Dawntreader Downtrodden

I just watched the movie adaptation of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

In summary — it's not very good.

In truth, I find it difficult to assess how the movie stands on its own merits; it butchers the original story so bady that at times it could be described as "a movie based on the title of a book by C.S.Lewis". I'm aware, of course, that absolutely faithful movie adaptations of books are seldom dramatically successful, but in many cases the additions and elisions, and changes in scene order, characterization and tone in this movie often don't appear to have any justification except for the sake of fiddling around by the screenwriters.

I'll give it this much — the sea serpent is pretty cool and scary.

African Mask

Sgraffito — indian ink painted over a layer of white wax crayon on paper, and then the ink scratched away to form the image. It's the same process as scraper-board, but the resulting lines and areas are much less clean and precise.

Garden Sculpture

Math

Ding-Dong, the Witch is Dead

Or in this case, Osama Bin Laden.

He was a huge drippy chancre on the swollen hæmorrhoids dangling from the arsehole of humanity, and I'm very glad that he's dead. I only wish that more of his charming comrades-in-arms shared his state.

I don't think it will make a blind bit of difference to anything at all.

Flute-head

Ball-point pen doodle done while listening to The Bugle bullshitting about the royal wedding kerfuffle

It speaks for itself

For Gentlemen

Never again suffer the embarrassment, the humiliation, of failing to identify a chap's collar style.

Workshop Manual

Welcome to a Brave New World

Funnel-head

Black roller-ball pen. Approx. 225 x 160 mm.

Ball-point pen art

Brains

Mechanical riding-bird

Here's a couple more of my ball-point pen doodles.

I've been investigating the longevity of ball-point pen inks, and it doesn't look good. Black ink lasts longest, red ink shortest, but any of them have to be completely protected from any exposure to UV if you want them to last more than a few years.

Roller-ball inks tend to be more stable, but they're not capable of the tonal gradation one can achieve with the ball-point. It would be nice if somebody managed to produce an archival-quality carbon-based black ball-point ink with similar drawing characteristics to the dye-based inks in use these days, but I'm not holding my breath.

The pictures get bigger if you click them.

Online Toy For Everyone To Enjoy

This is great, everyone should have a go at it. It's an interactive music-box thingummy.

Skype

Lest We Forget

I made a little card flap to hang over our toilet's flusher, because without something to remind me, I forget about half the time. I don't really want Christchurch stinking like an open sewer for the next year or so, so I'm trying to do my bit.

Killinger und Freund motorcycle

From "Killinger und Freund Motorcycle":

"In 1935 a group of five German engineers named Killinger and Freund from Munich started to design a more streamlined and modified version of the German Megola front-wheel drive motorcycle that had won many motorcycle races in the 1920s."

Apparently it was quite successful in pre-WWII race meets. I wonder if the rear wheel has more tendency to drift in turns when it's being dragged along behind rather than pushing the whole shebang.

Inaction Figure

I would be willing to exchange actual currency for this. I would never take it out of its packaging, and it would become an heirloom of my house, to be passed down the generations into perpetuity. Eventually it would turn up on an edition of the Antiques Roadshow, and make some nerdy bow-tied British guy very excited, in a rather controlled, understated British sort of way.

Affordable high-resolution 3d printing needs to hurry up and become more generally available. If I had a decent 3d printer of my own, I would produce so much shit.

You can tramp all day!

I cannot honestly say that I've ever had any issues tramping all day with a freely-swinging nutsack.

Apparently this thing is "made just as nature intended"..... I guess the lack of a built-in version was just some sort of evolutionary oversight.

LOL

Doodle

When I'm sitting around doing nothing much in particular, I doodle. This is one such doodle.

I've been rediscovering the joys of the ball-point pen, a much-underrated medium. I've written and drawn with pens costing hundreds of dollars, and disposable pens that cost just a couple of bucks, and as far as I can tell there's no particular reason to spend a lot of money on a ball-point pen except to display your wealth. A $4 Bic does just as well as a $150 Parker* so don't waste your money on pens. Waste it on something else, like whiskey.

* This turns out not to be entirely correct. My Parker-style refillable ball-point has kept going smoothly where the el-cheapo disposable pen started to stutter and glom up, so it looks like it might actually be worth spending a little more than $4 on a pen. (It also feels nicer in the hand than the extremely lightweight plastic jobbies).

Drawing - Cambodian temple ruins

I drew this in Corel Painter VIII, using its various Charcoal brushes, from a photograph of a ruined Cambodian temple. Colouring was done (very hastily) in Photoshop.

I had an idea of peopling the scene with a tribe of some sort of humanoid critters, but when or if I'll get around to that I have no idea.

Image may be clickified upon for embiggenation purposes.

Dear Santa...

Though this may be the least practical car in the history of creation, I nevertheless crave one with a potent craving.

I'd be very interested to know just how much engineering would be required to turn a 250cc scooter into one of these; I suspect not that much. I thought the body shell could be made from fibreglass quite easily, but it has been suggested to me that canvas would be even cooler. Canvas and wicker-work. Oh yeah.

The blog is dead, long live the blog

I have a blog at Livejournal that I almost never use any more. I've decided to move my miscellaneous random musings and blatterings over here to blogger, mainly because blogger makes it easier for me to upload images. Not that I do a great deal of non-gaming-related bloggery in any case, but what I do do I'll be do-doing here instead of there.

I'll be leaving the LJ blog up for the foreseeable future, but I won't be updating it any more. I have no idea how long they keep an inactive blog accessible over there — possibly forever.

Balls