Category: halloween

The best holiday ever.

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trite green halloween


Happy Tuesday my friends, it was a fairly mundane day at work – just the same old routine of answering e-mails, attending meetings, and finding time to pee in between. Came home, fed the baby and put her down while Sharaun was out getting her hair did. Poked around the net for any new leaked albums of note and caught myself up on the LG15 goings-on. Not a lot here today, I’m still in feeling something of a slump in the inspiration department. That’s how it’s gonna be, so that’s how it is.

With my Keaton “featurettes” becoming more and more complicated, I decided I need to take it all to the next level and figure out how to greenscreeen her into different sequences. Since my movie-editor of choice thus far, the free Windows Movie Maker, can’t do chromakeying (the official term for blue- or green-screening something into other footage), I once again turned to the freeware program Wax. After reading a tutorial online, the whole process sounded almost braindead simple so I decided to bust out an old blue sheet we have and take some test footage of Keaton on it. With the test footage on the PC, I loaded a static image behind it and then keyed out the blue. Amazingly, in under 5min I had some very nice chromakeyed footage (you can see it here if you’re interested – it’s DivX-enocded so you may need something like VLC to view it). Putting live action instead of a static image behind the “cut in” items is trivial, and Wax supports advanced techniques like scaling and moving the bluescreened items around the frame. So, as soon as I can dream up a worthy concept, I’ll be cutting Keaton into all sorts of scenes. My first thought was to actually have her running from a real charging bear, thus bringing to life one of my better static goofs, so maybe I’ll start with that.

Halloween’s creeping up. I finally broke down and ordered my PicoBoo today, I splurged and got the one with AC outlets instead of fiddly voltage posts. I intend for it to control the wolf prop, but I’ve had some renewed interest in doing the “scarycrow” project of late – being that I think I can do it rather cheaply and easily (the motion and activation of course being the chief cost-drivers). In honesty, I’d still ideally want the prop to be a hanging man – but I’m just too much of a politically-correct coward and am concerned about what a animated “lynching” on my front lawn might come off as to the over-sensitive. Sitting today thinking about it though, I came up with another idea which I absolutely love. Right now I’m calling it the “guillotine/headman” prop, because it’s one of those. The basis of the prop would be a prone figure with his head on a chopping block or in a guillotine. In the “headman” version there would also be a standing figure holding an axe, and the whole falling-axe head-chop thing would be animated via pneumatics. The guillotine would work the same way, but not require the second headman dummy. Problem is, altho it’s an outstanding idea – it would require two-to-three pneumatic cylinders and as many solenoids, plus a PicoBoo to get the timing right. Too much money for this year, maybe filed away for next year with the “pulling his head off” man idea.

Check out the Democrats gettin’ all MySpace with their new social networking tool, partybuilder. Fancy.

Goodnight.

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at least i got the blog


Wednesday night and I’m sitting here trying to be anything but unimpressed with the new Dears leak, so far it ain’t workin’. I’m also fast at work grabbing the new Decemberists LP, which I learned also leaked a couple days ago while searching for some new song about “ghostriding the whip” for Sharaun. Speaking of workin’, I put in a good effort today – felt like I dug around and made some stuff happen… I like that feeling. Now Sharaun’s watching some eight-hour dancing-show extravaganza and I want to tear my eyes out – but at least I got the blog to keep me busy.

Got my unopened box of 15th series Garbage Pail Kids the other day, and promptly violated the collector’s code by tearing open each and every still-sealed pack. When it was all over, I had one complete set, one nearly complete set (lacking two cards) and one complete ‘B’ set, not to mention a pile of wax pack wrappers and a neatly stacked tower of twenty year old gum. I’ll sell the extra sets on Ebay to make back my outlay. Then there’s the gum… what do you do with twenty year old gum? You wonder about how it tastes, that’s what you do. You wonder and wonder and wonder until, finally, you just pick up one of the brittle pink sticks and poke it into your cheek. It won’t chew like regular gum though, it’s more accurate to say that it shatters like peanut brittle. Moreover, it’s age has made it impervious to saliva, and it never quite “gels” into one mass – remaining, rather, as a thousand tiny shards. Then you taste the bleu cheese, and you know it’s not right. Something in this gum has got the mold, and it’s like a fragrant fungus just bloomed on my tongue. Ick. Don’t eat twenty year old gum.

Some time ago, I realized that my pneumatic PVC-frame scarecrow prop I had planned for this Halloween was unrealistic. It’s not that the idea isn’t good, because it is, it’s that using air to power a prop that simple is just overkill. I guess I just wanted to do something more with pneumatics this year, but running a hose and buying a push/pull cylinder and solenoid seems like too much investment for an effect that could that could be realized with a small electric motor. All that needs to be done is to jiggle the joint strings to get the desired “electrocuted” effect, and I could do that with a windshield wiper or washing machine motor… something really easy. I mean, if I have to run power to the prop to trip the pneumatic solenoid anyway, why not just run power to a motor? The thought was that I was making the prop unnecessarily complicated just so I could use pneumatics.

Then… I stared researching it some more… and I’ve almost flip-flopped again. Air’s more reliable, and all I have to do is power a dead simple solenoid – no relays, no gear motors, etc. Still though, I run up against my long-time Halloween prop nemesis: timing/automation. I can buy a solenoid, I can get sound to come out of a speaker, but how do I make them happen on-cue or in sequence? This year, I debated buying a professional prop controller/timer – and I’m still undecided on that, although they are pretty affordable. Something else I stumbled on the other day, a Windows application that you can use on cheap PC-controlled timer/relay board. $50 for the software and $30 for the hardware (not counting the PC which will control the timer board) and you’ve got an extremely flexible complex prop automator.

At first I was excited, when I saw that the DIY jobs can support five inputs instead of the PicoBoo, where one PicoBoo = one input. This means that one PicoBoo could likely trigger only one prop (maybe two if you’re creative), while the Haunt Controller PC board could potentially power up to five. But, all is not as sweet as the first impressions, as those relays seem kinda weak… 12V and max out at 3-5 amps, and the PicoBoos have two straight up AC outlets on them (albeit offering only 8 amps combined). For my money, then, the AC-outlet F105 PicoBoo controllers are more versatile for amateur-type haunt automation.

Whew, glad that’s over, I was getting bored.

Before I go, here’s an interesting note written by a chemistry nerd on the plausibility of the London plane terrorists mixing and detonating TATP on a commercial airliner. Regardless of the plausibility of using this particular explosive, there’s always something that’ll work. I don’t remember who I heard say it but, if we can’t keep weapons out of prisons – how can we expect to keep them off airplanes?

Goodnight.

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the camera lives in the diaper bag


Happy Sunday folks! Had a nice long-seeming weekend. Mowed the lawn, hung out with friends, had a slight beer overdose, bought and assembled some patio furniture, pulled weeds… yeah it was a good weekend. Need more like that, or a vacation… one or the other. Not much for writing today, but I did manage to upload Keaton’s five months photos to her gallery (it’s not huge, but it bests last weeks small offering), enjoy! I can hardly believe she’s five months old now, it really has gone by fast (just like everyone said it would, imagine that).

Sunday before I Sharaun and I headed out the door for church, I, for some reason, started thinking about an old “cyber” friend of mine I’d met through my old days of Beatles trading. This fellow, Dave, and I became more than just regular tape-traders (yes, this was back before the days of sub-25¢ CR-Rs. We exchanged e-mail on a fairly regular basis, and eventually met in the flesh at a Beatlefest (kinda like a Star Trek convention but for Beatles-nerds). Over time, our correspondence dropped off, but we’d sometimes get or send a nostalgic “catch up” mail. Searching through my old mail for the last valid address I had for Dave, the best I could do was something from 2004. I figured I’d give it a shot, and wrote a three-sentence “hey there” mail to see if the address bounced. Later that day, I logged on to write Monday’s blog entry and saw a new comment from Dave and his wife. My first thought was that they’d got my mail, loaded my site from the link in my signature, and commented on the blog. Nope. Turns out they found me randomly, also spurred by a random “I wonder what that guy I used to like talking to” thought. Being that we both had this thought on the same day, some two years after our last correspondence – I’m totally convinced we had some of mind-meld going on. Crazy.

Got a great idea for the Halloween party this weekend, can’t leak it though – I want it to be a surprise. I love that our Halloween party is going to be four-years running this year. Can’t wait.

Goodnight.

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choke on this silver spoon


Monday night, just got off the phone with Pat, telling him I was about to go outside and pull weeds. Sharaun then walked out the door headed to the gym and, rather than haul the baby monitor outside with me into the 100°+ degree twilight, I decided to save it for another day. Another day on pins and needles at work, where the current climate is all headmen and falling axes. Without going into the whole story about my ongoing flirtation with the breadlines, suffice it to say that things have been a bit stressful and the atmosphere isn’t the most work-conducive. In fact, I don’t think I’ve done a “real” bit of work in three days now – ever since my employer raised the threat level to orange. It seems however, that I have, for now, weathered the storm – once again proving my indispensability. Chance has once again enabled me to grow more undeservedly self-assured and pompous. One day I’ll choke on this silver spoon, it’s a sure thing.

You may notice the “double posting” for today. You’ll see the entry below this one is dedicated to one of this year’s Halloween projects. I intend to document my projects a little better from now on, and will have a static, living post for each where updates will go. Not that you care about this, but it’s just easier for me to document the projects in a living post rather than setup an entirely new dedicated page. Besides, how can I one day hope to get some projects listed on the Monsterlist if I don’t document them properly and publish on the internet?

Today, while cleaning out my My Documents folder at work, I came across a curious Word document called “South Side of the Island.doc.” Not recognizing the file by name, I opened it to investigate. Inside was written only the following:

South Side of the Island

Counting myself (a librarian by former trade), the population of our little island stood at a proud six bodies:

  • Ms. O, who, it was said, was once a fearless sea-captain, and whose house had a mast sprouting from its center, complete with crow’s nest atop.
  • Mr. & Mrs. U, both schoolteachers by former trade. Their grey hair always a little wild, and both of them given to being easily surprised or even skittish.
  • Mr. T, a brilliant scientist and inventor.
  • Mr. H, who was once a police officer. Made a body feel right secure to have a former man of the law nearby.

I read this over and over again, trying to place it. Did I write this? Had I downloaded it or copied/pasted it from somewhere? I quick Google search turned up nothing. I read and reread it, and ever so slowly started remembering… I think I did write this. The date on the file says August of last year; you wouldn’t think my memory would fade that fast – but it seems it has. Maybe I was going to write a story about my #1 topic: an island. I think I was most surprised to realize I’d written it because it actually sounded interesting, and when I thought it was something I’d stumbled on rather than my own craft I actually wished I could read more.

I don’t know what it is about my “work smarter, not harder” post that attracts the whackjob comments, but it sure seems to be accruing them slowly. Check out this doozy and the one below it for an example of what I’m talking about. The other day I thought I might be imagining that the number of “random” comments I get here on sounds familiar was increasing, but with some great out-of-nowhere ones cropping up this week, I think it’s out of the realm of imagination and into the realm of fact. Maybe I’ve penetrated Google deep enough that I’m now getting a “second wave” of search-driven visitors. I say bring ’em on, I gotta believe I’m writing for someone…

I much prefer sitting here listening to music than sitting here watching TV. Let’s face it, I’m rarely sitting here without this laptop in front of me anyway, and listening to something multitasks a lot better with writing than watching something does. Even if Sharaun is home (she’s not now) and the TV is mandatory, I’m usually only listening anyway. The only watching I’m doing right now is the watching of Keaton’s video baby monitor, showing me some flickering, washed out, ghostly-grey bird’s-eye shot of her resting peacefully in her crib. Looking more like a wobbly kinescopic view into some past era than a representation of real-time events, I can barely make out her tiny form in contrast to the other shapeless grainy wiggles. This thing cost $200? It almost works like something I’d consider paying $40 for when you wrap tin foil around the antenna. Wow, that little nothing-sentence turned into a whole paragraph… now if that ain’t God’s bounty then I challenge you to show me what is.

I got more in me, but I’ll call this one done and put it in tomorrow’s so I have to write less then. Brilliant, nay? Goodnight my lovers and haters.

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halloween 2006: baying wolves


Note: This entry is part of my Halloween Projects category. You can see all of my posts documenting my projects by clicking the “Halloween Projects category” link above. You’ll also find images and movies of the projects and their construction in my Halloween Gallery, which can be accessed by links in these posts or directly here.

Welcome to Halloween 2006, friends. Starting this year, I’ve decided to better document the creation and function of the Halloween props/projects I so dearly love to create yearly. I wish I’d done this in year’s past, but in lieu of inventing a time machine to remedy that I’ve tried to tag as many past-project related entries into my new Halloween Projects category (linked above). Beginning this year though, each project will have it’s own entry describing the idea and construction, and hopefully documenting the final working product. Let’s begin then with Project #1 of an ambitious two-project year: Baying Wolves 2006.

Concept:

Credit where credit is due, my friend Kristi came up with this prop concept – and I did some “imagineering” to come up with a proposed implementation. The idea is simple: a faux setting moon with animated wolves baying in silhouette. Picture a ~7ft tall illuminated circle (like a partially set full moon on the horizon) silhouetting a couple wolves whose heads move up and down as piercing howls split the night. Yeah, that’s my best sellup of this prop folks, I’ll let the pictures and effect do the rest of the convincing. First, let’s outline the concept and we’ll get to the numbers and instructions later:

scapture2.jpg

What the visitor will see from the front. This prop is ideally located where you’ll not get many passers-by walking directly to the side or behind the prop (I plan on putting mine very near the fence in my yard). You want the visitor to get a mostly head-on view of this one, and that’s what this concept is supposed to show. The “moon” is just a semi-circle of somewhat sheer fabric (think old sheet) with a “sleeve” sewn around circumference where a piece of PVC pipe will be inserted to frame it.

scapture5.jpg

Here’s my terrible attempt at a 3D representation of the prop. The whole thing is stabilized via a “cross” of 2x4s and an additional “guy-wire” piece of PVC.

scapture3.jpg

An illustration of the base structure, no measurements here – those will come later (remember, these are just my concept drawings).

scapture4.jpg

A side-view of how the actual silhouetting effect will work. The light source will shine on the “moon” from behind, with the mechanical wolves placed just inches from the sheet for maximum effect. The wolves are simply 2D flat cutouts of wolf shapes with motorized heads – more about that to come. If all goes as planned, the wolves block the light and cast wolf-shaped shadows (which will look like silhouettes when viewed from the front) on the sheet. The beauty here is that no great effort need be made to make the wolves any more realistic than being able to cast a believable wolf-shaped shadow.

Well, that’s the basic concept. All I need are a motor, some materials, and some traceable wolf silhouettes. Read on for my documentation of the actual construction.

Implementation & Actuals

Coming soon, stay tuned.

Finished Effect

Coming soon, stay tuned.

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the sandman always wins


Thursday night and still coming down from a triumphant sprinkler repair earlier this evening. For dinner, Sharaun got all adventurous and made turkey and cheese sandwiches with blackberry jam on powdered-sugar topped waffles. Some kind of bastardized take on the Monte Cristo, but it was excellent and made my belly feel good. She and Keaton are back in the bedroom doing Keaton’s bedtime routine; I can hear Keaton crying from here, she must really be fighting it tonight. That’s a funny thing about babies, at least ours: how she seems to not want to go to sleep, despite being obviously tired. She’ll begin to drift off, her eyes will start to close, and she’ll bolt awake and begin crying – almost like she’s mad at herself for nearly losing the battle with the Sandman. Maybe it’s a kid thing, I can remember nearly always asking for an extra few minutes when my bedtime rolled around – never wanting to go to bed at the appointed hour. Now, man… I cherish my sleep.

Ever since I started thinking towards Halloween the other day, it’s been on my mind a lot. Each Halloween, I customarily get one “big ticket” item. Last year it was my air compressor, the year before it was the ridiculously overpowered fog machine, and this year I think I know what I want. Since my two new prop ideas are relatively inexpensive, I’m thinking of getting a real-deal prop timer system. The picoBoo looks awesomely promising. There are three different models, the major differentiators being the ability to record and playback audio and whether or not you want AC or DC outputs. To me, the the low-end model with DC outputs and no sound seems like a good option as the models with sound only have line out and still need to be amped, and they tout the audio quality as “similar to AM radio.” Prop activation and timing has always been a tough nut to crack, and I’ve always wanted a real-time programmer – this may just be the year to take the plunge. Oh, and by the way, all the talk of the ghosts of Halloween past and future made me nostalgic for the old “teaser” videos I’ve made. So, I put up a section in the Halloween galleries dedicated to past teaser videos, enjoy it here.

I have nothing more to write, g’night.

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as july approaches


Friday Friday Friday! Dave love the Friday. Burned the better part of the post-work daylight today working in the front yard: mowing, fertilizing, trimming hedges, checking sprinklers and weeding. Yard looks much better for it and I feel like I did something constructive.

While I don’t usually do celebrity gossip stuff, I am willing to link a funny story if it’s related to something I care about. So, continuing the Scientology bashing theme from yesterday, here’s the comical tale about some famous folks’ heated run-in with a dude wearing a “Scientology is gay” t-shirt. Good story, and, where can I get that shirt? Come to think of it, it’s eerily similar to a shirt I still want to make, but don’t have the artistic prowess to illustrate. Anyone who has some basic drawing skills and wants to help me realize my multi-religion-bashing concept tee, hit me up and we’ll do lunch.

As July approaches, and August after, my mind begins to drift to this year’s Halloween prop. Last year, Kristi made a great suggestion to do a backlit scene on the lawn with a large glowing moon and animated wolves in silhouette, complete with scary baying sound effects. I simply adored the idea, and the concept seemed relatively easy to realize: 2D wooden wolf coutouts with hinged parts for movement, some kind of illuminated orb shaped from pipe/wood, and a simple motor to animate the thing (I have an ice-cream churn we never use which I can adapt). Now, don’t get me wrong, I think this is an excellent project – but it sounded relatively “low touch” in terms of effort (of course, I’m probably wrong about that) and that prompted me to start daydreaming about a second, more involved, prop. Two props in one year, can it be done?! As my mind drifted on the 2nd prop idea, I centered most of my concepts around air-power, which I switched first experimented with (quite successfully, I might add) on last year’s “pneumatic coffin-popper” project. Air power is so clean and easy, no electricity to deal with, no AC-to-DC rectifying, no relays or geared motors to wear out – just a compressor hidden away in the garage, a hose, and some cylinders.

So, air-power on the brain, I began to revisit an idea I’d had a while ago which was based on a “twitching, hanging-from-the-gallows” prop I’d seen somewhere on the net (and has since disappeared, I think). The hanging man always intrigued me, I think mostly because I imagined the hinged limbs moving in a slow-but-frantic, almost electrocution-like, way. Powered the way I imagine it, the whole thing would be quite random, the movements not based on repetitive motorized actions – instead only being “motivated” some force, the actual movements themselves being completely spontaneous and organic. I love the concept, but was kind of turned off by how macabre I imagined the final result. While I love Halloween, I’d like my display to at least remain kid-friendly scary… and besides, in these politically-correct times I’m actually a bit leery to actually place a “lynched” dummy on my lawn.

So, keep the concept but scrap the noose and gallows… what could I do? Then it hit me, a scarecrow. Scarecrows are very Halloween to me, and the scarecrow in my concept is a lot gruffer than your goofy Wizard of Oz variety, I imagine him with a twisted sneer or something. A scarecrow writhing to get off his pole, kicking and flailing… yeah, I love it! Here’s a brief concept description and sketch I made today with all my enthusiasm:

“Flailing Scarycrow”

  • PVC frame with dual-action push/pull air cylinder mounted vertically mid-torso
  • PVC body “jointed” (springs or otherwise) at hips, shoulders, knees and elbows for organic motion
  • Wire attached to each cylinder plunger, and attached to PVC arms/legs near elbow/knee joints
  • Push/pull action of cylinder alternately tugs wires attached to knees/elbows, resulting in a jerky, flailing motion in limbs
  • Cylinder should fire randomly, or perhaps be motion-activated, and be at a lower pressure to sell the effect

Here’s a sketch I did, it was in color, but I don’t have a scanner and the only one I have access to only does black and white. You can probably figure it out anyway.

One thing I do want to do is begin documenting my projects better. I’ve even considered a page devoted to them, with details and through processes like in this entry. Ambitious, I know, but a guy can dream. Anyway… I’m not saying it’s ready to design, maybe a few more weeks o’ thinkin’, but it’s got potential!

Changing subjects… did you see the strange comment yesterday on the “satanic flier” entry? (Remember, the “satanic flier” post is consistently my most read post, averaging 30+ reads per day.) I originally pegged it for a random-letter spam filter test, but was intrigued when a Google search for “zwaml” turned up a ton of hits. Though none of them in English, most of the results were in French, some German, and some still appeared to be a phonetic version of Arabic or some other script. Intrigued, I looked up the IP address of the poster, which turned out to via a system based in Mauritius (it’s OK, I had to look it up too). AfriNIC, the Internet Numbers Registry for Africa, is based in Mauritius – leading me to believe the commenter was commenting from somewhere in Africa. Some more digging, and a few other searches seem to indicate a link between the word “zwaml” and the Kabyle region of Algeria, where they speak their own language: Kabyle, which is a Berber language.

Look, people, I researched this for hours last night. My conclusion? “Zwaml” is a slang word in some Berber-based language, it refers to a type or class of people and is derogatory. I also think it is a semi-localized term, being used primarily in the Berber-speaking regions of North Africa, and can be alternately spelled in English as “zwamel,” don’t ask me why.

Bottom line? I think I’m being called a name.

In other other news, I recently found out that the blog that started it all for me is now back online – and has been active again since sometime late last year. Glad to see it back, it really was my inspiration (oh, and please forgive the linked entry… it was only my 23rd of blogdom – cut me some slack).

Goodnight.