9 Billion Hours of Sewing Succeed

The Information Twins were a definite hit. In fact, we’re thinking of doing it again next year, with some improvements in the costume department. Not being able to stuff poor Captain TMI into his Superman suit in order to do a proper fitting led to some issues, but we made it through.

Captain TMI and Golden Silence, ready to fight – um, whatever. We actually don’t know what our superhero schtick is.

I’ll have more pics later. For now, I’m going to eat, watch teevee, and not sew a stitch nor paint a prop. I’m tired beyond belief. Arglebargle. How the fuck does making costumes take so much out of a person? Oh, right – no sewing machine. I’m glad most of you who were making costumes had sewing machines. Soooo much easier with a machine.

I’ll have some geology for you later. Which do you want first: the next installment of Rivers, or the final stop on our OSU Geo tour?

I hope my east coast of North America readers are safe and well. I’m sorry Sandy fucked up your Halloween. And if your cell service is down, rest assured we’re fixing it. Even whilst wearing costumes.

9 Billion Hours of Sewing Succeed
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OSU Geotour Supplemental V: A Spring in Your Steps

Our tour of Oregon State University geology continues apace. We’re just going to make a really quick dash in at

Stop 12: Memorial Union Main Entrance

and – holy fucking travertine, Batman! Maybe not so quick, then. Continue reading “OSU Geotour Supplemental V: A Spring in Your Steps”

OSU Geotour Supplemental V: A Spring in Your Steps

Sneak Peak

There’ll be something of substance up later today, I promise. For the moment: a glimpse of what is to come on Halloween.

Not the full costume, obviously: just the speaker-shield and the microphone-mace. And the cat, of course, helping to demonstrate the power of the mic.

And here she is deciding to defeat it by consuming it. Unfortunately, I hit the Program Auto button when setting up the camera, and the colors are horrible as a result, but still. She’s cute.

Something of an action shot. Sorta. Shame you can’t see the shield from this angle.

Anyway. That’s a small part of what I’ve been working on. The rest (and hopefully best) is yet to come…

 

 

Sneak Peak

I Have Gone Very Slightly Mad…

It’s that madness that happens when you planned to do something simple, but kept enlarging upon the idea, and then expanding upon those enlargements, and embroidering the details, and so on. A sort of positive feedback loop takes effect, and your life becomes dominated by something that started out very simply indeed.

I really only meant to make one simple cloak. That’s it. When I told my coworker I’d help him dress up as Captain TMI for Halloween, I meant I’d make him a cloak and design a logo. I didn’t mean to make the mask and the boots and a shield and all the accessories. And I didn’t mean to dress up with him. I have to sew this shit by hand, forfuckssake. But here we are, it’s the weekend, I’ve spent the entire weekend working on these costumes (with a brief aside for cooking and cleaning the kitchen), when what I’d meant to do was spend the weekend doing research.

I haven’t even welcomed Avicenna and NonStampCollector to FreethoughtBlogs. Although I have, now, watched nearly every video NonStampCollector ever put out. Whilst my hands and eyes are busy with stitching and painting, my ears have been busy with various videos on science, atheism and reason. Without those, I think I might have gone completely mental.

Those of you with sewing machines, please tell them how much they are loved. All of you pause for a moment to remember the inventors of the sewing machine with fondness. I’m amazed people ever wore more than a piece of cloth wrapped round their sensitive bits: this hand-sewing stuff takes forever.

And now I’m back to it. Just popping in to say why some things are going to be quite late, and why it’s a damned good thing I had some substantial posts pre-written. I just hope my coworker lets me put photos of him up here. This costume, my friends, is bloody epic.

I Have Gone Very Slightly Mad…

OSU Geotour Supplemental IV: From the Ancient Seas of My Birthplace

Almost halfway through our tour of OSU geology! We’re coming up on the Memorial Union now, and I hope you left yourself lots of time, because this is one of those places that a person could get completely lost in – and that’s just on the outside of the building.

Continue reading “OSU Geotour Supplemental IV: From the Ancient Seas of My Birthplace”

OSU Geotour Supplemental IV: From the Ancient Seas of My Birthplace

Unidentified Flying Dinosaur: Akai Tori

A few days ago, I mentioned I’d like some red birds from someone, since I now knew the phrase for red bird in Japanese – and Heliconia came through nearly instantly with these beauties:

UFD I
UFD I. Image courtesy Heliconia.

All right, so they’re arguably orange. But it’s definitely a red-orange. Heliconia was a bit worried about them being arguably orange rather than reliably red, but I say this is fine – I can show off my (laughably infinitesimal) Japanese vocabulary and call them aki tori* – autumn birds. Because orange and red are colors of autumn. So it works. Just nod, smile, and go with it, people. Continue reading “Unidentified Flying Dinosaur: Akai Tori”

Unidentified Flying Dinosaur: Akai Tori

OSU Geotour Supplemental III: Marble Halls and Sandy Pillars

We’re moving right along with our campus geotour – it’s amazing geology students ever get any class time in, considering how much there is to distract a person on the way to class, and we’ve only just got started. Continue reading “OSU Geotour Supplemental III: Marble Halls and Sandy Pillars”

OSU Geotour Supplemental III: Marble Halls and Sandy Pillars

Mystery Flora: Campus Beautification

I know, I know – two domesticated species within a week, where’s the wildflowers, right? But we’ve been doing the OSU geotour, might as well do the campus flowers too, amirite? And these are quite wonderful.

For one thing, they are trees:

Mystery Flora I
Mystery Flora I

Continue reading “Mystery Flora: Campus Beautification”

Mystery Flora: Campus Beautification

Learning the Language of Rivers II: The Basics

The Marys River at Avery Park had me staring in incomprehension like a kid on the first day of a foreign language class. You know how that is: the teacher’s off babbling in said foreign language at Warp 9, and you begin to wonder why you ever decided to take a foreign language in the first place. And you doubt you’ll learn so much as a word, because none of it makes sense – your teacher might as well be speaking Greek, even though you signed up for French. Or was it Spanish? It all sounds alike when you don’t understand a word.

But you’re here. You signed up for this shit. All you can do is try not to look like a dribbling fool while you strain your ears for a single familiar word.

Continue reading “Learning the Language of Rivers II: The Basics”

Learning the Language of Rivers II: The Basics