Well I WAS going to come here and make another post about my procedural image system, which of course requires that I finish putting it back together after trying to make it load files properly. Unfortunately, I also noticed that there was a new version of the D compiler out, so I decided to go ahead and update to that.
Last time I gave a summary of the first episode of this series and a link to the Crunchyroll channel.
Today let’s take a look at some of the actors, and the stage they play on. Small spoiler warning.
This is a series that kept me and my roommates engrossed for a good 12 episodes and in discussion on series themes for considerably longer earlier this year: “Suisei no Gargantia,” or in English, “Gargantia of the Verdurous Planet.”
Do you ever have difficulty getting motivated? Life ever get you down?
I’ve got just the thing! So…
Come with me!
Your usual host is back any day now! I know I was bad yesterday, but they had me working a closing shift, followed by an opening shift, which was quite lame and taxing. But good news! I finally have time to blog! Bad news, I have nothing to write about today!
“This is totally the face you’d make if I had anything useful to say. You can make it anyway to humor me.”
I think this weekend I will continue on my journey to make a Charmander (not mine, Nintendo’s) hoody! I’ll let you know later if it doesn’t totally suck.
Finally a day off and all I can think about is more ways to not feel spectacularly spent after a stressful work week. Yesterday I went for adventures, today I think I’d like to tackle Rainy Day Boxes. What is a Rainy Day Box, I make you ask? I’m so happy I forced you to inquire!
A Rainy Day Box is simply a box in which you place something that might make a friend or family member smile, then give it to them to help fend off the darkness of depression or even just to ease the pain of a particularly rough day/week/month/year/decade. The box can be any size and house anything at all, as long as it’s personal and will bring that other person some delight.
So for example, say you have a friend who is dealing with chronic and prolonged depression. Put something humorous or even, dare I say it?, touching in a box. Then put that box in another box, mail it to yourself, then when it arrives, SMASH IT WITH A HAMMER!!! Ahem! What I mean to say is that you can then decorate the box (or if you used origami to make your own box, that part is covered) and/or write witty, pithy and pleasing things on the outside. Then give the recipient the instructions: Simply open when they feel like life has just kicked them at the junction between leg and torso, or if they feel like maybe they never want to leave the house again. From there, when they finally sink low enough to open the box, you have already buoyed their spirits, and lifted their hopes! Thus forestalling that 4:00 am drunken phone call we all know and love.
“That’s right, friend! You needn’t be on the other end of this call with a little forethought, cunning, and human decency!”
That is why I, for one, enjoy both giving and receiving Rainy Day Boxes. For everyone who knows that the darkest time is just before dawn, and it really sucks getting a weepy phone call just then.
Life did. Life, and work. I’ve been up to my eyeballs in random calls to come into work on my regularly scheduled days off. I’m mildly disgruntled, but my paycheck rejoices. More importantly, I’m feeling a little frazzled and low on energy. Naturally it’s time for… AN ADVENTURE!!!
What kind of adventure, you ask? It doesn’t really matter as long as it’s something new. It occurs to me not everyone knows how to adventure like we do, so I thought I would go through a couple of our adventures for the unlearned, ignorant, or just plain new adventurer out there.
Sometimes it’s chalk-full of stupid as well.
I work at a cell phone kiosk that abuts an electronics section of a store, so we get all kinds. The electronic associates and wireless associates hang out and together we have put together a list of some of the more… charming things customers have said.
Prerequisite information: Both the electronic section and cell stand surround a jewelry counter. We have an easy-to-spot, well-known uniform. The only carriers we supply phones for in our location are ATT, Sprint and Verizon. We have plastic dummy displays because someone somewhere doesn’t like having all their demo phones stolen (wuss). We do have several live devices that have security devices.
Onward!
And that is all the ones that translated easily. The others mostly only make sense to people who spend all their time in the store watching people do ridiculous things and say hideous stuff!
IT’S BACON!
If a blog is called “Candy-Coated Bacon,” you might expect to see something about candy-coating bacon. Or at least bacon.
Today, I shall not disappoint.
Does anyone else have twin siblings? I do.
Fun fact: If you have twin siblings you may get drafted by your mother to participate in twin studies well into adulthood. In fact, they still contact us from time to time. It’s kind of insane, really.
When I was little they would put us through a series of logic tests, math tests, and lingual tests. Then they would ask a series of really AWKWARD questions. Usually about if we abused drugs, if anyone touched us, what we think of our siblings and other such foo-fah. They would compare all three of our results, give us a lolly and send us on our way.
As we got older the cool and fun parts diminished and eventually they just asked even more questions about our mental health (suicidal thoughts, depression and others) and gave us $100 each.
The moral of this story is that if you want $100 several years down the road, have twin siblings. Also, I don’t always have a point.
Today is the first day without your normal gremliny host, so let the pain begin!
So I guess what I really want to ask is if anyone has ever worked much candle gel as far as making better and more comfortable mouse pads? We (for the purposes herein “we” constitutes clockworkgremlin, Milli and myself) have! It turns out that ergonomically speaking, one of the best shapes to rest your wrist on while surfing the interwebs is that of two, soft but supportive spheroids supporting the wrist on either side. If you haven’t got the mental picture yet, we have put together that it strongly resembles upper female anatomy if you get my drift.
So we set out to make some for our own comfort and to see what kind of mischief we could get up to. Also, it’s really funny to tell other people you made breasts over the weekend.
First, we knew we had to find an appropriate mold. Not so hard as such things go, but not very easy to locate locally. We did end up making a trip to our local Hobby Lobby (kind of like a Michael’s or a Joanne’s or whatever you have wherever you are) and picked up several likely-shaped candidates.
Second, we knew that, unaltered, the molds would stick to the candle gel and make getting them out in one piece difficult, if not impossible. We had a latex coat kit (from the interwebs) and coated two of our vessels as per the instructions and used a silicone coat kit (also from the interwebs and also as listed in their instructions) to coat the other two molds.[Gremlin Edit: I bought both mold kits at Hobby Lobby.][Cupcake Edit: Semantics!!!]
Third, we melted the candle gel in an expendable pot and poured them into the waiting containers. Tired of waiting for them to cool, we shoved them in the freezer. Once they were finished, they were the perfect consistency. The latex molds initially yielded the perfect shape, but as they continued to cool the latex coating became loose, leaving a wrinkly texture to the finished product that was incredibly visually unappealing. The silicone coating was initially more difficult to remove from the mold, but the finished product did not have the disturbing loose skin that the latex coating boasted.
All in all, we learned much more than most know about making boobs that day.
On another note, one of the finished products disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again. We can only assume it is in the shadows, biding its time, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
To whom it may concern,
I have been invited to host while your regularly scheduled program is interrupted! Allow me to introduce myself! I am the Spiciest Cupcake, though mostly only because it was in opposition of Candy-Coated Bacon and also decidedly an equally gross flavor combination in the making. I am tragically and boringly uninterested in the finer points of coding and have been invited to speak of anything else that may take my fancy. Currently leaning towards a couple of rants about how we encourage poor behavior and a lack of creativity in our society, or maybe just a lovely jaunt through cell-phone land! My level of whimsy and rage will be the deciding factors.
Always yours,
The Spiciest Cupcake
Ideally I’d like to average better than 1 post per day. Unfortunately, I will be missing for the next few days on account of a wedding in the family, and preparations for said absence prohibit me from sitting down and composing a post with the attention it deserves.
So I’ve hired some help.
If by “hired” you mean “contacted a good friend who has already expressed interest.” Sometimes being allowed to contribute is its own reward. So say hello to Spicy CupcakeSpiciestCupcake, she’ll be keeping the place from stagnating while I’m gone!
Screenshot from Farbrausch’s “The Product” 64kb demo
Many, many years ago, a German group known as Farbrausch created a rather impressive piece of software, known as The Product, a 64-kilobyte executable which produces, without the aid of a network connection or any additional files, a short, real-time rendered music video advertising all of the great things “The Product” can do.
The really cool thing is that at 64 kilobytes, the file itself is almost smaller than the download request, and it’s old enough that virtually every (windows) PC available today can run it flawlessly.
I was inspired to start here partly because of Shamus Young, owner of the entertaining and informative Twenty-Sided Tale blog. Seriously, go check him out.
Shamus is a good programmer, and like any good programmer, when he gets bored, he likes to write little experimental coding projects. Currently he’s working on a game called “Project Good Robot,” which is shaping up into something I would REALLY like to play. The cool thing about Shamus is that when he does these coding projects, he posts about them. It’s all very educational, and a lot of fun to read, and Shamus really has a talent for explaining high-level technical stuff in a way that anybody can understand. Reading through his earlier projects would really be a good way to gain some solid practical knowledge for beginning programmers. Or anybody who would like to be a beginning programmer. Or anybody who’s curious about the arcane arts of “Computer Science” and would like a peek behind the curtain.
At rest, the human body consumes around 1300 kilocalories per day. That’s what it takes just to keep your body running. If you can eat less than that, you can actually lose weight by channel surfing on the couch!
Your brain weighs about 3 pounds. For the average adult male, that’s about 1-2% of your body weight. For something so small, it consumes a gluttonous 260 kilocalories every day.
That’s a lot of energy. Going to have to replenish it somehow.
The blog’s definitive first post ever.
Candy-Coated Bacon 