The Archives

Animals, Random, Video
Cobra controlled burns
06.30.10 | Permalink | 2 Comments

Last night I went outside for a moment, and noticed a massive pile of ants on the back patio. We don’t own Raid© so normally Holly will pour a pot of boiling water on them. I figured if I was going to commit insect genocide, I might as well do it with some pizzazz. I grabbed the camera and lighter fluid, and one minute and ten seconds later I not only had the infestation issue solved, but also a nice warm snack.

Originally I was going to post the video with it’s natural soundtrack, but the crackling of souls is deafening. I then attempted to overdub some Bon Jovi, but quickly aborted when I realized it was more effort than 5 clicks on youtube. I decided to go with the free easy stuff that is catalogued over on youtube, and chose a track based on two criteria: no lyrics, relevant name.

So please enjoy these horribly violent images, and the musical styling of two random dudes who could very well be ant rights activists but because they named their free song on youtube “Into the Flames 2″, they are now part of the global ant roasting machine.

*Disclaimer*

No ants were hurt during the filming of this production – they had their souls incinerated on a sub-molecular level, which I assume is painless.
Animals, Life, Photos, Video
Soccer and small pups
06.27.10 | Permalink | Comment?

Last night Mary and her friend Meagan came by for a few back patio beers. Shortly before it started getting dark we decided to all head over to Roan’s school and have a friendly soccer match. Just as we were leaving, Lesley showed up with her parent’s puppies and was dragged along to the school where I forced her to film the beginning of our match.

The teams were Roan, Gage, Holly, Meagan, and Kyle (the boys friend’s neighbour) vs. Me, Mary, Ashton, and Cameron (Kyle’s brother). Ashton and I each scored goals, and Cameron got two. It still wasn’t enough though, as Gage scored like 3 or 4 goals himself and his team (Portugal) pulled off a 5-4 victory in overtime.

Roan got injured early on, suffering a shoe to the tail bone, resulting in him being sidelined for the remainder of the game. When it got too dark (and just before I had a heart attack) we called the game, and everyone named Mary the M.V.P. after numerous diving saves, and having the wind knocked out of her after a 3 man collision in her box (that sounds dirty).

We all had tons of fun (with the exception of Roan), and will hopefully do it again. Hopefully not too soon however, as my legs and hips are killing me today.
Photos, Roanisms
Assualt rifles by Rousseau
06.27.10 | Permalink | Comment?

Holly’s dad brought over some guns he and the boys made out of wood this morning. They actually made them a few weeks ago, but they needed some extra work and then a coat of camo paint. The two large ones are modeled after Roan’s favourite Call of Duty gun the ACR. They look pretty awesome for being made out of scraps of wood and a piece of copper pipe. The smaller one is a mini-uzi. And of course, no commando would be caught dead without his bowie knife.

I kind of want to get a nice piece of wood and carve a gun for him. I’m dying to make stuff, but no longer have a shop or most of my tools. I have a bunch of ideas for how to make some sweet guns that have moving parts and things that come apart (like ammo clips, and scopes), and I’d love to make him both a rubber-band gun and a cork gun similar to the ones I had as a kid (although I’d make his cork gun a double barrel). I suppose I have enough tools here to make some neat stuff, but I need materials.
Book stuff, Fuck Microsoft, Fuck Sony, Life, Sketchup
PC peripherals 3 – Cobras 1
06.25.10 | Permalink | 1 Comment

Well last night I got my new work load from James at around midnight. I was in the process of defusing an enemy I.E.D. when the phone rang and I had to let the terrorists win. He wanted to go over the text edits he’s decided to make after spending a few months with my layout.

He suggested we go about it page by page since he doesn’t want to give me his copy and then not have one. I don’t care one way or the other (although I suppose I should bill him for the hours and hours it’s going to take to get this all done over the phone) but I am surprised at how much a tiny amount of writing (with a pen??? wtf??) can start to hurt my wrists and finger joints. We spoke for a little over an hour and a half and got through about 38 pages of edits.

I now have plenty of work to do for a few days, but it’s only the beginning. I also have to add a bunch of photos to the layout, but I’m still waiting on James to supply me with them. On top of that there is still a butt-load of appendix and glossary information that needs to be added yet.

And as my luck would have it, just as I get a new workload my mouse decides to stop working with no explanation at all. That’s it up above, still in pieces but fully functional. I’m not sure how, but I managed to fix it. I won’t be surprised if it dies for good soon, as in the last 12 months I’ve been through 3 (although one of those broke with some assistance when I smashed it into pieces).
Life, Photos, Random
Dude, where’s your gas?
06.25.10 | Permalink | Comment?

So this morning I was eliminating tangos with some friends, and the Dude messages me asking if I’m busy and would I like to go hit some golf balls with him. I said sure since it’s such a nice day out, and I enjoy hitting things. The Dude said he’d come get me around 2pm.

If you know the Dude at all you obviously know he lives by a dynamic clock, and in the past “Five minutes” has meant anywhere from 2 hours to 3 days. I therefore felt it necessary to stress the importance of my being back home to Holly’s by 3:30 for when Roan gets home from school. Luckily he was right on time (if you’re a Dude) and arrived at around 2:20 to retrieve me. He was driving a white jeep someone lent him while his Mercedes is being looked at.

He took the scenic route to the range after stating “I don’t trust this thing enough to take it on the expressway.”, and a short time later we ran out of gas at the top of a hill. We coasted down the hill, managing to maintain the posted limit the entire time and finally came to a halt at a stop light about 2km from where we stalled. We left the jeep and walked over to the gas station near the on-ramp. After a bit of a hike we returned with a can of gas, and several attempts at starting later we were back on the road with our new goal of just taking me home before Roan got there.

Less than two minutes after we were cruising towards the gas station so the Dude could fill up, he reaches over to pull a cigarette out of his pack and a $20 bill along with a $10 bill get caught in the wind ang go flying. The $20 luckily caught a down draft and fell to the floor, but the $10 took off out the window.

After a sudden U-turn we quickly located the airborne bill and got back on the road. We got back just in time, and I honestly couldn’t care less that I didn’t get to hit a golf ball. In fact, it might be my best round of golf ball whacking I’ve ever had.
Angry Art, Book stuff, Life, Sketchup
Shredgar Fantastic
06.24.10 | Permalink | Comment?

Now that I’m finished with James’ residence drawings it’s time to get back to the book. I’m still working on fixing text sizes in images, and I have to get all the manuscript edits from James. He’s been compiling a list of errors and edits that I need to take care of, and now we need to spend some time on the phone going over the book basically page by page. I know you’re probably thinking “There’s got to be an easier way Cobra!!?!?”, but you’re wrong. There’s a million easier ways. None of them however, are as little work on his end as talking over the phone.

Since this week is his last week of the log course, he’s really busy, and likely won’t have time to make that call. I decided to use some of my free time to get on a request my brother made for a robot of his soon to be born child. Some of you Cobra cohorts might recall my xmas gift of robot art I made for my brother and his girlfriend Lisa. My brother is interested in using the models I’ve created to make comics to document his families early days. I think it’s a really cool idea, and I’ve been missing making robots and rendering things, so I spent a few hours the other night working on the model above.

My brother believes his child will be born a rock god. They still don’t know the sex, so I just assumed the uber-potent Cobra genes will guarantee a male offspring. I figure if it turns out female, I’ll just add a little hair curl or something and make the rattle glow pink instead of red (if I’m allowed). I had tons of fun making it, and I keep thinking of more and more I could add. Perhaps when I get back from lunch with my mum, I will do some more modeling. Although, I really want to spend some time today checking out a handful of render plugins for Sketchup. Jon sent me a link to a guys blog that turned me on to a bunch of things I’m curious about.

Click the image for a slightly larger version.
Life, Sketchup, Timber framing
Last night, Darth Vader came down from planet Vulcan and told me that if I didn’t update that he’d melt my brain.
06.24.10 | Permalink | 2 Comments

I haven’t been updating much recently mainly because it’s too goddamn hot upstairs to sit with the laptop on me, and also because I’m mega-lazy. I suppose I could start writing blog entries from my desktop machine, but that means sitting in a leather chair which makes me almost as hot as the laptop. Plus, I enjoy writing while relaxing and not while I’m sitting at the desk I work all day from. I have made several attempts at updating but I seem to either lose interest or start to get tired and just pack it in. Then I forget what I was going to say and another update free day goes by.

This morning I’ve moved my laptop into the basement where it’s nice and cool, and there’s a t.v. to keep me background entertained. So here goes another attempt!

I have finally finished the drawings for James’ residence (I think, but I’m sure that will all change soon once he has a really close look at it), and he’s sent them off to his engineer. Above is the new floor plan, complete with the enormous deck James forgot to mention until the day he expected the drawings to be on his desk. It was quite a lot of work, and nothing was easy. I also had to use 3 different programs to create it because his engineer refuses to look at any image that isn’t in .pdf format, and because Sketchup has some annoying idiosyncrasies when dimensioning in 2D which force me to touch up every thing in Photoshop or GIMP afterward.

Regardless of how annoying the work was, this house is going to be pretty amazing. I still think it looks like the Flux Capacitor, and I’m considering asking James to put blue strip lighting along all the roof ridges.

In total there was about 15 images which make up the blueprints for his house. I figure the above one is the least technical looking (therefore probably the most interesting to people who don’t care about building). If you’re interested in seeing a slighlty larger version just click the image.
Book stuff, Log building, Sketchup, Timber framing
Finally something to read that’s not on a monitor!
06.21.10 | Permalink | Comment?

The other day I got excited when I saw an envelope sticking out of the mailbox on my way back from walking over to get a coffee. I have been expecting a package for a few days from my friend Ryan. I had lent him my PS3 headset while our PS3 was broken, then after repeatedly forgetting to grab it from him while in Toronto, he offered to mail it to me at Holly’s. I was really looking forward to killing some zombies with Jeff and not having to hold the phone at the same time, but I was mistaken – it was an envelope from the Timber Framer’s Guild. Equally exciting, but for different reasons.

I had spoken with the guild administrator a short time ago and then forgot I was now going to be receiving regular guild publications. When I saw what it was, I was thrilled to have a reason to sit outside and read in the sun. I opened it up and was pleased to see the two latest issues of Timber Framing and Scantlings, as well as this nice little note from someone important at the guild.

I look forward to reading all the stuff I’ve missed, and I hope once I have money I can check out some of the guild conferences. Or maybe James will spring for me to attend and promote the book and school!
Roanisms
Holiday art, EQAO preps.
06.10.10 | Permalink | Comment?

Roan brought home a butt-load of school work the other day. Mixed in amongst some tests was some art and a Mother’s Day gift he forgot about. Above is an image of fireworks going off on Victorea Victoria Day, and just below we have our newest piece of refrigerator art: The Lost Mother’s Day Gift.

And then we have an example of one of Roan’s tests. He did pretty good on it, and might have done even better if his teacher understood his answers a little better.

Question 1:

a) unlikly

b) likly

c) posaball

d) inposball

Question 2:

a) certain = catch

b) unlikely = I’m 2

c) impossible = british colomba

d) likely = I’m 9

I love how he got the black crayon from the top image all over his test because he was just colouring so intense and didn’t realize he was colouring on it. I also love how the first answer makes no sense at all to me, but the third one is crystal clear – “impossible = british colomba”. He wants to go see BC so bad, but he knows we can’t go this year. His teacher obviously didn’t make that connection since she marked it with a question mark.
Book stuff, Life, Sketchup, Timber framing
Elevation frustration
06.10.10 | Permalink | Comment?

I’ve been working on some elevation drawings for James’ house. Normally houses have a north, south, east and west elevation. This house is huge and has multiple gable ends. This means I have 3 gable end drawings along with 3 side elevations and none of them have been much fun. I just finished my third revision of each drawing, along with a site plan, and a foundation plan view, and hopefully that is it for that project.

I think all I have to do now is put everything together in a large multi-page .pdf, but I’m not sure until I talk to James. I regularly run into communication problems with him, which I believe can be attributed to his lack of computer knowledge, and our constant failure to both be looking at the thing we’re discussing at the same time.

Once this is over and done with I have to go through the entire book with him over the phone, so we can sort out all the edits. Originally he offered to mail me his version that he’s been scribbling edits in, but the other day he decided we should just do it over the phone. He says there isn’t much that needs fixing, so it won’t take long. Hopefully that means I won’t have a ton of text to shift when it comes time to edit. But again, this could be a matter of him not understanding computers, and I could be looking at a month worth of work and a two hour phone call.

I suppose I should be happy to be employed, but I want to build stuff.