Tags: game, photography

On days when I have little time, it's random comic time. The panels are picked at random. I supply the words.

Tags: comic

Tags: photography, game

Hmmm.

This Thing is based on an old Dead Milkman song and the passing of Charles Nelson Reilly.

Mature comic ahead.

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Tags: comic, Satire, art

Tags: art

I've been working off and on for weeks on this Thing. A few weeks ago, after Free Comic Book Day, I picked up a free comic by Comic Genesis. They're a site that publishes comic websites for free. There's literally thousands of comics at the site. So I decided I'd set-up a site for the TTOTD comics I make. Granted, I'm not an artist, but I do like making photo comics. I thought, easy, set-up a site and start posting comics, piece 'o cake. Well, due to all kind of bugs on the site, creating just a generic site a logging in was extremely time consuming.

Well, today, I've finally figured it out. So, today's the debut of the extremely generic The Thing Of The Day Comic Site. It's a kick in the butt to make more comics. I plan to make at least one a week and post it here and there. Also, serendipitously, the site requires lots of HTML work, so future Things will be the various Dreamweaver tinkering with the site to add that much needed 'Zazz.'


Mmmmmm, Zazz.

Tags: comic, project

(Shelly here): We decided to do a Team Thing, since today was a bonus day, me having the day off (Bryan always has Monday's off--must be nice!) So I looked through the archives at MAKE to find something we could do together.
What we decided on was some paper crafts Make featured brought to you by Cannon. Check out all their free paper crafts to download, print and put together, there are tons of cool ones, and they are free!!
We decided to do some from their craftown series, because they might be able to work into or become a game.
Here's our police station, convenience store, and people to go with. It was fun to do a project together!

(Shelly did the super hard police station and police car; Bryan did the easier convenience store and some people.)




(Bryan here): As you can see from this scene, the employees and manager have decided to take a day off from menial labor and pay tribute to their favorite movie, Clerks. After about a half hour of some of the most righteous roof hockey you'll ever see, the Fuzz show up on a noise complaint. But it's cool. Lady cop buys her weed from Raoul, the night clerk who's also her booty call on the overnight. But Lady Cop doesn't know Raoul is also tapping her best friend, Amy. Not that she'd care much, she just knows where Amy's been. Oh, and Sampson, the manager, has the largest collection of inappropriately edited video of customer hijinks from the surveillance camera. He'll show it to you if you ask.

And that's just a few of the stories in the torrid history of the Craftown Convenience Store. Sorry no Jay and Silent Bob, they're a just an urban legend.

Tags: craft, team

With beaded blanket stitch. Flower is about 1" x 1 1/2" and puffy. I see several felted flowers or other such fluffies in the future. Not sure yet exactly what they're going to turn into just yet.

Updated 6/4/7: New picture with better background, and size reference.

Cross Post

Tags: craft, project

This website is mostly created with the mac program Rapidweaver. A new version came out today. While, I'm not crazy about paying an upgrade price, I do like the new tags feature. Today's Thing is a web-related project putting tags on all of the previous posts. Check below the post to see the tags. In the sidebar, you can separate all the comics posts or all the photography posts. It's a boring Thing, but a nice addition to the site.

Tags: web

i.e. my thoughts on what happened on the season 3 finale, and what will happen in season 4.



Recap of season finale:
*the fast forward was just a dream brought on by the smoke monster (as seen in drawing) as proven by Jack's father being dead, but he refers to him in the fast forward, and in Kate not being in jail in the fast forward (she's a fugitive, if she gets off the island, she still is a fugitive!)
*Ben thought the shot or the fall would re-paralize Locke
*Why were Sun and Jin in the plane with Jack? (or were they?)
*The commercials gave too much away, like Des shooting the cyclops in the looking glass hatch, and the three shooters on the beach not being dead
*Charlie could be NOT DEAD. There might be an air bubble or something. If he is dead, that was a cheap, unmourned death, like the supporting actors that were buried alive
*Why does the transmission go straight to Penny?
*Maybe the flight 815 crash was all Jack's fault just like the lady on the bridge's crash ended up being all Jack's fault.
*The reason children are taken off the island, is because they will age quicker when they are off the island.
Predictions for Season 4:
*Ben and the origional islananders "purged" the Dharma group, Naomi and her ship are Dharma people trying to get back to the island
* The guy from Suddenly Susan is actually running everything
*Everyone on the island now will have to work together to stop the Dharma ship people
*Penny's transmission is just her continuing to search for Des, and it was being blocked
*"Jacob" is just an acronym for Just A Creation Of Ben's

Tags: television, art

Now that the big "Snake in the Mailbox" season finale has shocked America, it's time to look ahead to the fourth season, it's time to look ahead eight months.There's still so many more questions and today's comic Thing prepares to ask those obvious Lost questions.

Please do not read on if you're not completely caught up on the TV show Lost. If you've never seen the show, then, man, this comic won't make a lick of sense. To see the big size of the comic, click on the comic or visit the flickr page or read more.

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Tags: comic, television

Here's a quickly scribbled drawing to show my prediction of what will happen on tonight's season finale of LOST. (Yes, I see what time it is, but I haven't watched it yet, it's on the TiVo)

To clarify:
You see, those two girls Charlie met in the looking glass hatch (Bambi and Thumper are their nicknames) are decedents of the island's original, original inhabitants, that date back to ancient times. These people worshiped a parthenon of gods and made statues all over the island to please them, the foot is the last of what remains of these. After interrogating Charlie, they decide the person they most want to talk to is Locke, who they search for and find, almost dead, so they take him to the foot of the foot to pray to their god to heal him.
OK, seriously. I predict the two girls aren't bad guys, that Locke AND Charlie will live, and we will again see the giant foot statue!
Now, off to actually watch!!
(And remind me next time to make my prediction a little sooner!)

Tags: television, art

Due to an unexpected 13-hour work day yesterday, today's Thing plans fell through. So, like Shelly's migraine Thing, I whipped up today's Thing using the creative toys page at work. It's from comic strip creator. To make the comic interesting, I picked a completely random set-up and wrote around whatever the random comic Gods gave me.

Tags: comic

Since I've been incapacitatted by a migraine this evening, I used one of the creative toys to make a portrait of what I feel like right now. You have to click on this link since I don't know how to make a screen print, sorry. And I'm so out of it from the migraine, that I even forgot to sign my work. Now you know that's pretty bad.


Edit: So now I've learned how to do a screen grab!

Tags: art

So, I just got back from my first 30 minute walk and it's Tuesday Thing time. The early part of this week is about doing ongoing Things to keep me healthy. Yesterday, I made a pledge to take a 30 minute walk five times a week. This exercise may change as months go on and I thought I'd track both my blood sugars and exercise online daily. That's my Thing, it's ongoing. I currently use a free program Diabetes Logbook to track and graph my stats, but there isn't any way to post it online. I'm more complete in that program adding carbs and medicine into the mix. I thought I'd share some simple daily stats to keep me motivated. I searched around for a simple online (and free) solution to show everyone my blood sugars. None. So, I retrofitted an ical calendar page to post up some simple stats for everyone to see. I plan on taking my blood sugars twice a day.

Since I'm limited by space on the calendar program, here's the abreviations I use in the single line entry:

MW=Minute Walk,
BB=Before Breakfast,
AB=After Breakfest,
BL=Before Lunch,
AL=After Lunch,
BD=Before Dinner,
AD=After Dinner.

Before means directly before eating. After means 2 hours after the meal. The number before MW is how many minutes I walked that day. The number before the meal abreviations is my blood sugar number. If the number is over 150, that's a high number. Between 80 and 110 is optimal. Below 80 is too low. The numbers after a meal should be higher. For example today's reading says, "30MW, 120BD."

Once again, here's the page. Keep me honest, hassel me if I haven't posted or my readings are too high. That's the point.

Tags: project

Today's Thing is more of a 'Do.' As in Make. Learn. Do. It's also ongoing.

I went to the doctor today for a check-up. I have diabetes and have had diabetes for a long time. I haven't always been the best at managing the disease, but have recently overhauled a lot of the way I eat. My sugars are still a bit high, even though I've been regularly taking my medication for the last six months. I have dropped my sugar count from about 300 to 160 or so, so I've done a lot. The new medication gives me headaches and because of slight--I found out today--irreversible nerve damage in my feet due to my slack treatment, my feet always feel cold. I have to get better at managing the disease. I'm doing better, but...

The missing component is exercise. I'm extremely sedentary. So, my Thing today is just plain exercising. I plan on walking a half an hour a day, five days a week. It's about 45 minutes to work, so I may skip using the car one day a week while the weather is nicer.

The only fly in the ointment, besides time is my ipod has been acting wacky, so I'll work on that this week as well. Must have music while I walk.

Tomorrow's Thing is designed to help keep me honest and you can see my progress.

Tags: project

I've had this art project idea for a while now, and bear with me, it's still in progress. The idea is kind of an anonymous form of Where's George (click for link), in which I would put into circulation quarters or other coins that have been altered. I thought perhaps my art project was a little strange, being completely anonymous, and never knowing where the change went, but recently, this story appeared on Boing Boing (click for link), and that raised my interest in continuing.
Today, we see part 1, my first idea was to use my cool new permanent markers to draw on the quarters, sometimes incorporating the state picture, other times, just making a political statement (and utterly human wish). I like how the peach turned out on Georgia, and I could really see some potential, but it was very time consuming to produce, and the marker was very quick to become not permanent after being handled a bit. Nonetheless, I put all of these into circulation not too long after this blog and contest began.

Tags: project, coin

Some buggy photos:
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Tags: photography

Today's Thing is the second of many crappy models I plan to put together.
It's The Serpent, number one of six in a series of snap-together models.
This was more of a focusing exercise than anything particularly creative.

Tags: project

Tiny baby bunny, who lives in a bush on the 1 1/2 block walk between work and parking lot. Unfortunately, his sibling became a street splat this morning. I cried a little. Read More...

Tags: photography

In my never ending quest to goof off at work, I've been trying to develop 'work games,' that is, games you can play with little or no set-up at work, maybe during a break or while doing other mundane activities.

At work, we were having a discussion about names and their meanings, so I thought up this social game for three or more players in three short phases. This game works best with people you have a casual relationship with, such as coworkers or people at a party.

Blame the Name
Sometimes, names can feel like destiny. For example, as a kid, every Kevin I knew was a bully. So, I have a slight suspicion of all Kevins. It's irrational, of course, but the basis of this game. The basis lies around the simple fill-in phrase, "All (name)s are (adjective)."
To play the game you'll need a few scraps of paper, pens or pencils and a list of baby names. You can find a list here, but there are lots of lists online. It's a good idea of sticking to a list of 100 as the names will be chosen at random. Also, pick how many rounds you plan to play. Each round consists of the three phases.

Phase One-Picking a Name
Choose a new name. If you have a two lists---one for girls, one for boys---flip a coin, heads for boys and tails for girls. Then have a player pick a number. Match the number to the list and there's your name. In the rest of the rules, I'll refer to this name as the 'named person.' After the name is announced, each player writes down an adjective to describe the main quality of every person with this name. It's intuition-based, so your first reaction is usually the best. This descriptive word will be the basis of Phase Two, the storytelling phase. Some descriptive word examples include any adjective you can name---sexy, model, prissy, butch, brainy, weakling, etc. Stereotypes work well. All the players then reveal their descriptive word. Each word that matches with another player receives one point. Multiple matches count for multiple points. For example, if three people all have the same word, each of those people would receive two points, one for each other matching word. Keep a running score of points on a separate piece of paper.
A variant---Instead of one descriptive word, each player writes down three descriptive words, but this means three different stories, one for each word, in the storytelling phase.

Phase Two-Storytelling Phase
Each player will take turns telling a story about the Named Person and how they are like your descriptive word. When deciding a story to tell, remember your story must fall into one of three categories:
A. Real----This story happened to you with the named person and all the details being true, as you remember them.
B. Bluff----You made this story up. It's a fabrication. A bluff may also be a real story, just one that did not happen to you and the Named Person. For example, if the name was 'Babe' you could say 'All Babes are gluttons' and tell a story about how this 'Babe' you knew used to eat 20 hot dogs before every baseball game. The real Babe Ruth used to very often pig out on hot dogs before games, so this is a bluff. If the story is about you, but your saying it's about the named person, it's also a bluff.
C. Fictional---This is a story involving you and a fictional character. For example, using 'Babe' again, you could say 'All Babes are filthy' and tell a story about this 'Babe' you knew who used to literally roll around in the mud. Of course, I'm referring to the fictional 'Babe the pig' from those kids movies. You wouldn't mention the pig part in the story, but could place him on a farm and match up other details from the movies. Don't mix up fictional names with other named persons. Use the same fictional name always.

Each story only needs to be a few minutes or so. This is also a great way to work in that great story about so-and-so, you know, that great story you're always trying to shoehorn into normal conversations.

Start each story with, "All (Named Person) are (descriptive word), I knew a (Named Person) and they....."

Phase Three-Voting

After all the stories, each player is up for voting. The first storyteller is first. All of the other players chose whether they think the storyteller's tale is Real, Bluff or Fictional. Each story, if multiple adjectives are played, is voted on separately. After all the player have written down their guesses, the storyteller reveals the nature of the story. If the story is Real, tell the other players the full name of the object of the stories and any other details. If the story is a bluff, reveal if it's a total fabrication, happened to a real person and name them or if it happened to you. If the story is fictional, name the fictional character and source.

Each player who guessed correctly receives one point. If the player is incorrect, the storyteller receives a point. Repeat voting process for each storyteller.

Optional rule---After the main voting is finished, each player votes for the best story. They can not vote for themselves. Each vote delivers one point to it's storyteller.

Tally up the points and declare a winner. In case of a tie, the player with the most Real stories and highest score wins. If no Real stories, have another round of best story votes for the tied players. If still a tie, the game ends in a tie or play another round.

Tags: game

Well, I can't beat him at his own game (or he won't want to play). ;p
Or maybe I'm just so distraught from hearing the "Ding Dong" song from the Wizard of Oz all day today.
Either way, I pass.
That makes us tied again, 5-Love. With 4 total team passes left.

Tags: pass

The experts vote, "Where did Jerry Falwell's soul go?"



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Tags: comic

Giant Strawberry photos:
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Tags: photography

Last Saturday, my son graduated from high school. Today's Thing is a photoset of his graduation. Thanks to Shelly for taking all the pictures!

And congrats to Kel!

Tags: photography

It's Photo Week!
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Tags: photography

Another simple site addition. If you're new to TTOTD, please sign our guest book. You can also view our guest book.

Tags: web

I have to take a pass today.

Yea! Shelly's ahead 6-5.

Tags: pass

Remember when I asked What is this?

Well, today we have the answer. Read More...

Tags: photography, craft

Today's small Thing is just links to some complete zombie-themed products. Yea, Free! Most items you once had to pay for, but are now free.

The first is Monster Island by David Wellington. It's the first novel of a three-part zombie series. All three books are there, complete. You can order them from Amazon or read them free. The stuff I've read is pretty good and it's not just internet wankery like most free writing. He's also posted some other books there as well.

And now, a bunch of free zombie games. Follow the links on the Game Board Geek site pages to download maps, rules, etc.

Zombie Plague---haven't read the rules to this one, but it looks like an expandable miniatures game.

Dawn of the Dead---Based on the 1978 movie. I actually owned this game back in the early eighties and played the heck out of it. The free version will require a lot of cutting and set-up, but it's all there.

Dead of Night---I downloaded this game a few months ago. The rules sound fun, it's like a more expansive version of Zombies where the tension is ratcheted up as the game goes on. However, just visiting the site, I notice it's no longer free because the game has been picked up by a publisher. That's good news 'cause now I can buy it at the game store eventually with cool bits.

Check out the many Zombie lists on Board Game Geek for head munching fun.

Tags: review, links

As a photography project and in an effort to see myself as others see me, I am going to start experimenting with self portraits. Self portrait does not necessarily mean a face shot, obviously, I've seen many creative self portraits on flickr that do not include the full face. I've also started a new page on my photo part of the blog just for the self portraits.

Tags: photography, art

May 5, 2007 was a special flickr day, 24 hours of flickr. Any and every flickr-ite was invited to take a photo of their day. Whatever they wanted to show their day, a day-in-the-life. Everyone can post one photo taken on that day to the big pool, and some of the photos will be chosen to be in a flickr book that will be coming out. This is my contribution.

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Tags: photography, art

Sitting at work trying to think of a Thing for today, I had the thought, "How come Holy Water works on vampires, but not zombies." It's kind of a dumb thought.

So, I decided to take that sentence and make it the first sentence of a horror story. That's how today's Thing started out, I wouldn't expand on the thought until I sat down to write. It's sort of a creative writing exercise. After about two hours of writing, I realized I have a two-parter. So part-two will be tomorrow.

The micro story is called Minus One.
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Tags: fiction

This was going to be my 'thing' today. Money with my honey. But since somebody made funny money and a bunch of other things, I would look pretty lame just posting this money. Hey, sometimes a thing takes a couple days, sometimes it takes a couple minutes.
In the spirit of trying not to be too lame, though, I'll add a couple more little things into this post! So it's a bonus, huzzah!
#2) All the people who left comments left in April were put into a random drawing, and the winner is: ZEB! And no, he didn't get entered as often as he posted, just once. In fact, we had 6 people entered, and a total of 10 prizes, so if the rest of you would like a button, too, just let me know.
And Lastly for today, a little guessing game, which will be answered later this week. What is this?

Tags: art

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Tags: review

Zombie Letters from e-zombie.com


Read on for more pictures from Zombie Nation.

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Tags: art, comedy, photos

My folks brought some pictures this weekend that they had made digital from slides. There were some cute shots of me and my younger brother that I don't ever remember seeing before. The new photos prompted me to make a new ScrapBlog page.



Cross Post

Tags: web, craft, photography

I'll jump on the Comic Day bandwagon! Here's a comic strip I made with strip creator.

Tags: comic

Tomorrow (Saturday, May 5th) is Free Comic Book Day! Go down to your local comic book shop and pick up a bunch of free titles. Today's Thing is a list some of the free comic books on the web. There's a zillion of them! I just recently started reading comics. I never really read many as a kid, but all the free ones on the web, especially the more adventurous adult titles got me buying a few. I've been reading the new Buffy comic (basically season 8 of the show) as well as The Goon, The Walking Dead and Y's The Last Man on Earth. Most of those are older comics, but have trade paperbacks out for them. Here's a short list of free online comic books, mostly by publisher:













Image Comics---The Walking Dead and others.

Marvel Comics---You need to register, but they have a ton of comics!

Vertigo---All of the imprints first issues including Sandman, Preacher and others.

Top Cow Comics---Tomb Raider, Witchblade and other cheese.

A Directory of Online Comics---Lots of obscure, web-only stuff.

Dark Horse---Hellboy, Buffy, The Goon

Antarctic press

Oni Press---Indy style comics.

Wasteland

Comic Book Archive---Over 4,400 classic comics from the 1920's-1980's.

Golden Age Comics---Thousands of more pulpy golden age comics.

That's just a taste. I've downloaded over 80 or so comics as well as read a bunch online. A great comic book site is CBR---tons of info and links.

Tags: links

Here's a necklace and earring set I made over the last couple weeks on my break at work. Grape colored rice beads, mother of pearl rice beads, and silver stars.



Cross Post

Tags: craft, art

Today's Thing is a Mac OSX screensaver. Shelly and I have been playing The Spoils Collectable Card Game. It's a good game that fixes most of the problems of the now bloated Magic the Gathering. Another tip, you can play almost any CCG with the excellent Lackey CCG Mac and PC program. It's free and well supported. I got all of the cards for The Spoils screensaver from there. Unfortunately, they're all the low quality JPEG scans as that's the only Lackey plugin currently for The Spoils. Someday, I hope to code my own game to play on Lackey as there's a way to make plugins for the program. Oh, I used FotoMagico to make the screensaver, the new version has a way to make mac screensavers. I bought the older version, so I apologize for the tiny banner in the screensaver. The screensaver is all the cards in the game in alphabetical order. There's some neat artwork and interesting mechanics.

Download the zip file here. It's 58 megs. Can you spot the MST3K joke in the card?

Tags: mac, game, software

Due to computer problems, Shelly had an Act of God day and was unable to post.

Tags: pass

Today's Thing is Macosaix. This mac program allows you to make a mosaic out of photos in your iphoto or from any source. There were over 10,000 pictures scanned and 2,500 pictures used from our iphoto collection to make the image on the right. The quality is only about 75 percent of the original. I've done other photos that have approached 85 percent which looks pretty close. Check it out.

Tags: project, art

Here's a 'mod' kind of craft I made for my car. I took a regular tree air freshener, and beaded decorations on it.


Cross Post
More on this Thing

Tags: craft

Here's the second part of my modeling Thing. I spent about an hour and a half painting Dr. Z---Get painted, You Damn Dirty Ape! I am not a great painter, in fact my artwork has been described by imaginary critics as "sucky" and "thumb-fingered." I think I used the wrong kind of paint and spaced painting one part.

Plus, Dr. Z is now the one armed chimp looking for Charlton Heston and worshiping his precious bomb. I lost an arm.

Oh, well, it was very relaxing painting. Next up, basket weaving in the "What Things do the Severely Mentally Challenged make in workshop" portion of TTOTD.

Tags: project