Fuzzbot Reincarnate

So I decided to make my newphew a Fuzzbot t-shirt for his upcoming birthday (the big 4), which is based on the shrinky dink magnets Brit made when she was here.

They look much happier on our fridge, I swear.

Anyway, here is to hoping that my almost 4-year old nephew doesn't keep tabs on this blog or the surprise will be ruined.

Basically, I drew a pencil drawing of the magnet, took a photo of it, Kennet messed with it in photoshop and then printed it on iron-on paper for me. 30 seconds of ironing later (not too little, not too long) and wah-lah. Fuzzbot makes his fashion debut.

Quack

Shelley and I did a little paddle around the Arboretum today. One of the best things about the area is the constantly changing melange of waterfowl, rhythmically changing with the seasons. The duck du jour was the Green Winged Teal (above). We saw a good number of them, something of a rare treat.

Also, in case you don't know me, I'm a simple creature. I like my beer cold, my cars fast, and my ducks garish. The wood ducks were out in force as well (below), and they're always a hit with me.


Finally, I present a very intimate portrait of a Mallard. Shelley thoughtfully pointed out that they really are neat looking ducks, what with all the solid patches of bright green and yellow and orange (orange feet not visible here). We just don't normally think of them as all that neat because they're so common.


The Flickr album is here. It includes 2 pictures not shown in this post.

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Today was my first time really shooting with a "Red Dot Sight" on my camera. It's an absolute revelation for photographing fast-moving targets with extreme zoom. My whole, big, geeky rig looks like this:
It's a Daisy air-rifle sight mounted on the flash hot-shoe, with a 1.7x teleconverter on the end of the lens. The beauty of the sight is that you keep the camera at arm's length and you aren't just looking at the viewfinder, but everything else as well. This makes it possible to quickly aim and track. The user's view looks a bit like this (stuffed monster not included):


There's a glowing red dot. Whatever the dot is on, is where the camera is aimed. It's just that simple.

Backlog

I'm a little backlogged on projects here, so here are a couple things I've been working on:


Here is the Amy Butler box I made this week- I made the major mistake of using heavy interfacing and not Timtex, which is much stiffer, so it doesn't hold up with heavy things in it. But it fits perfectly in our Ikea bookshelf/room divider so it works. I'm about to start on the Weekender Bag, so the box was good practice. The hardest part was fitting the liner over the exterior, sewing it 3/4 of the way inside out and then flipping it right side out again. Practice.

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The next thing I wanted to post are some of my own pictures of the No Knead Bread I love. I made this loaf with white whole wheat flour and it was the prettiest loaf so far. I took it to the Femuary sleep over for the breakfast feast and we finished it off. Usually I use half white flour and half (brown) whole wheat, but I'm a convert. The little orange pot is Le Crueset that Robin gave to me when I first moved out of the dorms in college. I'm pretty sure you can't get this color scheme anymore. Well loved obviously, especially now that I'm making this recipe weekly.

Seattle Panorama Desktop Backgrounds

I posted a link to my Seattle panorama shot on DPReview's Forums and I got a lot of really positive feedback. Some people asked about getting versions resized to fit as desktop backgrounds.

Right-click on the image you want and select "Save Target As" or "Save Link As" (depending upon if you're using IE or Firefox)

1600 x 350:

1200 x 263:

1024 x 224

Attack of the lazy robots

We're back, but only momentarily. I've been really lazy about posting recently, but hopefully that will change soon. I've got a couple things in the works, another IR photo, knitting, and a how-to on taking decent photos of your own creations.

We decided we needed a better illustration of what "love in the time of robots" is really all about. Hence, I've taken it upon myself to render a simulation of two giant knitted robots reclining upon the Seattle skyline.