little details, and it’s full of them. I also have to figure out if the lights and sound work, before I go to the effort of chasing wires all through the nacelles, and up into the saucer section. They appear to be in fine condition, but when I put the batteries in nothing happened. I noticed quite a bit of corrosion on one of the terminals (looks like a battery leaked in there), so I need to clean that off before I go any further. If the board is dead, I’ll just cut the wires and build the ship without a fixed stand, or lights and sounds. It will still look totally badass.

One of the coolest parts of it all was the box and manuals. The box was crinkled and slightly damaged, but Mary said she could fix it and offered to frame it for me. I forgot to get a picture of it before she took it back with her, but I took some photos of this certificate thing that was also in the box.

I’m not sure what it’s purpose is, but it’s got sweet line drawings of the Enterprise, along with transcripts of Picard’s logs. The image is too small to see, but if you could, and you were as nerdy as I , you’d know that they are all from the two-part episode Unification, where Spock is duped by Romulan Senator Pardek in a plot to destroy Vulcan, and Picard (with the help of Gowron) and Data pose as Romulans to rescue him.

I’ve got this flattening under some books right now, along with the assembly instructions. I would like to frame them both eventually. I love them.

I need to get some steel wool, and see if I can fix the terminal. If I can, I’ll chase all the wires and see if I can talk a certain ceramic master into painting it. As much as I want the lights and sounds to work, I would be ok with copping out and just gluing the plastic parts together – no paint, no decals. That would be a whole lot easier.
Angry Art, Gaming, Sketchup
PP by me
03.20.10 | Permalink | Comment?

The other day Roan asked me if I could make his favourite guns from Nazi Zombies, in Sketchup. I said I could try my best, and started on his first favourite – the PPSH. He wants me to model them, so that we could combine the two and see how “pro” that would be.

After about 5 minutes of watching me go, he got tired of it and went to watch Gage play video games. I put it on hold, and picked it up again yesterday. I finished it off, and decided to render it in Indigo.

It turned out pretty good, aside from the textures. I’m not really happy with the way the wood grain turned out, and the metal looks too perfect, but whatever. It looks pretty awesome still, and it will work just fine for what Roan wanted.

The next one I have to model is the MG 42. It’s very similar looking as far as the barrel goes, but it’s got a weird muzzle, and a much more detailed body. It also has a bi-pod which should be pretty fun to make.

Here’s what a PPSH really looks like, and here’s what the MG looks like. Tune in soon to see what a hybrid version of the two looks like!!
Photos, Roanisms
Tramp-tech
03.20.10 | Permalink | Comment?

Roan’s trampoline has taken a beating since last year. Just before they stopped using it over winter, about 4 springs popped off, and 3 more are ready to go any time. Now that the weather is nice again, he’s dying to get me on there with him, but since it’s only rated for 300lbs (I think), I’m skeptical of jumping on it.

He decided to try and fix the problem so I would hopefully get on with him. He used one of the old springs, a tent peg he found in the yard, and a bunch of plasticine.

And here’s how he looked when I told him we couldn’t jump on it still. If we had trampoline rated plasticine, or maybe some Mighty Putty, I’d have probably given it a shot. Until then, no fat dudes on the tramp.