29 January 2006

Very Cool Art

Check this out. I'd love to have some of these lurking in my house. I'd love to make something like these. I tried once, with some fish bones, but it didn't work very well. Maybe it's time to try again. (Link via Neil Gaiman.)

26 January 2006

You Know You're a Geek When

. . . your design class is looking at monograms and your teacher asks "What do the initials D.M. remind you of?" and you say "Dungeon Master."

20 January 2006

Forget Heaven, I'm Going to Valhalla!

HASH(0x8d0c134)
Do you deserve a seat in Valhalla? (15 Questions)

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Why I Love Value Village

(There's also a "Why I Hate Value Village" category that begins with insane pricing, but that's irrelevant for the moment.)

I love Value Village because you can still find very cool stuff there for relatively cheap (possibly that is especially so for the Atlantic provinces). Today, I found a Rolleiflex SL26 camera there. It's a "classic" camera from the late 60s/early 70s, made in Germany and sporting a Zeiss lens (Zeiss makes really good lenses for large format cameras). Anyway, they're not hugely expensive cameras these days, but they do cost more than the $25 I paid for mine. Now I just have to find some 126 film cartridges (I could swear I saw them at a Lawton's drug store a few months ago, but it might have been 110).

And I also found an old Nintendo NES game system. It's a bit cheesy, but how could I resist? It desperately needs cleaning, so I'll be off to WalMart for cleaning items (and junkfood for anime night). Woo hoo!

15 January 2006

Bestsellers

According to the Lulu Titlescorer,

  • The Coming of the Fairies has a 63.7% chance of becoming a bestseller
  • The Secret Common-Wealth has a 69% chance
  • The Madness of Kentaurs has a 35.9% chance
  • The Stolen Child has a 41.4% chance
  • Three Sisters has a 14.6% chance
  • and Bunk has a 31.7% chance.
Of course, only the first three have actually been written (and only the first one revised). Scientific bestseller projection for books not even written yet! Amazing!

(Link via Neil Gaiman.)

10 January 2006

Airship Teapots!

Yes, you read that right: airship teapots! Want one . . . drool . . . (Link via Kaja Foglio.) (For more airships and Foglios, read Girl Genius. 'Cause I said so.)

07 January 2006

New Things

I wonder how long it will take me to remember to put "2006" on things?

Anyway, I had a quiet New Year's Eve. Watched some tv, read a book, stayed up late enough to say "Happy New Year" and went to bed. Then we had a turkey dinner on New Year's Day.

I spent most of the holiday recovering from the hectic end of semester. I tried to get in a little extra work, but mostly I did a lot of reading (mostly YA novels, a few magazines, a bit of non-fiction, and a handful of graphic novels from the library), a lot of gaming (on PS2 started Devil May Cry, played most of Jak and Daxter (since finished), and got all the way through Samurai jack: The Shadow of Aku, and on PC started Syberia 2 which I didn't think would work on the elderly laptop but did), and some watching of movies (a few rented things like The Brothers Grimm, and the latest Harry Potter and The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe at the theatre).

And now the new semester has begun. The first day of class was Tuesday, and I had an 8:30 am class (this means getting up at 6:30--bleah). The class was Studio: Design, basically an introduction to the various categories of design (product design, communication design, etc). The teacher was, alas, still in Switzerland, so another prof gave us the course outline and our first assignment. I've since had the second class (Thursday morning), but I'm still not sure if the class will be really good, or a chore. It will definitely be a lot of work, and I should learn a lot, so I'm hoping it will be good. More on that as things develop.

Wednesday I had a much more reasonable start time: 10:30 am. This was for a lecture course in 19th century art. So far it's lecture-course-tedious, but the only homework will be reading and studying for the two exams. Then in the afternoon (1-5) I had photography. It started off really fun, with some optics demonstrations, so I think it's going to be good. There will be a fair bit of work--after next week, we'll have to shoot a roll of film (36 exp) a week, plus technical exercises and textbook reading. The text is really interesting, though; I'm finding myself really intrigued by the technical aspects. So now I'm trying to figure out how to fit more photography into my schedule next year. I'm thinking of paring down the art history classes to only the required courses (I have enough transfer credit to cover electives). I really wanted to take the one on the Arts and Crafts movement, but I can learn about that from books on my own if need be. Better to spend my class time learning practical things. I only wish I'd thought of that before I signed up for Survey of 19th Century Art; I could have possibly fit in one of the required ones instead and freed up more time next year. Oh well.

Thursday was Design again. On Monday I'll have 19th c, and then my first Foundation Drawing 2 class. I expect it'll be similar to part 1, with 5-hour homework drawings each week.

And so life goes.
  • Currently reading: The Penultimate Peril (A Series of Unfortunate Events book 12) by Lemony Snicket (fiction)
  • Currently reading: Winter World by Bernd Heinrich (non-fiction)
  • Currenly playing: Devil May Cry (PS2)
  • Currenly playing: Kya: Dark Lineage (PS2)
  • Currenly playing: Syberia 2 (PC)