Holy crap. Some scammers just made off with a million bucks by attaching a recording device to an ATM and using it to duplicate cards. The scary part? The ATM they used is in our neighborhood. I’m pretty sure I’ve never used that one, but I’m going to be a lot more careful in the future…
Month: November 2002
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Oh Pacey… How the mighty have fallen.
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Roger Ebert praises the films of Buster Keaton. I saw some of his films in college and really enjoyed them. If anybody wants to buy me an early Christmas present, feel free. 🙂
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It was a weekend of extremes. Saturday night the Snook and I rocked out at the Reel Big Fish concert. Sunday afternoon we attended his grandma’s 80th birthday party. (We gave her a set of the photo marble magnets I made, which she loved.) Now I’m just tired.
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I picked up my copy of Kushiel’s Dart at Borders today. (It was in the sci-fi/fantasy section, if any of you are having difficulty finding it.) To be honest, it doesn’t look like something I’d pick up otherwise. But that’s the whole point of this little exercise, isn’t it? I’m loving that we’re reading such a wide variety of stuff. I can’t wait to see how this one turns out. It looks pretty long though, so if you’re going to play along you should try to pick it up soon. (We can always postpone the discussion a bit if people are having trouble getting through it in time. So no worries.)
Oh, and check out this message from the forum. We’ve been linked on a Jacqueline Carey fansite! Hopefully this means we’ll have some new people to join in the discussion.
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Take Rolling Stone‘s Simpsons Quiz! The Snook and I only missed a couple.
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Marble Magnets
It worked! My cunning plan worked. Instead of using magazine pictures, I successfully put the Snook’s and my faces under the marbles. (Apologies for my crappy camera. They really do look pretty good.) I’d read that using Bubble Jet-printed images wouldn’t work, because the ink is water soluble and runs when you put the glue on it. I had a hunch that color laser printed photos would work better. And they did!
I tried to follow Megan’s instructions as closely as possible. For you Sydneysiders: I found the magnets (20 mm diameter) at the big Lincraft store in the Imperial Arcade on Pitt Street. They were randomly hanging in the aisle with all the clay. For glue, I got silicone window sealer from my local Mitre 10 hardware store. It came with a long plastic cone/applicator, but I just tossed that. The marbles, as you all know, were the difficult part. In the end I found them at Eastern Flair on King Street in Newtown. (I bought all the clear ones they had, though, so don’t bother trying them for a while.) I also heard that the “Reject Shop” on Oxford Street has them too, but I luckily never had to look there.
Okay, so once I had the equipment, I had to select my pictures. I knew I wanted our faces, so I went through my pictures trying to find clear shots of our heads with interesting expressions. Then I scanned them in at 300 dpi. I managed to get about four faces to each scan (since I didn’t need the rest of the photos and could overlap them a bit). Then using the Gimp (but Photoshop would do just as well), I isolated each face as its own image. Then I used the “oval” selection tool and set it to 20mm by 20mm (thus creating a circle the same size as my magnet). Then I just resized the image until the face fit just right inside the little circle. (Note: You need the high resolution so you get good sharpness and detail when you print. But since your screen can’t display that high, the circles will look way big. Relax; they’ll be the right size when you print.)
Okay, so then I copied and pasted each little face circle onto a blank image. (The idea is to cram as many on the page so you have to print as few sheets as possible.) I only did six for this first trial, but I duplicated them so I had twelve altogether on one sheet. Then I whacked this on a Zip disk and headed ’round the corner to the Copy Shop. Fifteen minutes and a buck-fifty later, I had my pictures.
After that, the rest was easy. I didn’t even bother with putting card down on the magnets first; the paper was nice and thick so I didn’t think it would bleed. None of the ink has run at all, which some people said they experienced using Bubble Jet-printed photos. The sealer still needs a day or two to fully set, but I’m going to declare the photo magnet experiment a success.
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The Snook and I recently bought tickets for Big Day Out this year. It’s a mega-huge rock festival. Apparently two years ago a young girl got crushed to death in the mosh pit during Limp Bizkit’s performance. The coroner’s inquest just ended today and he had harsh words for both the concert organizers and the band, who continued to play even when the crowd started crushing. To their credit, the organizers accepted their share of the responsibility and said they’ve made plans to avoid such accidents in the future. They also said that Limp Bizkit would never again be invited to play. Of course, Fred Durst then had to respond and say they wouldn’t come back anyway. What an ass clown. Anyhoo, I’m still looking forward to it nevertheless. I want to see the Foo Fighters, Jane’s Addiction, the Vines, PJ Harvey, and Kraftwerk. I just need to remember to steer clear of the mosh pit…
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Again, I’m going to skip the Friday Five this week. It’s all about the recent U.S. election, which means I have jack squat to say about it. No, I didn’t vote. I didn’t even remember to renew my driver’s license the last time I was home, much less register and request an absentee ballot. I am a crappy citizen. (Of course, I don’t live there anymore either. Is that any excuse? Probably not.)
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Hyperventilating
Went out to do laundry. Did my customary “Spider Check” in the corners of the shed. Noticed a huge hairy brown tarantula-lookin’ thing in the doorjamb, about – oh – two inches from my head. Freaked out. Came inside and IMed the Snook. He was anything but reassuring.Him: Those ones don’t drop. They just run real fast. Well, they do jump if you scare them. That’s why you should wear shoes, so you can stomp on them after they jump on you.
Me: WHAT? Are they bitey?
Him: Not really.
Me: “Not really”?? What the hell does that mean?
Him: Well, they hardly ever bite, and they’re not deadly. Some people claim they do nasty things like make your arm fall off, but more likely it’ll just hurt a lot.
Me: *dead faint*