Grauh

I am back in NS, and still tying to catch up with the time zone. Will blog more when I do.

On My Way

Way too early tomorrow morning I shall be on a plane, en route to BC. I will, no doubt, strongly resemble a zombie when I arrive.

More Wishes

Wel, I went and updated my Amazon.ca wishlist (it's linked over there on the left somewhere). There were a few things -- a couple books and some PSP games -- that I'd forgotten to remove. And I've added a few things, but I keep forgetting things I thought of during the week and haven't added. Sigh.

Anyway, a few more things to add to the wish list below . . .

Practical Things

• knife sharpening apparatus -- for keeping my leather paring and bookmaking knives sharp, now that I spent a couple of hours in my teacher's studio getting them sharp. I'll need medium and fine ceramic stones (Spyderco makes nice ones that should be easy to find, or there's these ones from Lee Valley), and probably a coarse Diamond stone eventually, in case things get really messed up (here's the Lee Valley page on Diamond sharpening things -- the 6" is plenty big). Because the knives are flat on one side, kitchen knife sharpening apparatus are not generally good. Oh, yeah, and a strop. The most important thing is a strop and the grit that goes on it (once again, Lee Valley to the rescue).
  

Fun Things

• Inu Yasha season three box set DVDs. I already have the first two seasons and all the movies.
  
• The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana by Jess Nevins. MonkeyBrain Books, 2005 (official web site is here). I'm actually collecting rather a lot of Victorian fiction (especially science fiction), fiction set in Victorian times, nonfiction about Victorian times, and nonfiction about the history of magic, as reference for a novel that's been growing in my head for some time now, and is going to need to be started soon. I hope. To that end, movie versions of Victorian sf are also welcome. Jules Verne, especially. Even old black and whites. Maybe especially old black and whites. And The Illusionist and The Prestige, whenever they come out on DVD.
  

That's all I can think of right now. I think there was more, but it's gone now.

Holiday Wishes and Travel

I figure it's probably about time I made my holiday wish list, in case, you know, people don't know what to get me. Of course, no one has to get me anything. I'm quite happy just having you all around in the world. These things here listed are not in any particular order, by the way.

Practical Things

Of course, in my world, most practical things are also fun, so don't worry about getting me something practical when you want me to have fun. These ideas are both.

• art supplies -- I'm most focussed on book-making and printmaking right now (I have Intro Printmaking next semester), so things like paper, printing ink, bookbinding odds and ends, or gift certificates to art supply stores (Opus and Island Blue both have mail order, and of course there's Talas, but I don't know which if any of these do gift certificates) would be lovely.
  
• books -- Specifically books on bookbinding and books on books. I'll try to add all the relevant ones to my Library Thing list so people can see what I've already got. And I'll try to get my wishlists updated, too, so people can see which ones are at the top of my list. Or there's always the gift certificate route. Amazon (either .ca or .com), Chapters, Powells -- they're all fine (Powells has more used/antiquarian).
  
• light meter -- So I can figure out exposures for photography. I need something that has incident metering, but I think most of them do both incident and reflective these days. The ones we use at school are the Sekonic FlashMate or similar. I certainly don't need anything more complicated.
  
• PlayStation 3 -- Yeah, okay, no one's going to get me one. I'd be surprised if anyone can even find one any time soon. But I'd like the 60GB version just in case someone has too much money lying around. And it's in the Practical list because I can use it for work as well as play (on account of it can interact with the PSP).
  

Purely Fun Things

• books -- Yeah, books are fun. Niko likes books.
  
• Nintendo Wii (the console formerly known as the Revolution) -- that's pronounced "wee" if you were wondering, and yes there have been many jokes. I want to play Legend of Zelda in the worst way. And the Wii is backwards compatible, so I could play GameCube games, too. Alternatively, a GameCube would be cool, and cheaper, but won't play the newest Nintendo games.
  
• games -- EB Games certificates are good, or Futureshop, or you can get me the box set of all three Devil May Cry games. Or, if someone gets me a Wii or a PS3, Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (or LoZ: Windwaker, which is GameCube, but Wii is backwards compatible) for Wii or Genji II for PS3. Also the Legend of Zelda game for DS if it comes out by xmas.
  
• DVDs -- I still don't have any Angel past season one, or any Farscape besides a few odd discs from season one. I'd really, really like the new Doctor Whos, though. The ones with Christopher Eccleston as the ninth Doctor or David Tennant as the tenth Doctor (though the old ones are cool, too). Those classic versions of Frankenstein with Boris Karloff and Dracula with Bela Lugosi are tempting, too.
  

I'm sure there are other things which I have forgotten. Maybe even important things. So I will update this list if I think of anything else. Plus, there are always those cool unexpected things that I hadn't thought of but which are perfect. There always seem to be lots of those.

Oh yeah, and travel. I'll be arriving in the Nanaimo airport on December 13th after an obcenely long cross-country flying marathon, and will be leaving from the same airport on December 31st 29th. So if you're on Southern Vancouver Island, I might see you over the hols.

Bookish

In a recent conversation with my roommates, Deva asked, "If you were a superhero, who would you be, and what would your superpower be?" (Yes, we have conversations like this all the time, though it's usually Ryan who asks this sort of question.) My answer? "I think I'd have to be The Bookworm." A superpower was more difficult, but we settled on knowledge, or the ability to find out anything.

So yeah, our apartment is starting to look even more bookish than ever. As if my and Deva's shelves full of books (mine neatly ordered, though rather over-full, and Deva's haphazard and sometimes spilling over at the edges) didn't make it obvious enough that Book People live here, there are now -- crowding the computers and printers and scanners out of their dominance of one third of the living room -- an assortment of book-making apparatus. The first was an unassuming marble cutting board for paring leather on, that simply looked like it got lost en route to the kitchen. Then came the sewing frame and finishing press I ordered from England. Neither is very large on its own, but together they take up a fair bit of room, and I haven't actually decided where they'll live permanently yet. Then this morning the parcel guy brough a big box containing a small wooden press (a standing press or nipping press, perhaps; it's a sort of generic "book press" according to the tag on it). And sometime later this week I'll be adding a small-but-heavy metal press, of the same ilk as the wooden one, but more heavy-duty. My book arts teacher has one a previous student wants to sell for a very reasonable price. There may be a smallish board cutter, too. Now I just need to find a parlour-size letterpress and I'll be set. For now.

Blogthings - What Gender Is Your Brain?

Your Brain is 67% Female, 33% Male

Your brain leans female You think with your heart, not your head Sweet and considerate, you are a giver But you're tough enough not to let anyone take advantage of you!

What Gender Is Your Brain?

I Wish I'd Made These

Well, not really, but the photographs (ambrotypes, specifically) and camera obscura installations that Stephen Berkman makes really fit in with some of the stuff I've been playing with. (Via Brass Goggles and crossposted to Camera Obscura Nova, my Livejournal.)

Now This . . .

This is a watch I'd rather like. Pocket watch, roman numerals, mechanical (which is to say not battery-run, as in you have to wind it), chrome (not a big fan of gold, I), window for peering in at the gears working away . . . Very cool.

Madness, Shapechanging, Art

The Journal of Mythic Arts Summer /Fall 2006 issue is now up at the Endicott Studio website, and my paper "The Artist as Shaman: Madness, Shapechanging and Art in Terri Winding's The Woodwife" is included. You can scroll down the page to find it (but be sure to look at the other wonderful stuff too), or if you must, skip straight to it here.

This was originally written as an assignment for a workshop/seminar I took at SUNY New Paltz in . . . 2003, maybe, or was it 2002? So it's really Heinz Insu Fenkl's fault that I wrote it in the first place. And, of course, Terri Windling's for writing a book that made me ramble on at such length. (The mistakes and the stupid things are all my own fault of course). The paper was first published in the Mythic Passages web journal.

Two Ronnies Mastermind

Watch this: Two Ronnies Mastermind (the usual warnings about having anything in your mouth apply).

The Shire of Bend, Oregon

Maybe the Tolkien Estate can sure them? The Shire of Bend, Oregon. I shudder. Many times.

School! Books! Etc.

School started up again on Thursday. I had Architecture, Culture and Photography with the lovely Mr Fish. Like Intro Photo, it should be a really good class, but lots of work. On Friday I had Graphic and Typographic Design with a prof who had a Scottish accent and a tendency to trail off at the ends of sentences, but I think he'll be easier to listen to when he's actually talking about design and not reading out the obligatory course descriptions and rules about respecting the historic buildings our school is in. I'll have that class twice a week (Tues and Fri mornings). Then Friday afternoons I have Intermediate Book Arts with Joe Landry, who also taught Letterpress in the summer (and who gave me an A+). It's going to be a really, really great class (even though I managed to cut myself while sawing a recess on the spine of my sewing sample -- Joe and half the class were out of the room fetching sewing frames, luckily) (for those of you who don't know, if it's pointy or sharp, I'll eventually stab or cut myself with it, though it's never serious). And that's what my semester is going to be. Only three classes, but two are 6 credits, which is kind of like double. So I'm still doing 15 credits -- the maximum anyone is allowed to take at once.

And I've just spent some time entering all the books I have out in the living room into LibraryThing. Go look if you want (you can search for me as "feynico"). Basically, you can see most of my geek books, some of my nonfiction and a very small amount of my fiction. The bedroom shelves will be next, but I'm going to need to get a paid membership before I'm done. There's a nice lifetime membership option which only costs two and a half times the yearly membership, so I'll probably do that (unlesss someone wants to get me a gift membership). I really like the idea of being able to keep a record of my books online, for insurance purposes, if nothing else. I'm probably also going to (finally) get some kind of book cataloguing software for offine, too. I had one all picked out a year ago, now I just have to figure out which one it was . . .

One Down . . .

It's been an ambition of mine (one of a short list of things I want to have happen before I drop dead) to have work on the Endicott Studio website or be mentioned there in some way (like if I had a novel published and they put it on the recommended reading list or something). Anyway, there will soon be a paper I wrote in the Endicott Journal of Mythic Arts. And not only that, but I'm listed in the "Contributors to the Journal of Mythic Arts" in the right column of the Endicott blog. I'm only two names down from Neil Gaiman!!

Swashbuckling

You Are A Pirate!


What Type Of Swashbuckler Are You?
brought to you by Maddog Varuka & Dawg Brown

I Rule the Freakin' World

I picked up my grades from the summer today:

Basic Book Arts ---> A+

Intro Photography ---> A

Survey of 20th Century Art ---> A+

Letterpress Printing ---> A+

Plus, I got my paycheque, a notice from Canada Post to pick up a parcel, and a notice from UPS that they'll try again to deliver a package tomorrow. All in all, a good day.

I Have the Best Job in the World

So have I said lately how much I love my job? I really, really love my job.

Twice this week, a nice FedEx person has showed up at my door with packages for me. One was two anime UMDs, for an upcoming special guide I'm planning on Anime on UMD (or Anime for PSP). The second was a Beta build of a wacky Japanese PSP game called WTF (which does not stand for what it stands for; it stands for "Work Time Fun"), with a t-shirt! So now I have cool stuff to review and write about.

Like I said, I love my job.

Mild-Mannered

What does Niko say when a Jesus boy asks her if she wants a Bible tract? Why, she politely says, "No, thank you."

And what does Niko say when said Jesus boy then asks, "If you die tonight, will you go to heaven?" Why, she says, "I'm not going anywhere."

And then turns around and yells after him, "I'll just be dead!"

Art for Sale!

Yes, finally some things I can sell! Buy a coelacanth print, and get a coelacanth card free! Pics and info here.

I'm going to have some photos for sale soon, too.

Punctuation Matters

Just ask Rogers about that single comma. Not enough attention to the details of punctuation may cost them a lot of money. (Via Neil Gaiman.)

Shiny Airship Watch

If anyone should ever wish to spend a tidy sum on a watch for me, this is the one I'd like.