Monday - Logo

Just a temporary new logo above. Yellowbus is a hard ambigram. I'd love to see anyone elses suggestions on how to make it better.

Weekend update: nightmare, sleep paralysis, pansy

So for anyone who hasn't already poked fun at me for screaming like a little girl the other night, here is the story. I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't move. I looked up and I saw a guy standing over me.
I knew he wanted to kill me but I couldn't do anything. This is when Andi woke me up because she said I was "screaming like a little girl."

At the same time, Mylie woke up in the middle of the night and happened to walk in on me screaming like her. When I finally moved and saw her black silhoette standing by my bed, I almost punched her through the wall if not for Andi holding me back.

The next day I got to work at read my usual geek news and here is one of the articles that I read about Sleep Paralysis. Here is a pic from the article. It says that I'm not the only one who screams like a little girl ... or at least I'm not the only one who has terrorizing dreams of someone standing on me in my sleep.

Let me know if you have ever had a similar experience.

Writing Friday - Ambigrams again

Here is an ambigram for Andrew's blog, Scurfy Budoo. Don't flip your monitor upside down. Just trust me it is the same both ways.

Philosophy Thursday - Ambigrams

I read Angels and Demons a while back and loved the idea of ambigrams. The title of the new movie in the promo posters is an ambigram. Ambigrams read the same updside down. I thought it would be fun to try it out. Here are my first two attempts and the one from Angles and Demons and then one more just for fun.

Friday - another movie review

Twilight – better than expected because it was better than the book. (running through the forest and climbing trees was a little lame). I read the book and would rather ram a wooden stake through my own chest than hear one more gooey account of Edward’s beauty. Plus, like most people out there, I try to identify with the main character. Since I’m a guy, I naturally try and identify with Eddy. I thought they did a lousy job casting Edwardo and thought this would be a better promo poster.

Friday Movie Review - Australia

Australia – boring. There are many movies that have two or three themes: rascism, religion, social class prejudices, history and war. And then, to make those themes more interesting, they throw in some romance and action. The problem with Australia is that the romance and action aren’t enough to make it interesting. They should have taken my long standing advice and intertwined some other twists: instead of herding cattle, they could herd velociraptors. Instead of the Japanese attacking in WWII, it could have been the midget cyborgs returning from Uranus. Instead of the Aboriginal king using mystic abilities, why not give him a magic wand and a talking kangaroo sidekick. I wouldn’t even mind if there was a brief disclaimer by the director at the beginning of the movie declaring that his movie is based on true events and people, EXCEPT for the raptors, midget Uranian cyborgs, magic kings and talking kangaroos. I’d go see that movie twice. Here is my personalized promo-poster.

Philosophy Thursday - Mountain Biking in Fruita and Moab

Here is the list of trails we rode last weekend:

• Kessel Run in Fruita
• Joes Ridge in Fruita
• Zippity Do Dah in Fruita
• Horsethief in Fruita
• Porcupine Rim in Moab
• Mack's Ridge in Fruita

You can find Youtube movies of all of them. Here are two:

Joe's Ridge


Zippity Doo Dah



Moab is the meca of mountain biking, but I honestly think Fruita is just as good if not better.

No one got hurt. Here are some extra photos.






If you want to see all the photos and a couple movies, go here.

Drawing/Art Wednesday - Cartoon Sylar

I've been inspired by a couple people I know to dabble in caricatures. Where do you draw the line with how far to accentuate their traits? Here are four different sketch tests of Sylar from Heroes. Below is the reference.

Philosophy Thursday - Scurfy Budoo

Andrew created his own blog: ScurfyBudoo.blogspot.com.

Here is a quick sketch of the little scurf in his honor. He is the coolest little chip ever.

Scripture Study Monday - Omni

I'm sad that we miss two hundred years of history during the 30 verses of Omni. I'm thankful that Amaleki was so faithful.

The population growth rate in the year 2000 was about 1.5%. I tried to find the population growth rate of the Nephites, Mulekites and Lamanites and ran across a bunch of essays written by BYU professors. I thought it was interesting that they explain such explosive population growth by not assuming that the seed of Lehi and the Mulekites were the only inhabitants of the promised land. If you consider the process of assimilating other cultures into the Nephite culture, it can open your eyes to the importance of continuing revelation, missionary work and friendship among societal classes.

Art Wednesday - I'm not a Pollock

Jackson Pollock paintings are only slightly interesting because they are expressive depending on individual beholder's mood. This goes back to a previous post on Pareidolia - the tendency to find order among chaos. This is why we can see animals in the clouds. I think people are predisposed to see things according to their mood: If I'm happy I see a teddy bear, if I'm angry I see a skull, if I'm ornery - and I am - I see a desperate beatnik attempting something avant-garde so he can afford his next bucket of paint to splash at the amusement of the 1950's socio-elite.

It might appear that his style of art isn't art at all. Just an orchestrated accident. Maybe that was his goal - so that each sorry sap looking at his mess could see what they want to see. It is like a choose-your-own-adventrure book painted on a single canvas.

I'll tell you what, you give me a large pizza, two liters or diet coke, a canvas on the floor and a spoon to gag myself and I can make you a choose-your-own-adventrure painting.

I'll never do this again, because I think it is a waste of time, but here is my hommage to Pollock, minus the chunks of pepperoni. (By the way, I think the painting on my previous post on pain were done by Pollock).

Another Art Wednesday - Another Painting by Andrew

I call this one the schizo-eyeball. It hung on my wall at work for the last four months since Andrew painted it in art class. I noticed that it has an angry mood, but when you turn it on its side, it mellows out a little bit. Maybe I'm the one with the schizo eyeball.

You can download this and his other paintings here for use as a desktop background. And like his other paintings, this one starts at $300. Bidding closes at noon tomorrow.

Art Wednesday - Andrew's Paintings

Andrew was trying a new technique at school and painted these three killer pictures. I think they are really cool and they get the paradolia fluids pumping in my brains. I have the originals hanging in my office and I'll auction them off to the highest bidder starting at $300 a peice. I also have high resolution pics that are awesome for computer backgrounds if you want me to email them to you (about 2mb each!)

Baby

Here is the ultrasound of kid number three:

Writing Friday - Canafantine Research

Why is power so lustful? Is it because people in power can create wealth for themselves? Is it only desired because of greed? Or is power even more than money? People with money can have power. But people with strength can influence and influence is also power. People with strength can take down people with power.

It is hard to build a bad guy. Here is one one of the bad guy's henchmen. The main antagonist is named Horvil (horrible+evil). The henchman is Master Crandall. He used to be a college professor until he helped Horvil develop the serum that in addition to being addictive, gives extreme strength (both muscular and skeletal). Master Crandall is better known by his nickname: Callous. Anyone with the serum addiction who has the musculo-skeletal deformities is called a Faker-Body. The Faker-bodies make up the armies of Horvil in his pursuit of power.

So much more to explain. I guess you'll just have to read the book.

Art Wednesday - Skateboard

Here is Tyler's skateboard we painted for Christmas. I used a $10 deck from Target - sanded down and sealed with a white latex and rubbed with blue watercolor on the edges. The rest is painted with black enamel and orange water color - sealed with clear spray paint. Also included is the vector rough of the Triano logo. Note the signature on the right girl's boot.

Art Wednesday - Vector Art

Bit Maps (most digital photos) are made from a grid with location and color values for each point. Vector diagrams use mathmatics that goes over my head and are mainly used for logos and large graphics. I use the open-source (means free) tool called Gimp to photo-shop my digital photos. But I just discovered Inkspace (another free opensource tool) to make vector art. Here is a sample:

Music Tuesday - Eagles of Death Rock

I listened to a couple live recordings of Eagles of Death Rock, and they stink when they play live. The only good songs I've heard: Wannabe in LA and Cherry Cola. One of the guys is from Queens of the Stone Age. Actually most of their other music that isn't live stinks too.

Art Wednesday - Eddy in the Sun

I’m ¾ of the way through Twilight. Eddy just showed the damsel what he looked like in the sunlight. (I can't yet give a full critique of the book, because I’ll probably get hung, but at least I’ll say I wish there was more action and less gushy, mushy, cruddy discussion of their immature relationship.) Here is Eddy from the film and the way I think they should have made him in the sunlight.

Music Tuesday - One Word

Weezer - The Greatest Man That Ever Lived.

So we were driving east on County Line Road in Littleton on 12/04/08 at night and I saw a fireball blaze through the sky. I checked the clock - 8:42PM. The fireball was heading east towards Parker but looked like it would impact somewhere between I-25 and Parker. But there was no rumble, explosion or even a flash or light. I checked all the news sites and googled fireball sightings and couldn't find anything related to that specific night. However, I learned that there are tons of meteorites that hit in Eastern Colorado.

Here is a quick sketch of what it looked like:

I also saw this drycleaning truck in the area. No drycleaner has that kind of money these days to warrant a uhaul sized delivery vehicles. This is the most obvious undercover CIA UFO detection vehicle I've ever seen. You gotta know there are millions of dollars of computer hardware in that delivery truck. Coincidence that I saw both in the same area?

What this all has to do with Weezer? I don't know.