Claire needed a little break from Sakura-Con today so I took her to Gameworks and we went to Nordstrom. I bought some new jeans. Claire offered to carry the bag. I took this walking back to the convention center.
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March 30, 2008
March 29, 2008
Seattle Sakura-Con 2008… Cosplay Insanity!
I went to Sakura-Con this weekend with Carter and Chad… It was just crazy… Probably more crowded than last year, but maybe a bit more fun. I ran into Tim, BJ and Jonathan from work…
There were tons of pretty amazing cosplay costumes… Carter and Chad went as Light and L from DeathNote. They were stopped on Saturday about 15 times to get their picture taken. Carter got hugged from 2 girls who really liked his costume. I didn’t get hugged. Sad. Maybe it was the handle bar moustache.
We are going back tomorrow for the final day… See you there?
Oh yeah, and we were going up the escalator and I saw this guy. Twice.
Check out my Flickr Pool for More pics.
L – Ryuk – Light
Yellow Dudes – With Pink Girl in the background
Zombies!!! Run!!!
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March 26, 2008
Land Of The Lost Is At The Top Of My Netflix Queue
Scratch That. I just checked and Land Of The Lost is in the mail. Why? Because Vickie loves LOTL… Loves It! Me? Not so much. Kinda scared of the sleestacks as a kid. I have been unable to live it down from my sister, she brings it up every chance she gets. My sisters name is Ronell. Ha. Funny.
Anyway, LOTL on DVD is in the mail and then I came across this…
That is the first pic of Will Ferrell as the dad in the Land Of The Lost Movie. Woot.
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This is Ox. Ox the Pug. People love Ox.
Ox is getting pretty weird. He won’t walk on our hardwood floors anymore. Which sucks for him considering 3/4 of the main floor are hardwood. He gets stuck in parts of the house and won’t leave because he refuses to walk on the floors. Maybe he knows something we don’t.
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March 25, 2008
The BlinkM for the Arduino is sold out.
I have sent the guys at ThingM email asking when the next production run of the BlinkM will be out. I really want one of these… Oh Yeah. Carter does too.
I have seen tons of cool examples of stuff you can do with this little LED.
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March 24, 2008
I read a description of TWITTER a few days ago…
The Twitter. The kids love it. So, like the myspace I am pretty sure I hate it. I have avoided it. I was listening to a stream of R.E.M. playing at SXSW and Michael Stipe was saying that between songs people in the first couple of rows were blogging on their cell phones… Ummm… I think they were actually twittering there, Michael.
So I read this description of twitter a few days ago… It said, “life is what happens between email and blog enteries…” So i’m thinkin’ to myself… Hey I do stuff between blogging and email… like surfing the web… and thinking about surfing the web… and reading books by people who like to surf the web… So how the heck is everyone gonna keep up with me if i’m not on twitter??? Goshdarn… I gosta get me some twitter…
Whew… Luckily it was easy. Now i’m tofuguns @ twitter.com… Hot Dang. Now I can get back to blogging. Everyone Relax.
My use of naughty words upset Eric. The above post has been edited for his delicate sensibilities.
-Thank You.
–Tofuguns Management
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March 16, 2008
Playing with the Arduino – making an annoying lightbox
Carter and I played some more with the Arduino tonight. We attached an ultrabright LED and a piezo speaker to the analog out . We wrote a little for loop program that slowly increased the output to the LED and Speaker. It looked cool and sounded horrible. Awesome.
I cut a some paper into a little box and put it around the LED’s and it looked pretty pretty cool with the lights out. Still sounded horrible. At this rate Skynet will be self-aware by early next year.
Arduino with ultrabright red LED and a piezo speaker
Folded some paper into a little box to cover the LED
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March 14, 2008
Freeze! Performance Art in Grand Central, NYC
Found this on Kanye’s blog. You know… The purveyor of awesome.
How much would this freak you out?
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March 12, 2008
Cormac McCarthy’s Child Of God – 2008 Booklist
I am now half way through Cormac McCarthy’s novels. I finished Child Of God tonight. Another McCarthy, Another Favorite book. Child of God is a good book, maybe a great book. It is filled with little stories. Folksie, crazy, wild eyed, toothless hick stories.
Stories about what a man, Lester Ballard, can do if he is left to do whatever he wants. The stories about Ballard start slightly off, a bit violent, a bit like the stories you might hear from any random homeless person… In backwater Tennessee. By the end of the book, Ballard is much more than a little quirky. Like most of the McCarthy I have read, this book is dark, but it is also probably the funniest McCarthy I have read.
This book is super accessible and I read it in 2 nights. Some of McCarthy has intimidated me, but this book was a breeze. The fact that it is accessible should in no way reflect on the quality, the prose is super tight and still distinctly Cormac. I think. Or something.
I also just read on wikipedia that a 14 year old student in Texas picked this book for a report. The students mother complained that this book was on an approved list from the teacher. Hmmm. I don’t think this book is a great book for ninth graders, but I don’t think the teacher should get canned over it. Or go to jail in Texas. McCarthy has written about these jails and they sound… bad.
This is an awesome quote from the Amazon.com review of the book:
Child of God must be the most sympathetic portrayal of necrophilia in all of literature.
Enough Said. Now You! Go Read!
Booklist 2008:
- Child Of God By Cormac McCarthy
- All The Pretty Horses By Cormac McCarthy
- 361 (Hard Case Crime) By Donald Westlake
- The Genocides by Thomas M Disch
- Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy
- Spook Country by William Gibson
- Half the Blood of Brooklyn By Charlie Huston
- I Am Legend By Richard Matheson
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Teaching a 10 year old programming / electronics basics with the Arduino
I bought Carter a Arduino for his birthday this year and we started playing with it last night. Don’t know what a Arduino is? Here is the description from their website:
Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.
The board was ~$30, and there is a little app / bootloader that you use to program the board. Carter and I wrote a program that turned a little LED on the board on and off. The timer was in Milliseconds and he played with the delay, pushing it up and down. Each time the changed the delay the program needed to be recompiled and reloaded onto the board. He was able to figure out how changing the numbers affected the board ahead of time. Neato.
I think this weekend maybe we might pick up some more LED’s, resisters, motors, and breadboards to do some more experiments. Maybe make a little CarBot kinda thing… with blinking lights and whatnot.
Go Here: http://www.arduino.cc/
Photo by Nicholas Zambetti
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