Game Music

So... I was going to draw tonight... have this great sketch idea of Jaya licking her new arm. But instead I spent... jeeze... the last three? hours manually looking up & constructing the Gaslight playlist in Rdio. There are sooooo many tracks missing, it's a ridiculous tragedy. But even with that, there's still 68 available from all chapters. Good for me to listen to at work. But also a good reminder that keeping ahold of old MP3s has value. Just dug around and made sure I still had all of them on my backup drive... as well as a good handful of session recordings. Hilarious, those.

This was motivated in part because last night I pulled together some album artwork for my 4th Terminus and Midwinter playlists, which I had looked up & built quite some time ago.

There's an Academie of Magic one too, but I don't have artwork yet for it...

Now that I'm listening to the music, all I want to do draw is Lilly and her pretty pretty dresses... covered in mud. Possibly strangling someone. How are all my old sketches (mostly) not online?! Ugh...

Time Flies

Wow. It's already mid-July. Crazy. A lot of stuff has happened in the last month (though none of it all that important)

There was a hack-a-thon at work early early June and I got *really* into my project. Picked up my first Arduino and made a Next & Start/Stop external button for Rdio using the Rdio JS API and Chrome's USB API for apps. I had an intense weekend of non-stop coding and yet didn't quite finish the project (input works, but I haven't gotten output yet). I mean to finish it yet! Soon...

Adam's mother visited and we went to see The Tales of Hoffmann (an opera) which was quite fantastic. The Doll Song has always been one of my favorite pieces. Then Andreas visited and then we went way for a much needed vacation. Obnoxious vacation post to follow soon once we get our photos in sorted out.

Tonight was another fantastic Dr. Sketchy's. The dedicated Mercy Beaucoup posed as Beatrix Kiddo from Kill Bill. I appreciated Mercy's great outfits and ambitions/creative poses. I've sketched her before (as Wonder Woman) but the pictures were lost on my way home! Luckily I managed to hold onto them this time. I'm thankful that I won tonight's context with the below image. The prize was this super awesome book The Art of Sketch Theatre Volume 1 which I look forward to reading after this post is done.

Speaking of reading, I've been doing a lot of that lately as well. Was horribly let down by Robin Hobb's Rain Wild Chronicles which I dropped mid-series. Am struggling not to be entirely consumed by the thrilling magic realism World War II series by Ian Tregillis. I accidentally staid up till 3am finishing the second book (on a work night no less! shame on me!) and I'm worried the third book will lead me to a similar fate. Bitter Seeds (Milkweed series) is the first book and I'd probably recommend it to most folks.

In less happy news I installed Minecraft for the first time this weekend and lost several hours of my life. I regret it and wont be doing so again. Sigh. Having re-read World War Z and watched the movie (and surprisingly not hated it) I've a strong hankering to play some Left For Dead again, which I will not regret. But there are better things to be doing with my time. Like sketching. Quilting. Finishing my hack day project. Writing letters. Cleaning.

Pacific Rim was great. Not perfect, but what it delivered it delivered well. You should go see it. Now.

Snow? In April!?!

I swear, Colorado needs to be severely reprimanded. It snowed. A lot. In April. That is simply not acceptable in my book. During my vacation. I wish there was someone I could formally complain to. I was in Colorado this last weekend because my cousin was getting married. Good on him- my grandmother was due for a wedding and my branch of the family certainly wasn't tracking to do so any time soon. The bride was a lovely lady who ran around barefoot for most of the reception and reportedly wears miss-matched socks. I welcome her into the fold. The wedding was lovely, the ceremony short and to the point, the DJ fantastic, and my branch of the family quickly liquored up into a frenzy. There were many things done, few of them caught on film (thankfully?). The evening ended in log rolling. You should ask me about it in person some time. Or Adam. It was quite a scene. Seeing family was fantastic and Colorado proved to be quite lovely. It was only on the last day, Monday, that Adam and I spent alone in Denver that was ridiculous. I can't count the number of times Adam just looked out the window and said "It's snowing" this this awed yet slightly horrified voice. Of course, he was drunk from the brewery visiting pretty early so that's probably not saying much. In-between visiting a crazy-good Cuban sandwhich place and The Great Divide brewing company, Adam and I visited the Denver Natural History museum which is WAY cooler then either of us expected it to be. Great taxidermy! Very dynamic displays! Amazing rigging of dinosaur bones! I would recommend it! It lacks the gloss & openness of the Japanese or Paris NHMs but what it does, it does well. Reminded me the Chicago NHM in terms of quality dioramas. More pictures from the trip can be found in this Flickr set.

Our flight getting back was delayed several hours by snow, didn't get to bed till at least 2:30 in the morning. Woke up the next day and managed to make it to the Sigur Ros show that night. Worst crowd I've endured in a long time. Horrible, horrible crowd. So much talking! And stupidity! But the music was great and the set design lovely. There were these beautiful incandescent lights scattered about the stage at varying heights which not only looked cool but also illuminated the stage without the need of spotlights. This video gives a good idea of what it was like.

Have been reading the Kabuki comic series. A++, would recommend. Now if only I had more time to read the second half of it...

Look. Listen. Watch. Read.

The first Dr. Sketchy's this month featured the delightful Randal and Daisy (a fellow Dr. Sketchy's artist!) with the theme April in Paris. Great costumes and great poses makes makes for happy sketches. Be warned that there's sketches of a lady in mild undress- consider the following mildly NSFW.

Despite my near inappropriate enthusiasm for Randal as a model, I spent a good deal of my time sketching Daisy because she had a superb outfit and figure that I couldn't pass up. Red hair and a corset that fits and is flattering! Yay! Randal's starched collar and swallow-tailed coat were also admirable. Too many pretty things too look at all at once! I wound up not entering the contest this time because I was too happy with my sketches to sully with flair. Almost all the sketches are nicely laid out by them selves on the colored construction paper, making them ideal for future letter sending.

    I also want to mention that a coworker of mine- a one Emily- joined me and it made me incredibly happy. I believe she had a good time and will return again. If there's one problem I've been having at my new job, it's making friends. I think it turns out the music industry attracts a lot of cool people, of which I am soundly not.

Speaking of being horribly uncool, let me take this moment to mention that I've continued to listen to Professor Elemental's new album and it continues to make me happy. Here's another track that's great (that I didn't link to last itme):

Working my way out of the uncool section, but still questionable, is a track from Savant's that I've been enjoying. The lyrics being almost entirely composed of the line "the horrors":

And finally I absolutely must share some new Toxic Avenger that I found. It itself isn't new, just new to me. There's something about how he weaves together tunes that really gets me! Angst Four is the new track (which I find calming), not to be confused with Angst One which I find vaguely stressful (but in a good way!)

In other news the rest of this month will be fleshed out with movies and shows. Room 237, Sigur Ros, Computer Chess, Much Ado About Nothing (new Joss movie!). I'll also hopefully be making it to Mary Robinette Kowal's book signing. I just devoured her latest- Without a Summer (Glamourist Histories). I keep meaning to do a post specifically about her series. In short though, it's awesome. It reads like candy. It makes me happy. The main character is 30 years old and has a healthy romantic relationship, which is the sort of thing I want to read about. The way the author describes the magic makes me think of programming.

In closing, things have been going mostly well. Except my tabletop character spent too much of last session stuck in a chair getting yelled at.

The Basement

In October we moved to a lovely little house that we're renting in the Mission. There is a dark, dank, low ceilinged basement which Adam has generously "given" over to me to do with as I wish. Of the two rooms, I originally claimed the larger one till flooding and ants chased me out of it. Now I'm in the smaller section, near the door, with the window. Not bad. The whole "unpacking" thing still hasn't finished and I've not enough carpet to cover the floor... but despite that, I have begun to "move in" and make the space feel more like my own.

I'm quite fond of my growing wall 'o things. Pictures, a skull, some bullet bugs, fabric creatures, things. Since the basement wall is unfinished I feel no qualms about sticking a hundred and one nails into it. The only thing holding me up is my lack of frames (apparently only Ikea has non-tacky yet still cheap frames! Curses! I had hoped not to need to return so soon!) and the knowledge that I want to have some sort of ... useful tool hanging "things" above the desk. I've ideas & supplies, just not the time to pull it together.

Having my sewing machine out is pleasing, along with all my books and thread available. My fabric and yarn collections are still abandoned in the other room, which needs to be corrected. I've been making good use of the desk though, cluttering it up with pins and soldering supplies. My old iMac is practically useless (I can upgrade no further) but it does at least play music and let me search for reference photos. You can't really tell from the top photo, but beyond the ironing board (which I was using to iron plastic, thread, beads, and wire together to make wings!) is my lovely futon bed for those who are bave enough to stay over.

If we owned the place I'd put forward efforts to actually improve the basement (like finishing the fucking walls!) but we don't and so I can only hope to cover and work around its "quirks". One thing that isn't horrible is the metal pipe? that runs over the wall and on the ceiling for the SINGLE outlet in the room. Sticking monsters to it via magnets makes me happy.

So, yeah. Some horrible photos of my "crafting cave".

Other things: I've been playing the Starcraft Campaign! I <3 Abathur! Expect to see related crafts soon. I had my butt handed to me at Dr. Sketchy's last week, could not get in the grove. I appear to be momentarily tapped out on the letter writing front. Need to recharge. Have been crafting a magnetic wall butterfly monster... thing... educational, but it's not quite coming together as I had hoped. I bought the thumb drive of stock poses from Senshi Stock but haven't found the chance to sketch anything from it yet. Am excited to do so at some point. Went to Angel Island for the first time and loved it. Saw the movie Stoker. It was... kind of fun? Watched Strage Days again, it was also rather fun. Both have horrible dark parts to them though so I can't broadly recommend. Also saw Pitch Perfect which was delightfully silly & fun. Have been quite enchanted with one of the songs from it. I was compelled to sketch the scene it's from and you can listen to it below.

Good things

I attended my first Meetup event- a Women Who Code Hack Night thing. It was... interesting. There were more ladies in that room, interested in programming then I believe I've worked with in my career so far. Sadly I felt socially awkward, my laptop misbehaved, and I failed to actually "hack" on anything. But it was pleasant in an overall abstract way and I hope to attend again.

While it didn't come out this month, I have just recently stumbled across Professor Elemental's Father of Invention album and it is crazy good. Superior to all previous albums, in my opinion. There's no single song better then Fighting Trousers on this album, though there is a track featuring Mr. B-the-Gentleman-Rhymer. Listed below are my favorites:

You're Invited: The best part about Professor Elemental is how fun and happy and joyous his songs are. Good hearted!

Animal Ice Cream: The Professor has an abnormal interest with animals and it produces amazing things

You Remind Me of a Car: What's better then these breathy sexy, sexy lyrics? I quiver!

The Attic: A mysterious story! Reminds me of table top games...

Speaking of music, I just found on my camera a photo from Doug's CD exchanges from early January. I love my album artwork on this! The title of the playlist: Everything is Horrible. Adam's playlist is 'Unsolved Mysteries'

The only sad thing is that I've failed the Month of Letters challenge... but that's something for another post. Was distracted with a new project... it's been too long since I've made a monster. You can see some in-progress shots below. A weighted paper holder is the core that I've been building around... just skinned the legs after I took the photo... the eyes are in the process of being painted... slow progress, but it's coming together. Destined for my desk at work when completed.

Papers! Papers everywhere!

Letter writing continues. Yesterday I received my first response back. There's some people kicking around the concept of some letter RP, which I'm ashamed to admit I have little faith in. It did however motivate me to dig around a horrendous number of boxes (we still haven't really tackled our basement full of boxes problem yet...) to find the results of my long-ago attempted round-robin story telling. Turns out they're still very delightful to read!

I survived Tahoe. Turns out I still remember how to downhill ski and I still don't know how to cross-country ski. It was a fun & educational trip but I don't think I'll be doing it many more times. Four hours in a car seems far more unbearable to me then four hours in a plane.

Scans, scans, scans... Here's some scans from Dr. Sketchy's on the 5th. The mermaid costume was impressive. I appreciate her nods to The Little Mermaid in her poses, despite her lack of red hair.

I did not come near to winning the contest (she was just one of those kinda' judges, you know?) but at least I liked my entries. Contest theme: Mermaid in a Martini Glass. I've since mailed off the 2 entries to miscellaneous folks as part of the letter swap. I've given away all my good tea, clearly I'm hurting for content at this point ;) I keep meaning to pull together a zine about data structures but... not. Been busy, yo!

Saw Hansel & Grettle. Do not recommend. Am hoping to catch Warm Bodies and Beautiful Creatures in theater because I'm pathetic. Warm Bodies I at least enjoyed the book. Beautiful Creatures has great trailer music:
and a fun soundtrack:

Also, I played Lady Blackbird again. That happened. Yeah....

In closing, I am tired. I've been doing a lot and yet still not enough. One thing I know I'm not doing enough of now is exercise. My snazzy new Fitbit tells me so. ;)

Sketches from the Ball

While I would never claim to be that good at it, I do very much love to sketch at events where people are dressed up. It combines the delight of people watching with some artistic exercise, isn't as lazy as poorly-done photography (the only type of photography I'm currently trained in), and removes any awkwardness of attending an event alone. I used to be better at it, as demonstrated by some scans from the 2008 Ball [1] [2] [3]. My rusty skills in no way deter me from continuing to attempt it however. I had a lovely tiny black square book to work with this year, which I believe is an improvement... though I've a spot in my heart for the old now-filled-up sketch book which was tall and narrow with an ornate cover and magnetic clasp...

Some highlights & photos taken by a talented collection of random photographers:

• Diver Helmet Man w/ Bowler was fantastic! He had a drink in his hand, a dapper hat atop his helmet, and what looked like a good attitude from my vantage point across the dance floor. Interestingly enough there was another diving helmet, though I think dapper hat man wore it better.
• This year's Dark Garden fashion show was one of the best yet. The fashion line of corsets + dresses/skirts made me seriously re-consider my no-corset stance. Sadly I can never sketch these shows because I'm absolutely frozen in place with awe. There were in particular a lot of buckles and straps across corsets and skirts and lovely silhouettes that were snug on top and flared around the knees. [1] [2]
• I am always delighted by the acrobatics at the Ball. This year had a talented silk straps act, an impressive rope/cord act done by a woman (I believe I've only seen men perform with it so far), and a far more amazing then initially expected bike act. There were other acts as well, but I've not found good photos of them yet...
• I saw Holy Motors a couple days before the Ball... let me just say, it made watching her act a bit uncomfortable. That movie is really, really, really strange... that doesn't mean it's good, am not sure if it's bad. It's just odd to the point of being nearly nonsensical...
• Did not like the music as much as last year, sadly. I saw Shovelman in passing but didn't get to listen to him play as much as I would have liked. Delachaux is an awesome DJ & I can barely stand to listen to Miz Margo string together more then 3 tracks.
• The belly dancer was to die for. I believe her name is NagaSita. Her movements are magic. (I wish she had more appropriate music to dance to... like some killer techno)
• New crazy costumes every year. Less Edward Gorey themed ones this year (no one in a giant iceberg, alas) but some very original ones stood out: gentleman frog & tentacle woman (sketched below and not be be confused with this other lady adorned with squid)

Alas, my black marker was lost rather early on the second night and let me tell you, you can not sketch at the Edwardian Ball without copious amounts of black ink. This wound up putting quite a cloud over Sunday night and sent me home before the end of the evening (that, and Miz Margo's DJing) Though none of them made it into scanned sketches, mad props given to the crew who posed upstairs in their stark black & white costumes without moving (or with minimal but continous movement). Enjoyable to watch, useful to sketch, good idea all around. Hope they carry it over to next year. Luckily my friend Suko attended with me on Friday night and took a lovely shot of both the model modeling and myself hard at work trying (but failing) to sketch him. In closing, here is something rarely seen- an photo of me in full get-up. The outfit was more silly then usual, as is my pose. I compensated by wearing all black on Sunday.

Happy Holidays : 2012

Christmas is almost there. Hard to feel the season in San Francisco with its year-round crowds of shoppers, non-stop sunshine, and international and not particularly "seasonal" selection of food. Adam and I did at least secure a tree on the 2nd to get in the spirit of things.

I miss our midget tree of last year with its popcorn and yarn. This year has candy canes, official glass ornaments, and Adam's dapper hat as a tree topper for lack of anything better.

Spending my free time getting pummeled by a cough & cold. Ick. Did manage to get a lot of gift shopping done early though, which is nice. Presents wrapped more then 24 hours in advance! How novel!

All craft energies (which have not been lost to said cold) are being channeled into secret home-made-gift which will be mentioned after the 25th.

In other news I accepted an offer at Rdio. Am very psyched for a number of reasons. Some of which are : everyone I've met so far has been super awesome, I actually use the service on a daily (near hourly!) basis, and it's approx. 10 blocks away from where I live. My first day should be Jan. 7th... wow...

On that note, let me link to the top songs stuck in my head this month on repeat.

• Thrift Shop (feat. Wanz) by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
  Just too much fun. TOO. MUCH. FUN. (I enjoy several other tracks on The Heist as well- Ten Thousand Hours, Same Love, Wing$, Starting Over)
• Revival (DJ Skee & THX Remix) by Neil Davidge
  Good electronic/techno music is soothing to the soul

Some basic mental warmups

Am back in Munich for another week. Switzerland was exceptionally lovely and fun. More words and photos on that later.

Have finally started spending some quality time with my laptop, trying to kick my brain back into shape. Decided some simple math/graphics projects would be a good warmup. I know that I'll need to tumble into the interview circuit at some point soon and I know I *can* be good at it... but it (at least the white-boarding part) is definitely a skill that I need to retrain up.

On a whim I was interested in animating vines unfurling/growing. Some basic Googling failed to provide me any existing algorithms so I had to figure out what I want. Turns out the Logarithmic spiral [x = ae^btcos(t), y = ae^btsin(t)] is what I wanted (as opposed to the Archimedean spiral) and so I waded into battle against Javascript, logarithms, and trigonometry. As I put it to Adam last night, it felt like I was doing one pound dumbbell curls with my brain. It was hard (despite being simple) but I felt good when things finally fell into place.

Used jsfiddle when working, which was pleasing. Here's the link in case this iframe doesn't work...

If you go to the Result tab you'll see the demo curl I made. Am still struggling to wrap my brain around what all of the parameters do/mean but this widget makes it a little easier. Next step: cleaning up the code and diving into b-splines (which, I will confess, I have already found helpful code/algorithms for here, for the vines)

Interesting (to me?) to look back at the little things I stumbled over:

• Omg- trig! Bane of my high school math experience! The problem I ran into here was that I wanted to rotate the spiral so that I could hold it's "tail" in a fixed position. (left alone it just spirals around the origin). That meant I spent *at least* half an hour trying to solve for θ (x′, x, and y being known) : x′ = xcos(θ)-ysin(θ) I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out how to isolate that fucking θ... the key to success was realizing I was solving for when x′ was 0 and that sine over cosine is a tangent. Sounds simple, but that took some time...
  
  
• I swear, every time I look at the canvas element and then look away, I forget everything. Another (smaller) stumble I had was keeping everything on the canvas... turns out that when you've got logarithmic stuff, things just fly off the page with astounding speed. Took longer then I'd like to admit to figure out what value I need to scale to and then to remember/realize the scale method call had to happen before the path. (turns out putting the scale right before the .stroke() doesn't get you much). Also had to remember to scale line width. If you check out the equation for the spiral you'll see that the value a is supposed to scale it... which I realized later, but found that the animation was smoother when I let the canvas scale it rather then squishing the equation myself.
  
  
• Pinning x=0 to one location was pretty neat, but wasn't actually the look I wanted (the spiral sat atop the point rather the to the right of it as I hoped) so I had to add in a "tail". The fact that I STILL can't figure out how to just solve the equation for a value when x is, like, -50 or something shames me but... whatever. I just manually added a fixed number of "steps" and computed that end point. Lame, but some times programming is about finding a solution and moving on rather then dwelling on the optimal solution mid-project.
  
  
• As I move out of jsfiddle and try to make this code usable, I'm finding Javascript Function Invocation Patterns to be a fun/helpful read. I feel like I know most of it, but it has helpful points/gotchas.

In other news :

• I am now 29.
  
  
• I saw Skyfall last night. It was pretty sweet. Highly recommended if you're an action/Bond fan. Best Craig!Bond by far, plus evil!Javier Bardem. That man is golden, no matter how bad of hair-cut you put on him! Vague internet rumors of Idris Elba as a potential future Bond make me happy and maintains my interest in the franchise. I loved Noamie Harris in this film as well, she plays kick-ass so well (see: 28 Days Later)
  
  
• I rode a cow this last Sunday.
  
  
• I wish I didn't like Taylor Swift but damnit, I do.
  
  
• The US Presidential elections. Need I say more? Adam and I will be up, watching late tonight, as the polls close in the US. We both voted before we left. GO VOTE. I WILL THINK LESS OF YOU IF I EVER FIND OUT YOU DON'T VOTE (_{of course I'm pro-Obama, but having things/people I don't like pass/win is much easier to swallow if there's high voter turnout. Then that *really* means "the people" want such a (stupid/silly/evil) thing... but when (stupid/silly/evil) things pass/win with low voter turnout it's just... really fucking depressing})

Gaming withdrawl...

My friends and I are in the middle of a free-form table top game that has gone on TOO LONG without a session. Seriously antsy here, folks. I desperately need to know what happens next. If a certain person by the name of N-------- F--- doesn't GM a session soon, I may have to, as one may say, "cut a bitch".

Above's illustration* is my vague recollection of where I last left my character-- Jaya had just subdued a mysterious woman where 'subdued' here means beat the shit out of and cuffed. If I recall correctly, her nose got broken in the process... Everyone else is exploring the room we're in and a mysterious hatch has just been opened, releasing a cloud of smoke/gas/vapor. WHAT IS IN THE HATCH?!? -- for the record, we're basically glorified BART police in a dystopian? post-apocalyptic? future/alt world.

In other news, let me try out Rdio's embedded functionality... Have I mentioned I love Rdio? Because I do. Gets me through the day! Anyway, not sure how well Blogger (or Reader?) + iFrames gets along...

First embedded attempt- Kiss With A Fist by Florence + The Machine (Jaya's theme song)

Second embedded attempt- my July/August 2012 playlist. Starts out epic/dancy/techno, heads into "good" lyrical territory, then swerves into crazy land at the end. I enjoy this pair of months' mix/breadth of music.

(Edit: Looks like it works! Plays 30 second clips of every track, which is certainly enough to get the idea of what each song is like)










_{* Insert obligatory disclaimer here} about how I'm so out of practice sketching and I really mean to do more and get better. Course, I'm missing Dr. Sketchy's tomorrow much to my sorrow so... yeah... I'm really doing a great job there..

Le sigh

Lots of stuff has gone on and more will be going on. Overall, good times. Lots of social stuff, not so much with the crafting lately. Minor cooking here and there. Less minor cooking last Sunday when I went to a friend's Science Dinner party. Sous vide fish? Awesome. Sous vide pork? Best ever. Sous vide egg yokes that are then breaded and deep fried? !!!!

A kind co-worker from our far distant office flung (via the US postal service) tasty Amish Friendship Bread starter in my direction. Turns out following a recipe produces optimal bread. Adam was pleased, but I didn't let it sway me from my path towards... something....paved with random experiments! The animated gif above is the starter over a period of 6-7 hours... Good thing I worked from home last Thursday- it was like a baby, needing all that attention and burping...

Lack of crafting is in part due to reading and consumption of media. Some of it has been amazing, some of it has gotten me a little down...

• The Cabin in the Woods? Best film all year. I'm buying the DVD when it comes out. If you did not watch it in the theater I WILL MAKE YOU WATCH IT. So good. Can't summarize a word of it though, for fear of ruining it. Just go see it, if you can.
• Shades of Milk and Honey was fantastic read! I devoured it in nearly one sitting. Grab the Kindle sample- you'll be able to tell from that whether it's meant for you or not. Light fluffly reading material. Jane Austin/Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell mashup (favoring Austin)
• Game Of Mother Fucken' Thrones. Yo.
• The Testament of Jessie Lamb (P.S.) was... depressing. Very very good. And written in such a way that I was really able to relate to it. The author was really able to get inside the head of a confused 16 year old girl... and I get the impression almost anyone with a uterus knows what it's like to be inside the head of a confused 16 year old girl and therefor could find the book moving. Children of Men/YA mashup (favoring CoM)
• God Bless America was, presumably meant to just be a straight comedy as well as, perhaps, a really heavy handed social commentary. It just made me depressed (saw it mid-Jessie Lamb book so there were no doubt outside influences on my opinion). If you catch me in person, I'll go off on a long rant about Jedi Knights and the Dark Side of the force to explain how this movie made me feel. Basically it boils down to "it sucks to be a liberal" and that you can never act out your frustration with others without becoming as bad as they are. Even in escapist fictional works where people go on humorous shooting rampages, the guilt will be there... drives home how truly taxing (and important!) the freedom of speech is. Also- don't let the way other people live their lives get you down.

It also is hard to be crafty when you're far from your crafts! Went camping last weekend! Big Sur! There was camping, there was cooking, there was hiking, there was eating, there were hammocks, there were hookahs (tobacco!), there were waterfalls, there were friend! There was, however, no singing or music. Boo to that.
Turns out Adam is much better then Trisha at holding still for night shots...

Heading to Spiritualized show now with Adam... It will be fun! (except that I've got this song stuck in my head... which doesn't really sound like what I'm in for tonight...)

In closing, I'm still around and doing stuff. I have coding projects to post soon. Just found out I can host web pages from my Dropbox account so expect to see something there. Have been working on my bread calculator-- though it looks massively janky, I've already started to use it and find it to be of great help. See below. No recipe! Tasted just fine! (kinda' spongy- I liked it!) Notes on formula on Flickr page...

Green things

We finally had our first solid "good" weekend weather of the Spring. It was pretty sweet.

Last year I goofed around on the deck trying to grow crazy things in little bottles... all from seed. This year I've no such ridiculous restrictions. Given my flirtations with cooking, I actually want results this time around. Wish I hadn't accidentally killed that rosemary bush... damn...

The growing of things isn't entirely without silliness however. For Easter this year I was seized with a overwhelming ferver to make little planters out of Easter eggs. I emptied a number of them (via Dremel and syringe), dyed them, and then filled them with a pinch of gravel and dirt. And seeds. Made approx. 6 of those bad boys.... and then 1-2 days after Easter, right after I had hung them up outside, it poured down rain so viciously the dye was washed off and the seeds basically killed. Oops. Luckily 2 remained indoors and both have sprouted- the basil fairing much better then the mint (of which so far there is exactly 1 sprout-ling)

In other green-things, I finally took a stab at avocado bread. It started off *so* nice... smoothest, nicest dough I've worked with so far. Fun to touch! But then when pfffffffth in the second rising and just sorta' spread out rather then rising up. Boo. Should have put it into a bread tin....

Also made a tiny bit of fresh blackberry bread. Soooo oozy and wet and terrible to start with! But surprisingly it turned out pretty tasty. It's not so much that you could taste the blackberries... but you could taste something! Also, the color was pretty sweet! While the avocado bread had a lovely green thing going on to start with, baking it really muted it.

Fact: it was a pretty sweet weekend. Week, even.

• On Tuesday Adam and I went to see Justice. We showed up waaaay too early (lame) which meant we were able to claim space against the railing on the 2nd tier of the Fox's GA section (super awesome).
• On Wednesday Adam and I went to see Godspeed You! Black Emporor. Claimed near-optimal seating on balcony to the left of the band. Did you know the Great American Music Hall serves up wicked awesome brownie sundays for only $8?
• On Thursday Adam got me a ticket to the opening movie/event for the SFIFF. Pretty posh!
• On Friday I hurt... allergies started to kick in and my body taxed me for the week's joy
• On Saturday I was tipped off that the Lost Horizon Night Market was happening! Among many other things, I attended the Prom truck.
• On Sunday the GWS house had the first BBQ of the year! Friends + Meat + Fire + Sunshine + Sugar + Game of Thrones = Happiness. Did you know smoking a hookah while laying in a hammock is an even more fantastic experience then just smoking a hookah?
• On Monday Adam and I went to the SFIFF showing of Buster Keton shorts with live music from Merrill Garbus (of Tune-Yards) & crew. How have I not seen Buster Keaton before?? He's like a fey crossed with a clown- it hurts my head.

Sigh... it's 11:35pm and my bread has now just finished it's 1st rise... I really need to work on this...