Saturday, August 30, 2008
Note: I am currently creating the hardcover layout. If you’re interested in this, it will be posted in a few days! I’m completely re-creating the book (so it’s the same material, but much cleaner looking) and it’s going nicely so far.
I received my copy of the ModCon book in the mail today (click there for an order link). For those that aren’t regular readers, the book is back in print via on-demand publisher Lulu. It’s essentially the same book as the original, but I wanted to make this detailed post to show the quality both for people who are interested in this book, and for those who are thinking about publishing their own books via Lulu.
In summary:
- The paper is lighter than my original printing (both internally and in the cover), which makes the book thinner feel a little flimsier.
- Print quality is nearly identical, although not quite as good in my opinion. But it’s very close.
- Binding and bleed/cut accuracy and so on seems great.
I feel like the images are a little washed out, but as you can see, that was a problem in the original printing as well. This issue is corrected in the hardcover version (since that’s a completely new layout, whereas the softcover is identical), but is not in the softcover.
(Continued)
I posted this on my kit car blog, but it was just too amusing not to mention here as well. I don’t know if it’s ignorance or irony. My own kit car by the way has the body re-mounted, and the electrical system was just redone… slowly but surely it’s coming along.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
I had a great couple of days staying out in the coutry with Nefarious. I slept in a tent trailer out with the sheep and turkeys close by, and you really forget in the city how nice it is to breath fresh crisp air while you sleep, and what a blessing it is to see the stars. When we got back I finally plugged our Wii back in and Nefarious laughed her head off as she trounced me in a couple games of bowling before bed.
I read on Digg when I got back that “Earthrace“, a high end wave-piercing motorboat (the one on the left above) had managed to break the world record for a circumnavigation in a powerboat, and to do it in an “eco-friendly” way because it’s powered by biodiesel… It did its circumnavigation in just under 61 days. I thought it was important to point out the sailing record, by a catamaran called “Orange II” (right) is only 50 days. I don’t know about you, but I consider no-electricity wind power much more eco-friendly — to say nothing of more beautiful — than an internal combustion engine!
Well, at least Earthrace looks faster.
We had a big day yesterday with a ton of transit rides and a trip to the ROM and then the CNE after we’d explored literally every single floor. Nefarious is now at an age where she enjoys and appreciates the museum (although she still does love running through the bat cave over and over), so it’s becoming an increasingly pleasant trip for me… although I think the most fun was having a hotdog, of which 75% was hand fed to the pigeons. Not tossed to them, but literally hand fed. Very tame/aggressive.
Swimming yesterday was a lot of fun with crazy-dive contests with another girl that was at the pool as well as a swimming contest between her and Nefarious which consisted of her swimming (she was much older) and Nefarious being thrown across the pool by me every time I caught up, but the day before was a little odd. Before we got there, a big douchebag-type guy was screaming at the far-too-little teenage lifeguard — a rather frail looking Asian guy — about how he was going to report him for being rude and so on. I sort of wrote it off because the guy was obviously an ass, but when he left I asked the mother that was there with her developmentally disabled son what had happened. I guess the lifeguard had decided he was not fit to swim, and had told him to leave the pool unless he was willing to do a “deep end test” to satisfy his worries. His mother, who was swimming with him, vouched for his abilities, but with the lifegaurd shouting at them about how he would call security if they didn’t comply, the kid just decided to leave the pool and sit in a chair instead. He seemed quite upset.
After Nefarious had been swimming for a little while — in the deep end — he came over and tried to pull the same stunt with her. I told him to forget it, and that I’d swum there every day for the last month and a half with her and that it was completely ridiculous, and that he could go ahead and ask any of the other lifeguards, but that I wasn’t about to do any “test” for him. After complaining for a minute, he eventually just said, “fine, I don’t care, have it your way,” and stomped off and shouted at the (most likely) autistic boy to jump into the deep end… Pretty unprofessional behavior for a lifeguard. I’m assuming though that he must have had a scare earlier in the day or something like that to make him so angrily paranoid.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
One of the photographers that was at Buskerfest just emailed me these really nice pictures of Nefarious’s face paint (done by “Kromatik“)… There were quite a few people doing it, but these artists had a three-plus hour waiting list! It was definitely worth the wait — everyone they did looked amazing. The pictures don’t do it justice.
And I forgot to tell one of my stories from the day… I was watching a great German wheel act, but the woman standing in front of me — in the front row, refusing to sit down even though the act had asked her to — insisted on holding a large fancy and probably very expensive umbrella in my face. I pushed it out of my face a couple times when it got too close, and after the fourth time, she turned around and copped an over-the-top “DO YOU MIND?!?!?!” attitude…
I’m like, “yeah, I do mind, you’re in the front row with an umbrella blocking everyone behind you and you keep pushing it into my face!”
So then she starts freaking out, screaming “How dare you talk to a WOMAN that way!??!?” and making a scene that this is some sort of gender issue. I take a step toward her and she keeps freaking out — “Are you threatening me? Don’t you know it’s wrong to treat a WOMAN like this?!?” — and I’m just, “Look, just turn around and watch the show and keep your umbrella out of my face.”
So then she starts screaming at her kid, gets them in trouble for nothing, yells about me being an asshole, and drags them off and thankfully I didn’t see them again. (Nefarious was sitting down some distance from me so she was spared the ridiculousness of this drama-queen’s outburst).
