My "Other" Blog

With the sludge of guilt burying me, I stumble back to my abandoned blog, head down, to give a clue as to what is up.

Honestly I've been much more focused on my other blog and portfolio site, which you can find here:

http://cshaver.wordpress.com

and

http://www.siteosphere.com

Rest assured I am alive and well, just focused in a different direction than I was.

Thought this was great...

Not telling you how many I know...

http://www.esquire.com/features/essential-skills-0508

The Gravy Mile

Just watched a guy run a mile on a treadmill and consume more processed snack cakes than a person should EVER eat while doing it.  I'm telling you, I did the math and the minimum number of calories he packed away is close to 5000, all sugar and carbs.  Don't think he died afterwards which is the most surprising part.

It was done as a promotion for Betabrand, makers of Cordarounds and some of the more unique clothing items you'll ever find, including discorounds, reversible smoking jackets, "Wrath" pants and the ultracool Cornucopia bag.

http://betabrand.com/

3:00? Like, in the morning?

I just looked up my stats and I keep getting views at 3:00 AM.  Wondering if it couldn't be an insomniac cousin of mine perhaps?

School is off to a rocky start, I'm glad I prepared and have four-wheel drive.  The whole "laptop initiative" thing has caused all sorts of little glitches and because of those I didn't get to start my second class until almost 45 minutes after when I should have.  I feel bad for them since they had to sit here until 8:00 just in my lecture.

I think it'll be a good year though.  I've fooled them for two days now into thinking I actually know something.

The Scary Man Himself

I've always really loved Tim Burton's movies but never really noticed the rest of his art.  I was wandering around in the "Trends" section of Hastings one day, you know where they keep all the cool toys for unusual girls and boys, and found Oyster Boy.  Now if you don't know Oyster Boy there is a book of poetry that I think is named "The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy", which Tim Burton did that has all sorts of wonderful characters like Stick Boy, Stain Boy, Match Girl, etc.  It's laced with that typical Tim Burton dark humor with just a dash of arsenic thrown in.

Since I found this I've been fascinated by his stuff.  I guess it's something about the emaciated characters with enormous heads and huge eyes that I dig... that combined with the rather unique situations they often find themselves in.

I was hoping around a bit online today and found this:
http://www.timburton.com/

Not real hard to guess where that leads is it?  It has a fun little set of galleries that you can explore using Stain Boy as your guide.  Wonderful dark humorous imagery!

Eric Orchard

I love Mr. Orchard's stuff, have been a fan for a while now, but this one I absolutely love.
http://ericorchard.blogspot.com/2010/08/glimpse.html

Total Nerd

I know I'm a total nerd but when I have a few extra minutes, I've been creating Personas for Firefox.  I have four right now and the sad thing is I got a huge thrill when I checked today and 21 other people are using them.  Sad validation isn't it?  Anyway, if you use Firefox you can type Personas in the search bar and it's usually the first on the list.  Do a search for evrman and you should be able to find the four I've done so far.

Third Time's A Charm... Grandpa

We found out yesterday that H is having a baby girl.  Big news since her other two are boys.  I have already pledged not to change a single diaper on this one and D graciously let me off the hook.  I cited the statement that cleaning up a baby girl is like wiping gravy off a deck of cards.  A bit overstated?  Probably, but it served it's purpose.

She's a limber little one... In the sonogram she has her foot touching her forehead.  It blows my mind that that is even possible, let alone a comfortable position.  I think if I tried to do that my attempts would end in a visit to the emergency room.

Rocket Man

This past Friday D and I had the good fortune of scoring tickets to see Elton John at the arena.  You couldn't have gotten any higher up, our backs were literally against the wall, but his piano was facing our direction so we had a wonderful view of him.

There was a bluesy feel to his extended versions of a few songs (including one of my favorites "Rocket Man") that flowed into the upbeat tempo. 

Feather boa's draped around necks and flashing LED glasses added a fun feel to the crowd as many danced with a lack of self-consciousness that you only really get during a good rock concert.

He finished his set with "Crocodile Rock" but reappeared on stage to the crowds clapping and chanting, to play "Your Song" and "Circle of Life."

I have to admit, at one point I was a little nervous when he stood up on his piano bench to the cheers of the crowd, and put one foot up on his piano like he was getting ready to climb up on top of it.  I guess that's the side of me that has seen too many attempted tricks go badly.  I didn't want the concert to end with a concussion.

In love with 3D

Deannie and I went to see Alice in Wonderland last night in 3D and it is sooooo much better than it was when we used those red and blue 3D glasses that always gave me a headache.  I think the last time I used those was for an old Coke commercial during some long ago Superbowl.

I think I'm ruined for regular movies from here on.  The glasses are so much better than the old ones.  What this has to do with anything, well, I really don't know.

The movie was great, I'm bothered though that we missed Avatar in 3D.

Forever and a Day...

Wow, just looked over here at the end of class and it's been a long time since I've posted.

Ok, to sum up what has happened recently:

Anniversary was this last Sunday, had a blast chillin with the only woman who can put up with me full time.

Getting ready for the reunion... YAY!!!

Got a new Moleskine and it's one of those strange things where I always dread marking that first perfect page with the imperfection of my hand but eventually it has to be done.  I usually use them for ideas about everything so if anyone looks at them after I'm dead they will either see me as a genius or a lunatic... probably the latter.  My last one was ruined by water damage... bad fishy!

Still in shock that we've gotten as much snow as we have but the farmers love the moisture.  Might make for a good growing season to come so I need to get my happy butt out in the backyard and start tilling the soil for the garden.

Still just doing the same stuff I always have.

Anyways, that's about it.  Love, Peace and bacon grease.

Welcome to West Texas

Started out the day with temperatures below freezing and a light drizzle that coated everything in a sheet of ice.  About 10 am it started to warm up a bit, the ice began to melt and temperatures continued to climb.
Since then, the ice melted off, things dried up and the sun came out, followed by strong winds, a fairly decent rain, temps in the 60's and now the signature of West Texas, the duststorm.

Ok, so who wants to argue with me that we've screwed up the planet?

Really cool Fractals and such for ActionScript

Ok, this will be really cool for a lot of basic Flash tinkerers, probably fairly boring for the more advanced, but certainly something fun to play with.

http://www.levitated.net/gravityIndex.html

A true love of coffee

I admit, I really love a good cup of coffee, but never THIS much.

Another blog

I might be shot by Blogger for this, but I have another blog I use exclusively for class notes and assignments.  While it's much newer than this one it's already gotten more hits, lol, guess it helps that I've announced it to all of my students huh?

It's called designaholic.

Rediscovery

A wonderful Illustrator and artist, Aya Kato appeared on the cover of Beautiful Decay a few years ago and I immediately fell in love with her work.  She has this incredible modern asian feel to everything she does, stepping well past what might be based in anime and sinking her roots deep into her own style.  I've exchanged emails with her a few times and she's always been happy to answer my questions.

It's been about three years since I've seen her work but it's an easy romance to fall back into.  Check out some of what she's done in her Gallery.

It's a... thing

Have no idea what this is, just playing around in Photoshop during lab.  I can tell you that it started out as a dual exhaust on a chopper.

You Suck at Photoshop

Ok, no I'm not actually saying you, nor am I trying to be mean.  That's the name of a set of tutorials I found on YouTube today.  Dark, dry comedy might not be everyone's cup of tea but it certainly spices up what might otherwise be just another video tutorial.  I couldn't quit laughing when I was watching these.

Photoshop project #1

Seems like everyday my kids turn in an assignment I find some little surprise that just thrills me.  I know I'm bragging but I can't help it, I'm really proud of them.

Ok, so they started Photoshop on Monday.  I covered the selection tools, the transform tools and couple others.  I wasn't expecting much from them for this one, just some cleanly cut pieces of the files I gave them to work with.

I told them to clip pieces from this file:

And stick them on this background:

Pretty much anyone with much experience would see this as a fairly routine project and it is geared towards those that haven't worked with Photoshop before.  I wasn't expecting much.

But looking through the students files, one jumped straight off the screen at me.  You can tell he's one of the ones that already knows more about Photoshop than I'm going to be able to teach him in class, but it's still a delight to come across something like this when you're expecting so much less:

My hat is off to his creativity.  It's always so cool to find them doing this sort of work.

Think he might be a bit of a Bioshock fan?

Cordarounds

Ever wonder why you can only find corduroy pants with vertical lines? Well that's the question that powered the dreams of two guys from California who created Cordarounds. There dream became a reality and they now run a successful, not to mention fun, alternative clothing site.  The stuff you find here is nothing if not unique and so cool!

They are a great couple of guys and I guarantee laughs if you sign up for their mailing list.

While you're at their site make sure to check out the discorounds and Mary-go-rounds and you'll have a smile on your face.