old school flatland bmx bandit
I’ve been pretty stoked lately on riding again. My friend at work Birk took some shots on top of my office building’s parking garage. They turned out great. Take a look at the flatland freestyle slideshow.
June 7, 2006 at 8:46 am | general | 1 comment
A riddle for you
Pictured below are two stacks of books. All of these books were checked out by me recently from the library. Today is the day I have to take all of these back to the library. One stack I actually read, the other I did not. Guess which is which?
Update
Wierd! I posted this, and then, over a week later I see this.
April 22, 2006 at 6:53 pm | general | 3 comments
Checking out the City Market
One thing I really like about Kansas City is the City Market. Here you can buy your weight in fresh vegetables from various local farmers and private growers. It has always been a good time walking around the market square and browse what everyone is selling. No doubt there will be street performers around too.
Today’s plan is to check out the Steamboat Arabia Museum, which is a boat that was recovered years ago that sunk in the Missouri River in 1856. A group of treasure hunters researched and thought they knew where the boat was. Rivers change their course over time, just like small rivers. After the river changed course, the boat was buried for a hundred years but a group headed an excavation based on their calculations, and found the boat something like 40 feet down, with all of its cargo intact. So now these are on display at the museum.
Juri has been wanting to see this for a while now. Off we go!
April 22, 2006 at 9:57 am | general | No comment
Cat Illustration
March almost over and I haven’t even accomplished half the stuff I wanted to this month. Arrgh. Police school has been great. I’m also very excited about next week. We’ll be at the helicopter pad.
Juri is always making funny drawings. I absolutely had to do a vector drawing of our cat she drew on our dry erase board. It took a few minutes.
March 30, 2006 at 11:11 pm | general | No comment
Write my memoirs?
Last night, I had all these memories of when I was little, all the silly things kids go through, the friendship dramas that always seem so big when you are in the exchange, but looking back are just amusing or stupid. Anyway, I started thinking that I could write a book about me. Not that my stories are so important, but more of a way to preserve ideas and how my life crossed paths with so many important caring people.
Preserving this history may impact others, or may have a lesson to teach. Or it may serve as entertainment or a bridge to a past that vibrates through time. I’m not sure. It was just these very strong memories.
March 27, 2006 at 7:40 pm | general, writing | No comment
Back from Hawaii
Back from Hawaii, from a very memorable vacation. I feel so relaxed. Despite all the travel concerns, the timing of flights and train rides things have been pretty smooth. Check out the pics.
Oahu wasn’t the pristine place I originally thought, but there was plenty to do and see. We spent one day inside, and that was fine with me. The rest of the time we saw it all. One place in particular was a fun excursion. The company Dole, which makes all those canned peaches in syrup we all love, have a pineapple plantation on Oahu. They boast having the largest hedge maze in the world. Check out the Dole plantation maze on google maps satellite imagery.
One comment I must make about Hawaii, is that if we intended to prevent the Japanese in World War II from invading the island, we failed miserably. Hawaii is crawling with Japanese. This was good for me though, plenty of lovely ladies to people watch.
February 26, 2006 at 11:44 am | general | No comment
We got a flipping sex panther
I did a couple things this weekend that I’ve never done before. It’s nice to stretch yourself once in a while. First, I cooked steaks in the oven tonight. Never did that. Stirfry was always my game. The top sirloins turned out good. I bought some A-1 for the occasion and dinner was just like my dad would have made it.
The 2nd thing I did, I can’t even believe it. I got a cat. This happened on Saturday. I’m not a cat person, mostly because my experience with cats has pretty much never been good. I remember a day on the playground in grade school, when this cat from a neighbor’s of the school, or a stray was in the lot. I went over to the cat to see it closer and it flipped on it’s belly in an affectionate way. Being used to dogs, I thought, well I should pet the little guy. Upon reaching in, I was relieved of the skin on my finger. I can hear the cat saying “Burn! ha haha” right now.
Fortunately our cat is extremely nice. Not standoffish, not scratchy and he likes being handled. Pretty cool. The cat’s name was Noah before we got him, so we’re keeping the name. Juri calls him “No-chan” I asked the lady at the store about de-clawing because I thought it was a common thing for inside cats. She informed me that that is a debilitating amputation. Didn’t know that. I think I scared her that I was going to hurt the cat. I later read that declawing can cause all the attitude problems that I specifically don’t like about cats.
Our cat is strange. I think they all are. When we walk around the house, the cat likes to trip us up even when it means he’s geting knocked around. And he’s kind of clumsy. First cat I’ve ever been with that will come up to you and kind of kiss you with his nose, on your nose. Wild. Since he’s black he’s like those panthers in Team America World Police. As a tribute to the excellent movie Anchorman, we’re going to also call him Sex Panther.
February 12, 2006 at 10:52 pm | general | No comment
Cyril the magician
I wanted to share a magician that I stumbled upon. Cyril Takayama is an American born man of Japanese and French descent. He’s an awesome street magician and I’ve really enjoyed the clips I’ve seen of his super powers. I had to share these.
Here is a round up of some videos of his street magic.
- Burger Trick
- Hershey’s Kiss Trick
- Levitation
- Water Bottle
- Linking Lifesaver candy
- Green Tea trick
- Matchbook tricks
- Moving Cards
- Card prediction
- Shaker Trick
- Bunji — OMFG
- Game of Darts
- Oh hell here’s the lot
Want to order some DVDs?
December 11, 2005 at 9:56 pm | general | No comment
general updates
I opened my site up today and decided that it’s high time to make a posting. Things have been pretty interesting over the past week or so, despite that I have been somewhat ill, over the thanksgiving break. I’ve been fretting over this personal project I’m doing for friends, who have been entirely patient for me to deliver it, and I have not since finished all the pieces of this video for them yet. That gives me a nice rush of self-loathing about every two hours or so.
When I’ve been laying around doing nothing, several of my favorite software programs have been updated. Over the last week, Inkscape came out with version .43 and it is so much faster and more stable. Not any revolutionary changes, but it really works well. I still need to write up my comparison with Inkscape, Xara and Illustrator. I feel that story needs to be told.
Another advancement was with Blender 3D. It’s up to release candidate status for version 2.40 and has better everything. Fluid and cloth simulations are a big one for some, I haven’t figured them out yet. I really like the ability to soften shadows with Buffer Shadow using spot lights. Blah blah, most people reading this don’t care about that.
Something more well known is an upgrade to Mozilla Firefox, an excellent web browser. Years from now, I can only wonder what methods people will use to browse the web. Will they be browsers like now with more, less, or no features. You never know. Flash could be the browser of the future. Anyway, what’s cool about Firefox update to 1.5 is that there are a sleu of developers with extensions who have been resting on their laurels during these 1.01 – 1.07+ incremental updates. The extensions break and don’t get fixed. I think the 1.5 extensions are better than ever and probably we will see this larger update paves the way for some of the classics to come back.
November 30, 2005 at 8:33 pm | general, graphics | No comment
Wrapping up the InDesign CS2 Atomic Learning Series
I finally wrapped up the recording and editing tonight for my next Atomic Learning series. It’s InDesign CS2 tutorials, about 80 of them. It’s quite a listing. And you know whats funny, I can’t seem to cover everything even in 80 tutorials. The program is huge. AtomicLearning.com.
I’ve noticed in the past couple weeks a lot of websites are doing all of these 2005 “best of” articles. The best of the camcorders, the best restaurants, top hotels, best jugglers, heck I’ve even seen the article “Best Flu’s 2005 roundup.” Who decides this crap? Anyway, all this is really strange for me because 2005 seems to have just begun. Of course I remember the new year, the spring and summer seasons, but only as a whisper and a blink. Today my cousin called about Thanksgiving and reminded me that it was only two weeks away. What in the world? Where did the year go?
November 10, 2005 at 10:57 pm | general, graphics | No comment
