Thursday, May 29, 2008

I'll eat all the popcorn


I feel like I don't draw enough anymore, so i am trying to do that more, though i was sick of having lotso f drawings in piles all over the office and in notebooks that i was afraid to get rid of, so i dragged out the old digital drawing tablet. At the same time, i came across a program called Sketchbook pro that I like a lot more for drawing digitally then photoshop. Above is the drawing I did this afternoon when my drawing of the yeti lobster starting going sour. For things like directional hair, regular old pencil and paper is still good for me. I am very happy with the colored pencil in this new program, something i hate in real life.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Hooray!

The greatest GBA game that there was, Rhythm Tengoku (rhythm heaven) is getting a sequel on the DS, very soon, too. July 31! This is right after i saw the news that there is supposedly a sequel to Daigasso Band Brothers coming out in June.

Some kind of link to news about it: TOPIC 4


here's a summary of the one for GBA:


in other news, there is no other news. I had memorial day dinner at my friend cory's, and it was fun. I saw Indiana Jones today, and I enjoyed it. I think the key to enjoying movies these days is going in with low, low, low expectations. It's worked for me for Indiana Jones, Speed Racer and in the past it worked for Life Aquatic. I clipped my hair, i have itchy bumps on my hands and fingers which is some kind of eczema manifestation.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Go Look at the ISS

Here's a link to NASA's Java Applet to show you when it will pass over you and where to look. I missed the last viewing by ten minutes, but it's all cloudy right now, so i couldn't see it anyway. They seem to happen every three hours or so.


Sunlit space station to put on marathon sky show


The next few days will be prime viewing opportunities for anyone interested in catching a glimpse of the International Space Station (ISS) passing overhead.

The space station is normally visible once or twice a day, but from Wednesday to Friday, it can be seen making as many as four daily passes over North America and Europe.

Satellites like the ISS are only visible on Earth when they are in sunlight and the viewer is in deep twilight or darkness.

Such a scenario can occur more often at certain times of the year, when the Earth's orientation relative to the Sun allows the ISS to move out of Earth's shadow.

That will occur over the next three days, when the station will be bathed in sunlight almost constantly. Since it takes just 90 minutes or so to orbit the Earth, it will be visible multiple times around dawn and dusk.

The space station, which orbits at an altitude of 386 kilometres, is by far the biggest and brightest manmade satellite circling the planet. It looks as bright as Venus or Jupiter and can be seen even in well-lit cities.

"You don't need anything [to see it], although I would recommend if you have binoculars to try them because then you see a much more detailed view," says Nicole Cloutier, a spokesperson at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

The ISS will appear to sweep quickly across the sky, remaining visible for about 4 to 5 minutes during each pass. Find out when to look for the ISS here.

Construction of the orbital outpost, which is about as tall as a nine-story building, started in 1998 and will be completed in 2010.

NASA’s space shuttle Endeavor is scheduled to launch on 31 May. Another unique viewing opportunity for sky watchers will occur two days later, when the shuttle docks with the ISS, making the station appear even brighter than usual.

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Harry the Horse

This is one of my favorite sesame street segments. Jimmy sent one out in email, and remembered to look for this one. I feel like I have searched for it before and been unable to find it, but this says it was uploaded over a year ago.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Speed Racer


I watched Speed Racer this morning while I did some physics homework, and I actually enjoyed it a lot. If you aren't a big fan of the cartoon, then you probably won't like it, but if you do like the cartoon, it's pretty good. I won't go into a long review, except to say that it's perfectly cast (except for spritle and MAYBE sparky, but the fact sparky is in it is great), the Warchowski brothers chose exactly the right elements to keep, including the way Pops Racer clunks heads together during fights, and to keep Snake Oiler as Speed's rival during races (though he's sort of different, and there's no mention of "the car acrobatic team", and the original music throughout. The only thing that it was missing was constant reminders from the narrator about who Racer X is, and Speed's erotic groaning, and the fast, erratic, dialogue resulting from trying to match mouth movements when translated to english. Also, Speed has next to no internal dialogue. The cartoon is saturated with it. Some parts are embarrassingly stupid, but whatever. It's a Speed Racer live-action movie, and I think it's meant for nine-year-olds. Feel free to make fun of me if you want.

The movies exciting with cars flipping all over the fucking place and exploding and if you can see it for free, I'd say do it. There's not an ounce of realism in it and its totally predictable. I was very, very surprised that I liked it as much as I did, but then again, I am always surprised that I like the cartoon as much as do.

I'm up to 50 bucks now as a chacha guide. I answered 10 bucks worth tonight while working on this insect pamphlet. Most of the questions people ask are about rabbis in brooklyn, and about people in SLC, Utah. So many questions from brooklyn! They must be advertising there a lot.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Corvallis and the Helvetica Scenario


I went down to Corvallis this weekend to check out the campus, the town, and to talk to a potential landlord and a potential roomate about some rooms and apartments come fall-time. I liked to area a lot for the short time that I saw it. I got super lost at one point too. It's weird seeing a town that is so proud of the school that's there. The town seems to be there for the college and nothing else. Everybody has OSU hoodies, OSU stickers on the cars, OSU flags flying, etc. The area reminded me a lot of olympia, washington. A lot of people said that Corvallis is boring, but I don't know what they want. Clubs? Cinemas? I dunno. Looked nice to me.

I met with a guy named Tim who's really nice. The room he's offering is cheap and the place is all furnished and networked up since he's a computer science major. He pointed out the server in his room with 600 movies on it, and that it all streams to the PC in the living room hooked up to the TV with the XBOX and the Wii. He also had futurama and penny arcade posters in his room. I decided that i really wouldn't find a better price or personality match, so i told him today that i'd like the room, and he said good. The apartment is close enough to campus that I can walk or bike (or there's a free bus every 1/2 hour) the rent is not much more than I pay now, and it's pretty much completely furnished except for my room. I lucked out, I think. I am lucky that it was so easy and it's all done. His girlfriend is moving up to tacoma in august, when I will move stuff in and start paying rent. I can even take the dog.

I talked to another lady that had a basement apartment, and she told me that I was her first pick if the current one didn't go through, but I decided that it was too expensive and the extra room would go mostly unused. The lady was super nice and worked at the school in the botany dept. We talked for a long time about her research with fungus and slugs, and also about the bugs in her yard. I would have enjoyed living there, but if i'm not going to be working while in school, at least next year, I felt like I shouldn't blow all my funds on rent.

If you don't have one, I suggest getting a 10x jeweler's scope. They look pretty great and you can look at things close up. I got one down the street at the rock shop for $1.25. There's a picture of me wearing one tonight whilst I was pinning some beetles at the top of this post.

if you haven't watched them yet, I suggest you click over to NOEL'S BLOG and check out his latest two movies. Solid Gold.

Also, I think that "Look Around You" might be my favorite show ever:

Friday, May 9, 2008

Cercopidae

Getting into the lecture was not a problem, although I did show up way to early when there were only 2 other people there and I thought that i had totally blown my cover so I ran away, and took a walk down the street to get some coffee. When I got back, they were about ready to began and there were at least 12 people there so it was not a problem. They sold every copy they had of the guide (3 copies) and the Peter Haggard autographed mine for me, which made me happy. They mentioned that they were low on funds, and although I don't want to join the society, I will probably send them a thank you note with a small contribution since they let me stick around.

I found the first spittle bugs (cercopidae) of the season in our backyard yesterday. These are very small, about a millimeter long. I put together this time lapse of them doing what they do best.




Spittlebugs are found on all kinds of plants. The nymphs will make bubbles with excess sap they they eat from plants by pumping air into it. This gives them a hiding place from would be predators such as paper wasps, which I have seen eating them. When they are adults, they resemble leafhoppers and I read somewhere that they can jump higher than anything else on earth (you know, to scale).

Also, I forgot to post this next video when I made it last october. The good thing about the USB microscope is that the LED's don't produce a lot of heat. The lamps I was using before did, and sometimes that led to less than satisfactory results. Watch the snail embryos inside of the eggs struggle to stay alive as the moisture leaves their unborn bodies (try and wrap your head around that, pro-lifers/pro-choicers! When DOES life begin? These are aware of pain, or perhaps they are simply boiling.)



The microscope was lacking a tripod mount, so i glued a 3/4" nut to the bottom of it today and it seems to have worked very well in holding it in place. It looks like it might be slipping just a little but, or the plant is growing in the video, which would be weird since it's just a bit of the branch being pinched by some Mr. Hands and in a jar of water.

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Peter and Judy Haggard

I'm going to crash a meeting of the Oregon Native Plant Society tonight for this:
May 8, Thursday, 7 pm
Meeting: Native Insects. Judy and Pete Haggard will present a program featuring some of the native insects that are in their field guide Insects of the Pacific Northwest. The emphasis of their talks is not only insects but plants, especially native species, and gardening with native plants to attract wildlife. They should have copies of their book available for purchase and autographing. Mt. Tabor Presbyterian Church on SE Belmont Street at SE 54th Avenue. Enter the church parking lot from SE 54th Avenue.


I own their guide and I love it. I think I am going to try to get mine autographed. I'm not a member of the society but i am going to try to name drop some members' names (april fong) and see if they'll let me in. Otherwise, i'll just walk in. I can't imagine that they are too agressive. After all, the whole idea with native plants is that they are less agressive than the invaders that are coming in. I'll be the english ivy of their little club. Or rather the wood louse, since i am not trying to eradicate them.