Checkers

Neighbor kids learning checkers on a board I made with another kid.

Faceless man - round 2

I tried a different way to make faceless makeup. It uses a bald cap, nylon stocking, liquid latex, and flesh colored makeup. I put some cotton on either side of the nose make the nose less defined. I'll use more next time I do this. The discoloration on the front is where I didn't put the latex on enough to close the holes in the stocking so I could see and breathe.

I did slather my eyebrows and beard stubble with Vaseline to make sure the latex didn't stick. It worked fairly well. I pulled the mask away from my face after the third layer of latex and before putting the make-up on. Even with the Vaseline there was some pulling, but nothing painful.

Problems: This looks pretty good from the front, but from other angles there's a problem. I fixed some of it by taking pictures and patching them up blind. But, really, I needed a cast of my head to work on or some volunteer to help me beyond a certain point. Or wear a wig.

And I may need to do the neck first, when I can still see reasonably well. I gotta hide the band around my neck.

Friday Links: September 25

Russian Winnie Pooh.


A special breed of dog that just turned a spit. [link]

30000 year old virus is largest one ever discovered. [link]

Dust from the Sahara causes a carbon sink in the Bahamas. [link]

A mission to save a  Soviet satellite in 1985. [link]

The long rift between Bill Murray and Harold Ramis. [link]

Frogs and an iPad.


Live webcast of the radio station played at and for NASA. [link]

India has something going into Mars orbit next week. [link]

Reliability of contraceptions over time. [link]

Dancing spiders and the beat they're dancing to.


Artificial sweeteners mess with the intestinal flora of mice. [link]

The new insulting term for ISIS/ISIL. [link]

18 kinds of people who comment on recipe posts. [link]

Adult playground. [link]
no, not that kind of adult playground.

Friday Links: September 19

My garage was here a minute ago.


Johnny Carson can't keep a straight face.


A breed of fish that doesn't live in the water. [link]

Ghostly gifs. [link]

The wild cattle of Hawaii. [link]

Men being raped in the military. [link]

Aztec Batman. [link]

99 Luftballons played on balloons.


Goodnight, Iron Man. [link]

Doctor Who Dodecahedron. [link]

"In the Mood" on ukuleles.


What kind of messed up upbringing is this?


Why America refrigerates it's eggs when most of the world doesn't. [link]

Creepy and sweet. Same coin, different sides. [link]

"5 Things I Learned as a Sex Slave" [link]

An Iraqi girl tells of her escape from ISIS sex trade. [link]

Friday Links: September 12

A car design you normally only see in Europe is finally going to make an appearance in America. [link]

First peek into hidden chambers in the Great Pyramid of Giza. [link]

Stockbrokers really are worse than psychopaths. [link]

This is interesting, but how are they getting electricity from the algae. [link]

The horror of SpiderDog.


Video of a volcano exploding. [link]

Marc Maron chatting with Robin Williams. [link]
This is how Gandolf found out Robin Williams was dead. She was upset. "No way. No good. What? What? What?"

Light brought to a stop. [link]

The man with 3 legs, 4 feet, 16 toes, and 2 genitals. [link]

Jupiter used to be much larger. [link]

What dessert is your state known for? [link]

How to call in sick for minor illnesses. [link]

Light spitting fish. [link]

Jack the Ripper identified by DNA. [link]

Hit men who specialize in getting Jewish women divorces. [link]

Pictures of California's drought. [link]

That's not a telescope. THIS is a telescope! [link]

The first stand-up comic. The racist everyone looked up to. [link]

Going into yourself. [link]
People who have seen me programming report seeing the same thing. 

Pictures of a hitchhiking genet. [link]

faceless makeup experiment

My makeup fell to the side for a bit as I worked on my aquaponics system and assembling my Christmas light controller (more on that some other time). So here's something I threw on last night. This was experimental. I'd seen someone else do it, but I knew there'd be kinks to work out. So I did one that would be incomplete just to see how it went.

First, I need to get contacts before I do this again. I could see out, but the world was a blur.
If I could see better, I think I could have put on the tape better. That is, with less wrinkles.
I should have put cotton balls over my right eye just to add structure to that side. Some of the issues with the wrinkling was due to that eye socket collapsing.
I put most of the tape on vertically. A few horizontal pieces would have helped with the structure and the wrinkles
I might just want to put nylon stockings over my head and put latex on that.
I can see out of that tiny slit, but I'm going to need nasal breathing tubes or something so I can close up the mouth.

I've heard some talk about sanding latex. I need to figure out how.

masking tape with one layer of latex

more layers of latex and my friend

6(?) layers of latex?

with makeup in poor lighting

dang. Better lighting doesn't help

longer shot

Fiddling with acylic

Last week I posted about the fish tank that I patched up. Didn't read it all? I don't blame you. I blathered on for pages. The plan was to make it a small aquaponic system. I could cheap out and put a plastic tub on top... in fact that's what I did do, eventually. But before I resorted to the tub I had a dream. I wanted a custom made tank that fit perfectly over the aquarium and was decorative as well as functional. After all, I'm putting this in my front window for anyone to look at. I'm making a museum piece... out of a ugly, patched fish tank... perhaps not my best idea. Today I want to tell you what I did, where I succeeded, and where I went wrong.

There's my design. It sits on top of the aquarium with 3/4" legs hanging over the ends to keep it from slipping. The long edges hang over the front and back of the tank by about an inch each way. The gap at one end was where the automatic feeder would fit and hoses would come out.

I'm not sure if you can tell, but the corners of the long ends isn't square. It's rounded. Back in college I was shown how to use this strip heater to soften plexiglass so it could be shaped into a small picture holder. That stuck with me and I've been wondering for years if I could do the same thing with a heat gun. Turns out you can.

The trick is to control where the heat goes. You want only a narrow band heated. I accomplished this by putting aluminum foil over the plexiglass with only a millimeter or two exposed between sheets. I used masking tape to hold the foil in place, but put the tape on unheated side so it wouldn't melt or catch fire or something.

only a mm or two exposed.

I clamped the plexiglass to a bench, slowly waved a heat gun back and forth over the gap, and gently lifted on the unclamped side. After a few minutes I was able to lift the loose end further and further until it was at a right angle. The outside of the curve had the same arc as the edge of a quarter.

At a right angle.

The second curve didn't go quite as well. It wasn't bad. But it didn't curve as smoothly. There were flat spots. I think I rushed things. Since the first corner went so well I got cocky and lifted with too much pressure. The plexiglass bent, but wasn't as soft as I might have liked.

If I were doing it again, I'd have a dowel rod handy to wrap the plexiglass around to make a nice curve.

The ends were cut out with a band saw. It was all sealed up with silicone aquarium sealer.

Friday Links: September 5

Global warming to make England to become penis shaped. (humor)


Taxonomy of climate change deniers. [link]

When the Beatles met Elvis. [link]

A cockatoo feeding the dogs.


This is what's replacing Clone Wars.


An intestinal microbe that prevents allergies.  [link]

Man arrested for waiting to pick up his kid in a public place while black. Video of the incident included.[link]

The Daily Show comes back from vacation and does a nice bit on Ferguson and racism in general.

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook,Daily Show Video Archive

Related to how that previous video ended, here's a story about a black movie producer who was detained while heading to the Emmys. [link]

Pros and cons of police body cameras. [link]

New information on the moving stones of the Devil's Racetrack (a.k.a. Racetrack Playa apparently). [link]

Game: Bring peace to the Middle East. [link]

The disease that causes "demonic possession" identified and treated. [link]

Home is more stressful than work. [link]
You'll notice that most of the reasons are child related. Which is why I don't have any.

Make your own rooting hormone for growing stuff from cuttings. [link]

An elephant playing with a ribbon.


33 facts that are total bull. [link]

Horseshoe crab blood detects bacteria. [link]

Robin Williams named his daughter, Zelda, after the Nintendo character.


Steampunk music. [link]
I like "Steam (Prometheus)" the most.

How to patch a crack in a glass fish tank

I came into a 10 gallon fish tank about a year ago. I came into it because it was cracked. No shortage of cracked fish tanks in the world. If you know how to repair them then you can build an elaborate system of scratch and dent tanks in just a few years¹. I come across abandoned and broken-ish tanks at least once a year. And I always want to grab them. Until I moved to Baltimore I didn't have the room. But when I saw this one cracked tank in Grandma's barn I had dreams of a hydroponics system dancing in my head. The tank sat in my basement until about a few weeks ago when I decided to start fiddling with it. But I had only the vaguest idea how to repair it. And I'm betting you have the same issue if you're reading this². And you're finding that when you start looking for "how to repair cracked 10 gallon glass fish tanks" (consider that a shout out to the Google webcrawler) you find a couple of guys filling their fish tanks after patching them and never telling you how they did it.

Before we start, I want you in the right mindset. If I have a crack in my wall I paste over it, smooth it, and paint it. It doesn't need to do more than look good. But here you need to have something that will hold back the pressure of 10 gallons of water or more. No problem? Go pick up 10 gallons of milk and tell me that's nothing. The patch I'm about to describe will go on the inside of the tank. If it were on the outside you'd have pressure from two pieces of glass pushing out at one point, right at the crack. The patch would either break or tear off. But if the patch is on the inside then the pressure is over the entire surface of the patch and all the surface from around the cracked glass is giving the patch extra strength instead of working against you. Or, how about this? If you were trapped in a big barrel with it's one hole closed up, would you rather have to reach through the hole and push off the patch or have to push the patch through the hole? Having the patch on the inside is better for keeping stuff in.

You're probably hoping that all you have to do is get some aquarium sealer and give the cracks a good once over. Alas, that stuff is flexible and will give the broken glass the wiggle it wants. You need reinforcement, first. Find yourself a piece of glass you can cut up. And you'll want to get a glass cutting tool. Available now at your local hardware store³. While you're there you need to get a tube of some aquarium friendly glue/sealer/caulk stuff. Silicone Aquarium Sealant most likely.

I had two cracks running from the bottom corner up the back of the tank reaching toward the middle. So I may have some bias towards my own personal fix. Deal with it.

You need to cut out a rectangle of glass. How big? Big enough to cover the crack. I don't mean cut out a piece of glass an inch wide and twelve inches long and place it over the crack at an angle. I mean measure how far it is horizontally from the far left point of the crack to the far right point. Add an inch beyond the crack. Add two if you like, but at least one. Do the same vertically from the top of the crack to the bottom. Since the crack probably runs clear from top to bottom that just means your piece will have to be the same height as the tank. If the crack hits or even gets close to the edge of the tank then you'll want your patch to go flush up against that side. Same with the bottom of the tank.

I couldn't mark my glass worth anything. Instead I measured and put a T-square on the glass. Then I pulled the glass cutter down the glass using the T-square as a guide. Ideally, you want to have some experience with glass cutters. I have and I still find them nerve racking. Not the sound they make as they score the glass (not fork scraping a plate irritating, but still enough to make your teeth itch). I mean actually breaking the glass. You keep applying more and more pressure and expect the glass to break at any second. If you're lucky you have a lovely piece of glass. If you didn't it could break anywhere and possibly throw sharp flakes around.

Oh! Are you wearing glasses? You should be wearing glasses.

If you did score the glass right you should be able to break the glass along the groove you cut. Please tell me you can see the cut. The whole thing? End to end? If not, do it again. Although, if you press too hard the glass will start to flake along the groove. Still, better it flakes than breaks in the wrong place. Dad has what are basically pliers with rubber grippers for doing his stained glass stuff. I had to put the glass on a table, put the score at the edge (facing up), and push down. And it worked! Alas, my second cut was less successful. I had much less glass hanging over the edge of the table and couldn't get the leverage. That's where I wanted Dad's pliers. Still, the break ran along the general area plus or minus a quarter inch. I just had to be sure not to touch the jagged part. Do I need to explain that jagged glass is bad? No? Fantastic. You're smarter than most of the neighbor kids.

Now, get a razor and cut away the aquarium sealer in the corners of the tank where you'll be putting your patch. In my case I stripped out the whole corner from top to bottom and about half way along the bottom. Dig for it if you have to. I want you to be able to stick the corner of your razor (or a toothpick or something pokey) into the corner and push it along without resistance. Remember hopping on your first skateboard and faceplanting over a grain of sand? You want to make sure that grain of sand isn't hiding in the corner of your fish tank. Your piece of glass should sit flush along the bottom or edge. Cut away everything that prevents that. You can wrap part of the razor in tape if it makes it easier to hold. Double, triple, and quadruple check for debris, sand, old gravel, whatever. I did, and I still found colorful bits of rock after I sealed everything up.

Now put the aquarium glue on one side of your piece of glass. Be generous. You're looking for something that will hold and will also look good. So place the beads of glue close enough together so that when you press this to the side of the tank there won't be air bubbles left between the pieces of glass. I mean, you can leave some. I left quite a bit, actually. But it'll look better if you get rid of the air bubbles. And if you can't get rid of them, you at least want there to be more glue than air. When putting pressure on it, don't just push from one side. Push from both. Or, set it on a table and put something under it for support. Your tank likely has a top and a base that prevent the glass from sitting flush on the table. You want something that keeps you from breaking the glass further by pushing on it.

Once you're happy with how your patch is sitting, you need to seal the edges. Take the Aquarium Sealant and put a bead along the edge of the glass all the way around. If you have rubber gloves you can use your finger to smooth the bead and make sure there's no holes for water to get through. Just make sure that there's no way for water to get between the panes of glass. If you broke one edge, make sure you're covering the sharp bits, too.

I put a bead down the outside of the crack, too. Partially for support, but mostly I wanted to cover the crack so no flakes would come off and I couldn't accidentally cut myself on it in a raging fit of incompetence later on. I used the razor as a putty knife to spread the bead, push it in, and smooth it out. It's obviously still there. It's just safer. I'm not making a pretty tank, here. I'm making a beginners level aquaponics system.

Let sit for 24 hours. Heck, let it sit for 48. No need to push our luck. You'll want some kind of moisture indicator under the tank. Newspaper or paper towels or tissue paper or a layer of flour should work. Even if you only lose a drop and it dries before you look again the water mark should remain.

What to do if you have a leak
If you have a leak you need to make it visible. To do this I put red food coloring in the tank and started filling it with water. I thought that I had to build up the pressure before it leaked, because it only leaked after around 2 gallons were added. No, dipshit, that means the leak is between 1/10 and 2/10 up the side of the tank. I could see red water between my patch and the original glass and I could see where it left the tank, but I couldn't see how it got behind the plate. So I dumped the water out, put the fish tank in the bathtub, and started filling up the bathtub. Once there was a couple of inches of water I saw the water rush in the bottom of the patch, fill it part way, and burble out in the corner about two inches up. I hadn't sealed properly. I made a bead, but hadn't used anything to press it down. It shouldn't have needed that, but now I know better. And now I know where the leak is. Once things dry out again, I can close that up.

Another way to narrow it down is to add one pitcher of water to the tank, and wait. Mark the water level with some masking tape or something and do it again. When it starts to leak you know the leak is between those two pieces of tape.


Here is what I'm going for in the long run.


See also https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aquasprouts/aquasprouts-aquaponics-self-cleaning-aquarium-and


¹ The fish store I've been visiting for supplies sells damaged and used tanks cheap.

² Note to regular readers: I love ya' but my most popular pages are those where I'm telling people how to make, fix, or harvest something. This page is likely to be getting hits for years.

3 Did you read that last sentence in The Voice? No? Then read it again!

Friday Links: August 29

Tina Fey and Rachel Dratch before Saturday Night Live.


Mashup of the songs Sunrise and Get Lucky. [link]

One or two Dune art themed Tumblrs I could understand, but there's enough to have a top 10 list? [link]

Braille sprung from an attempt to make a method for letting soldiers read in the dark. [link]

In Vietnam, the Ace of Spades was a psychological weapon. [link]

Winners and honorary mentions of the 2014 Bulwer Lytton horrible writing awards. [link]

The first Air Force One.


I wanna see this weapon fired. [link]

The real meaning of the pot calling the kettle black. [link]

Returning Star Wars to it's original version - A fan project.


A man talking about being shoved through the bottom of a river. [link]

Statements by Nick Offerman.


New games for the old Commodore 64. [link]

What airlines owe you when they strand you or your luggage. [link]

Koko the gorilla mourns the passing of Robin Williams. [link]

The only Pro-choice argument you'll ever need. [link]

ISIS slaughters Zoroastrians because one of them refused demands to convert to Islam. [link]

There's a great solar eclipse coming in 2017. [link]

Having the sex talk with a 9 year old. [link]

Seaworld's most rewarding and traumatic job. [link]

Norman Rockwell's reference photos. [link]

Bank of America's many court settlements and why I closed all my credit cards with them. [link]

Baby elephant learning to stand.

Gandolf goes dark

We're sitting out on the front porch. I'm working on a project and Gandolf is just chillin'. A little kid up the street starts crying "dAAAdee DAaaDee DaaADY daaaaady DAAADDY..." and on like that for a couple of minutes. Finally, Gandolf says,

That's right, I put your daddy in a blender. AHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

When Gandolf goes dark she goes fast and really dark.

Scar Makeup

It's October 31 and you've just been invited to a Halloween party. Unfortunately, the closest thing you have to a costume is your Batman T-shirt. I have a quick fix for you. Find a local stage makeup store and get a bottle of Mehron Rigid Collodion.

The bottle I saw online was different. This is the same stuff, though.

What you do with this stuff depends on how you want the scar to look. I wanted a simple slash down the face that looks like it happened many years ago. OK, I wanted to try it without getting into coloring and stuff. Same thing. What you see in the picture below is six layers of Rigid Collodion.

The stuff dries pretty fast, so it won't take long to get this done.
The first layer doesn't make much impact, but you can feel your skin is kinda stiff and moves differently than it did. And there's a shiny line running down your face.
The second layer, once dry, leaves a dent running down your face.
The third layer starts to look like a gouge. Layers 4-6 make it deeper.
I added layers 7-9 to the bottom of the scar after I took this picture and it make it a touch deeper. I was working from the top down so I had a full brush at the top and less full at the bottom. So there was some touching up to do.

Right there, you have a Halloween costume that took 10-15 min to do. If you want to make it more involved you could add makeup a few shades paler than your skin to lighten it up for an older scar. Or some red to make it look fresh.
If you put it on before you put the scar makeup on then the makeup will be protected and may look more real. Put some powder on it to take off the shine.

I saw some video where someone put on about thirty layers. I'm not sure their scar was much better than mine. Can't find it now, of course.

Friday Links: August 22

George Takei talking about his time in an Internment Camp. [link]

How the sun sees you.


Outbreak tracker. [link]

Self assembling robot swarms.


The Wright Brothers (and sister) and some of their later models. [link]

Computer maps a model's face and projects onto it even as she moves. [link]

Bird deaths due to solar tower being investigated. []
Yes, this is the solar tower featured in Fallout: New Vegas.

Viking ship found by Mississippi River. [link]
Declared winners of 990 Hide and Seek Championship.

What happens when cops wear cameras. [link]

Don Pardo, the Saturday Night Live announcer passed away Monday at age 96. [link]

Where Americans have moved, if they move, in the last century. [link
]
Starting removal of the John Hancock Building's west antenna. Just a bit of vertigo for you.

Zipperface

One of the things I'm having problems with in my makeup skills is smoothing the tissue. If I have to build up my tissue to build a welt or a claw or attach something to myself or just try to turn a lump of cotton back into something like skin I need to be able to smooth it out so it doesn't look like I'm masking a horrible rash. Generally, I'm making it look like I've got much bigger problems than a rash, but I want the rash gone. To practice, I decided to recreate something I saw online a few years ago that required attaching a zipper to my face. Here's the results.

I attached the zipper with spirit gum. I found out that I need to work on doing that, too.
I put a layer of latex on the zipper and face to help secure things and stick down edges.
The next layer held some tissue paper in place to try to build some tissue right away. But the tissue paper wrinkles no matter how hard I fight it.
The third layer of latex coated the tissue paper to hold it down.
The fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth layers of latex were to build up the surface and smooth the transition from zipper fabric to face. Each layer takes forever to dry. If I'm doing 20 layers I need a life cast of my head to build it on before I transfer to myself.
I stopped there because it was getting late and I'd been working on this for 5-6 hours.
The red makeup was put on between layers 6 and 7 because I had time to kill. A bit of black was blended into the edges and a bit of white blended in on the tip of my nose and chin trying to make it look like there was some bone nearing the surface.
The flesh tone was applied after layer 8 was dry enough. I put some powder on first to make the latex a bit less sticky. The flesh coloring is just what seemed closest to my skin in my beginners kit.

I think I may put the next thing on a piece of glass and build it up there before transferring it to my face. That way I can build it up over several days. Maybe another zipper and I can work on making a Slitheen forehead zipper.

The removed zipper looks kinda dirty. My face makeup is still kinda creepy, though. 

Friday Links: August 15

Pictures of the abandoned Cincinnati subway tunnels. [link]

Matrix action sequence with 8-bit game audio.


There's a gun on the ISS and the Russians control it. [link]

"Muppet Thor" a short comic story. [link]

Authors coming to the Library of Congress Book Fest later this month. [link]

Doctors talk about their most oblivious patients. [link]

Quotes from Discworld books. [link]
The last one I've quoted here once or twice around Christmas.

A bunch of close calls.


Getting rid of lesbians in the Army could cause problems. [link]

Rate of un-vaccinated by state. [link]

Tennessee drug tests welfare applicants. So far only 1 out of 800 have tested positive. [link]

The evolution of scissors. [link]

Fetuses really are tumors. [link]
So we might get to the sci-fi world of all babies coming from vats because it's healthier for both fetus and woman. 

Frozen steak vs thawed steaks.


Robin Williams was suffering from the early stages of Parkinson's. [link]

Ambient sci-fi sounds. [link]

Movie PreReview: Avengers 2 - Age of Ultron

I was in the comic book store the other day and found the Age of Ultron graphic novel.  It's not an old storyline. The original comics came out in early 2013 which makes me wonder if the whole thing was written with the movie in mind. Then I have to slap down my own doubts when I see that the comic is not an Avengers comic. It spans much of the Marvel Universe. Major rewrites would have to be done since they can't use Spiderman, The Fantastic Four, or the X-Men in the Avengers movie. From what I've heard, they're even having to change who originally built Ultron from Hank Pym to Tony Stark since the Ant Man movie won't be coming out until after Avengers 2.

In the comics, Ultron is an AI created by Hank Pym (Ant Man) who various Marvel heroes, but mainly The Avengers, have been fighting since the late '60s. Destroyed again and again, he keeps coming back in new bodies. In this storyline, the body of a Spaceknight (not necessarily ROM's Spaceknights) is unearthed and Ultron wakes up inside it. He manages to elude the heroes. The comic then skips ahead to about six months after the Earth, the whole Earth, was attacked simultaneously and conquered in about eight and a half minutes. Most of the heroes are dead. Wolverine (X-Men) and Susan Storm Richards (Fantastic Four) go back in time and kill Hank Pym. When they return home they find that without Hank's help and without Ultron's creation, a robot Avenger named Vision, some key battles went poorly and the world is on the brink of being destroyed by the winner of the Asgard/Latveria (Thor/Dr Doom) War. So they have to go back and not-kill Hank Pym and figure out how to fix things.

As you can see, there's been very little mention of Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Nick Fury, or Agent Coulson. In fact, it's been almost exclusively heroes yet to be introduced and heroes whose rights are in the hands of other studios. Our Avengers are there, just not major enough to be part of a one paragraph summary. So major rewrites were needed.

Honestly, this is not a must-read graphic novel. It's there for those unwilling to wait until 2015 for the movie. If you get it, you may also want to look for the Age of Ultron Companion. It collects other titles and tells their shorter stories about actions taken to fight back against the initial Ultron invasion.

note: It should be stated that the comics took place while Doctor Octopus's mind was still in the body of Spiderman. I didn't follow the storyline closely, but from what I've seen Doc Ock made for a good hero.

RIP Robin Williams

Robin Williams was not on my list of people I expected to die soon. I mean, I don't keep a formal list or anything, but we all have a mental one. He died yesterday at the age of 63.

Comedians tend to make the best dramatic actors. Comedy is hard and timing has to be perfect. If you can do that then you can do drama. Robin Williams was probably the greatest example of that. His stand up career got him Mork and Mindy, but after that he roamed freely among the genres doing whatever caught his fancy. That mindset was reflected in his comedy. One could get motion sickness trying to follow him on one of his improvisational tirades as he lept madly among impressions, voices, and subjects ranging from social, political, historic, religious, and "huh?" Often the challenge was trying to figure out what the reference was as much as where he pulled it out of. Much of the movie Aladdin was made by just letting Williams go off on a tirade and then animating around him.

One of my favorite stories about him is the one Christopher Reeves told.

Then, at an especially bleak moment, the door flew open and in hurried a squat fellow with a blue scrub hat and a yellow surgical gown and glasses, speaking in a Russian accent. He announced that he was my proctologist, and that he had to examine me immediately...it was Robin Williams...for the first time since the accident, I laughed. My old friend had helped me know that somehow I was going to be okay.

Robin spent a lot of time after Christopher's accident making him laugh. He did the same for Steven Spielberg during the filming of Schindler's List to help Steven fight off the depression the film brought on.

I was a fan of the original, British version of Whose Line is it Anyway. My friends and I would talk about how awesome it would be if they could get Robin Williams on. In season 3 of the American version, they did just that. And it was awesome. Although, would have sworn that he wore his Mork suspenders.


Watch Robin Williams in Whose Line is it anyway? in Comedy  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Meteor shower

I would have told you sooner, but I was just reminded, myself.

Why you don't date dryads

I took some stagecraft classes in high school, but was never happy with it. We worked with stage makeup that was supposed to work when flooded with light and viewed from mid-audience. So it looked downright comical up close. I'm more interested in stuff that can be viewed from a few feet. Something I can wear on Halloween. Monster makeup. I've watched some videos online over the years and found some interesting techniques that I've never been able to apply. Some stuff I'll need to make a life cast to build. And some simpler stuff.

My house is in OK shape, but needs work. Alas, the work is done in short bursts because it's too humid and stagnant to work seriously for long. And Halloween is in a few months. So I'm working on some makeup techniques to be ready for a costume since it doesn't require moving around and getting overheated.

In these pictures I'm trying a bark making technique I learned at a sci-fi convention a week ago. It involves applying Kleenex-type tissue to my skin using liquid latex, being sure to fold it and give it wrinkles and texture, going over it with more latex, and then painting it. So art class and and YouTube videos are more applicable to what I'm doing than the stage makeup class. This is not to discredit the years to reflect on what was done in that class.

While writing this I've got more latex drying to help make a blister. This will be followed by using cotton to build up some growths.

Friday Links: August 8

All Most Marvel Studios movie Easter Eggs pre-Guardians.

Get More: 

Music News

Native Americans bred corn to the form we know today. [link]

Peanut butter turned into diamonds as tech development to make metallic hydrogen continues. [link]

If you don't have a steamer trunk for your spare blankets, try a 55 gallon drum of Chanel. [link]

The first honest resume of a graphic designer. [link]

Frozen mummy is found to have relatives alive today. [link]

After the fraud that led to the Great Depression the Glass-Steagall law stopped that. It's repeal was key in the more recent Great Recession. [link]

An acre is the amount of land it takes a yoke of oxen to plow in one day. [link]

New wireless electricity tech uses sound instead of induction. [link]

Close up (only 130 km away) pictures of a comet. [link]

Video of sharks attacking the probe. [link]

A woman accused of animal cruelty was eaten by her dogs after she died. [link]

Help Grandpa remember about his photos. [link]

Play with a Koosh Ball brain. [link]

Playing a trombone for cows.