and trying not to fall
So only one person replied to my previous post, but I guess I decided to shave my head today after being super hot and sweaty in our house (no air conditioning) today while I was drying dishes. I thought about how nice it would be to have no hair and so right after I finished up, I shaved it all off. I did a bit of playing around for the heck of it. I went for a biker look, an intellectual biker look, and then the finished job with and without glasses. Pictures below!
I know I haven’t updated in ages. I plan on trying to be better with that, but I know that I say that all of the time.
I just thought I’d write a quick update because we got back from camping on Sunday. We went down near Crieff to a campsite called Comrie Croft and stayed camped there with our friends Ryan, Theresa, and Chris. We had a lot of fun. One day we went for a circular hike to see Deil’s Cauldron, which is also called Devil’s Kettle. I read something online which said, “In Gaelic it is Slocha’n Donish and legend has it that it was the favourite haunt of a brownie or water elf called Uris-chidh who enticed victims down into the huge natural pothole.”
I thought that was pretty cool and it was a cool looking waterfall but unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera on the hike. I did take some pictures while we were at and around the campsite, though. I’ll put those below. The other day we took our friends to Loch Lomond and to eat at a pub near Callander. It was a fun time. Steph and I stayed in our 2 person tent, which is quite snug for both of us, but wasn’t too bad. It kept us warm and dry despite the rainy weather. I just wish we could have stayed around for longer, even though my neck was aching from the sudden change in sleeping environment.
Anyway, here are some of the photos I took. I can’t be bothered to post them all.
Ah, so this post is to serve as a sort of main course to the sort of starters I’ve been making lately…if you’ll accept the food analogy.
First of all, we’ve almost finished the cosmetic updates on my website. I think it looks very nice and Steph has done a good job adding the birds into the header. It’s pretty cool, and it keeps the idea behind the theme the same. I really like it, and it makes me want to post a whole lot more than my previous theme, which had some problems displaying images correctly and just did some screwy things whenever I’d try to format things the way I wanted them. This theme is clean and simple, but remains visually pleasing. Anyway, enough of web stuff.
I thought I’d mention that I’ve added a poetry section to my site, and I’ve got a bunch of my poems on there. Now, I’ll just state for the record that I haven’t really made most of my poetry available to just anyone to read before this, so please realize that this contains a ton of my stuff, some of it left unfinished or without any editing yet been done. Stuff will change on the poetry section as I add/remove/edit poems. I also hope that nobody makes fun of me. I write from the heart, but I haven’t always followed the rules for some of this stuff, I’m sure. It has mainly been a way for me to express my emotions, which I’m usually really bad at doing. Anyway, if you want to read them, feel free. If not, that’s fine too. Just don’t send them to tons of people in chain emails making fun of the crappy ones. Oh, and don’t claim them as your work, just in case one of these babies turns out to be my cash crop. Yeah…..that’s going to happen…totally.
HandRooster: The comic is coming back. It is coming back soon. It is coming back this next week. This week’s scripts are done and they have been sent to the beautiful artist who is my wife, and she will be working on them tomorrow and later this week. I hope we haven’t lost our fan base entirely, but if you read this and you used to read the comic, get your RSS news readers ready..or just go to the site later next week if you’re old school like that. I must admit that sometimes I prefer to go without a newsreader myself. I call it “going newsreader commando” and it can be quite an exciting experience.
It was a nice sunny day today, so Steph and I walked to the shop in Strathtay. On the way, I took some pictures which I will share below. I had been wanting to get some photos of a couple of little waterfalls near the path, so I got those and a few others. I hope you enjoy them, because I had a problem with my Aperture plugin which uploads photos and I couldn’t get most of them on for hours. Now that I have conquered that problem, I present them to you.
Honestly, this post was going to be longer. I want to talk about some books I’ve been reading and also some work stuff, but I think I’ll do proper book reviews at a later date and work can wait. I’ll leave you to what you were doing before this rude interruption. Have a good one, as required by law.
In case I’ve forgotten to mention it before, but I’ve recently updated my site design. I’ve been using the same theme for a while and I thought it was time for a new one. So, I downloaded K2 and I looked up some styles for it. I found a pretty cool one called Curlz and Steph has edited the header and footer images for me using elements from my previous design. I think it looks good. It isn’t done all of the way yet, but it probably will be in the next couple of days.
So, I’ve updated my Projects page. I added the photos of one of the woodcarving projects I did, which I’ll also put below. It is called a Dalecarlian Horse, and there is a bunch of cool stuff that this wikipedia article will tell you about them. I’ll just let you look for yourself if you’re interested. Anyway, have a look at my projects page or just read below for the same stuff:
This is a Dalecarlian style horse I carved from basswood using instructions from a Swedish style woodcarving book I have. I made it as a gift for my mom for Christmas but just got around to uploading the pictures. I don’t think it’s too bad for a first attempt at this style of woodcarving. It is difficult because I don’t have a bandsaw to cut out the rough shape so I had to rough it out by hand from a block. Steph (my wife) did the fancy traditional paint job.
It was my 28th birthday the other day - on February 8th. Steph and I took the day off from work and went to Loch Tay where I found some nice driftwood for possible carving and stick making projects. We just drove around the Loch, mostly. It was quite a windy day, though it was sunnier than it has been of late. I took some photos:
So I must admit that I still haven’t done any carving lately, and I have yet to post my latest carving project photos in the projects section of the site. That’s partially because I realized that I only have photos of one of my projects. There is another set of photos on Steph’s camera and some I have to dig out from my email somewhere, as I forgot to take pictures before I gave the carving to my Dad and he sent pictures after I got back home.
Nothing is really happening today. We might go for a walk a bit later. There is a beautiful little stream I’d like to get a photo of if I get a chance today, but Steph’s still in bed. We went to bed quite late - I think at around 4:30-5:00 am, yet I woke up at 10 am and felt wide awake. I fear I’ll have burning eyes and a weary body later in the day to punish me for my silly sleeping schedule. There is really no reason other than being too lazy to go to bed. John and I have been working lately on a big project for a popular gaming site but we’re now almost done. There are a lot of little things to fix and clean up but overall it is in much better shape than when we inherited it. I don’t really want to give away the name of the site, but suffice it to say that John and I have been mentioned in several site and forum posts and we were mentioned in two of the weekly podcasts, which are quite popular. It was kinda cool to have the experience, and it was good for learning, but I’d rather have a regular schedule and more time to accomplish tasks. What I’d really like to do is learn to do custom vBulletin mod stuff and more server side scripting for maintenance (maybe with python or something - something useful for cron jobs and not horrible to look at, etc) and then be able to work independently on my own projects without having to kill myself over them. That way, I’d hopefully be able to get a lot done yet keep time for myself for writing, etc.
Speaking of writing, I guess things are going moderately. Not too fast, because I don’t really do much at the moment. Since my book is going to be based on my life experiences living in Scotland, I’ll need to get out and meet more people and do more things if I want this to really happen. I intend on making some changes soon. I have a few ideas, but I’ll leave those until later, as I’m not sure what I’ll do yet.
On the HandRooster front:
I know we haven’t done a comic in months. I know it’s probably annoying. I know I keep making excuses when I get emails. Believe me, I want to do this. I think I’ve finally convinced Steph to go forward with it, but we may be making slight changes in the way the art is done. At the moment, it just takes her too long to do them. It isn’t something we get any money for, and it seems like a lot of time to her to spend on something when she doesn’t always appreciate the humor or when she’s slaving away for hours on something I’ve written in 2 minutes time. I really feel her pain. I wish I could draw the thing, but my unsteady hands and warped sense of perspective would probably have people calling for my head. I don’t really want to go to low quality stuff after having broken the 100 comic barrier. Anyway, we should be moving on soon. I think Steph may be doing some comics next weekend, should I provide her with the material. I have some ideas, so we’ll hopefully have some good news for you before too long.