Miscellany

08:54 am - This just in...

Dachshund puppies contain nearly weaponizable levels of adorableness. That is all.

Current Mood: happy

11:28 am - Coding Woes

It turns out that when you haven't coded in about 5 years--and were only a dilettante then--you tend to forget a few things. Like how to have your code recognize classes that are in different files in the same project. Mutter.

EDIT: Apparently I got an extra dose of the stupid this morning. C# is so picky about all the namespaces in the files being spelled the same...

Current Mood: frustrated

04:57 pm - Bleh.

I fail at baking today. For those coming to the playtest tonight, I apologize.

Current Mood: annoyed

09:50 pm - Drunken thought of the night.

After watching an episode from season 2 of Lovejoy and the first episode of Deadwood, I'm more convinced than ever that somewhere, in an attic, there's a portrait of Ian McShane slowly aging.

Current Mood: amused

05:26 pm - Feh.

Why is it on the days I most need a cocktail, I never have enough energy to make myself one?

Current Mood: exhausted

06:17 pm - Keep Being Awesome

This just made my day so much better:


Any offense taken by vegetarians in the audience is strictly accidental and not approved by Major League Baseball.

P.S. It's from http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/

09:46 pm - Today has been a good day.

It started with getting up at a nice hour, taking a leasurly shower and heading to Whole Foods for a heaping box of bacon, fruit, and biscuits. And a cherry strudel, but I digress. Then it was on to the Fremont Solstice Parade. This will take a bit of explaining. For those unfamiliar with this, it's sort of Mardi Gras, a pagan ritual, an art show, and a phish concert all rolled into one. It's where the people of our fair city take all the leftover winter depression and our infamous Northwestern reserve and say, "Fuck it."

So, it starts off with naked people on bikes (and Rollerblades, and the occasional scooter--oh, and one horny devil on a unicycle). And not just a few. They're all painted in strange and entertaining ways--one was wearing a luchedor mask and cape and for a brief moment I thought I had an El Camino sighting, but then I realized his cape wasn't a Cornoa beach towel. But I digress again. Anyway, then the floats start with a team of Brazilian dancers and a live band. I think you see where this is going. It's all to easy to picture the whole thing as a ritual, with the skyclad folk summoning a long stream of fae and associated mystical creatures (like the occasional undead). It was all too easy to pick out the varieties, the eshu dancing like dervishes, a ton of nyads and other fae of the water, some sidhe and their servants, a scattering of dryads, even a winter fae snuck in, a troll or two, and a couple of satyrs and their woodland friends. I think one of my favorite little bits were the people with air cannons that shot rose petals over the crowds. Suffice it to say that the summer court is definitely in session.

Anyway, after that revelry was the first of many excellent barbecues of the season. Less photographed if not less photogenic. Followed by a side trip to water some of my parent's plants and now home with wine and chocolate cake. This will do, lad, this will do...

Current Mood: chipper

08:12 am - What You Can Do For Iran

If you want to help the protesters in Iran but aren't, you know, there, here are a couple of ideas:

• Set your Twitter location to Iran. The more people who's twitter location is set to Tehran, the harder it is for the security services there to figure out who's actually a protester and intimidate them.
  
• Set up a proxy server. The more available servers, the harder it is for the Iranian government to block them all. Admittedly, this one is a bit trickier.
  

Current Mood: awake

10:26 am - The beads are done.

I'm hanging out at Zoka coffee waiting for my contact at Fusion Beads to come in so I can deliver my bead order. Oddly enough, I'm not freaked out. I may be when I get there and am actually handing the beads off, but oddly enough I don't think I will be. This is a huge change for me.

While I was cleaning, polishing up, and packing the beads last night a thought occurred to me. A few people have commented that my work with glass has made me some sort of artist, but that title has never sat well with me. Maybe it's because I was raised by, essentially, a family of engineers who considered artistic pursuits something you did as a hobby, but I think it's more because I believe that art requires intent. I have no statement with what I'm trying to do with glass. I'm not trying to get across a vision, I'm just trying to make something that looks neat. Perhaps I'm being naive about the artistic process, but I've always felt that art requires that the artist not only intend for their piece to be art, but also that they be trying to say something by the piece.

Craft, on the other hand exists for its own utility. Craft has function (even if that function is just to look pretty) and a craftsman is only trying to make something well made that fulfills its role well. That's what I'm trying to do, so I've decided that I'm a craftsman rather than an artist. Make a note of it. It should be noted that I appreciate the arrogance inherent in that proclamation, but I will say that I didn't say I was a good craftsman. And, at least technically, a professional one.

I also want to note that this is a personal statement and what I said above was medium neutral. That is to say, I work with glass and think of myself as a craftsman while someone else who works with glass is an artist. The same is true with wood, paint, or mechanical parts. Intent is the key in my mind.

Anyway, I'm not sure why this makes me content, but it does. The notion that I was being an artist without trying to create art rankled me. Somehow being a craftsman takes a lot of pressure off. Actually, I think I know why. I've spoken in the past about the difficulty of switching from science to art because science is all about self doubt, peer review, and margins of error while art is all about the confidence to proclaim, "This is art and it means something." Craftsmanship, though, requires neither of those. The object is created and stands or falls on its own merits, and really, that's how I like to work.

02:24 pm - Donuts

My fitness regime in a nutshell: tonight I'm running in the Fremont 5k, therefore--in honor of the world's greatest athlete--I had donuts for breakfast.

Current Mood: busy

07:06 pm - When Clowns Attack

Seattle has apparently had some attacks from clowns recently (ok, "Juggalos", I think we all know a clown when we see one). My question to you, is this the stirrings of the great demonic clown cult (we all remember from the last Bureau 13 game) or is this the beginning of the Jokerz gang foretold in Batman Beyond?

Current Mood: curious

03:25 pm - I kick ass.

I just sold an order of a ton of beads to Fusion Beads' brick and mortar store. This will nicely replenish Moonblush Designs' coffers. However, I now have two weeks to make 195 beads (minus a few I already have). Hrm, I hope the glass shop down in Burien still has that olive glass...

Current Mood: happy

10:16 am - Word love

Thanks to Zero Punctuation and their review of Bionic Commando, I now have a new favorite word: Schadenfreudtastic.


(ZP is safe for work, unless you play any of the videos, which are rather the point of going there in the first place.)

Current Mood: pleased

02:45 pm - Signpost up ahead: Next Stop, Robland

I was on my weekly run with covenantscave and we happened to make a turn into Robland. We ran past a pair of young ladies sunning themselves in their yards in skimpy bikinis. This was good. When we came by that spot on the way back (completely by coincidence, I assure you), one of the young ladies was up and stretching. And then, I kid you not, she got on the trampoline. Our conversation was reduced to, "Um...yeah." for the next few minutes. Following that came a lengthy discussion of Team Volare, and why it is good to be La Puma.

Today, in celebration of that little trip, I will be fixing ribs that have been marinated in bourbon, smoked with wood chips (carved myself with an old, blackened knife) that have been rehydrated in beer. camino_volare, thank you for letting me pass through Robland.

Current Mood: chipper

03:23 pm - Dishes are done, dude.

Parents are gone after a lovely lunch. The beginning was more hectic and unprepared than I would have liked, but everyone had plenty to eat and drink and once we sat down to it, everything was much calmer. random_girl had to leave early to get back to work, but in retrospect, I should have had her call her boss to see if an extra white chocolate strawberry tart or creme brulee would have bought her another hour...

Anyway, the kitchen has been more or less excavated and I'm going to take the afternoon to relax/sober up. There's plenty of leftovers for dinner (and I never made the clams, so they'll have to be done for dinner tonight too).

Current Mood: relaxed

11:10 am - Tiny Evil

For pirateseneschal, a blog where an artist draws whatever his 5 year old daughter tells him to, and then lets her critique it. It's called Tiny Art Director.

Current Mood: amused

06:00 pm - This Calls for the Willhelm Scream

I just watched the trailer for the new Sherlock Holmes movie and I can't decide if it's awesome or horrible. (The title of this post comes from the song by Possible Oscar.)

Current Mood: confused

07:42 pm - Small Side Note

After attending the U-District Street Fair yesterday, I have scientifically determined that I have lost whatever patience I may once have had for meandering hippies. That is all.

Current Mood: cranky

09:00 pm - Authory McAuthorton

My first published fiction is now up on Three Crows Press under Grants Pass Extras. (It's titled "Snake Oil.") It's not on a dead tree, but there's a check in the mail for me (right, gaaneden? Right?) so it totally counts. No doubt it'll be a DVD extra when the movie comes out.

In other news, still working on LARPS stuff. Took your suggestions under advisement but didn't respond to the comments before my ADD kicked in and made it impossible to do so (it's this whole pressure thing about not meeting deadlines, very complicated). Suffice to say they were very good and useful but I'm still looking for an elegant solution.

Will post more later.

Current Mood: pleased

09:59 am - The Apocalypse Cult is Recruiting.

So, some folks just came up to our door to share some "good news" what with all the depressing news thats been going on recently. It was a husband and wife, very middle class and friendly looking. Naturally, it was from the bible. No big deal. I'm agnostic and it sounded like they were trying to do something nice, so I figured I'd humor them and if they got preachy I could rip them a new one.

The wife did all the talking while the husband stood back. The verse she read was from Revelations, about how God made things all better and took away all the pain, etc. and she said they were looking for people who were interested in this sort of time and were willing to work for it. I laughed and said, "You realize that it sounds like you're trying to recruit people to bring about the end of days, right?" She was only slightly taken aback by this and said, "This time won't be brought about by people, but by God..." At that point I realized that either she didn't really understand what "End of Days" meant or she was just ignoring context and picked a bible verse that sounded pretty.

"Yeah," I said, "but by working towards this time you'd be working for the end of all mankind..."
"But God would continue us on, past this earthly existence..."
"I'm sorry, we're really not interested."

I saw at least one other team working the other side of the street. If anyone's interested in an apocalypse cult, I might still be able to catch up with them.

Current Mood: amused