It's Been a While Since I've Posted Anything...

I still don't have anything to post just yet, so here's a picture of a Combat Garden Gnome squad being overrun by snails:

The best part is this little detail:

Stay tuned.  More interesting stuff to come.

In the meantime, if you want some Combat Gnomes of your own, you can pick them up in my etsy shop at http://etsy.com/shop/thorssoli.
 

Random Animal Picture of the Day

Here's a chicken standing on a sheep:

The last time I tried to take this picture, my camera was destroyed in the process.

I felt it was worth the risk to be able to share this.

You're welcome.

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Shiny New Camera

Back in August of 2009 I bought a Canon point-and-shoot digital camera.  Specifically, it was a Canon PowerShot SD1400IS.  I liked it.  It was orange.

Unfortunately, I carry my point-and-shoot everywhere.  If I'm driving, it's in a cup holder, when I'm in the workshop it's in my chest pocket, and when I'm sailing, it's sitting in the cockpit next to me.  It gets hot and cold and surrounded by lint, dust, and humidity.  If I don't drop, melt, crush, or magnetize a new camera in the space of a year, I count myself lucky.

The latest one survived all of that for sixteen months.  Sure, it started to get little spots in the images from internal dust contamination, but it still worked so it was no big deal.  It couldn't focus when I zoomed in, but that just meant standing closer to my subjects so it was no big deal.  In fact, I've ignored the past several months worth of problems that were no big deal right up until about two weeks ago.  

That was when I found myself reaching through a fence to take a picture of a chicken standing on top of a sheep (yes, really) and ended up dropping my beleaguered, veteran camera lens-first into a pile of donkey shit.  Such is life for my point-and-shoot cameras.

Since then, it's never been quite the same.  Somehow I managed to gum up the workings of the lens to the point where it would no longer open or close.  At long last, I had to accept that the camera had died.  So it goes.

To help stave off my grief, I ordered a new Canon point-and-shoot digital camera.  Specifically, it's a Canon PowerShot A2200 HD.  I like it.  It's red.

It arrived yesterday and it wasn't until today that I finally got a chance to test it out.  I was visiting with my dad in his new shop and while we were discussing his cab-over truck project, I noticed a little spider crawling across the peeling paint next to the door.  It was only about an inch long, but I figured it would be a good test of my camera's ability to take a quick, detailed snapshot:

Test complete.  I'm thrilled with my new carrying around camera.  Now I can get to messing it up.




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Halo Spartan Armor Photo of the Month

Photo: Melissa Howell
Props and Costume: Shawn Thorsson
Model: Shawn Thorsson

Rainy Day Bain

At least the weather's cooling off...

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Target of Opportunity

I've been teaching my niece proper geekery lately.  Today's lesson: whenever you see Jar Jar Binks, you have a moral imperative to punch him in the junk.


Right before we left, I told her, "now strike him down and complete your training."

"Good...  Good."

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Rose's Rat Rod Glam Photoshoot

The other day Richard Small of Richard Small Photography contacted my sister Rose to pose for a set of glamor shots with a rat rod down at Infineon Raceway.  Looking at his website he's done a lot of great work, so she was looking forward to it.

Here's one of the splendid results:

And another that focuses a bit more on the car:

More pictures after the jump. Enjoy.

Star Wars Day

Not sure if you knew this, but yesterday was Star Wars Day.  May the Fourth be with you.


To celebrate, here's Darth Vader getting a lapdance:



As you might expect, a dark lord of the Sith doesn't tip very well:



If you'd like to see more, click here.


That is all.

More Pics from the Heart of Gold's First Photoshoot

As promised in a previous entry, here are a few more pictures from my shop assistant Mallory's photoshoot aboard the Heart of Gold.  Here's one of my favorites:

More pictures after the jump.  Enjoy.

The Heart of Gold's First Photoshoot

The other day Mallory, my intermittent workshop assistant, asked if I could make my boat available for her to do a photoshoot for her portfolio.  Not having any other plans for the boat just then, I agreed.

I also stuck around to help out.  The whole thing started just after dark and I'm eager to see the images the actual photographer and his assistant managed to get.  I took a handful of snapshots in the meantime, so here's the best one I got:


She cleans up pretty nice. 

Mallory, that is.*  Especially considering the way she usually looks when she's hanging out with me:


I'm counting on getting a few of the bigger, better images from the pro with the big camera when he's done sorting and processing them.  Stay tuned and I'll post them when I get them.

*The boat too, really.


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Sometimes It's the Little Things

Saw this today.  Had to smile...

Now back to my regularly scheduled bloggage.

More Pictures from the HALO: Reach Launch

My sister finally got around to uploading her pictures from the other night. Here's some winners from her flickr photostream.

First up, here I am as we arrived in her truck:

(I commented at some point that if we'd gotten into a collision, the suit of armor would've probably killed me.  Irony they call that)
She managed to capture a lot of shots of the crowd reaction:


And more of the folks who posed with me:





And some different angles of me and AJ at the supermarket:











Then there was this other shot at the newsstand:


Still, a pretty good time all the way around:


Stay tuned for the construction of the rest of the suits.  I need to make a couple of blue ones, a teal one, a red one, a lightish red one, a gold one, a black one, a yellow one, and a maroon one at the very least.  Then I'll have to consider a plurple one as well...

Midnight Launch for HALO: Reach

You may have noticed a whole pile of new updates to my HALO costume progress recently.  There was a reason, albeit a very frivolous one, for all of the sudden frantic work.

I've been at sea or deployed for the past two Halloweens.  Each time I had been planning on wearing the HALO costume, made a bunch of progress toward getting it wearable, and then had to shelf it for months while I was away.

So the other day I was looking around the shop and I decided that there was really no good reason why I don't already have a complete, wearable suit after nearly three years of tinkering with this project in between ships and wars. 

Later that day I was driving by the local Game Stop and noticed that they were taking pre-orders for HALO: Reach, the latest game in the series.  I stopped in for details and the guy behind the counter explained that because the game was due out on Tuesday the 14th, they would reopen the store on Monday night at 10pm so those folks who'd pre-ordered the game could line up and get their copies at the stroke of midnight.

He went on to explain that they had something over 300 pre-orders so far and that typically there would be somewhere between half and two-thirds of those folks who would show up for the midnight release.  This seemed like the right kind of place to go and crowd to witness the debut of this particular project, so I went ahead and pre-ordered a copy of the game.

So after all of the crazy preparations and last-minute scrambling that went into getting dressed for the evening, my sister Rose and my friend AJ wedged me into the passenger seat of Rose's truck and we drove across town.  Rose preceded me to the store so she could get this shot of me walking across the parking lot:


The first time someone noticed me it was pretty obvious.  That was the guy that yelled out, "Holy shit!  Look at that!"

That was a reaction I expected.  The next one completely threw me for a loop.  As I was walking up to the line, some kid walked up and gave me a hug.  Then another six of them did the same thing:



I was not ready for that.

Here's a shot of me inside as I was waiting to get my receipt verified:


And then strolling back outside:


Back outside, all sorts of folks asked to pose for pictures with me:


Including staff members from the store:


Still, since we had an hour to kill, we decided to wander into the supermarket next door for more pictures:


Some were funnier than others:


Some were sort of obvious:


But after a while it was time to go back, get in line:

That's me on the left.

While waiting, I got my picture taken a few more times:


Still, the best picture that was taken all night was this one that my friend AJ snapped:


When all was said and done, I went back to the workshop, pried all of the armor off, and then went over to a friend's house to play my new game.

I had to, you see, because I don't own an XBOX 360.

COBRAS!

Sometimes you wake up to interesting things going on.


Yesterday morning I got up and ambled over to the Marina Bean, my normal morning coffee haunt, and one of the other marina tenants pointed out "a lot of noisy stuff over in the parking lot."


When I looked I found something like thirty Shelby Cobra replicas (and a Shelby 500GT and something called a "Lister") parked in the lot:


Even though they were all kits and replicas, these cars were all gorgeous:












But even in this crowd of beauties, there were a few that stood out.  The first one I spotted (indeed, you could see it from space) was this green one:

The owners said they'd bought it from the original builder with that color and, because it had been featured in a magazine, decided they should keep it that way.  I like it, but I'm sure they get a lot of grief wherever they go.


The next unique one I spotted was this one painted in black primer with satin silver racing stripes:

Unfortunately, this owner is planning on changing the color.  He's not finished building it, but he was so eager to get out and go driving that he didn't want to wait for the finish.  His plan is to paint it blue with white racing stripes, bringing it neatly into conformity with the rest of the ranks of replica owners.  Bummer.

Finally, there was this gem made by Kirkham Motorsports:

Kirkam is a replica company that bought out a Polish MiG factory after the cold war and re-tooled it so they could make sports cars instead of fighter jets.  If you check out their website, you'll find tons of droolworthy photos of shiny aluminium parts being made into shiny aluminium cars and then polished to a mirror shine.  You can also get them in a burnished or brushed finish, all for the bargain price of around $105,000 US dollars.

Knowing this meant I was able to ask the owner the most annoying question possible:

ME: Nice car!
OWNER: [smugly] Thanks.
ME: So what color are you going to paint it?
OWNER: [grumbling] I'm NOT going to paint it.
ME: Yeah, I know, I just figured you probably needed to hear that question one more time.  I've spent enough time poring over the Kirkham Motorsports website to know that it'd be a crime to paint one of these.
OWNER: [almost mockingly] Are you going to get one?
ME: I'd like to, but I've got one or two other, slightly more practical, cars I need to get first.
OWNER: Practical?  This is practical. [points to the roll bar] That part is for hauling lumber.

Since I can't count how many times I've hauled lumber in my tiny convertible, I couldn't tell if he was joking.

Not long after that conversation, the whole crowd fired up their engines and started rolling out:

Sadly, my tiny little camera mic didn't do justice to the deep bass throaty grumble of all of those horses chomping at the bit while they waited for the light to change.

Still, it was a fun way to start the day:

Word of the Day: "Neathage"

Earlier I posted an entry with a link to an article that states that staring at boobs is good for your health.  While searching for a work-safe image to go along with it, I stumbled across a term that has somehow eluded me for all these years: neathage.


"Neathage" is defined as the curvature of the breasts visible hanging out of the bottom of a crop top or other shirt that doesn't hang low enough to cover their entirety.  Here's a prime example:




It is also occasionally referred to as "undercleavage" or "Aussie cleavage," because it comes from down under.

So now you know.

New Camera

I've got a lot of cameras.  Each one has it's own specific utility and they're great for what they do.  You may remember that I lost one of them in Steamboat Slough while out on summer cruise with the Sea Scouts.  While I was able to get away with taking pics with my bulky DSLR, I definitely missed having a pocket-sized "UFO camera*" to catch all of the moments when I'm not planning on taking pictures but I still find good ones.


I was in the store mulling over all of the choices (it seems like there's more every year) and had it narrowed down to the waterproof, crushproof, freezeproof, bulletproof Olympus Stylus camera and the updated version of my recently-departed Canon camera.  When a salesperson noticed my headscratching and came over to help, the exchange went about like so:

HE: Can I help you with anything?

ME: Well I've got it narrowed down to one of these two cameras, so can you tell me anything about them that isn't written on the display?

HE: The Canon comes in orange.

ME: Sold!

He wasn't kidding either:



I figure there's nobody in the world who would steal this camera.  Now I can grab pics of anything I spot whenever I spot it without taking crappy cellphone pics like I did when I spotted the rocketship down on the Embarcadero in San Francisco.

Not kidding:


*I like the term "UFO camera."  It's one the salesman used while we were chatting and waiting for the debit card to go through.  It strikes me as the perfect term for the camera you carry all the time, just in case.

Water Balloons Break So Much Better in Slow Motion

At least that's the way it seems at www.ultraslo.com.

Time-Lapse Experiment #1: A Day at the Boat Ramp

The other day I picked up an intervalometer for my digital camera. Eager to try it out, I mounted the camera in the forward cabin of the boat. Then I set it up to take a photo of the boat ramp dock across from my berth every thirty seconds until the camera's battery died.

At the end of the day I sat down and strung all of those pictures together into a video clip:


The main mistakes are pretty obvious. The Heart of Gold, while a very stiff sailboat, is not a perfectly stable platform for time lapse videography. Also, it's possible that the interval that I was shooting wasn't ideal for nice, smooth video.

Either way, it was a successful proof of concept and I'll be playing around with more of this in the future.

New Temporary Neighbors at the Marina

The other day somebody pointed out these two little hummingbirds living in a plant alongside one of the walkways at the marina:


When hummingbirds build a nest, they make it just big enough to lay two eggs in it. When the eggs hatch, the nest is right-sized for two very tightly nested little hummingchicks. This is fine at first, but eventually they get so big that one of them has to move out:


Now it's only a matter of days until these little guys just hover away. Then the landscapers who've been working all over the place here will finally be able to rip out and replace this particular bush just like they did with all of the other ones along this and every other walkway in the entire marina complex.

Nice of them to let things alone long enough for them to grow up and get gone on their own.