Evil Wayne

noreply@blogger.com (Evil Wayne) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:17:00 +0000

PUSH

This post is here to push that video off the front page.

If this were an actual emergency, you would have been eaten.

noreply@blogger.com (Evil Wayne) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:55:00 +0000

Dungeon

How cool is this idea? One Page Dungeons.

Of course, as a contest, it's just ended. But that's always how I stumble across these things, like center-lane roadkill. Too late to do little more than gawk.

noreply@blogger.com (Evil Wayne) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:40:00 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Evil Wayne) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 18:46:00 +0000

InDesign

You know what InDesign? You are a fucking joke. You seriously won't let local overrides occur without jumping through flaming hoops? What the hell is wrong with you? And why the fuck do I have to sit through loading each and every peice of artwork as I place them? Where the batching? And it's not even art, it's math. But you don't have an internal math editor, you weasle. I have to import math as art from a third-party program.

I'll admit, I could be doing something wrong. There might be some shortcut I'm missing, but as it stands, takes you between 45 and 60 seconds to load a single equation. This book has over 350 equations. That alone has single-handely blown my budget for this project. Fuck you, InDesign.

noreply@blogger.com (Evil Wayne) — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:51:00 +0000

Nonsensical Blatherings

This site has languished like ever other endeavor I seem to try. I often wonder why I'm incapable of holding on to one thing for very long? I suppose a part of it is the ADD; I get bored. Or lost. My brain just shuts off and I can't remember where I left my keys. Right now, I want to be here, writing, but my mind is somewhere else. It's actually quite difficult to bring it back and focus. I'm not even sure where else I want to be. I think that if I were to allow it to roam freely, it might wind up someplace that it can't get back from and I need that brain for thinking and telling my involuntary systems to keep breathing and whatnot.

Jesus, I think five minutes have just gone by while I stared at the screen. And I was nowhere while that happened. No where. Fuck. I need more sleep. Probably more regular sleep. They've never been in wack otherwise I'd say my cicada rhythms are out of. It's been a problem since I was about 5, I think. I've never learned to sleep right.

It probably won't matter.

Christ, at least ten minutes have gone by and I've completely forgotten why I started writing this.

noreply@blogger.com (Evil Wayne) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 11:24:00 +0000

Did I Mention the Drive Thru?!?

noreply@blogger.com (Evil Wayne) — Thu, 14 May 2009 12:12:00 +0000

History

Here's a shot of my history page from this morning. Except for my initial search for Mothra, and a single image search from a copied result, the rest pages as I bounced from page to page because of something linked in the Wikipedia entry.

If I didn't have to go to work, I'd be here all day.

noreply@blogger.com (Evil Wayne) — Mon, 11 May 2009 17:12:00 +0000

Goodbye Lego Area

And hello to The Lego SunRoom:

In what can only be deemed a fit of utter insanity, Tine thought it would be a good idea to convert the sunroom into a Lego/Gaming room. Later, after the paramedics had arrived and resuscitated me, I mulled over what Faustian deal I was getting myself into; Oh there are strings, but I think I can deal with them.

We spent the weekend swapping furniture, moving the Lego area in the bedroom downstairs and then disbursing the contents of the sunroom to various other locals around the house. Because the faster this happened, the less time she had to change her mind.

I think I started moving things around 9AM Saturday and stopped around midnight. Sunday was a lot of minor mopping up, but I got about 85% of the transfer done. There's still a few boxes and some display sets that I need to bring down. Not to mention the entire contents of TheBoy's closet. At the moment, I still don't have enough room. I couldn't possibly fit everything and have room to use it.

Part of the problem is I'm trying to do too many things with one room: I'm trying to squeeze in gaming, the computer, three smaller table/desks, a baby changing table for paper craft and binding supplies, and keep the main table accessible on at least three sides. Plus, keep one big comfy chair and an ottoman, mostly for Tine.

It's a work in progress. I went through about twenty different permutations on how to arrange everything before bringing it all down. Even after moving a good chunk, I thought I had decided on something only to wake up early Sunday morning and completely rearranged the table and Lego drawers. I figure I'll probably keep moving things around as I use them and actually see what works best.

Something will probably have to give.

Still, this is exactly what I've needed. Nobody should hear me rummaging around bins after dark, so I don't have to feel guilty about generating noise; I won't have to clean up every time I'm done for the night, just so we use our bed; I can actually access all of the bins easily instead of sitting on the floor to get under the table for bulk; I get the use of the whole damn table instead of a third. I might actually get to enjoy most of my collection for the first time since I started. Crimney, I could actually host a BrikWar game.

I'm giddy as a school girl.

Which can only mean the plane is going down.

noreply@blogger.com (Evil Wayne) — Fri, 08 May 2009 13:52:00 +0000

Daily Updated

I've updated the Daily photos through the end of April. It's all I could get to this morning, but it's a start. Now I'm only behind by 8 days instead of 18.

I also had taken a group of pics while putting together some of the paper mini Terrans to post here, but they came out too blurry to really be useful. I've still got tons of minis to cut, so I'll see about reshooting the whole fiasco this weekend.

noreply@blogger.com (Evil Wayne) — Mon, 04 May 2009 21:16:00 +0000

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Got my pay cut by 10% with a kindly worded message that ended with something along the lines of: when things get better, there might be a reassessment of the decision. Which has the ring of never. Man, it still feels like a fucking kick in the gut. There's other stuff, but I can't go into it without feeling like I want to vomit.

I'm getting on a plane in three weeks. I couldn't be more uninterested in this project at the moment. Seriously, my enthusiasm is waning deeply and badly. I keep thinking that I should back out, because I'm not sure what I have to offer anymore. (Don't worry Alfred, I'm still going).

I'm pretty much unmotivated about a lot of things lately.

The black flies are horrifically nasty this year. The last couple of weekends have turned my forehead into a pock-marked moonscape of pain and suffering. What little wind there was simply blew them into my face and pinned the to the brim of my hat. There might as well have been a hostess with menus waiting to seat them.

I am totally in love with these little paper miniatures I found online. There's a damn lot of paper stuff online. I've been building scenery on and off over the last six months. Most of it's just grayscale prototyping, but I've got some little computers and corridors for the space marines. I found some medieval town houses to go along with the fantasy characters (putting the space marines there has this weird Stargate-SG1 effect). Even went so far as to buy a couple of simple miniature combat games to use them with: Songs of Blades and Heroes and Mutants and Death Ray Guns. I think I bought MDRG strictly on title alone.

My dad help build a wood rack for the firewood on the lawn (actually he built it and I helped). I stained it yesterday with the implicit understanding it was not going to rain. It rained. I have no idea what that does to it if the stain hasn't had time to dry. I pretty much don't care at this point, despite my aching muscles. I had to twist in some weird ways to apply the stain because I can't come up with a plan on how to do it that doesn't involve painting myself into a corner.

I hate teenagers. Selfish, uncaring, remorseless pinheads. All of them. It just occurred to me that conservative radio sounds a lot like them: Whining, bratty, spoiled sons of bitches.

I've been playing with the shutter setting on Tine's camera. Been randomly taking pictures in the car of other vehicles as they pass me. I think I might start a new album just for them.

Tine and I were going over what we need to accomplish during the next couple of months. Move rooms around, paint this one, that one. Yard work. Barn work. Christ it's too much. Why the hell did I think I *needed* a reason to be motivated this year?

TheBoy is in baseball this season. I was worried he's inherited his old man's complete lack of physical prowess. But I'm pleasantly surprised; He can actually hit the ball.

I spent one Saturday stripping down this vine that grows up trees and kills them. It had really taken over the backyard. I can't figure out what it is, but it grows along the ground, then up the trees where it chokes them. It also has some of the most wicked thorns I've ever seen. Some are longer than a half-inch. I cleared enough away that you can now actually see the neighbor's houses. Invasive little bastard.

We figured out that we are way too far behind at this point regarding the garden. I've concluded that what I'm really doing is preparing for next year. There is a fair amount of wood left over from the wood rack construction to block off a small garden in the new area that actually gets sun most of the day. This would happen faster than I expected instead of moving all the cinderblocks. So *something* might get planted this year. Sorry Jen, I think most of the seeds are going to wait until next year.

I'm still taking at least one photo a day. I don't believe I've missed one since that day in February? However, there's a real issue with getting things off the camera which is taking more effort than I anticipated. I got images, I just don't have them on the PC.

There's a tentative plan to move all my stuff into the sunroom and take it over as a computer/game/Lego room. If it happens, there's one thing that might be a shining light at the end of the tunnel. It's too bad Thursday night gaming dried up, because I could finally hook up a headset and actually yell my swearing head off from there and not have to worry about waking anyone under the PG-13 audience up. Or a BrikWar game. Hell, just a game.

I should turn this blog into something else. I have no idea what.

I wouldn't mind playing some kind of giant-monster-city-attack game, now that I think about it. The Defense Forces could be cool to take down Godzilla's Next Door Neighbor's Uncle's Cousin Dog-Thing.

Did I mention my salary was cut? Still feels like someone kicked me in the gut. For one, brief, shining moment in March, I was going to purchase the Lego Death Star Playset. I backed down from it at the time. I should have gone for it back then, because it's pretty much a pipe dream now.

I'll leave you to figure out where the title applies.

noreply@blogger.com (Evil Wayne) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 01:31:00 +0000

MPG

Filled up and finally decided to cal out the MPG on my '02 Marquis. I'm actually doing slightly better than expected:

The neat thing is, none of my miles are highway. There's a lot less stop-and-go of the city, but then there's a lot more up and down of the hills of the sticks.

noreply@blogger.com (Evil Wayne) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 19:04:00 +0000

Google 3D

Holy crap if this doesn't actually work:

It sort of makes the cursor look like it's floating. More like the whole thing is under glass. Works better with b&w images and when I took off the glasses, my eyes just about burst into flames. Can you say overloaded cones and rods?

I knew you could.

noreply@blogger.com (Evil Wayne) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:10:00 +0000

Starry Starry Night

We went to the Cape this past weekend for, what we hope, is becoming an annual event. March on the Cape is dead, dead, dead. Which is totally fantastic. We rent a house in the middle of a beach front rental community. There's almost nobody there. The world has just gone away.

I've also been doing some major futzing with Tine's new camera, a Canon A590. This thing is awesome, tons of little features. I've been taking photos for awhile using various aperture settings to avoid flash photography, but my new thing is shutter speed.

Last year, there was a full moon at night. And that was beautiful in its own right, but this time, the moon was absent, and the expanded sky over the ocean was just alive with stars. I took about a dozen pics that night, using the slowest shutter speed (15") but this is one of the best I got that night.

Unfortunately, while I was trying to film the sunset, the camera and I had a bad falling out.

I had it precariously balanced on the railing of the deck to capture the sunset in real time. Stupidly, I took a couple of walks across the deck (so I could be in frame) and the subtle vibrations must have been just enough to set entropy in motion.

After about 3 minutes, I started to hear a small, intermittent, squeaking sound. As I stood, waiting for the sun to finish setting, it started to get less intermittent.

In extraordinaryly slow motion, I saw the camera shift and my hands shot out to catch it. I figure I would have actually done if the camera hadn't actually fallen at that precise nanosecond. Instead, the camera came down and connected with the tips of upwardly moving fingers. This caused the camera to bounce up even farther actually vaulting higher than the railing. It spun awkwardly in the air, the tiny tripod giving it an askewed center-of-gravity. My left arm shot out to try and catch it.

I actually remember my mind flashing: There's still a chance to save it!

But I overcompensated. It was like a beachball at a concert. Instead of catching the camera, I smacked it and sent it flying. It crashed into the barbeque grill and then fell onto the hard, stone patio. I grabbed it quickly, and in my haste to flip it on and off (I completely deleted the last 8 minutes of sunset). But it still appears to work. The latch for the battery compartment is slighly bent. It closes, but it's not flush anymore. There's about a 1/16" gap now and a nasty abrasion across that corner.

Between that and how much I hog the camera, Tine thinks she deserves a new one.

She's probably right.

noreply@blogger.com (Evil Wayne) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 12:09:00 +0000

Step 4: Cackle Maniaclly

noreply@blogger.com (Evil Wayne) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:59:00 +0000

World Builder

This was pretty cool.

noreply@blogger.com (Evil Wayne) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 02:15:00 +0000

Photos

I started taking more pictures, one of the things I wanted to do more of this year. I figured I should actually take a good look at the camera I own and maybe use it for more than just family photos and up-close Lego shots. There's actually a lot you can do with it.

I heard a segment on NPR last week where a group of friends were taking a single photograph, every day at 7:15. Which sounded pretty neat.

I don't actually think it's sustainable, but I'm going to give it a wack. I'm going to take the broad approach; not waiting for a specific time, or a specific subject matter. The only requirement I'm giving myself is to take at least one photograph taken within a 24-hour span (12:00AM�11:59PM), everything else is wide open. I'm not even going to force myself to post it everyday, just that it gets taken (although I am going to try to post them). Like I said, I expect not to complete this. I've got 4 days already and the first full, work week is about to start, but what the hell. If you want to see how far I get, drop me an email and I'll send you the link.

noreply@blogger.com (Evil Wayne) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 05:46:00 +0000

New Year's Resolutions

� Get that other site up and running. It's been a year already, does it really have to be two?

� Bind a book. Bind several books. Just try some binding, damnit.

� Spend less time on the computer. I have enough porn. ... Maybe.

� Use more of my Lego collection as God intended. Making warmachines for BrikWar games that never get played and not its current usage as a dust retention system.

� Take more pictures. At least one a day. Ideally clothed.

� Get more sleep. Six months of operating on fewer than five hours a night is starting to catch up with me in really nasty ways.

� Play more boardgames. I've started to amass a collection that threatens to become the new dust retention system.

� Plant a garden. I want to have something to do this spring that will force me to be outside in some capacity. Of course, there's 4 cords of wood still sitting on my lawn.

� Post more. I let this site slide like a California mudslide. There's some good reasons for that. And some not so good ones. It continues to be the Year of Hell, now heading into its 18th month. I should get that on a tee-shirt.

� Have something to do next New Year's Eve. Sitting around here, figuring out what to write on a blog is no way to spend this holiday, even if it is kind of a lame one.

noreply@blogger.com (Evil Wayne) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 18:44:00 +0000

Possibly Screwed This Up

Criminy, is this thing still on?

noreply@blogger.com (Evil Wayne) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 15:00:00 +0000

Mother Nature Blows

We had most of the leaves raked up and under control, it was looking good out there. But last night, there was a slight breeze. No, it was stronger than that, I think it was actually a monsoon out there and every freaking leaf within a 12-mile radius is now on my front lawn.

I swear no other house in the neighborhood looks like this. That's because all the leaves on their property are now on mine. It's like my front yard was the rendezvous for the Great Leaf Exodus '08 (t-shirts out back!).

My car looks ridiculous.

noreply@blogger.com (Evil Wayne) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 14:55:00 +0000

Finally!

Thank the FSM, we finally got enough balls to bring it, and it only took two horrific terms of the Bush administration lying at every turn, fucking us over left and right, thousands dead, the trampling of the Constitution, the shredding of the First Amendment, raiding the treasury, and hooking the economy up to a Kevorkian-9000 Special for just enough people to see the cliff we've been driven off to finally take the wheel.

After eight years of raging against the machine and so goddamn much time being plain old angry without focus, it's almost, truly over.

Just what the hell am I going to do now?!?

noreply@blogger.com (Evil Wayne) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:15:00 +0000

"Tomorrow we explore the possibility of national unity. But today? Today we crush the bastards. They have it coming."

Got to the polls early this morning with TheBoy in tow (they had closed the schools). He was pretty interested in the whole process--even the whole precinct divisions. Good for him; I'll breed a little watchdog before you know it.

For the first time since I voted for Clinton in '92 I actually felt like I wasn't actually just picking the less of two evils. (Not to mention that I've had to redefine Political Evil since then in a way I honestly never felt like I would or should have.) I actually feel there might be a fighting chance to take back this country from the wack-job Right. I'm still keeping a healthy dose of caution handy. I have no desire to experience the same soul-crushing fall from 4 years ago, but it's hard to not be hopeful.

Stewart and Colbert on at 10. Don't call me or I will start ranting and raving, possibly with mouth-frothing spittle, and nobody wants that. Again.

noreply@blogger.com (Good Wayne) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 03:00:00 +0000

Under New Management

Hey everybody! Hope you're all having a super swell Labor Day! The weather is downright awesome here!

Just wanted a quick update that the site will be undergoing some super groovy changes in the days ahead! We're all super psyched here and we hope you'll be diggin' it when we finally roll 'em out! There's some minor paperwork that needs to be done and a heckuva lot of house-keeping as well as a focused quantum singularity that totally needs to be closed, but as soon as we get through all that we hope to be back and sweller than eva!

Groove on you krazy kats!

noreply@blogger.com (Evil Wayne) — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 21:23:00 +0000

Prepare to Freakout

noreply@blogger.com (Evil Wayne) — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 03:20:00 +0000

Bunny Modern, or What the Hell...?

I just finished Bunny Modern by David Bowman.

It takes place in the 2020s where electricity has disappeared--possibly flowing backwards to the 1960s?--and so has the sperm count. With the birthrate on the decline, there's a rise in kidnappings of babies and the evolution of the nanny into a corporate, gun-toting, drug-sniffing, baby-bodyguard force. Throw in the narrator, a guy who's way too old to be in love with the girl--but thanks to some rejuvenating recreational drugs, isn't exactly a dirty old man, at least on the outside-- plus he apparently has some kind of super-clairvoyance talent--a lot of men do? probably a trade off for the low sperm?--he can tell the rest of the story when he's not actually present; which is a lot.

Then there's the Ishmaels, New Jersey, Fred Astaire, Lit Wear, Radio City Music Hall. And a 40-year-old baby that just won't grow up. Literally.

I have no idea what I just finished reading.

noreply@blogger.com (Evil Wayne) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:42:00 +0000

08.08.08

Eight has been my lucky number since grade school. So far today, however, there has been a distinct lack in the showering-of-mystical-luck on Eight's part. I might go so far as to say there has been an utter failure to live up to my expectations. I may have to go back to not believing it you, Eight. Unless you get off your ass and start dishing out the good fortune, pronto.