An optimist will tell you the glass is half-full; the pessimist, half-empty; and the engineer will tell you the glass is twice the size it needs to be. – Oscar Wilde
There are many places to find out about local/popular eateries around town... weekend insert, internet, word of mouth, doorknob hangers, etc. Personally, I prefer Lonely Island SNL Digital Shorts for all my foody info. Check out "Lazy Sunday" to see what I'm talking about. Deb and I hit up NYC recently to see some friends and do some exploring. While there are many cultural and historic sights to see, Magnolia was definitely on the top of my short list of things to do. If you ever find yourself in the city, do me a favor. Get yourself some cupcakes and a carton of milk. Pick a cushy swaft of grass and chow down. You can't go wrong, I promise you. But be prepared to stand in line. The place can only fit like eight people, six if they really like cupcakes. Wasn't too bad though, well worth the wait.
So I sort of took the easy way out this Christmas and bought my girlfriend a TV. She subsequently upgraded to an HD signal in her apartment and it looks great but I can't help but feel the gift lacked a little heart. I wanted to make up for that a little this Valentine's Day. We have accumulated a lot of silly pictures of us over the last couple years and I've had the idea of putting them all on a digital picture frame for some time now. Alone, that would have been a step in the right direction but I knew I could do better. While perusing the capabilities of some online machine shops, I came up with the idea of combining said digital picture frame with a custom front bezel. And why not throw a few tri-color LED's in there for good measure. Check out the video for some cool multicolor animation action.
This project took me way more time than I initially imagined. Good thing I started it more than a month before Valentines Day. Choosing the digiframe was not a trivial task. Most of the frames I found where either undersized for my taste or large, expensive and wide screen. I guess the wide aspect screen is good for HD video resolutions but I'd wager most people are going to go primarily with digitized photos which are almost entirely produced with a 4:3 resolution aspect ratio. After a pretty good search, I found an adequate candidate in an 8" Matsunichi model. I took a bit of a gamble with a non name brand selection but that ended up working in my favor since the flimsy construction made ripping it apart pretty easy. And the screen turned out to be just as bright as the reviews said it would... Bonus.
Check this out, I used a friggin laser to cut the letters out of the front bezel. Would have been a lot cooler if not for the smell of burnt plastic. A friggin laser! The rest of the outer casing came together with some high strength plastic glue and screws. And then came the programming. I hacked together some of the ugliest code you can imagine. I really need some training in proper coding techniques. Yikes. But the end result looks pretty good so I'm happy. Though I think during "Randy Jackson presents America's Best Dance Crew" she likes the TV just a little bit more.
Headed out to hit the slopes in Colorado a few weeks ago. Breckenridge to be exact. I had been there a few years back with my sister but it was during the summer and I was curious about what the town and mountain would be like during ski season. Back then, my sister and I stayed at a hostel a few blocks from the center of town and it turned out to be more of a bed and breakfast than the simple accommodations I was looking forward to. I had formed this idea of a hostel in my head and wanted to realize it by arriving to a young crowd of travelers sharing stories and experiences. A community of strangers you could say. I guess that sort of thing appeals to me. Instead, the place was very comfortable, very spacious and the party sized jacuzzi was very hot. It was a good consolation prize and a clue to the kind of clientele the town catered to. Although the aesthetic is very upscale, Breckenridge still manages to keep that old town mountain village feel mostly because it was built over an old town mountain village. I remembered checking out the people on the restaurant and coffee shop lined streets thinking it was yuppie central. Totally not my crowd, but where there are yuppies there is ease and comfort. Prefect for a no hassle ski weekend out west. And the snow usually brings out the adventurous types anyway so problem solved. Neat town, cool people, big ol hill, close to Denver International... choosing Breck was easy.
The conditions on the mountain weren't optimal and not all the runs were open the first couple days we were there but I still had a grand ol time on my skis. It's hard to say what ability of skier I am. Sometimes I feel like I'm in the advanced category and sometimes, like on the diamond glade runs up on Lift 6, it's like I'm putting skis on for the first time. Breck goes from intermediate to expert in a flash with little in between. Not all that bad for families or those into cruisers I suppose. Though I would have preferred something a bit more challenging without having to negotiate mogals and pine trees on near vertical descents. My ego is still bruised. But I'm nitpicking, there was a lot of variety and when peak 10 opened up we had our fill of great views and great all around skiing.
Breckenridge has way more upside than any downs I can think of. I'd recommend it to anyone. I wish I could go into detail about all the wonderful places to go and eat but we had fun finding them on our own so I wouldn't take that experience from you. Just talk to all the friendly people on the street and in the hotel and you'll have an easy time. I'm already looking forward to my next ski trip our west... whatever that may be.
A popular event during the holiday season around the DC Metro area is a Santa bar crawl, though I'm sure this sort of thing happens all over the place. The premise is simple, dress up like Santa, an elf, Christmas tree or maybe even Rudolph and head on out to your favorite bars. Since the elements of the Santa myth are a hosh posh of traditions from various religions, this outing can appeal to persons of any religious background.
I chose to class up the tired ol Santa shirt a little and reconfigure it into a Santa suit jacket. But this is still a pretty low key event so I accessorized with the Santa ball cap I made for last year's crawl. Although time intensive, the hat was pretty easy to put together. I took an old baseball hat I had laying around and covered it with the fabric from two Santa hats. An Exacto Knife with a very sharp blade made short work of the de-stitching duties. Totally necessary to maximize fabric coverage. And of course, attaching the fabric to the hat was a breeze with hot glue... what else. Now, the jacket was a completely different story. First, I bought a generic Santa costume from Party City and a swath of white fuzzy fabric along with a few buttons and some thread from Jo-Anne Crafts. I proceeded to de-stitch the whole Santa coat so I could adjust the measurements. I used one of my sport jackets for size comparison. After a little scissor work and a ton of hand sewing (and hot glue), the jacket was born. Originally I didn't attach the bottom trim thinking that it would look more like a coat than a suit jacket, but the red felt from the Santa suit is too thin to create an adequate border even when doubled over so I opted for it. I think that was the right decision.
There's nothing wrong with being dead last if you're doing it for a good cause. Headed out a little while back for the annual SMASHED DC Scavenger Hunt. Now, with a little cross team teamwork and possibly a bit of dishonesty, we actually managed to win the thing last year. Sometimes you have to play above the rules. And winning is all well and good but we needed more of a challenge this year. That and we felt like fraternizing a little more along the course. Contrary to what you may think, coming in last is kind of hard to do. We needed to actively try to get rid of points both real and fabricated. We got a kick out of making people sing Def Leopard songs for fake points. It's the little things.
Our Team theme was "isn't it obvious". In a nutshell, we all dressed to a rhyme scheme. For instance, Cuckoo Hebrew, Haiku Guru, Blue Crew, Voodoo. You get the point. We made people guess the theme and no one did. I guess it wasn't that obvious.
I recently recreated my Knight Rider Belt for a trip out to the State Theater to see the Legwarmers. The original belt died after the party for which is was built. Not too surprising really, it was sort of a last minute thing and the construction wasn't that solid. Normally I would have called it a project and moved on but I was never really happy with the way the light diffusion worked in the original so I instituted a few new tricks and put together a far superior product.
So here's what we built for our latest 80's party. If you try hard enough, I think you can guess the theme. The idea first came to me when my roommate Rhett and I were studying for our high school history final. I was kind of stressed cause if I didn't pass, my father was going to send me to a military academy. And that was a real possibility since I know nothing about most pop culture historic figures. I thought, if only there was a way to travel back in time and accidentally gather up said figures due to situationally comedic events that necessitate their coming back to the present with me just in time to help us give our history final oral presentation. Then I thought, wait... this was kinda already done in a movie and besides, everyone knows that you totally need a flux capacitor for time travel. So we axed the time travel idea and decided to build the phone booth anyway. I painted the whole inside black and mounted a couple black lights to its ceiling so party goers could write anything they wanted on the inside walls with a highlighter pen. Indecent verbiage and caricature was kept to a minimum. Best thing about the booth... it was still standing when the party was over. I don't know if that's saying more about the quality of the party or the construction of the booth. Nah, it was all booth baby!
