Category: Critters

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...And Little E Makes 3 Critters Gaming

You are not the ones to make me fly, and therefore are obviously not the ones to take me home

The trip home was fun. My barely-long-enough-to-reach-my-connecting-flight layover in Denver turned into what was nearly an all-night stay. The plane that normally makes the XNA-Denver run and back again was diverted to Colorado Springs due to severe storms…and then vanished off the radar. Well, that’s a good sign. I still don’t know what finally happened with that. Finally, they got us on a plane, some plane, any plane to get us out of there. We went around the aforementioned nasty weather at fairly close range and it was spectacular – moonlight illuminating the tops of the clouds, which were just boiling with lightning. Breathtaking stuff. There was a woman about two seats behind me who didn’t agree, however, though that may or may not have had something to do with how many bloody marys she’d had.

I touched down at XNA at around one in the morning, and was groggy enough that I took my time driving home. Of course the kitties were happy to see me, though I’m worried about Xena – she’s been eating very little, though I don’t know how much of that is the heat and how much of it is her missing her favorite human. I’m worried about her. The baby room painting is coming along nicely, but the rest of the house, to put it as charitably as I can, isn’t. So I’m trying to overcome a bit of mental jet lag and get back to work. … Read more

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Critters Gadgetology Home Base

Step up to the plate

It was a busy weekend this weekend, what with the baby shower and all, so I haven’t had much time for bloggage lately. I’ve also been preparing for the CGE trip, which is…this weekend! I can hardly wait. I’ve got a couple dozen blank tapes on order that should arrive any day now, and I’ve also procured a fisheye lens, which I’ve wanted for about, oh, 20 years, ever since my grandfather let me try out the one he was using. I just wanted to take that thing home then and there. 😆 But…there’s just one catch. I had to put a step-up ring on one of my cameras to try it out…and now the damned step-up ring is stuck. You cannot get that thing to budge at all. Apparently the threads misaligned or something, and now it’s on there. Which means I’ll have to put a step-down ring on it at some point to make it compatible with the other stuff I have (telephoto, wide-angle, etc.). As a result, that camera is also now incompatible with its own lens cover. Go figure. Worse yet, I have to get another step-up ring to use the fisheye on anything else. (The fisheye isn’t stuck, just the adapter ring.)

No problem, right? I’ll just call Bedford Camera & Video, literally the only thing in the local phone book for photography supplies, right? I mean, a step-up ring is just about the most common thing in the world, short of film or tape or batteries, that I could possibly be after……right?

Wrong. Fine upstanding pillars of the community they may be, they don’t have any step-up rings that are “that small”, and they don’t carry any cameras with filter threads that small. But they do carry a full line of Nikon™® accessories compatible with their full range of Nikon™® digital and film cameras, so would I be interested in one of those? “No,” I responded, “because I’m not using a Nikon.” Then it sunk in – they were trying to tack the sale of a multi-hundred dollar camera on to a customer’s call about a two-buck step-up ring. 🙄 I mean, I’m sure the person on the other end of the phone was just doing his job, but the conversation wound up revolving so much around their line of Nikon™® equipment that the whole point of me calling was lost. Pffffft. I ordered the step-up ring I needed from an online distributor with second-day shipping. Because there’s literally nowhere else to go in this area for anything more than the most basic photography/video supplies…and if you go there, you’d better be ready to talk about Nikon™®’s fine products.

Sheer desperation has set in at home as far as where to put boxes of stuff that are coming out of the baby room:
Pac-Boxes
That’s a bunch of boxes, stacked on the slanted back/top of the Kick machine, covered in a Pac-Man bedsheet. 😆 Well, hey, it kinda fits the game room decor…I thought I had found a new home for the machine itself, but that prospect appears to have evaporated as quickly as it appeared.

Here’s Xena through the fisheye lens:
Xena
Xena

I love the fisheye lens. I promise that I won’t shoot absolutely everything with it, but it’s really handy to have the option of getting that wide an angle, even if it makes my dog look a little weird.

Today’s entry has been brought to you by Nikon™® and your friendly local Nikon™® dealer. 😛… Read more

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Critters

Payback’s a bitch, ain’t it?

Some time earlier this year, taking my morning bath became a strictly solitary activity. I’d gotten used to Othello and Olivia coming and sitting on the rim of the tub and watching me without incident. The magnificent klutz that we know as Oberon changed all that one morning when he pushed Olivia into my bathwater (while I was in it). I caught her so she didn’t get more than her paws wet, but apparently she didn’t forget. I was drawing a bath this morning, turned my back for a few moments, and then heard a colossal SPLOOSH! that sent water almost to the ceiling, and saw a furry streak running out of my bathroom.

And then I saw this:
Oberon drying off

Poor Oberon! Looks like he’s gone swimming. I helped him dry off.

Oberon drying off as Olivia flees the scene
Olivia fled the scene immediately and was unavailable for comment.

Looks like karma slaps cats on the ass too. 😆… Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Critters Home Base ToyBox

Things are going just swimmingly

Swimmy time
A look at our super secret swimming hole. And us in it. (I’m the bald, non-pretty one who isn’t using any kind of flotation device and is therefore barely keeping his head above water in the deep end.)

Little Girl
This is the lifeguard, Little Girl. Sooooo much better than David Hasselhoff. For example: I could never see giving David Hasselhoff scritchies behind the ears. Hell, I couldn’t even see doing that to Pamela Anderson, for that matter. And I don’t think we’ll ever see video of Little Girl sloppily wolfing down cheeseburgers in a drunken stupor either.

Dipstick
This is Dipstick. He’s a much older cat and loves nothing more than to find shady spots…and stay there. He is wise beyond his considerable years.

Oberon and Olivia
Naturally, our own kitties are more than happy for us to come home from the pool.

I spent almost three hours today shooting some video for a Toybox article you’ll see in about a week; it was quite a bit of fun and took quite a bit of setup, but I think you’ll like it when you see it. It got me thinking quite a bit about my evolution from playing with toys as a kid to collecting them as an adult, and I realized that I was much closer to playing with them today than I’d been in a long time – I was just inspired in a kind of “I know that’s not what it looks like on the screen, but what the heck?” kind of way, and had a made-up rationale for why things would be the way I was setting them up instead, and before you know it, scenarios form in my head and I have to remind myself that I’m taking some pictures, not playing with my action figures. I had a long train of thought about the nature of imaginative play, about how much modern toys (especially those attached to TV and movie licenses) are geared more toward re-enactment of specific scenarios than they are to open-ended play, and the thought also occurred that I would need to be accessing my imagination in that same wide-open, no-boundaries space once again, probably sooner than I think, when interact with my son (and play with him) as he grows up. Anyway, not wanting to dump all of the cargo from that train of thought at your station, I arrived at the following summation:

  1. In some ways, I have indeed never grown up.
  2. I think I’m actually happier that way, and may function better that way.

So much of the business I’ve been in all of my adult life has revolved around finding ways to do things, finding ways to make things look a certain way. There are several schools of thought here:

  1. It can’t be done by us with this equipment.
  2. It can be done, but we don’t have the time to do it.
  3. It can be done, we just have to rethink the angle of attack and use what we know about the equipment we’re using to make it happen in a reasonable amount of time and/or money.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am so Mr. #3. And that comes from that spirit of imaginative play. Anyone who’s so locked into one way of thinking that they reflexively fall back on #1 or #2 as an answer without even trying #3 needs to get out of the pool and let someone more playful dive in and make some waves.

My toys are mostly digital now, but damned if I don’t still love my plastic ones too. And if I get to play with both at the same time, even better.

I’ve already gotten one call from the Entertainment Fort Smith print ad for GreenhouseFX.tv, but they wanted me to shoot a wedding…on the last Saturday in July. Eek. Stay tuned for the explanation of why exactly I had to turn them down…because it seems I’m booked.… Read more

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Critters Gaming Home Base Television & Movies

Big Fun!

Found even more treasures during the Great Clean-Up Of The Baby’s Future Room Wednesday, including my long-lost tape of the original Fox promos for the 1996 Doctor Who movie. I’ve put those up on the site here, just click each of the “preview” buttons to see the various promos Fox ran in 1996. Damned if they didn’t make it look exciting, eh? (And hey, if you like Doctor Who trailers, you can’t miss this one – if ever you don’t dig a trailer from the new series, just come back to this one again. 😆 ) I also found a heap of PAL VHS tapes of such things as “I Was A Doctor Who Monster”, “K-9 Unleashed” and “Who On Earth Is Tom Baker”, all of which I promptly dubbed to a DVD for safe keeping. I’m fond of that now-nearly-extinct breed of fan film/documentary hybrids that Myth Makers excelled at.

The trip to Springfield’s 1984 Arcade is still on, and just a week away. I can’t wait for that. I may have some other Big News in the next few days as well, stay tuned!

Got some swim time in on Wednesday night, then we came home and I proceeded to whip up both dinner and the next day’s lunch for both of us all at the same time. Well, all three of us. That Evan is a hungry little bugger. As usual, I didn’t get near any fireworks – I fired up the fireworks graphic demo on the Christopher Tumber Vix / Tsunami Vectrex homebrew and let it run all day. When other people did start blowing stuff up, Xena was ready to come inside. (Smelling me cooking may also have had something to do with that.) I was getting pretty irritated with some kids who were shooting off fireworks insanely close to our overgrown pasture, when all of a sudden it stopped, and yet I kept seeing flashes of light outside – lo and behold, it was the nightly thunderstorm to the rescue. With all the rain we’ve had, it’s probably too damp for there to really be any legitimate concerns about someone burning down my land, but it’s just the principle of the thing.

I’m just elated with the news that Catherine Tate will be back as Donna for all of the fourth season of Doctor Who. That just about makes up for the hash that was made of Martha’s character development (to say nothing of that finale…oy vey! Sleep, Data, sleep! Am I the only person who thought that Eccleston’s Doctor would’ve wiped the floor with John Simm without a second thought?). But Catherine Tate? I can get behind that, and not just because she’s delicious. She’s not 20 years old, she’s not impossibly stick-figure thin, and she doesn’t have an unrequited love thing going on with the Doctor… yay, she might come across as a real person. I loved that character in The Runaway Bride, although I fully understand that I’m probably in the minority there. (That episode, and the first one with Martha, air this Friday night on Sci-Fi, so hey, you tell me.) I know that I’m just an American who hasn’t suffered overexposure to Catherine Tate via her comedy show, but I just thought she was really cute, and the character was a nice departure from anything we’ve seen in the show before, old or new. And as for Kylie…well…ask me again after Christmas.… Read more

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Critters Home Base

Unearthing the past

Amazing what turns up when cleaning my old room.

Jump Cut City raw tapes

These are the Jump Cut City raw tapes, straight out of the camcorder, the original footage that we’d pile layers of sound effects, etc. onto later. When there was a big Burchuss scene, we’d dub Burchuss speech audio directly onto these tapes as well. What a find! If one had professional editing gear and time, one could probably do a Lucas number on these…oh…wait.

Jump Cut City raw tapes

I’m going to have to look at some of this stuff and see what’s on it, because several of these JCC adventures never ever got finished.

Boxed Kitten

We’ve been boxing stuff up to store it away and get it out of the baby room, though obviously we wind up with the wrong thing in the wrong container from time to time…

Boxed Kitten

(Don’t worry, that lid was closed for all of three seconds, and wasn’t locked down. On the flipside, Olivia’s not jumping into every box we’re unpacking or repacking now…)… Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Critters Gaming Music

Chillin’ like Obi

Here’s Oberon, chillin’ in my wife’s portable cooler bag:
CHILL, MAN 😆

So apparently the results of yesterday’s listening were as followed: almost no movement at all for the whole Carl Stalling Looney Toons music CD, but switch over to the Moody Blues, and the little guy started kicking. A lot. Whether this means “more cartoon music” or “more Moody Blues” or “make with the Katamari music”, there’s no telling.

In other news, I’m trying to round up a raiding party of folks from the Digital Press and Retroputing forums to storm the castl…erm, I mean, visit 1984 Arcade in Springfield, MO, on July 11th or 12th. (Leaning toward the 11th for a variety of reasons.) I’ve been wanting to go there since last year, but Rob’s recent visit has me positively salivating to go there now. In a way, this is going to be my “last fling” before I have to start preparing for baby on an almost full time basis. And if the kiddo likes these old games as much as I do, I’ll bet there’s another visit to 1984 down the road.

I wonder if they have a TV ad? 😉 … Read more