Escape from Portland

Happy holidays one and all!

I'd like to share with you the tale of my escape from Portland.

Between Friday and Sunday 8~10 inches of snow fell on Portland, royally screwing things up. The cold killed off my already weak car battery leaving me in the hands of public transit for getting around. Sunday this was fine, but on Monday, an hour after I arrived at work, service on my route was cancelled. In order to get home, I had to take a bus that got me within a mile of my house, and then hiked the rest of the way home.

The snow was deep. (And largely non-shovelled and non-compressed.)



Tuesday the snow had stopped falling, but the roads were still covered in snow. My bus route was still cancelled. Airport shuttles were not running, and taxis would only pick you up if you were medical personnel trying to get to a hospital.



Tuesday also happened to be the day I was flying out. This lack of easy transit nearly had me thinking I was going to have to hike to the airport, which would have...well, it would have sucked hard, and probably would have kept me from leaving. After some serious research into the status of various bus and MAX lines, I eventually found a way to get to the airport.

It took a half mile snow hike (with luggage), a bus down Lombard to the MAX yellow line, a shuttle that was running to supplement the yellow line because the switches were frozen, two more MAX lines (blue to Gateway, Red to the airport) and a total of two hours to get to the airport.

Thankfully I gave myself 7 hours to get from my house to catch my flight, so I still had 5 hours to kill. Also working in my favor: I wasn't the only one who had a hard time getting to the airport.



Because of this... shall we say... shabby attendance, I managed to get on standby for an earlier flight, and despite the fact that people had been able to fly out of Portland for the three days prior, I managed to get on the flight, and arrive in San Francisco an hour before my original flight was scheduled to leave.



Which was great... since when I later checked my flight, it got delayed three and a half hours.

Tweet.

Have I mentioned that I've succumb to twitter?

...Well, I have.

Oh internet (Tim Biskup)

I love how often the internet seems to bring me to great coincidences.

A link from Diesel Sweeties brought me to this episode of BoingBoing TV which features a studio visit with Tim Biskup.



This got me looking at Biskup's work, which I love. (His texturing and simplistic shapes remind me a lot of another painter who's work I love: Shag. Gotta love artists with similar influences!)

I particularly like his pieces with his recurring character Helper. In the studio visit he describes Helper as "this conflicted deamon" and I think he does an amazing job capturing that.



Then, after drooling over various pieces, and wishing I could afford large prints by awesome people, I came across this photo a friend put up on facebook.



That's right, Colin Williams has a Helper star. How sweet is that?

I Saw You

Hey Dustin, have you seen this book? Could be interesting to see how someone else approached a similar topic.

For those of you that don't know Dustin and his work, lately he's been doing a series of animations based on local missed connections ads. They're pretty sweet.


Thanks for All the Snuggletimes (work-in-progress)

Snowed In

A considerable amount of snow fell today (no idea the actual depth) so I bunkered down at home and watched a bunch of movies I had yet to see. (Can you believe I hadn't seen 40 year old virgin before now?)

I also disassembled semaphore-bot v2.0 and built a robot arm out of its servos, aluminum rods, and rubber bands. It's got 3 points of articulation, but currently no hand. Unfortunately my arduino is in my studio at the stag. ... so it's not currently running.

Quick Illustration

I haven't one any drawing in a few months, but tonight the urge hit me. So I sat down and drew this up.



Definitely got what I was going for, but I really want to see this printed large, as part of a series.

Gel Remote

I've seen this thing before, but all the information about it had been in Japanese. Good to see it making the rounds on the internet in English.

Once you get past the initial "I wonder if they ever used that tech in a sex toy" impulses (who said that? ...not me...no sir), there's still a lot of interesting things going on with that remote.

[via Make] [via NextNature] [via The Popular Uncanny]

(Normally I only link to the first site I read it on, but this trail is great because The Popular Uncanny has info on another project from that show: fruit skinned juice boxes)

Belgian Endive

Finally found a grocer in portland that sells belgian endive (Trader Joes) so I made some yesterday, stuffed with blue cheese, wrapped in prosciutto and puff pastry.



It came out perfect, but really, this is a dish that's next to impossible to mess up.

The Recipe
Thaw 1 sheet of puff pastry and cut it into quarters.

Roll one of the quarters large enough to completely wrap around your endive.

Place enough prosciutto to completely wrap your endive on the puff pastry. (Honestly, deli ham works just as well, I just happened to go with prosciutto this time)

Take your endive and core it (I use a pairing knife for this, just basically sticking it in the bottom and twisting it around)

Stuff the hole with blue cheese.

Crumble some more blue cheese on the proscuitto, because lets face it: blue cheese is good, especially baked.

Place your endive ontop of the proscuitto, and wrap the whole thing up, sealing the puff pastry.

Bake @350 for ~45 minutes, or until golden brown.

Caution: Baking the endive causes it to release a lot of steam, which is trapped by the pastry. When you first cut into this thing, give it a minute or so to cool before biting into it, or you'll find yourself doing a serious reverse blow.

Enjoy!

California Love

Really diggin' this piece from french animation school Gobelins.



I love the cell-shaded, stylized 3d work, but more than that I love the little details that set the time period without ever explicitly stating them. The game boy, the flannel, and best of all the Los Angeles Raiders hat. The Raiders were in LA from '82-'94, the game boy was released in North America in '89, and flannel: total staple of the early '90s wardrobe. Excellent!

Female posturing makes me cringe a little... Those poor spines.

[Via NOTCOT]

I've noticed...

NPH + Singing always equals awesome.

Prop 8 the musical is no exception.

"Prop 8 - The Musical" starring Jack Black, John C. Reilly, NPH and many more... by Jack Black

[Via WWdN: In Exile]

Cornish Game Hen

Made a cornish game hen with parmesan rice stuffing tonight. The hen came out alright, but the stuffing was AMAZING.

You should be warned: I don't really measure when I cook. (Baking, yes, but cooking, not so much.) So all these measurements are estimates.




The Stuffing
Melt 1/4 cup butter in a sauce pan.
Saute 1/2 chopped onion
Add half a cup rice
~1 cup white wine
~1 cup chicken broth
1/4 cup parmesan cheese
Let simmer until the rice is fully cooked.




Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
Rub the hen inside and out with olive oil.
Mix together equal parts salt, pepper, cinnamon, basil and garlic powder.
Rub the hen inside and out.
Stuff full of stuffing. (Wow... that sounds dumb when I say it)
Place in a roasting pan breast side up.
Roast for 1 hour.
When finished do NOT forget that you just left the roasting pan in a 350 degree oven for an hour and grab the lid with your bare hands. (Yep... did that)

As I said earlier, I'm really happy with how the stuffing came out. I wasn't as pleased with the hen though, the skin was delicious, but once I got past that, it was a little bland. Next time I either need to use more spice, or marinade it in something.

Quiche

I made a quiche today, inspired by a quiche my former roommate Stacy and I used to make. I don't have the recipe for that particular quiche, nor did I have all the ingredients it used (it used evaporated milk) so I made up a recipe as I went. It came out pretty well.

Since this is the first thing I've posted here where I used my own recipe, I have no problem sharing it with you all.

Rules of 3 Quiche
(aka Spinach Quiche)

Preheat the oven to 350.

Put a pie crust in a pan, filled with pie weights, and bake for 10 minutes

While it's baking beat together:
3 eggs
1 cup cottage cheese
1/3 cup milk
1/3 cup cottage cheese
1 cup cooked chopped spinach
1/3 cup parmesan cheese

Dash of paprika
Dash of garlic powder
Dash of salt
Dash of pepper

Remove the pie weights from the crust and fill with the beat egg mix.
Bake until firm. (I started with 45 minutes, but I think it wound up taking an hour)

I'm fairly happy with the results. If I make it again though I think I'll do it with 1/3 cup less cottage cheese and an extra egg.

Today...

I woke up and put on my work uniform. I'm now taking it off to go to bed. While it was a relatively good day at work, the above mentioned circumstances are my definition of a bad day.

Semaphore-Bot v3.1

Semaphore-Bot 3.0 never saw an audience because his arms were too long/heavy for the motors. Last minute design change later, v3.1 was born.

A few thoughts on the review:

While I agree that the design/construction of the bot needs to be cleaned up a bit, and I may have to reconsider how I approach the flags, I think too much of my review was spent discussing the bot himself.

The piece is as much about the robot as a webpage is about the computer or a phone call is about the phone.

Before I next show it to people I really do need to finish the complete installation, that means create the key cards so that people who are intrigued enough by the motion will try to assertain the message. This will also give a hint as to the meaning of the flags.

On the subject of "why semaphore / why flags?" As far as I know semaphore is the most reciever invested means of communication. Maybe morse code is equally or more so... Morse code is definitely more recognized... this may require exploration.

One happy accident during the critique was a set of loose screws, combined with the occasional contact between arms caused one of the gear boxes to fall apart. While unintentional, this definitely falls in line with my thesis that the load of modern communication is destroying the value of communication itself. (The bot is communication incarnate.)

Triumph Breakfast

Saturday morning I woke up after a little over 12 hours of sleep. It was wonderful. Since I got back in town Monday I'd been sleeping 2-3 hours a night on my couch (knowing full well that if I slept in my bed, there would be no waking me). I'd get home at 5 am, crash, wake up at 8, and go back to the studio.

Toward the end of the week the combination of lack of sleep, and poor eating habits were really getting to me. I was moody, and at times a careless (see: I had a mental lapse and grabbed the hot end of a soldering iron.)

But it was all worth it. I got my piece finished in time and went through a fairly successful review. A lot of questions were posed that I wouldn't have thought of otherwise, and some fabrication errors presented themselves to bring a possible new direction to the project.

When I woke up Saturday, I decided it was time to celebrate. And in my world, there is only one way to celebrate: food. So I made spinach bacon eggs benedict!

Start with fresh home made biscuits, topped with spinach sauteed in white wine:



Add a couple strips of bacon:


Next: 2 perfectly poached eggs (ie: yolks still soft)


And finally coat in hollendais sauce:

(I let mine sit about 5 seconds too long and it started to curdle. Unfortunate, but still delicious.)

Soooo good.

Ska Is Dead 4!

Ska Is Dead just announced their fourth tour, featuring The Toasters, Voodoo Glow Skulls, Deal's Gone Bad, Mustard Plug (Jan 23-25), Buck-O-Nine (Feb 3-8), and Monkey (Jan 22-Feb 1)! I'm very excited!!!!

The show hits Portland Friday, January 30th, and tickets are only $13. Who wants to join me? (Hint: everyone!)

...Ska in Oregon! Yay!

My first contribution to the Arduino Playground

The Arduino: Playground has given me so much that I felt it was time to contribute back.

So I wrote this article: Arduino + PERL

Blogger Upgrade

Apparently blogger upgraded one of the backend pieces of their atom / rss feeds, migrating from OpenSearch 1.1 to OpenSearch RSS 1.0.

There aren't a lot of people this really effects, but since this blog is driven by a blogger feed, it screwed with me for a second.

Foul Mood?

I recommend maple bacon


Thanks for curing my grumpies Voodoo!

(image ruthlessly stolen via google image search from this blog...just attributing. Cause my camera battery is dead.)

Semaphore-bot v3.0.alpha

Untitled from Andrew Parnell on Vimeo.

Semaphore-bot 3.0 is on its way!

I went through and rewrote the control code from the ground up in PERL, letting me eliminate processing from the equation all together and making everything run more efficiently.

I also built some gear boxes so that I no longer need to stack servos.

All in all, major improvements all around.

Tomorrow I rebuild the casing and get it ready for show.

Interested in the script? Click here!

...actually... [PERL here] [Arduino here]