Pollen, Pollen, Everywhere

Thursday, June 7th, 2007

Your interpid host, hamming it up with a Studio Scale Escape Pod and Viper, which are on hold as I work on this...

Lisa and I are having fun playing Scrabble, using our new garden tools, and getting ready for our vacation next week. While last year was an international affair, this year is a thriftier jaunt to Ocean City for four days of detached tackiness and funnel cake, and then a nice five days at home, catching up on all the things we never seem to have time for. Sleeping in, maybe painting the living room, finishing Han Solo in Carbonite, etc. It will be fun, and I will turn my cell phone off.

I started a round of antibiotics today to kill a sinus infection that seems to be getting bigger and bigger, so hopefully I will be able to use my nostrils in time for the beach on Saturday. I thought it was just severe allergies, due to the thick coating of pollen that we seem to be experiencing everywhere, but MucusWatch 3000™ reports a Code Orange, if you know what I mean. Very rarely do I find myself sick, and I hate hate hate it. The only good thing is how i can do a pretty good David Lo Pan impersonation, with my stuffy throaty vocal condition. "Shut up Mr Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!"

Ocean City

Sunday, June 10th, 2007

Lambtron and I headed for the beach yesterday... check out the hedges! She trimmed them last week - sorry, she's taken!

Once in Ocean City, we saw the strangest thing - a guy with a license plate almost exatly like mine... nice spoiler. Hahaha!

Then we saw people setting up for a wedding on the beach!

Here is the procession... waiting to erupt from the dunes! Pow!

I'm full of cotton candy. Life is good.

Last call

Tuesday, June 12th, 2007

We saw dolphins yesterday! This was our last day in Ocean City.

And played minigolf with a sci-fi theme.

Lisa was excited!

Kool-aid fountain.

Crashed ufo!

The galaxy-scape stretched out before us.

What if he doesn't survive?

Monday, June 25th, 2007

So as you longtime readers already know, I have a life-sized Han Solo in Carbonite as a back door. It's a fiberglass casting that I screwed into the wood, and then spackled over, sealing with a couple coats of polyurethane and then the black and silver mixture that to me, looked right. Technically he's probably supposed to be a little more pewter colored, but I like it like this. I also love that you can see right through to the back of the house when you come through the front door, so he's pretty much highlighted from the get go.

Always in motion the prop room is. But I pretty much ruined the back door for any other use, so he's permanent.

In the Terribly Cute Department™, we have Coco's stuffed bear. She has "loved" him so much that Lisa had to give him a foot graft. It cracked me up, so I had to take a picture.

Song in iTunes: "When The World Is Running Down" by The Police.

The Berserker robot of Mr. Naoyuki Katoh!

Wednesday, June 27th, 2007

While waiting for Time Machine bits to dry, I took a dremel to some model kit parts from a really cool little kit from Japan. It's a Naoyuki Katoh design that was worked on by both Kow Yokoyama and Iwai Hide from Sus4 System. The circuit board and led were taken from a "Tea Light Candle" sold at craft stores. The yellow led flickers and pulses, like a real flame. In the context of a robot eye, it looks like it's thinking.

All three resin parts had to be thinned to fit the circuit board. I had to re-solder 4 leads.

The board itself was also hacked up to make it fit. Luckily, the edges were mostly unused, electronics-wise.

Perfect fit. I will putty over the edges, locking everything inside.

The switch is located on the underside, and will be puttied over to hide most of it's surface (except the actual black switch itself).