IU / Tuesday / Twitter / video — Comments Off on More videos for you to watch
27
Mar 18

More videos for you to watch

We have students doing a late night show. We’re not just news and sports around here, after all. You can watch an episode online right now:

My friend, Dominick, made me watch this video today:

He said it made my life better. I don’t know about all of that, but it was worth seeing.

So was this:

hobby / Monday / photo — Comments Off on I stayed indoors
26
Mar 18

I stayed indoors

It snowed this weekend …

And I found this Alec Wilkinson quote: “One of the reasons there are so many terms for conditions of ice is that the mariners observing it were often trapped in it, and had nothing to do except look at it.”

Wilkinson was writing about S. A. Andrée, the visionary Swedish aeronaut who, in 1897, during the great age of Arctic endeavor, left to discover the North Pole by flying to it in a hydrogen balloon.

Andrée and the two other members of his expedition crashed and then lived on the ice for another three months, before they died in some way that’s still a mystery. It was 33 years before the bodies were found, so it’s not as bad as all of that here, I took that picture and went back inside, but still.

It kept snowing.

So I worked in the garage. And I turned my hand sander into a mounted tool. I just cut out a hole in a box and wedged the sander in there:

It worked really well. I could move a piece of wood around the belt rather than the sander over the wood. So I guess I’ll need to build a more permanent version of this one day.

It let me sand this piece into something approaching an even roundness:

I’m making a gift for someone. And I took a bit of scrap pine:

And cut, and sanded, it down to this:

Its a book holder out of a bit of scrap wood. It helps prevent hand strain and keeps the book from closing up on you. Works pretty well, but the thumb hole is too big. That’s why you make prototypes.

Friday / IU / photo / video — Comments Off on Studio time
23
Mar 18

Studio time

I spent a few minutes in the television studio today with an IDS movie reviewer.

She sits down and does these right after watching the movie. It’s an interesting process. Line, pickup, line, pickup, and then she just jams them all together to get her finished product:

She’s doing that on a DSLR with video capabilities. The studio is a backdrop, a fancy enough setting. But we’re of course producing traditional television productions as well. Here’s a talk show some of the students produced a few days ago. I think so, anyway.

The days tend to run together if you bounce back and forth between the control room and the studio too much. I think it has to do with the darkness in both rooms.

music / Thursday / Twitter / video — Comments Off on Soapy songs
22
Mar 18

Soapy songs

This is how it works at dinner time. The Yankee cooks it and I clean up after it. Sometimes the division of labor is fair, sometimes it works to my benefit. Well, it always works to my benefit, because when I wash the dishes and clean the stovetop and the counters I get to turn on a Pandora station. The evening station of choice is anchored on Sam Cooke, which is always the right way to go. And that particular Pandora station is well-managed.

So while the simple meals are best because it involves fewer dishes, a good run of songs means you don’t mind a bit of extra scrubbing.

At any rate, I decided, for some reason to make note of the songs. And that seemed like a good reason to make gifs. So here we are: The Dishwashing Sessions.

That’s a great set, right?

memories / photo / running / Twitter / Wednesday — Comments Off on Its still winter, in spring
21
Mar 18

Its still winter, in spring

I’m not accustomed to seeing cotton bolls in March. Then again, I’m not accustomed to seeing snow in March, either:

It’s still spring, by the way. And at lunch I saw this second, or third, sign of spring:

It’s hard to keep count, there have been daffodils and the eternal budding-but-not-opening of trees and my first robin of the year, and pointless, too. Winter isn’t hardly done with us yet.

But, for this afternoon’s neighborhood 5K, when it had warmed up to an impossible 46°, I wore a sweatshirt. I did that for the first 1.8 or so, and then discarded it. I ditched it just before the shady and cold segment.

Now, normally that would be one of those things you’d laugh and shiver about. Timing, am I right? But I did this in the neighborhood. I did this in the neighborhood, the place where, presumably, I know where the shady spots are.

So this was a lovely experience. Ten years ago we were at Peju, got a few of these and held on to one. And held on to it and held on to it and held on to it. After a while it became a joke.

Then, as I tend to do, I got sentimental about it. We got some more, so that solved the nostalgia problem. And by then we figured we should probably ought to wait until the 10th anniversary.


And here we are. Tonight was the 10th anniversary. The cork didn’t cooperate, but we filtered out the debris.

It was quite tasty after we let it breathe. I don’t know if it was worth hanging on to for all of that time, but it was worth getting sentimental about.

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