Pixels, Paint and Photo-Reality

The word of the week is pithiness.

Mar 28 – Clearing Worry

As my anxiety wanes weekly, I've been thinking about its causes. Why was I so anxious? What was going on in my life that was causing the anxiety? Was it short-term or long-term anxiety?

These and other questions all ran through my head this last week. I went out looking for answers and found a few that surprised me.

One article posited the idea of shifting from a 'Delayed Return Environment' to an 'Immediate Return' one, which is easier than you might think. It's a fascinating read and I highly recommend going through the article, as it allowed me to take a different look at how I was running my life day-to-day, for good and bad.

Essentially, the article suggests switching from an attitude of 'Worrying about things that we can't control' to 'What can I do to control my life so I worry less?' Which is a much healthier attitude. Here's an example I can relate to:

Writing. When I publish an article, the quality of my life is noticeably higher. Additionally, I know that if I write consistently, then my business will grow, I will publish books, and I will make enough money to sustain my life. By focusing my attention on writing each day, I increase my well-being (immediate return) while also working toward earning future income (delayed return).

In my mind, worrying about something now needs to be accompanied by the phrase "What can I do now that will help me manage this worry and make it less stressful for myself?" which is a far healthier thing to do than getting stuck in a mental logic loop with no perceivable solution.

Mar 29 – Photo Games

It's coming: the game you can’t tell from reality.

No, I'm not talking about virtual reality, but rather photorealism in videogames. Ever since the first days of electronic gaming, when a few dozen pixels were strung together to become an interpretation of reality, the slow march had begun to making videogames indistinguishable from reality.

I still recall the feeling of vertigo that I got when I first played Star Wars: Dark Forces on my then-cutting-edge PC back in the 1990s. Be able to look down and see a bottomless chasm yawning below me gave me shivers then, and still does.

Fast-forward 20 years and now we're getting to the point where the latest videogame hardware allows you to experience on-screen graphics that rivals reality. Hvae al ook at what's possible now in current games on the market:

Those are real-time graphics, not static: they move and change as the gameplay demands. It's incredibly impressive and while I won't be able to afford such a cutting-edge rig for more than a few years yet, this level of sophistication signals a threshold where reality and virtual reality begin to blur and become indistinguishable from one another.

For me, at the other end of the hardware spectrum, it's a head-scratcher trying to run some of the latest games on my hardware. Even setting some of these games run at minimum graphics settings doesn't guarantee that they'll even run at all, which can be frustrating.

Enter the LowSpecGamer, a gaming enthusiast who has made it his mission to run the latest games at the lowest graphics settings possible while maintaining playability. There are many reasons to want to do so, apart from the obvious desire not to part with hard-earned cash for the latest graphics card.

I think it's a noble quest, and will be checking in once in a while on his YouTube channel to see which games he's managed to reduce visually to make them usable by the rest of us...

Mar 30 – The Last Starfighter

Ah, the 1980s, golden age of the arcade videogame.

You can find almost any videogame that was in the arcades back then on the Internet now, most likely playable right in your browser: they were that complicated and many programmers these days grew up on those very games.

One game you couldn't find in an arcade back then though was the one from the movie The Last Starfighter. It was one that I badly wanted to play, along with thousands of other kids, to no avail: it existed only in the movie.

Until now. A diehard fan of the movie took it upon themselves to re-create the entire arcade-game video experience in a playable game that you can find on the Internet to download and play to your hearts content. Have a look:

That's some pretty cool programming there, Starflighter!

Mar 31 – Victorian Cthulu

Many years ago, I heard a story read by Neil Gaiman live, and I've never forgotten the wonder that I felt as I listened.

Called A Study In Emerald, it's a reimagining of the Sherlock Holmes type of tale, but set in an alternate universe: that of Cthulhu, a big nasty evil God who is the creation of H.P. Lovecraft and not the kind of ancient deity you want to be hanging around anywhere nearby.

If you have never read the story, I invite you to track it down at your local used book shop, as it's probably part of many a good horror anthology. If you have read the story, but didn't dig too deeply into it, you're in luck because Tor.com has revisited the tale and gone into great depth on many of the themes present in the story. Warning: spoilers for the story!!!

I found the piece quite enlightening and I stopped halfway, as I want to reread A Study In Emerald before I finish reading Tor's excellent article.

Apr 1 – Fooling Around

What's in a joke, you ask?

I'll come back with another question: what's a good kind of joke to play on April Fool's Day? The answer is more complicated than you might think, but I've boiled it down to one word:

Harmless.

Pranks, in my opinion, don't fall into this category as quite often humor is dependent upon surprise or some other form of physical humor. Whoopee cushions, air horns, and other such prank-level jokes aren't really ones that I like.

This kind of thing, though, I find hilarious:

Wow - what a great shot!

I think the humor in this particular kind of joke is a gentle one: the person watching the animation will eventually realize that there's no end to the graphical loop. Therein lies the humor: the person will feel chagrined that they were taken in by the joke and wasted one or 2 minutes of their day... to no ill effect: harmless.

They laugh, I laugh, we all laugh: that's the point of April Fools' Day.

Apr 2 – VAYKAY!

My first week of vacation for 2016 is here!

So what did I do with my initial bit of time off today, you ask? Well, I spent a good portion of the day working on my costume for the convention next week: I've got a lot to do, but nothing that a few more days of solid effort won't take care of.

Mostly, it's painting, which involves a lot of layers and visual tracing, in order to create a camouflage pattern that closely resembles that of the USCM armour from the movie Aliens. It's patient work, but fortunately nothing that's beyond my skill; all I have to do is spend the time to do it, piece by piece by piece:

This are inch-squares, and terrible glue lines on the bottom....

Once everything is painted( and dry! )all I need to do is cut some holes for straps and assemble the buckles to hold it all together. I have dozens of reference pictures, including all the locations of necessary attachment points to hold everything together while making it closely resembled the rigging from the movie.

As of tonight, the only major piece remaining to be fabricated was the back plate, which I've been holding off on because the detail work has to be done by eye as there's no templates anywhere that I can find on the 'net.

The limiting factor has been my wrists: cutting the dense EVA foam is not only hard on the X-Acto knife blades( I've gone through dozen already )but difficult for my wrists to maintain the pressure for more than a few minutes a day. Most of the cutting's finished with now and it's on to painting, which should be fun.

I can hardly wait to show you what the final result looks like!

Apr 3 – Working Time Off

My girlfriend and I spent the morning together, then I headed home after lunch to continue work on my costume.

It's really come together this week, and I'm quite proud of how I've managed to figure out most of the challenges I have faced as a novice to this craft. Admittedly, there are some parts that make me wince when I look at them, mostly the ugly end on the even lines of hot glue that represent welds on some part of the armor, but those are minor gripes. For the most part, all the pieces are the right size and shape and have turned out far better than I'd hoped for been made of foam rather than vacuum-formed plastic or fiberglass, neither of which is cheap nor doable in an apartment, for that matter.

By 8 PM, I had all of the armour's parts completed and most of them painted with a shiny metallic silver base coat. My plan is to use a low-tech but effective method to show weathering around the edges of the costume, simulating paint that's been worn away from use of the armor and/or combat, if you will. The secret to showing this base coat underneath layers of camouflage paint, you ask?

Toothpaste.

I kid you not: I ran across this tip during my research and it's brilliant. Simply rub a decent line of toothpaste atop your( dry! )silver metallic paint and let it harden, then paint right over it with as many layers as you like. Once all those layers are dry, all you do is rub away the toothpaste - gently - and voilà: the 'worn metal' of the base silver layer shows through in all the areas that you had covered with toothpaste. I tried it out on a few test pieces and it worked perfectly.

So tomorrow I'll be smearing a armor with toothpaste, then painting layers of camouflage by hand on about 20 pieces of armor. As I'm using inexpensive, non-toxic and quick-drying acrylic paints, I hope to be finished painting camouflage on the majority of the pieces by the end of the day tomorrow, with a few touch ups as necessary. Tuesday will be dedicated to the assembly of the costume piece by piece, cutting all the links of straps, riveting them together and assembling each piece on the mannequin as I finish it.

Wednesday, I get to pack for the convention and leave on the evening ferry for Seattle - huzzah!

A week's vacation, and I'm going to be BUSY for all of it: some of it preparing for the convention, some of it AT the convention... and a little of it recovering from the convention. One nice thing is that I'll be too busy to worry about anything at all this week, apart from when I need to sleep!

Superheroes, Spring and Sight

The word of the week is indicative.

Mar 21 – Spring!

Did you know that yesterday marks the earliest arrival of spring in our lifetimes?

I didn't, and I find that fascinating.

Spring is a time of rebirth, of regeneration and renewal, all things that I can relate to this year. As I've said many times in this blog since the summer past, I've got a lot to do and have to ensure that I'm not overextending myself while trying to accomplish it all. My recent anxiety hasn't helped get things done either, but I'm choosing to see it as just one more challenge that I have to overcome to accomplish what I want this year.

Seeing all the fresh life blossoming around me here in Victoria now, I can't help but feel like my spirits are buoyed... and the recent time change has certainly helped as well, ushering in later evenings and earlier mornings both to look forward to. I'll also be thinking about my friends elsewhere, how they're enjoying their spring this year and how soon I might be able to see them again.

Probably not until next spring, at the very least, depending on how this year goes.

Mar 22 – Orthokeratology?

I've had glasses for more than half my life, ever since Grade 8.

While I can see all right without them, my vision is much poorer in my right eye and I can't go too long nowadays without glasses without giving myself a headache from the focus discrepancy. At least modern glasses weigh only a few ounces and aren't anywhere near as heavy as the sliding-prone glass monstrosities I had perched on my nose decades ago.

Still, I regularly wish I could see without them.

Today I went to the eye doctor and got some test pairs of contacts. I'm thinking about getting some monthly-wear one's sometime late this year or next, simply to have the variety available. It's been over 10 years since I last were contacts, mainly because I was working in retail and constantly having to touch your eyes meant I was constantly getting sick from the transfer-germs-contact with people. All the same, it's not advisable to wear contacts at work if you're staring at a screen all day, as that can also lead to headaches and I won't even get into the fun part where the lack of oxygen to your eye( even with today's technology ) means that in the long term, the surface of your eye dies the longer you or your contacts....

But what if you were contacts that reshaped your eyes?

Such is the promise of orthokeratology, contacts that you wear at night to apply pressure to your corneas so that when you wake in the morning, your vision has been corrected - temporarily, at least.

I'm quite leery of laser eye surgery, due to the lack of long-term studies showing its full effects, so hearing about orthokeratology this week is exciting for me. I'm going to investigate it further and see what he can do for me, but I'm quite aware that it too might possibly have side effects; all the more reason to research it.

Maybe I can wear them for the next 10 years, until bionic contacts finally arrive...

Mar 23 – Bike/Car?

Do I need a car? Not really? Could I use a car, though? Well...

Apart from the expense  of owning and operating a vehicle in general, it's great to be able to be able to travel directly to a destination without needing to orchestrate a ballet of bus routes. Especially if your destination is on the other side of the city and taking your own vehicle means that you save at least half an hour trip time total by going directly there and not having to wait for a bus... etc etc.

Time is precious to me these days, so my lack of mobility has been on my mind. I've been considering some ride-share alternatives like Modo, but that requires advanced planning and also that nobody else wants the vehicle at the same time as you need it... who might reserve it first. Then there's the time it takes to walk to the nearest vehicle location, which in my case is at least 15 minutes away.

What if I could get a vehicle that's not a car, but not a scooter either? And definitely not a motorcycle... while still being an environmentally-friendly electric.

Enter the C-1( working title ).

While it looks like an enclosed motorbike, the resemblance ends there. The C-1 is designed to operate like a car, containing extremely advanced technologies like gyroscopes in order to make the driving experience as simple as possible. For someone without motorbike skills like myself, this sounds ideal, as the C-1 can carry one passenger and a small a lot of cargo, or two passengers in a pinch for up to 200 miles on a single overnight charge - perfect for city driving.

While I'm not in love with the current design of the vehicle, it's better in my mind than Smart cars, which sound like rattling refrigerators with wheels to my mind. The C-1 is something that I could park easily on the street and take me wherever I need to go at a moments notice, with no ties to expensive fuel or general maintenance necessary for gas powered vehicles.

While it's too early to tell yet if the C-1 will become a reality, its appearance perhaps heralds the arrival of the pure 'Commuter Electric Car' designed just for city driving.

Hopefully it also heralds the arrival of affordable vehicles in the same category...

Mar 24 – Guess What Arrived Today?

It's here, at last!

After months of work, a package arrived in the mail for me yesterday. After lunch, I excitedly trotted down to the post office to pick it up, lugging it back home in order to free it from its packaging. Have a look:

A little blurry, but at least you can ready the LED: 95 rounds!

Isn't she a beauty? The prop is built around a fully functional Nerf Rapidstrike that's been upgraded with some very high-power motors, meaning it can fire off the entire clip of 12 darks in under 3 seconds: three times as fast as normal! But that's not the point: it looks just like the M41A from the movie Aliens, doesn't it?

The LED counter on the right-hand side is something I'm especially proud of as I managed to find a pair of them for sale on eBay after waiting nearly a year for one the pop-up. There's a fellow on there by the name of Majenko who very occasionally puts up three or four for sale, which go damn fast, but I snagged a couple through persistence and luck. The counters are designed to exactly mimic the function of the M41A as it fires and then is reloaded in the movie, as shown in this test clips sent by the engineer who put my prop together:



Needless to say, I'm extremely pleased with the results and to be honest, a little scared that I still have such a long way to go with my costume before the convention in a couple weeks. While I wasn't able to budget having this prop wired for sound, part of my specifications were that it be pre-wired to allow such an upgrade in the future should I so choose.

For now, I'll just have to make some pew-pew sounds when I fire it...

Mar 25 – Bat vs Cape

It was movie night tonight: Batman versus Superman!

-SPOILERS BELOW-

Going in, I'll admit that I deliberately didn't find out much about this film, but not for the reasons you might think. Batman certainly ranks highly in my lists of best superheroes, for many reasons that I won't get into here( apart from being a normal guy without superpowers and the super genius part ). As for Superman, well... he's just the idolized version of what every superhero really should be: a boy scout, with lots of cool powers including flight.

So let's get these two fighting on-screen, and that'll be cool, right?

Sad Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman

Well...

Let's start with the visuals: BvS looks great and doesn't suffer from too much SFX overkill like Man Of Steel did( many parts of which were still cool-looking ) as much of the effects budget has gone to serve the story instead of just putting things on the screen to look good.

Speaking of looking good: what about Wonder Woman? Perfect casting! She's underplayed subtly by Gasl Godot, with powers far surpassing that of Lynda Carter's iconic iteration from the 1970s television show, all done in a solid performance that really sells the character while moving it forward significantly.

But back to the title match: it eventually happens, and it's a letdown.

Why? One word: story.

Quite honestly, while I enjoyed the biff-bang-boom action parts of the film, the rest of it was a major letdown, as the story has obviously been cobbled together in order to get these two heroes to fight one another. There's a whole lot of things that don't make sense in the film( 19 of them, in fact! )and in the end I just had to turn off my brain to enjoy watching the film, which looks great in IMAX.

Bottom line Guardians of the Galaxy was much, much better.

Mar 26 – USCM Progress!

Today was mostly spent working on my costume.

My girlfriend had an extremely busy week, so much so that we decided to forgo getting together today so she could just rest, which I can totally understand.

So, I was essentially handed the rest of the day to do with what I pleased, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to make some significant progress on my Colonial Marine cosplay. It also helped that it was extremely sunny here this afternoon, so working at the table by the window with all my paraphernalia was great for both light and fresh air.

Most of the secondary parts, excluding the helmet, chest and back plates. You can see on the left a complete shin guard vs one that's just been cut out

The main material on using for the costume is EVA foam, cut from large 8ft x 4ft antifatigue mats: I managed to get two of them for the budget price of $40 total from Canadian Tire on sale a few months ago! There's enough material for me to make a lot of mistakes and still end up with four suits, so I'm pretty happy about that.

While the cutting out of the parts isn't all that complicated, it does require a strong arm and the dense foam dulls blades at a frightening pace. As you can see from the image above, today I managed to cut out all the major and minor pieces, including the leg sections and I even got a few of them shaped with the help of some hot glue. Note to self: hot glue is HOT, so you shouldn't grab any freshly glued parts when you're not looking where your fingers are going...

The biggest challenge for me in the next few weeks, apart from finishing, is going to be the painting of the foam: the finish is key, and foam isn't smooth when you paint it with standard paints. I'll have to pick up some latex paint on the cheap ( from Canadian tire again )this week, so I can have time to do multiple layers while they dry for a day or so in between. It's going to be a challenge to keep them in my apartment while they dry without stinking the place up, I have to say.

Even with all the above challenges, I'm excited to be creating something so cool!

Mar 27 – Resting

I took a bit of a break today from the costuming, only cutting out a few replacement parts to substitute for ones that I've managed to screw up in some way. Plus I needed to get my arm a rest from all the cutting.

My girlfriend and I spent the morning and early afternoon together, taking a walk around and enjoying the flowers blooming everywhere in Victoria:

I took these on our walk today in Beacon Hill Park

I also caught up on a few more episodes of the wonderful Netflix-original anime TV series Knights of Sidonia, which is a scifi feast! in a nutshell: some of the last survivors of earth have fled the ravages of an alien species they don't understand it is still trying to destroy the seedship Sidonia as it travels to what the humans hope is a new world to begin again:

The premise is excellent and the science surprisingly sound for show with giant mecha in the traditional Japanese style. The story centers around pilots of the Gardes, which is what the Mac are called, and their defense of Sedonia from the Guana, which are the aliens. While the writing isn't stellar, and it's rather heavy on too-many-names and too-many-interpersonal-relationship stories, the overall plot has been engaging and I'm looking forward to learning more about the universe that's been created in which the story is set.

I'm going to add 'Figure out why Google Drive isn't uploading my pictures automatically' to my long list of Things To Do in 2016. Already on that list: fix Plex so that all the movies I copied from my DVD collection actually show up, finish scanning and organizing my book collection, check my few dozen laserdiscs for warpage... the List goes on and on, and that's not even THINKING about getting my novels completed or getting my new business running in the summer. I wonder if I can take a paid sabbatical from my day job for a few months...?

Puns, Patty Parties and Progress

The word of the week is customary .

Mar 14 – Getting There...

This was a completely normal week for me - finally.

I rarely checked my heart rate from day-to-day, depending instead on focusing on my daily tasks and not focusing nearly as much on how I was feeling from hour to hour, which was good in many senses of the word.

I'm back to just working through each of my days one at a time, with little hanging over my head, so to speak. That's the way I've always dealt with my busy schedule and it feels normal to get back to that progressive state of mind. I won't belabour the point, but suffice to say that my anxiety and I seem to have called a truce for the foreseeable future. I'm still taking two St. John's Wort a day, but that's a far cry from what I thought I'd still need by this date.

The time change yesterday has also meant that things feel lighter around here - literally. With sunset now happening well after 7pm( and later every day )it's far easier to feel energized in the evening if it's still light out.

Which is good, as I have a lot to do before the fall when the clocks go back again. Lots and lots to do...

Mar 15 – Medical Punnage

I love puns; sadly, many people don't.

Puns are a complicated matter, much like humour: it's complicated. Yet for all the effort, most folks can't be bothered to make a pun, much less appreciate them, with many ascribing the pun as being 'the lowest form of humour' and so forth.

Still, I pun, and I enjoy it, even when most other folks groan and walk away - fast. I do know when to stop, but for some pun-loving jokesters, it's non-stop.

Now, medical science has determined that there's something behind the motivation of the worst punsters: they're medically unable to stop punning.

According to this article, people who can't stop punning( or telling jokes in general )whether they're funny or not have suffered brain damage at some point in their lives - that should come as no surprise, really. The damage means that they only find their own jokes funny, including puns, and lose all inhibition regarding joke-telling as they can't determine if other people are finding the jokes funny or not. It's an unusual condition and while fairly rare, could explain the nonstop puns of the occasional jokester, it definitely doesn't explain my own penchant for puns.

Thankfully, my girlfriend appreciates the better puns that I let slip: I'm a lucky guy!

Mar 16 – Laserdisc Fixed????

After work, I picked up my Pioneer Laserdisc player from the repair shop.

I'd received a call yesterday that it was done, but that it wasn't fixed, per se as that would take specialized equipment and skills that just aren't available around here. I was lucky to find a place willing to look at it, really, and the technician who had it this last week has 40 years of experience electronics, so I trust his word when he said he tested everything, including the spare motherboard that I gave him along with the service manual. Getting it back, I resigned myself to months or even years of searching to find someone who might be able to repair it comprehensively. It's a rare Pioneer Elite unit, so it's unlikely that I'll ever find a similar or better unit that's in as good condition, even with the internal video glitch.

But, lo and behold: once I set it up again tonight, the picture was clear as crystal! No wavy coloured lines distorting things to unwatchable levels - huzzah!

According to the tech, it seems that the laserdisc I gave him to test the unit was warped significantly, which may have caused the distorted lines. I had also initially tested it with a Star Wars disc, which showed the same lines of distortion, but tonight's spending of a Babylon5 disc was apparently the charm!

I watched the Babylon5 disc for two hours solid tonight, and both sides played perfectly without any distortion whatsoever. I was able to see the excellent detail of the CGI scenes in each episode, with much greater clarity than the poorly-done DVD video transfer. I'm a happy guy!

I'll have to check my laserdisc collection for warped discs, which can be fixed using various simple methods to restore their perfectly flat shapes. It's unfortunate that age and mishandling can distort the disc, but it's to be expected given their size and even DVDs can be warped if the situation isn't good.

The irony is that I don't have a lot of time this year to sit and watch my laserdics, but as 2016 progresses, I'll be able to sneak in a few here and there, watching with a grin on my face thanks to the technician's tune-up and suggestions.

Mar 17 – Jazz Poetry!

It was an entertaining St. Patrick's Day!

I met my girlfriend and her poetry group at Hermann's Lounge for dinner, as they were having a meeting before the evening's entertainment. We talked for a few hours about Irish poetry, in honor of St. Patrick today. While I am not an official member of the group, all was able to put in quite a few cognizant observations about the poems, including one comment about combining poetic types that had everyone eagerly voicing their opinion as to how it might be accomplished - go me!

After some hours of lively discussion, the evening's entertainment took the stage:

The trio played some lovely light jazz, just loud enough to cover the crowd’s conversation and laid back enough to be utterly relaxing. After the first set, the band took a break and when they came back, they were joined by a young jazz singer( whose name I didn't catch )whose dulcet tones added wondrous new dimension to the music. There was also an elderly clarinet player who sat in a chair on the stage and showed everyone what decades of musical experience could do.

What a great night!

Mar 18 – Bye-Bye Bengal

Friday night after work, I went lounging.

Not just anywhere though: I joined my sister and some of her work friends at the Bengal Lounge in the Empress Hotel, down in the heart of the harbor area of Victoria.

It's a wonderful place, the likes of which can't be found easily in Canada anymore. It's a throwback to colonial days, with potted ferns and murals depicting African safaris on the walls, and the centerpiece of the lounge is a real tigerskin - barbaric, but that's part of the charm I guess:

I've always wanted to go into the Bengal, but the prices have been so prohibitive that I never bothered - check out what a grilled cheese sandwich costs:

The food was excellent, and so was the company, but we Teft after about an hour as it was getting too loud. The lounge is always crowded, with a line waiting at the door( mostly for the renowned curry buffet ) but after this April, it won't be anything but a construction zone, so I'm glad that I got chance to eat there at least once before it closes at the end of this April.

Tiger, tiger, burning bright...

Mar 19 – Catch-Up / Podcast / Party

Today was a busy day!

I spent most of my morning and early afternoon catching up on the week, getting various things squared away around the place - the usual when I have a little time.

In the afternoon, I again took part in the final of three podcasts regarding the third in the series of Dark Crystal graphic novels, Creation Myths Vol. III. I spoke for an hour and a half long with three other fans of the dark crystal, discussing each of the chapters in the graphic novel. It was fascinating to be able to 'read along' with other fans as I did the podcast, as we all discovered things that we missed as each of us pointed out little details here and there.

Soon after I wrapped the podcast, my girlfriend and I headed out for dinner, a few hours before we had to be at a party. We chose Ithaka, a family-run Greek restaurant just down the road from where I live and somewhere where I've been a few times before( good experiences both times, I might add ). It was quite crowded when we arrived, but the host managed to find us a table by the window, which was extremely fortunate.

The small restaurant was hopping, with a dozen staff moving in a smooth flow from kitchen to tables and back again while weaving around the occasional guest. The last few times I had been here, it wasn't nearly as busy and I came to appreciate quite quickly how well-run Ithaka is: each of our food plates arrived hot and perfectly timed for us to finish the last, our server was attentive and not a single thing went wrong the entire meal. It was one of the best restaurant experiences I've had in recent years and we'll definitely be going back soon.

After dinner, it was time for party!

Specifically, we attended a post-St. Patrick's Day party at a coworker's house, with all attendees having to wear something green and bring the same in terms of a food item. My lady and I both wore green, and we managed to find some excellent mint cupcakes along the way that were perfect( bottom left ):

Everyone at the party was wearing something green, and many had gone 'the extra mile' when dressing up. There was even a table of items to 'add' to your attire, should you so wish. We took advantage of that, of course:

Having had a long day, we didn't stay too long, but it was nice to sit out on a patio for a few hours with friends, enjoying the relatively balmy weather around a patio fireplace! Ah, spring in Victoria...

Mar 20 – Armour Progress!

Sundays: sometimes you relax...

... and other times you dive right into a project! Today saw some significant steps forward in getting my cosplay ready for the Emerald City Comicon taking place in a few weeks in Seattle. I finally finished putting together the paper templates for the armor, which were extremely complex and time consuming to assemble. Getting a three-dimensional shape from two-dimensional sheets of paper meant many dozens of small fiddly bits of paper that had to be taped together on my mannequin, after being printed out from a Pepurka file - so many little bits!

Once the templates were assemble, I place them atop one of my EVA foam mats and cut carefully them out using an X-Acto knife. While rough, the soft foam shapes are easy to assemble, and look great when pinned temporarily together:

That used up a significant portion of my day, pretty much and the concentration necessary lefty feeling rather tired by evening, when it was time to write my blog. I did feel a sense of accomplishment today in getting the foam shapes cut out, as I have to now do some detail work on them this week before hopefully painting them next weekend. I will have to strengthen them internally as part of that detail work, as they'll be too flexible otherwise and might cause the paint to crack.

Lots left to do in the next few weeks, but I like a challenge!

The next two weeks will see me concentrating almost exclusively on my costume, getting it ready for its debut the first week of April in Seattle. My M41A rifle is complete and was shipped to me several days ago, so should arrive by the end of this week at the latest - exciting! So now I have to get the costume ready to go with it...