Feed the Birds, Tuppence a Bag...

The Dalekettes

Cosplay via io9

Dad....what's that?

Driving home from daycare:
#2 : "what's that?"
me: "its the steering wheel - it turns the car..."
#2: "what's that?"
me: "it's the brake - it makes the car stop..."
#2: "what's that?"

.....


10 minutes later
"what's that"
"uhhhh..... that's the four way flash...look! Dump Truck!"
"ooooh!...... what's that?"
"........"
"Dad, what's that?"
"It's the Oscillation Overthruster"
"what's that?" "Flux Capacitor"
"what's that?" "Warp Drive Conduit"
"what's that?" "Interoccitor"
"what's that?" "Heisenberg compensators Ohhhhh look at that - we're home!"


yeah, we could both have gone on all day....

Wonderella

Wonderella comes out on Saturdays. It can be hit or miss, but I read today's after re-reading "Watchmen" and found it all the funnier

Wonderella - Saturday, Feb 28

This piece of fan art says a lot

flowchart

Random Fluctuations

" I don't have an angel and a devil on my shoulder, I have Rocky and Bullwinkle." - Lore Sjöberg

Then there's this


And for the kids, this is getting a lot of play at our place:


Kind of scary, but #2 loves it.

The Wheels on the Bus

The wheels on the bus go 'round and 'round
'Round and 'round
'Round and 'round
The wheels on the bus go 'round and 'round
All through the Town

The people on the bus go up and down,
Up and down,
Up and down,
The people on the bus go up and down,
All through the Town

The pirates on the bus go "Ahr Matey!"
"Ahr Matey!"
"Ahr Matey!"
The pirates on the bus go "Ahr Matey!"
All through the town

The Ninjas on the bus go sneak, sneak, sneak
sneak, sneak, sneak
sneak, sneak, sneak
The Ninjas on the bus go sneak, sneak, sneak
All through the town

The Zombies on the bus go "Must Eat Brains!"
"Must Eat Brains!"
"Must Eat Brains!"
The Zombies on the bus go "Must Eat Brains!"
All through the town

The T. Rex on the bus goes "GROAAAAAR"
"GROAAAAAR"
"GROAAAAAR"
The T. Rex on the bus goes "GROAAAAAR"
All through the town


I think this has the makings of a children's book.

Awesome...

Me (at work during lunch, finding this on the Internets): Dude! When I am old an infirm and needing one of those scooter things to get around, THIS is what I want to have.
Coworker 1: Cool.
Me: No, more than cool. Awesome!
Coworker 2: If it rolled over it would probably crush you.
Me: !... ( stunned silence at the utter boneheadedness of previous comment).
Me: Then I would be crushed by its AWESOMENESS!


Not the cleverest of responses, but it was better than nothing.
It is an awesome chair, though.

The Call of 'Tulu

"the newly opened depths...It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway.... The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight."

HP Lovecraft 1926

"Bad 'Tulu"
CB Lavery 2007

Ninjas Like Pie

Uhhhhhhhh.......
OK.
What?

Sorry. Latest things are: battling with air bubbles in the heating system, repairing water damage from said battle and re-doing poorly done house wiring discovered while battling heating system.
No house project is ever small.
Anyways, here's some stuff I'm enjoying currently:
RE: Your Brains

Skullcrusher Mountain

More at Jonathan Coulton's website and YouTube

Oh yeah, the post title is from an episode of "The Backyardigans" where they pretend they are Ninjas skulking the perfect pie. Urchin #2 and I watched this today at 5:30am while he had a bottle and I had coffee.

Cultural Spectrum

Last night I fully spanned the cultural spectrum. I went to a Monster Truck Show. Not just any Monster Truck Show - Monster Truck Jam. I saw "Gravedigger". I saw "Blue Thunder". I saw a jet engine powered dragster. My ears are still ringing.
Why? Why not? I've wanted an excuse to go to one of these for years and my six year old provided one. It's pretty cool watching these things go flying in the air, barely in control and crash down on a pile of dead autos ( note to self, many of the cars that were crushed were newer and in better shape than my current car ). And it was noisy and exciting and goofy and nobody there had any pretense about why they were there. It was base destruction and power and gear heading at its finest. The twenty something's sitting in front of us that brought their girlfriends sat very cooly and made little noise or commotion while my son and his friend were jumping on the seats yelling "GRAVE DIGGER/BLUE THUNDER" at the top of their lungs. I'm thinking - were it not for your ladies, you'd be doing this too... next time leave them at home - they can take care of themselves.
Last year, I went to Ashland, Oregon with the school. Ashland is the home of the Oregon Shakespeare festival. I saw "Richard the Third", "Twelfth Night", "Loves Labour Lost" and "Hamlet" in the space of three days. I loved it.
I've been to the ballet, I've seen all the Terminator movies. I've enjoyed "Carmen", I've watched "No Sex Please, We're British". I like Bach, I like the Ramones.
I think the only things I haven't been to are the things on the far edges of the spectrum. I have never been to a gallery opening or an avant garde minimalist work, and I've never been to a cock fight. Beyond those I don't want to think about what people consider as entertainment.

Doctor Who Scarf

www.doctorwhoscarf.com. Honey? Do you still know how to knit?

Code Monkey Like You

bloguctivity

Has the interest waned? Or have the kid's extra-curricular activities started sucking away my precious free time?
Bosconian analysis of data shows an exponential, rather than linear fit, so I will not likely be posting in the negatives.

Brass Goggles

For some reason, I think I need a pair of these.

From Brass Goggles.

September Blues

I am not a big fan of September. Oh, sure - my birthday, which always seems to fall on the first day of school (or last day of summer) - either way, there's always a little too much tension to enjoy it properly.
This September particularily, to use an apt metaphor, sucked donkey balls. Holy crap I haven't been so stressed since I can't remember. Too much, too soon, heavy rains of bad craziness. Bleurgh.....
Which is why my posts have been erratic and few. I have a few planned, but first I need to take a few deep breaths ( in through the nose, out through the mouth ), have a stiff drink ( a little more of the Yellowtail Shiraz, if you please...), watch another episode of Invader Zim annnnnnnnd.......

Fermodymanics

The 5 year old has discovered the second law of thermodynamics - "When you put more cold water with hot water the cold water surrounds the hot and makes it cold BUT when you put more hot water than cold the hot water surrounds the cold and makes it hot! the hot water is the good guys and the cold water is the bad guys"


I'm so proud...

That Darned Trogdor

Cleaning out the filing cabinet today in a futile organization exercise (entropy strikes quickly here) and came across my brother's cartoon work. Me and the family (pre sub-urchin) and our pesky dragon. Brian keeps a very meticulous blog of his life at Liverspot, but he's never published a cartoon as far as I know. Check 'em out here:

Trogdor Title Page

Trogdor in Train Wreck

Trogdor in Ice Follies

I said consummate "v"'s !

Laser Show - the beginning

I've been puttering with my very own 1970's era laser show for absolutely no other reasons than a) I like lasers and b) I could.
I tried to build one in high school using the laser from the physics lab, a couple of meccano motors, mirrors and some epoxy glue. That resulted in nearly getting shards of glass embedded in my face when the whole thing exploded. After that, we kind of abandoned the whole idea.
Last year I found a little controller kit at RP Electronics. It uses a cheap laser pointer with three spinning mirrors and connects to a PC parallel port. It made some nead little lissajous patterns, but it was pretty limited. I also realized the trick is to use very small mirrors.
The program is limited in that it only works with Windows 98 (XP is very restrictive about port access ). So while I was looking up a way of making an XP motor controller I came across Pangolin - a company that sells professional laser show software and hardware. Way out of my price range, but they were offering free downloads of their 1990 issue laser show controller program for the Amiga 500. Oddly enough, I had an Amiga 500... three in fact, plus a hard drive interface and various peripherals. Thus is born a Project....

101 Spring Assortment

$2.99 - Woot!