I’m just quickly posting this here to show someone the current finish on this size ten Nibbler ring. If you’re not that person, you can ignore this. Unfortunately I had to remove the Nibbler and Zoidberg-inspired Futurama rings from my Etsy store because FOX IP freaked out and filed a — in my opinion rather petty — DMCA violation. So I can’t sell them there any more. In general, I understand their desire to protect their trademark, but I think they’re making a big mistake by hunting down fan art like this which clearly doesn’t hurt any of their commercial interests, and it could be argued actually support and enhance those interests. Oh well.
Along those lines… For someone else… I’m trying to figure out the best way to colour the Zoidberg-inspired ring. Cough. I mean. Cthulhu-inspired. Yes, that’s it. Anyway, the copper finish is my favorite. I’ve been trying to get a good orange enamel, but if I put it on thick, it looks lumpy and/or cheap. If I put it on thin, it looks, well, thin. I think the only way to do it is by applying a couple coats, then buffing it half off — that’s where it’s at in the photo — and then repeating the process I’m guessing three times. It would take a day, and I still don’t think it would look that great. To be honest, the best way to do this ring if the person wants a true orange would be to cast it in plastic… Hmmmmmmmm…. That has me thinking… I could cast it in glow in the dark orange plastic which would be pretty sweet. But for now I consider the orange a failure.
I’ve been meaning for a while to check out App Inventor (a Google Labs project that is now being open sourced since Google is — sadly — phasing out that department). It’s a RAD tool that lets you quickly and graphically create apps for Android phones and tablets. In theory there is “no” text programming required — you just “draw” a flowchart and your interfaces. Anyway, to see what I thought I quickly hacked together a “fancy clock” after GIS’ing myself a clock face and some hands. I figured an analogue clock would be a good Hello World alternative since it is very simple but still touches on a broad range of tasks — logic, flow control, procedures, sprites and graphic manipulation, interface design, and system interaction.
On the “pro” side I was very happy with how easy it was to do this. Getting the first version running took literally minutes. After that it was just tweaking and messing around to try different things. It has a ton of potential. On the “con” side there is still a lot missing functionality, although I am certain that will come with time. My larger concern is that in their urge to dumb-down and make this accessible it seems like complex flow control could get extremely awkward to assemble. I’m not sure if that is unavoidable. I will definitely keep my eye on this tool and if I find the time I might write something a bit more ambitious (and useful). I want to say one other thing but I’m putting it in a new paragraph so it’s not missed by skimmers.
This seems like an excellent tool for teaching bright children* how to program.
And below is a video my dumb little clock in action. It’s exactly what it looks like. The only thing it does is tell the time, and if you tap it, the hands toggle their glow on and off (just because I wanted to write something… anything…) and the ‘X’ button in the top left quits. Oooh, exciting. I don’t know why anyone would want to, but you can download it here. Just uncompress the APK file and copy it onto any Android device. I’ve only tested it on my tablet because that’s all I have.
I just got home a little while ago because I was out of town today bringing the Saab to a friend’s house for indoor winter storage. After a nice drive out to the country followed by a relaxing GO train ride back to town reading a sad graphic novel about canine cosmonaut Laika, I was walking home from the subway. At Bloor and Dundas when the light changed to “walk” I began crossing and a moment later, literally two feet in front of me, an SUV comes flying through the red light. Barely after entering the intersection it struck the front of the car that was driving past me on my left with a loud bang. The collision was close enough that if I’d reached out my arm I could have touched the point of impact from where I stood. A second later there was an even bigger bang when the SUV, continuing perpendicular across the flow of traffic, struck a second car in the other direction’s lane of traffic, hitting the car square in the driver’s side door. Then both the SUV and this second car smashed into the corner across from me, with the car also striking the telephone pole. The SUV driver stumbled out but I’m not sure how badly hurt the driver of the other car was — possibly quite badly.
If I was not walking slowly, walking with a cane, I might have been a few feet further into the crossing by the time the careless driver did his dirty work and almost certainly would have been struck at the SUV’s highest speed of the accident, crushing me between it and the first car it hit. Then maybe the fat lady who started crying with her mouth agape while watching it might have had something more obvious to power her sobs. Maybe I can add this to my short list of good things this disease has done for me along with my handicapped parking permit. But seriously universe, don’t you think I have enough brushes with death? At least life is interesting.
Ooops, I just forgot to tell my hosting company my new credit card number, so they’ve been trying to charge a stolen card and got sick of it while I was gone and pulled the plug on my sites while I was down south visiting Nefarious for Halloween. Which was lots of fun, although the actual trick or treating actually got rained out — not that the rain stopped any of us. Nefarious used her candy bag (traditional pillowcase) and dragged myself, Rachel, and Matt (her boyfriend) until we were soaked to the bone and most of her makeup was washed off. But the whole thing was lots of fun as was the visit — although the travel was odd so I wanted to mention it.
First of all, when I was at the airport on Friday I got bodychecked by one of Rob Ford’s entourage! Seriously, I’m walking to my gate, limping along with my cane as always, and I notice the Blob and his gang (recently anointed “World’s Worst Person” by Olbermann) heading toward me. He really is hard to miss because he is much sweatier and pinker than the piggish photos would make you assume. Remarkable. Anyway, since they were steamrollering right at me taking up most of the hallway I did my best to get out of the way but the guy on the cane didn’t move fast enough for them and the outer member of his entourage gave me a solid shouldercheck without slowing down or an excuse me. Should I have expected anything more?
On the way back, I discovered that I have had my flight status changed to “SSSS” — Secibdary Security Screening Selection, which is a sort of soft no-fly list or something like that. I asked everyone along the way whether this is a permanent thing, or if it’s a single-flight random thing, or something else, and no one was able to give me an answer — no one knew — which is not surprising since it seems to have all been set up behind closed and locked doors without oversight. I suppose I will try and make some more calls but I’m dubious as to finding anything out. I guess I will find out on my next flight (three weeks, although that one avoids US airspace so now that I think about it, those flights may not be affected) if I should expect “extra screening”. Today I was aggressively searched at every checkpoint — meaning hand searches of my luggage (which found nothing, and allowed my long sharp metal spikes that I use for carving clay to travel carry on — so I don’t think it’s related to any of my adventures traveling with dubious objects and testing those limits, which was the first thing that crossed my mind of course), full scans, and a full pat-down. The “yup, that’s my penis” sort of scan. That said, everyone was very nice and I didn’t feel abused or molested — mostly just annoyed and bored. But I would like to get to the bottom of it. I did have a nice chat with one of the guys feeling me up about the legal status of branding in Virgina after he asked about my white ink facial tattoo which he thought might have been a brand (a common misconception). I haven’t checked what he told me, but he was telling me that branding is not legal there although some shops are fighting the law, and that the law dates back to slavery-era laws stopping cruelty against slaves like branding them as cattle would be.
Other than that, I was hoping (perhaps on a long-shot) to get some audio player advice. I’m reading Nefarious books which I record to MP3 files and send to her. Right now the solution is just to email them, but I’m wondering if there is a stand-alone audio-player (she needs a desktop stereo solution anyway) that has some sort of a drop-box folder? Something that would like me send files to her stereo for her to listen to. oes anyone know if that exists? Obviously it could be done inexpensively with a low-end computer, but that’s not the solution I’m seeking.
Argh, I feel like I just got off an airplane and now I have to get back on one first thing in the morning… and I haven’t even begun to pack yet, ack, ack, aaaack. Hopefully my plane is on time because I’m making it into town just in time to do Nefarious’s Halloween makeup for some school event (this picture was from my last visit there at the amusement park). I feel like I have done almost nothing this week which is unfortunate because I had a lot to do. I haven’t even posted all my new creations but I think I have at least gotten one from each new design posted. I think I’m getting knocked over by one of my medications, making me feel like I’m getting run over by truck in my sleep. Sleep has got to be one of the most important factors in staying healthy. On one hand I’m very lucky and almost always sleep well, but I feel like sometimes one can sleep “too well” and wake up sore for not having moved. Like bed sores junior.
