The Archives

Animals, Food, Life
Tortie torture
04.13.10 | Permalink | Comment?

My mum came and took me to Cora’s for breakfast today, then I convinced her to walk over to the Humane Society adoption center in the Niagara Square. There was a beautiful tortie in a cage near the counter, so I asked if it was a “terrible-tortie” and that’s why it was caged. The woman said she had been hit by a car, and is still recovering from surgeries. She’s up for adoption around the end of the month, but needs a home without other cats or children to ensure a safe recovery.

There was another tortie, but it’s one that’s been there a while and has a bad ‘tude. One day when I was petting her she turned around and scratched the hell out of me and hissed for no reason. I asked if they were the only two torties, and the girls behind the counter said yes.

Then I look down and see this gorgeous girl staring up at me. She was so soft and a bit of a fatso – I fell in love right away. I wanted to adopt her right there, but then the girls informed me that she hates other cats. Probably a result of being over 12 years old and recently losing her owner. I wish I could have brought her home, but I’m guessing she would prefer a more laid back environment.

I also saw a boy cat that had a very Captain like face. He was sleeping in a little hiding spot, but came out for me and was loving my pets. The one girl said she was surprised as that cat hasn’t warmed up to anyone yet. I figured out that he saw my Captain tattoo, thought it was a mirror, then realized I’m just really cool and wanted to be my friend.

I miss Captain so much. I wish she could come hang with us.
Angry Art, Book stuff, Life, Sketchup
Angry 8 Star Army Automaton
04.12.10 | Permalink | Comment?

Here’s a rendering I did of the army robot I modeled on the weekend. It turned out okay, but I really need to try some other rendering engines to see how well they work. I used Indigo again for these, but I have been reading about alternatives and want to try them all. Unfortunately I will have to wait, because I have plenty of work to do this week.

I have to redo some drawings for the Bents section this morning, then carry on with laying out the rest of the text. I had a chat with James last night, and he’s decided to change some text already. We knew there was going to be corrections, but I had no idea how many or how large they would be. I asked that he keep them all until the end so I can finish Bents, then move on to correcting his text for P&B while he and the students edit the Bents section.

I am trying to look at work differently these days, since I’m now paid on an hourly basis. Before when changes and corrections needed to be made it was pushing back my deadline, but not increasing my peycheque. Now if he needs those things I’m trying to view it as a chance for longer employment. I enjoy working from home and not having to wear pants or talk to jerks all day, so I shouldn’t get pissed when I have to spend hours fixing things, right? It’s just allowing me more chance to get out of the hole I’m in, and that’s exactly what I need. In fact, maybe I should sabotage the entire project!! Mwa Ha Ha!! Then maybe I can make money as well as get out of the hole – it would feel good to contribute.

I looked into 3d printing of Sketchup models again last night. I thought if it wasn’t too expensive I might try and get one done, but it looks like you still need to do a lot of work to prepare your models for printing before you can just get them printed. Again, I doubt I’ll have time for this anytime soon, so it will have to wait.

I want to take carving classes. I would love to carve little robot guys out of wood and add little led lights, then sell them to people as lame as me who would think they are cool. Although I often doubt there is anyone as lame as me out there.
Life, Roanisms, Video
Easter Monday Movies
04.12.10 | Permalink | Comment?

Easter Monday, Holly had to work while the boys and I were home all day. It was beautiful outside, so after spending most of the morning inside, I forced the boys to go out with me and play with the Vulcan. Roan decided to make a game where I shot at him while he tried to deflect darts using a broom stick. He did pretty good, then Gage came out and joined us.

I decided to get my camera so we could film our awesomeness, and Roan asked to be the cameraman. I shot Gage a couple times, then let him shoot me a couple. Roan just wanted to play with the camera the entire time, then decided he wanted to play more xbox.

Here’s some videos from that afternoon:

First is Gage setting the record for most Vulcan darts missed with a broomstick on automatic.

Then Gage setting the record for most Vulcan darts hit with a plastic sword that sat in the neighbour’s lawn all winter – 6.

And finally, me, attempting to bat Vulcan darts which was much harder than it looked.

What better way to celebrate zombie Jesus coming back to eat our brains than by firing foam darts at each other and posting videos of it on youtube? It’s got about as much to do with Easter as painted eggs, and bunnies.
Angry Art, Book stuff, Life, Sketchup
Cobra conquest continues
04.09.10 | Permalink | Comment?

I feel pretty good about myself today. I got lots of positive feedback yesterday, and it left me feeling like I can do anything. First I got a call from my brother regarding his project and how it blew his teacher away. Apparently his instructor liked it so much he asked if Chris could prepare a version with the course title as a header, instead of his group’s fake company name, which he can use this weekend at an open house where they try and rope people into going to Mohawk. Hopefully that means his group won the contest they were having, and I was right all along – I kept telling him there was no way anyone would have something as detailed and visually accurate as what we made.

The second thing that made me feel good was a phone call from James regarding the Post and Beam book, and his thoughts on what I’ve done so far on the Bents. He printed and distributed the P&B booklet to the students yesterday, and said he loved the way it looked. Unfortunately this phone call came after I emailed him at 2:30 in the morning our time (I guess I need to remind him Holly has kids), when I hit a roadblock in the Bents book. I emailed him my work so I could ask his opinion on how to proceed, and after he mulled it over he decided to call back and discuss some options.

I suppose it’s my fault for having a nap in the evening which resulted in me being up all night, and when everyone bailed on the Nazi zombie battle I was so bored I decided to do work.

Working from home rule: boredom forces productivity!

After I talked to James and we decided how to proceed, I realized it was incredibly late and I still wasn’t tired. I put my mp3 player on, and started colouring a model I made the other day. That’s it up top. I felt he was appropriate for this post since I truly had a feeling like I can conquer anything I want to after all of yesterday’s positive feedback. He needs a name still and I have to render him, but until I have the time to dedicate to that here’s an animated png with lots of things I should have hidden (seams that wouldn’t show up in Indigo).

I might attempt to render him using a new engine I discovered the other day called IRender nXt, which I can get a 30 day trial of. I stumbled upon it while looking for a material stripping Ruby Script in one of the online Ruby libraries. It looks good, and a tutorial I saw showed an amazing result using default materials in Sketchup without assigning any material properties. That could be a big time saver, and I believe it’s cheaper than Indigo (if I decide to purchase one or the other).

My brother just called, so I’m off to work on making an animated something for his teacher. If possible, I’ll post it here later.
Life, Sketchup
Cobra electric consultants
04.08.10 | Permalink | Comment?

The last few nights my brother has come by and we’ve been working on finishing up his model for the group project he’s got due this morning. It was a huge model – definitely the largest I’ve ever made. We had most of it done already, but last night we had to add all the drop-down cables, and recolour a bunch of things that got stripped of their materials when we tried to cleanup his model using a ruby script I downloaded.

It took a few hours, but when we finished it was still early enough to create a bunch of scenes for him to use as a walk-through, or just to manually walk around his model. He plans to present it today on a projector at school, so hopefully we’ve nailed all the details and important views in those scenes. I also hope he has no issues getting it to run smoothly. It’s a massive model and if you don’t have a good video card it will suffer. I believe he’s taking his home machine with him today just to make sure, so hopefully everything is okay.

We also exported the walk-through as an animated .png which turned out too large to post here (about 18mb), but if you’re interested there is a link here.

I also attempted to render a still image of the inside of the shop, but there is just too much geometry and far too many materials for my little machine and it’s free version of Indigo.
Photos, Random
Deadly Sneezing Cobra
04.06.10 | Permalink | 1 Comment

The purpose of this post is purely to demonstrate the lethal power of a cobra.

A simple morning sneeze, and Bwammo! you’re in a neck brace for Easter weekend. Although unintentional, this incredibly effective attack renders it’s victims (those lying next to the sneezing cobra peacefully) completely whiny for sometimes over 48 hours (there is apparently also some pain, but this has yet to be confirmed by any reliable source).

Beware of Cobras rolling the morning chronic or staring into the sun.
Animals, Life, Photos
Fried cheese and poop carrots
04.06.10 | Permalink | Comment?

Last night Holly and I went out for dinner when she got home, and couldn’t decide where to go. I said I would kill for some Saganaki (Greek fried cheese if you don’t know), but the only place we knew of that had it for sure was all the way in St(ink) Catharines. Holly suggested we see if Chatters here in the Falls had it, and lucky for us they did!

It was still really nice out so we opted to sit on the patio. Holly scratched her bingo tickets I got the night before because she had been too busy at work to even look in her purse and notice I put them in there. After the waiter took our order, I looked over at Holly and noticed something on her shirt. A bird crapped on her while she was scratching her Bingo ticket. I thought for sure we were millionaires, but no. She did however win $11 and dinner was delicious.

When we got home we saw a big fat bunny sitting in the front garden. There is always tons of rabbit poops there, so he clearly frequents that spot. Holly ran inside and got a carrot for him (do rabbits even like carrots? I know the one I owned ate everything including shoes, cds, and a smoking apparatus) which is still laying there this morning. Maybe this one prefers cds and bongs over veggies too, but I feel like maybe he just doesn’t want anything to do with the carrot the lady covered in bird poop touched.

I also feel like the bird poop is the only reason he let us get so close. At first he was probably thinking – “Ah! Hu-Munz!”, but then I think he became intrigued and was thinking something more like – “Ew! Dude, is that poop on her shirt? what’s with this brawd? Does she think I want her poop carrot? who wants a poop carrot? GO CHANGE”. Then he ran away when she got too close, because he didn’t want to tango with the turd.
Angry Art, Book stuff, Life, Sketchup, Timber framing
Book’em
04.04.10 | Permalink | Comment?

Yesterday I finished the entire Post and Beam section of the book. It was a huge project for someone of my skill/work ethic, and I was incredibly relieved to have it done. I got up this morning and realized I forgot to update the remainder of the table-of-contents, and fix some character code errors. I spent a couple hours fixing it, then sent it off to James.

I finally got in touch with him this afternoon, after our hike. He loved it, and said it was perfect. The only issue with it, is the fact that I found a drawing he didn’t mention in the text, but couldn’t get a hold of him (powers been out on the island for days) to find out what was up. I carried on, omitting the image and figured I will fix it if I need to. It turns out the image was mentioned, but not where I expected. So I now have to go back and shift basically everything from that point on. For now it doesn’t matter, this draft is specifically for the students, and will be edited by them.

Now I take a day off, then move on to Timber Bents. The book in it’s current state is 92 pages in length without the appendix (my dad says it doesn’t need an appendix since I don’t have one). I now have to add another section around 80 pages or more, plus another 30-40 pages of appendix and glossary at it’s end.

I have to get all that done before his Bents course starts on the 3rd of May. Hopefully I have an easier time with the rest of it, considering I know what format he wants it in. Oh, and I also have to add a bunch of photos to the middle at some point.
Animals, Life, Photos
Easter nature excursion
04.04.10 | Permalink | Comment?

This pretty lady and I took the Roanster to the Gorge this morning for a brief hike with my friend Cam, from Alberta, and his cousin. It was a beautiful morning, and I very much needed the time outside. I’ve spent far too much time inside staring at a monitor the last few weeks, and the weather has been gorgeous the last few days. We only had enough time to hike for about an hour, then we had to head home so Roan and Gage could head over to their dad’s house for Easter dinner.

We weren’t down there more than five minutes, and Roan already found a pair of salamanders to disturb. He turned over just about every rock he saw, until he found one. We had him put them back where he found them, and told him that they might have been guarding their eggs, so we had better make sure they don’t get separated.

Then on our way back up from the water, Holly spotted a snake and Roan chased it down and wrangled it. It was fairly calm for a wild snake, and focused more on pooping than trying to bite or flee. We had him put it back after some photos, then had to hurry back up to the top.

I picked a butt-load of catnip on the way back up, and brought it home for the kittos. I took a video of them munching on it and acting retarded which I will probably post later.

Here’s Cam and I posing in front of the Niagara River (and the ugly American side of the Gorge). He and I became friends in grade two, and were pretty tight up until grade eight, when he moved to Calgary. We stayed in touch off and on for a few years, but then didn’t hear from each other until last year. We met up in Victoria for an afternoon that was much like today – hang out somewhere beautiful, in nice weather, with some beer and a blunt. It’s fun times catching up with him and hopefully we’ll do it again next year when he returns on his new bike.
Angry Art, Book stuff, Gabriola, Sketchup
Robots live on (some at least)
04.03.10 | Permalink | Comment?

I know I said I was done with robots, done with Sketchup art in my spare time, but my recent frustration coupled with the fact that I am waiting on a response regarding missing drawings from the manuscript led me to spend an hour or so creating this yesterday. I rendered it overnight, and decided to use it as an excuse to put off starting work this morning.

I’m still waiting to hear about this drawing, and every time I try to call James his answering machine picks up before it even rings. When Holly came home last night, she said she heard there was a crazy storm in the gulf islands and read that some people had been without power for a couple days. I know from my time on Gabriola that even on the nicest of days the power can go out for a couple hours to a couple days without warning.

I hope if that is what is keeping me from reaching him, the problem gets solved today. I’m so close to done again, but this could be a major problem if I have to proceed without direction, and make the wrong decision. It’s only one drawing but it has the potential to make my life miserable if I have to shift everything forward or back once I have it all complete.

*click the image to see a bigger version.