Dirkus Maximus

I’m trying to get the girls into model building, kinda like I tried to get Andy into it. I let them do all the painting on the big stuff, and I handled painting the tiny bits. Ash seems to like working on them, and wanted her F4U-1 Corsair hung above her bed. She did a lot of the assembly and helped with almost all the decals. Addy was kinda into it, but didn’t seem overly enthused with following through to finish her P51 Mustang. I ended up finishing that up and putting all the decals on it while she played on the XBox with Andy. She’s gonna let me have that one for work though, so I can’t complain too loudly!

Sunrise at Chippokes

OK, first off in my series of “holy-crap-I-need-to-catch-up” posts is a quick blurb about the holiday craft show at Chippokes. It was actually quite awesome this year, for the first two days. Then the “awesome” packed up and went home, leaving the show in a rut.

Saturday night, all hell broke loose in a big storm and several vendors were forced to pack it in and go home in the morning due to damaged product, tents and trailers. The third day was rain, followed by additional rain and some more rain. That was then followed by a feverish, ANGRY-DIRK RAGE POWERED MANHUNT for the organizer, who bolted and went to dinner for several hours without bothering to pay me for being his Excess Material Waste Relocation Technician… AKA garbage guy. I was GREATLY DISPLEASED. I don’t walk around picking up other people’s half-eaten corn dogs and funnel cakes for free, ya know. We’re talking about paying off bills and making Christmas happen for my kids here.

I did manage to finally catch him on his way back to his cabin at 7:30 that evening (we closed up shop at 2:00) and got my check. He gave me the excuse that he had been looking for my father, to give him the check. Um, yeah. I was the guy doing the work, man. Give me the check. And finding my ‘rents isn’t hard, you had their cell phone numbers. And finding them usually doesn’t involve leaving the park for “dinner” for five and a half hours. I don’t think I’ll work for him again next year. Or ever. Ass.

I don’t think the rangers at the park would want me to work that job again either, I left the park’s John Deere hauler a muddy mess after driving it at top speed all over hell’s half-acre looking for that guy, and also forgot the battery charger for it in the bathroom supply closet down by the mansion. (Sorry!)

I was not the biggest offender of the weekend though; my hat is off to you, Mr. Winebago-Driving Canadian Craft Guy, for getting your 1980’s Winebago stuck up to the rails in the lawn of the historic area, while managing to rip a hole in the ground large enough to bury 4 elephants, a team of oxen, and a small jumbo jet. Well done, sir. Bravo.

They jokingly “announced” this product on April Fool’s Day this year. The popular demand for it was so great they had to at least try to make it. Amazingly, they managed to get George Lucas to sign off on it, and they’re going to start shipping officially licensed Tauntaun sleeping bags now! The best part is that they’re running a contest right now for Halloween where the top prize is the first officially manufactured Tauntaun sleeping bag in the world. Now I’m no artist, so I’m not holding out much hope, but here’s my entry into the Jack-O-Lantern design contest. A simple, retro game inspired template…

Click to see full size

[Cut out black areas, surface carve light orange, leave the skin on dark orange areas. Floating bits inside letters may require toothpicks or careful carving for support.]

Perhaps next time Mr. Munkey will remember to slow down the pace and increase the rations on his next wagon ride.

This weekend was my son’s 11th birthday. We also celebrated my birthday, even though it’s not ’till next weekend. We had a little get together at my parent’s house, had some kebabs and some cake and ice cream. He got a gift card from his aunt and uncle that he ended up spending on a new Star Wars tank, and a few new sets of clothes and a copy of the movie “Marley and Me”. I also got a gift card, and used it to get a chain tool and a new chain to fix Andy’s bike with. I’m still mystified as to how the hell you LOSE a chain completely, and not know that you did it or where it went. :-\ We also went out today and saw “Monsters vs. Aliens” at the local movie theater. It’s a pretty good movie, though I think everyone in the theater was hoping for a slightly more vicious fate for the weatherman at the end. I’d give it the thumbs up.

I also gave Andy a tiny model kit of a Sopwith Camel airplane from WWI. I’ve been trying to get Andy to work on model planes with me as a way to get him to slow down and pay attention to detail, instead of rushing haphazardly through everything he does in an effort to be “first”. We did one together last weekend, a Dauntless bomber from WWII, and it turned out REAL nice. I’ll admit, I did most of the work on that one, but he did get in there and help. We built the Sopwith Camel tonight. I did the paint on the model, but Andy did 9/10ths of the assembly this time around. I had to sit on my hands to keep myself from getting in the way. The only parts I glued on were the landing gear (that he had already assembled) and the top wing (I f**cking hate wing struts on planes this size). I’ll get Andy to do all the decals on it tomorrow night.

Overall, I’ve been really impressed with how quickly he’s learning to slow down and steady himself and pay close attention to his work. I think I’ll try to find a very simple kit for him to work on next, and let him do the whole thing by himself. I think we may have found him a really neat hobby.

Click on through the read-more link to see some pics from the party, and of the two planes we’ve built. (more…)

 

Yeah, so you may remember me saying something about accidentally deleting a few things because of an FTP client glitch I had while updating wordpress. Well, a commenter by the name of “George b” spotted another one: the papercraft model of the Canon EOS 1Ds Mk II. Thankfully, I was able to find that model again, PLUS a couple more. Here’s your prize for pointing out the 404, George; the 1Ds Mk II, PLUS a EOS Kiss Digital N (AKA EOS 350D, AKA Digital Rebel XT) AND a Canon AE-1! Pics of the other two, plus links to everything after the jump:

Update: George B responded, and added his own contribution to the set; a model of the EF 300mm 1:2.8L IS USM that will fit on the 1Ds Mk II and EOS Kiss Digital N models! I’ve added it to the list after the jump, along with a few more items I found while poking around:

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Take a look at these eggs made by Franc Grom of Slovenia. He uses a tiny electric drill to bore THOUSANDS of holes in every egg in intricate patterns. The finished pieces are incredible to look at, and probably incredibly delicate. His work is apparently inspired by traditional Slovenian designs, but there are a few eggs that look a bit more modern as well. This has to require an incredibly steady hand and an enormous amount of patience.

The intricate designs kind of remind me of pysanky, or Ukrainian easter eggs. Either way, it’s obvious that some countries take easter a lot more seriously than we do here!

We went out to take in some of the tourist trap scene today. There’s a full gale warning out, so it’s pretty blustery. We had lunch at the Full Moon Cafe. HOLY CRAP. BEST FOOD EVER. Highly recommended. The stuffed portabella appetizer was most excellent. The sirloin steak sandwich was extremely tasty. Wes isn’t a big fan of crab cakes, but they changed her mind with their incredible crab cake sandwich. If you ever come out this way, GO THERE. To walk it off, we walked all the way up to the festival park and back, and we’ll be heading back up there for the USAF Heritage Band’s free concert there at 8 this afternoon. Check some pics after the jump.

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Andy is less than thrilled with his score at his school’s science fair. He only got the “participation” award. He also could have gotten this “award” by showing up with a bag of dirt. His project was completely blown off by the judges. I don’t know all the winners, but 3rd place was a project about moldy bread, and one of the kids who tied for first place more or less just took pictures of his or her family members eating and labeled it something about how color changes your perception of food. Another really cool project, a kid who built “some kind of circuit board thing” with his dad according to Wes’s account, was completely overlooked as well. I think the judges were paid off or something.

We finished his Film Can Cannon, and I even gave him an  Author account on the site and had him post about what we did. It’s pretty neat. After a bit of experimentation, we have figured out a few things: (read after the jump)  (more…)

Me and my dad built a film can cannon out of a film can, Binaca and a grill igniter. You have to hold the butane container tab for six seconds then push the igniter button and the film can should  fire across the room with a loud BANG! I put pics of the cannon after this link.

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We’re working on Andy’s butane-powered cannon today, if you check the live can in the sidebar, you might see us right now. We’ll post pics and video after it’s finished.

Obviously intended for the couple who’s not afraid to show their collective geekyness, these rings are made of sterling silver and custom cast in the shape of zip-ties. Also available in a couple different styles for solo rings, these will put you back about $180.

Or you could just run down to the hardware store and buy a bag of zip ties and a can of krylon, but maybe I’m just a cheap bastard. Props to Makezine for linkage.

Andy’s got a science fair assignment coming up. His teacher was kind enough to provide some vanilla suggestions for projects like www.allsciencefairprojects.com. Oh yeah. I’m expecting to see a lot of vinegar and baking soda volcanoes. REAL original.

Instead, I told him to ditch those sites and try some of the stuff at scitoys.com. Home made “hydrogen bombs” and film can cannons are a lot more exciting than a project comparing how fast a bean plant grows in the sun versus in the shade. Andy picked the film can cannon, and I’ve already got a simple version of the setup working, with fuel from my butane soldering iron and an old Fuji film can. It’s louder than hell. I’ll probably make a video of it sometime “Real Soon Now” for you to see. In the mean time, you can go search Google Video for an idea of how this works.

I don’t even think I could undertake this project. Not only is this papercraft model of the EOS 1Ds Mark II extremely detailed and exactly to scale, including a removable 50mm lens with a working paper EF mount, it’s also officially endorsed by Canon. There are 23 pages of instructions (All in Japanese, unfortunately) and 17 pages worth of parts. And yes, that’s an image of the finished model to the left, not a picture of an actual 1Ds Mk II. This thing is freaking CRAZY. If you’re not planning on doing anything for the next few weeks and need something to keep you busy, you can download the model here as a 14MB .zip archive right here. (OOPS! FTP goof deleted it. I’ll re-up it in a new article in just a bit, with some extra bonuses I found.) Good luck with that, let me know how that works out! Larger previews after the jump.

Update: I accidentally deleted the file, but here’s another copy, plus some extras.

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We decided to do three pumpkins this year, and let the kids each pick out one pattern. They came out pretty good, I thought. I sprayed them down with WD-40 to try to keep them from wilting and turning to crap before tomorrow, as per the article on extremepumpkins.com. I also used their recipe for spicy-sweet pumpkin seeds, but they didn’t come out so great. :/ You can check out the individual pumpkins close-up after the jump.

UPDATE: A buddy of mine from work, John B., made a great suggestion: Light them tonight, DETONATE them tomorrow. Being the great fan of highly exothermic reactions that I am, i could not pass a suggestion like this up. Unfortunately, I only have enough funds for enough sparklers to A-SPLODE a single pumpkin. So, my loyal readers… all like… 2 of you… which one will it be? The Spider, the Moon Kitty or The Tombstone? Post your vote in the comments, and provided my pumpkins don’t get smashed, I will A-SPLODE the gourd of your choosing and post the video here for all to see!

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Just finished cleaning up and got the heck out of there. Got myself a nice check for my trouble too. That plus the fact that the whole family got to spend a free weekend at the park made it well worth the effort.

Looks like we’re going to have some nice weather today. we’ll be packing up and heading ing home tonight after the show. Peep the comments after the jump for more updates throughout the day.

Well, yesterday was a wash-out and today isn’t looking much better so far. The rain is supposed to stop around noon, hopefully things will pick up after that.

Today’s forecast, rain followed by drizzle with a 90 percent chance of crapulence, with an overcast of bleh all day and crappy Christmas music.

We just got back from a tasty dinner at “The Colonial” in downtown Surry. My ‘rents and I are chillin’ on the back porch of the volunteer bunk house. Real work starts tomorrow.