Taking a week or so off in August, I decided it was time to
write a short story that's been in my head a long number of years. It was about
a homeless man in Boston approached by a lawyer searching for a runaway teen
who was believed to be on the Boston streets. The homeless man decides to look
into it and embroils himself in a case where a father simply wants to know what
his kid's life has been like since he ran away. The investigator, nameless like
Bill Pronzini's "Nameless Detective", finds out about the kid and
reveals to the father the name of his kid's drug dealer on the Boston streets.
A murder later and our hero finds out just what he's gotten himself involved
in.
During the process of writing the first few I came up with a
back story for my hero, or my anti-hero, which culminates in two stories at
the end of the series that promise to show him some justice for the events that
put him on the streets in the first place.
Of course as any of this comes to fruition, I will post about it.
My
9/11 Memorial - The Project
September 11, 2011
This week I felt a need to do something to commemorate that
day 10 years ago when I was coaching my daughter and her team in soccer, sitting
on the bleachers with the other parents and we all looked up and saw absolutely
no airplanes in the sky for what must have been the first time since before
the 1950s.
So I came up with a simple, elegant memorial anyone can make
in a very short time with little money, and can place on any table, mantle,
or flat surface.
Here it is, and if you click on the picture, you can read the
page on how to create your own. Sorry I was late posting this, but you can
use this memorial at any time, not just the 10th anniversary.
Here's the How-To
Page. It's a very simple project of paper folding, and finding
cheap flashlights. You can even use small electric tea lights. Just don't
use candles, obviously.
Steampunk
Goggles - The Project - Done
July 30, 2011
Today I spent working on my goggles. Here
they are. And here is a full page on how I did it.
Steampunk
Goggles - First Alteration
July 16, 2011
I bought a pair of welder's glasses from Amazon.com with the
intent of making a pair of steampunk airship pilot goggles. They come in all
black plastic and very dark protective lenses.
I have a fairly detailed plan of what they will look like when
done, and today I took the first steps towards that goal - I painted them.
So I painted the main body copper, with a fairly nice, realistic
copper spray paint. I painted the screw-on rims nickel for now. I may go brass.
We'll have to see.
I removed the silver ball-chain link between the two eyepieces,
(which was also covered with rubber for nose bridge protection) and put in
a length of dark-bronze ball-chain (this is a lamp pull) that better fits
the look. I was torn between this color and bright brass. I kind of like this
choice.
The funny part is I wanted green lenses to offset the copper,
but I couldn't find dark green sunglasses anywhere, so I could fit those lenses
in, so I found instead a bright green hollow rubber ball! No kidding! I cut
out two shapes, so not only is it gree, but they bug out a bit, which I think
looks good.
Not being able to see without glasses anyway, the extra blur
brought about by this thick, but transparent rubber, only hinders my eyesight
a little more than usual, so I will have no problem navigating a room and
recognizing people within 10 feet.
Soon, I will be adding a clip-on double-loupe, which will enhance
the look, and a few brass clock gears. I want to attach the loupe in an unusual
way, so I'm looking into cutting a slot in the eyepiece rims and epoxying
in a gear, and attaching the loupe to the center hole of the gear. Whether
that works or not remains to be seen.
Eventually I intend to replace the elastic headband with leather,
with metal buckles, and brass nut/bolt combinations. When I'm done, I think
this will look quite good.
Our
Raspberry Bush - Third Harvest
July 7, 2011
Chris and Michelle Clay asked us if we wanted some raspberry
and strawberry plants a few years ago. We were in a new townhouse that had
some growing space in the back, so we took them up on the offer. Charlotte,
Carol and I went down and plucked up a few shoots of each and planted them
in our yard.
The strawberry plants are now everywhere, with their vine-like
shoots crawling all across the brick patio area. We see strawberries
in the late spring, but rarely get to eat one because they, being delicious
and low to the ground, get eaten by chipmunks.
The raspberry bush, however, has grown to enormous proportions,
and most of its fruit dutifully grows well above-ground. Perhaps some birds
can take the berries, but not the chipmunks. And so far the birds don't seem
too interested.
Here's Carol standing next to what was just a couple of years
ago, a few six-inch shoots:
You can clearly see a bounty of young berry buds not yet ripe.
This is today's catch, after a fairly thorough picking-through,
leaving any not-yet-ripe to ripen.
(Stereo image. Cross your eyes.)
And this is the third harvest I've undertaken. The first two
amounted to about what you see here, in two separate weeks. This is today's
alone.
Pretty cool. And by the way, golden raspberries are yummy!
Steampunk
Weapons - More Progress
June 11, 2011
Final paint, I think:
Did a little more painting:
Stereo image. Cross eyes to see in 3D.
Bonsai
Progress
June 5, 2011
Every weekend I've been takin pictures of my growing collection
of Bonsai trees. Here is an inventory of the current trees, and how they are
coming along:
|
|
|
Japanese Pieris - ie: "Red Mill" |
Dwarf Rhododendron - "Purple Gem" |
Blueberry |
|
|
|
Quince |
Dwarf Cherry |
Compact Japanese Holly |
|
|
|
Ming Aralea |
Pink Serrisa |
Japanese Red Maple |
|
|
|
Cherry |
Fukien Tea |
Firethorn |
|
|
|
| |
Birches |
|
Click any pic for a larger image. You will see a dual image,
which you can view in stereo if you know how (cross your eyes).
The fukien tea tree came from IKEA. I kid you not! And not long
after I repotted it and moved it indoors, it began to grow new leaves, and
shoots, one of which is now in flower. I pinched off some of the new shoots,
thinking they would grow branches I didn't want, but apparently this is how
they flower. I'll leave these other shoots to flower until they're done, and
then remove them.
But the firethorn is a bit special to me as it burst out into
flower not long after I got it from Bonsai West. But mostly because it's in
the Bonsai pot I made myself in a pottery class
back in 1991 or 1992. I wish I had made more of those. I'm quite fond, but
it's a bit small. Perfectly suited for this small tree, but I wish I had made
some much larger circular footed bonsai pots.
Steampunk
Weapons - Progress
June 5, 2011
This weekend I did the first metallic paint paint on my "Model
A" Steampunk pistol.
Here is the result. Much more to come:
Steampunk
Weapons
May 31, 2011
With a Steampunk convention coming up in the fall, I put my
thoughts towards customizing some Steampunk weapons.
I was looking for water pistols because I know they have some
interesting features, usually hidden by poor molding and bad color choices.
But a lick of paint does wonders, in my experience. So I set my eye on what
I consider steampunk features, such as piping, gas cylinders, brass-like tubing,
etc.
In a local corner store I found several pistols that seem to
fit the bill, and each one cost less than $2.00.
Here's my first attempt, and I'll update this blog with my progress,
but let's start with the basics. The original, the original painted in a satin
black undercoat, and a photoshopped mock-up to put a plan together.
So here we go. This pistol comes from a cheapo line called "Cyber
Series", and there are four models in the X-222 series. These are molded
in bright colors, in clear and opaque plastics.
Naked yellow, with squirt trigger and cap.
Black underpaint.
One color scheme idea.
Possibily adding a lamp switch for a trigger, a CO2 canister at the front,
and a brass cribbage peg with bead for sight. Just some ideas.
I intend to paint the upper gas canister copper, the majority
of the pistol body brass, with silver highlights and perhaps a turquoise decorative
accent. Either that, or metallic red.
This is just the base. I intend to augment it with metal parts
including perhaps a better muzzle, a targeting pin, a trigger, and perhaps
a pressure gauge and some small gears.
But hey, not a bad start.
The
Results of My Banksy shoot.
May 1, 2011 - a few hours later
Driving into Boston is never my idea of a fun thing to do. But
I made it. Parked ($12.00 for the day, which is awesome if I was going to
stay for more than 17 minutes) and I was about 50 feet away from the Banksy
rat I was to shoot near.
So here it is. I have more shots, which I may post later, like
Banksy up on the ladder, and one where the Doctor has holding one of the stencil
sheets for Banksy.
Upon seeing it, my daughter aptly captioned it: "Awkward..."
So here it is:
If you want a larger image, to get more detail, just click the
picture and a larger (non-stereo) one will come up.
One thing you'll notice, compared to the shot below which I
took about a year ago, various new stickers have appeared, but none encroaches
onto the rat. I think those placing the stickers know wherefrom the rat cometh.
(Oh, and a new sticker was added.)
My
Banksy shoot.
May 1, 2011
A year or so ago, my daughter and I discovered an actual Banksy
rat in Boston, on our way out of the Institute
for Contemporary Art on the waterfront.
Recently I entered a Where
is the TARDIS competition hosted by BBC America to honor the new season
of Doctor Who. The competition is for people building their own TARDISes and
sending in photos. One of the shots I have to shoot in a public place, so
I thought how cool it would be if I shot the Doctor accidentally encountering
Banksy himself painting one of his rats.
And I was off!
I have until May 5 to post the photo to the competition, so
I had well over a month to do this, including prep - making
1:6 scale spray cans, getting props together, like the
traffic divider I made last year, etc.
But you'd be amazed how hard it was for me to to grab a free
Sunday (when there would be little foot traffic) and go in and do the shoot.
Impossible, it seemed. With deadlines on my Spring Thing competition, a trip
to Arizona spanning TWO of those Sundays, and other obligations, I just couldn't
make it.
So here it is, May 1, and I'm off to Boston to do the shoot.
So in case you don't know who Banksy is, or what I'm even talking about, here,
at least, is a link to my blog entry showing the discovery: Go
see Banksy's Rat in Boston.
And here's a photo of it:
Spring
Bonsai Experiment. !
April 30, 2011
This past fall I decided it was time to get back into Bonsai.
I used to do it in Newfoundland. I had several successes: a found Larch, about
a foot tall, that was a perfect cone-shaped miniature conifer that I spied
along the Newfoundland highway and transplanted successfully; a found Quince
tree that had lovely peach flowers, that I molded into a nice cascade form
(which actually had five flowers the first year I had it, and 15 the next,
showing it was thriving); and a bought miniature azalea that had nice pink
flowers. But then I moved to the US and could not take any of my plants with
me.
So this past fall, 14 years later, I decided that if I had gotten
back into it right away, I might have some nice 15-year-old or so trees now,
that were quite mature and beautiful. Time goes and you forget that fact.
So it was time.
I shopped around and bought four very cheap (season was over,
everyone was selling out on sale) shrubs that looked the part for a good starter
Bonsai. I got a "Japanese Sky Pencil", which is a lovely tall, straight
miniature holly tree; a Purple Gem Rhododendron (which is a nice miniature
variant) and a Red Mill Japanese Pieris, which I know little about, but I've
seen them around a lot.
I left them out in my patio area for the winter, not able to
tend to them well because of the five frikkin' feet of snow. I couldn't get
to them, so I hoped they would survive their dormant period naturally, without
my intervention.
Two did not. Sadly one was the amazing and almost already perfect
Bonsai, the Japanese Sky Pencil.
But two did survive and thrive - the Purple Gem Rhododoendron
and the Red Mill Pieris.
And today I replanted them from their nursery pots into Bonsai
pots. This does require radical root trimming, so I hope I didn't kill them.
It's the right time, though - spring. Buds are coming out, new growth. Heck,
the purple gem is already spouting flowers, though they haven't fully blossomed
yet.
Here they are, in their fresh new pots, in 3D stereo if you
can cross-eye view, or if not, just look at one side or the other. (Click
for larger image).
Purple-Gem Rhododendron
Red mill
Oh, and one more thing to add. A month or so ago (before I went
to Arizona, I was at IKEA because my wife said that there were Bonsai trees
there. There were these large-rooted trees, and on checking, I didn't like
them much, but I decided to take a trip out there and see what they were like
up-close. Well, I still didn't like them. But they also had these Fukien Tea
bonsai trees, and there were a few left. An Asian lady had picked one up,
but I think she left behind the nicest one, at least for Bonsai - a cascading
one. I snapped it up and took it home.
It was about $15.00 or so, and I had not much hope it would
survive or anything, but heck, it was worth it to experiment.
So I planted it immediately into a nice, unglazed hexagonal
pot designed for semi-cascade format, and I watered it and watched it.
The instructions said it is a plant that is not terribly
tolerant to change, so I thought it might die. And sure enough, leaves
were turning dark and falling off. But after a week or so I could detect new
growth. Bright green leaves, and tiny shoots were growing from the plant,
and it's clear this thing may just survive. I have it in a perfect environment
for it - indoors, but near a large wall-sized window/door for light.
Here it is, moved temporarily outdoors for the shot:
Chinese Fukien Tea
(As usual, click for larger image. Cross eyes for 3D effect. See it for real!)
Catching Up!
April 24, 2011
Since facebook came along, my blog has kind of gotten somewhat
ignored, because I can express most of what I want to express, post most of
what I want to post, show photos, etc, all on facebook. But I'm going to try
to stay more current here too.
Spring
Thing
April 24, 2011
Well, this past year's project has been "The
Promise", an interactive fiction game written in (as
I learned) Inform 7, which is a natural language programming language making
the coding itself somewhat interesting.
My intent was to enter it into the 2011 Spring
Thing.
I came up with the idea for "The Promise" while watching
"Secred of the Celts", an animated movie. In the game you play Wil,
the son of a father who died a few years ago and an ailing mother, in a village
that has been plagued with perpetual winter for a couple of decades. Everyone
possible is out on a hunt to get food for the village you live in, leaving
you to help out around the village. You begin by helping the various crafters
(candle maker, glazier, potter, etc.) with chores on what is essentially a
series of Fed-Ex quests in which you are hopefully supposed to learn something
about the village and explore a bit.
Later, a stranger stumbles into the village and you alert the
Elder. He tells a tale of marauders moving down the coast by ship, sacking
all villages along the way. His own was attacked, and he's been running ever
since to warn your village.
You are then asked to take to the forest to find ingredients
for something, you don't know what. But you go, and before you do you hand
your mother a letter from the Elder. She then gives you an amulet that your
father supposedly carved one day when he was your age, on a day he spent alone
in the forest (before the forest became so dangerous - before the advent of
the Ice Wolves.) The back story of the amulet is interesting, and a central
point of the story. But it also allows you to enter the forest safely, and
move to places you've visited already in one move.
In the forest you encounter an interesting person, and make
a promise, and are tasked to keep that promise no matter what, and you soon
learn the seriousness of that promise.
I got the game done just under the wire for
the Spring Thing competition in 2011. 2010's competition saw ZERO entries,
oddly enough. This year I found out we have six entries.
I missed the e-mail deadline to establish my intent to enter,
but thanks to the gracious good-will of the organizer, and the other participants,
I was allowed to enter anyway. I had simply forgot to do it. I had it all
planned, and I visited the site so often, I thought I had e-mailed my intent,
but on checking, I hadn't. Anyway, water under the bridge.
The reviews, scant though they are so far, (probably until the
comp is over in early May) have not been kind.
Emily
Short trashed it mightily. The commenters on her blog weren't
as kind.
I read another similar review of it, but one that seemed to
get the game more, and actually played it through in great detail, taking
the trouble to get the back story from the NPCs, but I forget where that one
was. I saw it on Planet-IF,
but it's gone, as that seems to be a temporary aggregator. Oh. Here it is!
http://diden.net/~maga/springthing2011.html
Jenny Palodna of Pissy
Little Sausages gives it a less harsh review. I think she probably
gave me a bit of a pass because we met last year and I gave her Purple
Data Cubes (from my previous game "Piracy
2.0").
One rating on IFDB was a 1 star of five. Sigh.
I guess "The
Promise" will be my last IF entry. Ever. I have no
need to spend a year of my life on something people are going to absolutely
hate. When a story designed for an introductory audience, (kids) is trashed
so thoroughly based on my ham-fisted use of promises, with Emily Short even
going so far as to quote Greek doctrine on the matter of promises, then it's
fucking time to throw in the towel, no? I guess what I like in Interactive
Fiction is not the norm these days. My last game, "Piracy
2.0" was met with some skepticism due to its "old-school"
nature as well, but it's a game I liked to play, and a style I still love.
And I guess others agreed since it took 5th place in the 2008 IF Comp, out
of a field of 35.
I even went through great trouble to make feelies.
Amazon.com's
Breakthrough Novel Awards
April 24, 2011
In November I self-published my novel "The
Black Blade: A Gull Village Story" through CreateSpace.
This also means it's available on Amazon.com.
I was also able to convert it, though rudimentarily, to Kindle
format.
But I also entered it into the Amazon.com's
Breakthrough Novel Awards, where 10,000 people maximum enter
two categories: General Fiction, and Young Adult Fiction. Without my realizing
it, General Fiction has sub-categories, but because I was unaware of that,
I entered it into the Young Adult section, but that's ok, because I always
considered it a YA book anyway.
The first round of cuts, 10,000 entries, were chosen based on
a pitch document. I made it.
The second round of cuts, 250 entries in each main category,
were chosen based on a 3,000 (max) word excerpt, the first 3 chapters of my
book. I made it.
I find out on Tuesday if I made the third cut, down to 50 per
category. I have a 1/5 chance, but I don't know... I'm not getting great feedback
from other entrangs on the forums, but then a lot of of those entrants have
derivative ideas in their books. God help me if I read another excerpt about
a school for young magicians, or another one about vampires or werewolves,
or god forbid, zombies. It's like nothing is original.
Oh well, I'll post here with the result of hte third round of
cuts.
I WILL FILL OUT THE FOLLOWING TOPICS OVER THE NEXT WEEK OR SO:
Pax East
San Fran GDC
iPod 2
Bonus
Black Blade
