Over the weekend, I added all the games in the house to Board Game Geek. We have over 150 games, just in the house. We didn't even look downstairs and I know I have some games at Kel's house. The goal is to use this random selection to get us to play games we haven't played in a long time. I can think of 10 games off the top of my head I've never even played that I've bought. I admit it, I'm a game-a-holic. So, take a look around, refresh the page and discover some games you'd like to play.






I also added the random selection of games to the sidebar.

Tags: game, project

On a trip to a dollar store, I found a cute kid craft kit. With rub-on decals, pieces that pop together, and a propeller that makes it spin when you blow, it was well worth a whole dollar.

Tags: project

Today's Thing is part one of a new abstract card game I wrote called Pushout. Today, I spent a few hours on creating the templates, formatting, design and layout of the 30 unique cards of the game. The picture you see is the set-up for a bigger variation of the game called Double Pushout. There are seven pages of printable cards, including a page of card backing for double-sided printers. The nut of this Thing for me was developing a system to make the cards easy to assemble in a factory-like way. This will make it easier to add expansions down the road.

When the game is finalized, it'll have graphic examples of game play and some game play variations. Tomorrow, I write the rules and will post the PDF.

So, warm up your printers for a free game tomorrow (probably late) and help me play test Pushout.

Tags: game, art, project

Tags: craft, game, project

Felt embroidery flower patch on thrift store tiny purse.

Tags: craft, project, sewing

Since we're going to Nukecon on Friday, I thought up some all purpose cards to use while playing games. The best one is for a bathroom break. There's only two. There would have been more, but the site I used to make them crashed. They print out like business cards.

Get them HERE.

Tags: game, project

Tags: craft, game, project

Third of three in a set of collages. The Wallhanging Collage.

Tags: collage, art, craft, project

Braided Bracelet made from wire. With loop and hook closure.

Tags: craft, project

Would you believe the second in a series?

Tags: collage, art, craft, project

HERE.

Tags: art, project

The first in a series of collages.



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Tags: collage, art, craft, project

My Thing today is creating something new through destruction. Almost 8 years ago, at Holiday Gift Giving time, I got my kids a funky bunk-bed. The metal kind with a folding couch to double sized futon bottom, and twin mattress size top. This saved space replacing their two twin beds, and gave them a cool couch to sit on. I bought the bed with an 'overtime bonus' which meant to me that my personal blood, sweat, and tears went into buying them this gift. The bottom stopped folding into a couch a few years back, and they haven't even shared a room for almost two years now. In switching who's in what room, the huge project that we've been undertaking for the last few weeks, and will continue for a few more, it was decided (by them) that the broken old bed was no longer needed. So to create their new room spaces, and honor their growing-up-too-quickly desires, I took apart a piece of their childhood, and carried it to the trash this weekend. And as I write this now, barely able to see through my tears, I have to remember, 'out with the old, in with the new.'

Tags: project

Yesterday, I took the afternoon to make Bryan's surprise birthday supper: Meatloaf Cake. I'd seen them around the interwebs, and I thought it would be the perfect 'cake' for a diabetic's birthday.



He likes it! Hey Mikey!



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Tags: food, project

UNZIP.
PRINT.
POST IN PUBLIC PLACES.
TEAR DOWN.
NO REVOLUTION.

THE 'MY IMAGINARY FRIEND' EDITION

HERE

Tags: art, project

Today's Thing was supposed to be a Alberto Gonzales cartoon. I had the master panel and titles done, but didn't like the jokes. Although, did you know that Gee-Dub's nickname for Gonzales was "Fredo?" So, that means either a.) Bush thinks Alberto is the weak son link in his mafia (uh, so, yea, he must also see himself as operating the gub-ment as a mafia business. Yep. Uh-huh.) or b.) he really likes spaghetti sauce.

So, I had to come up with something else. The guys at work have been bugging me to join their fantasy football league. Bugging me like carnival barkers, bugging me like jackals. They know a mark when they see one. But, hey, it is a new Thing. I can learn about it, see what the buzz is (That buzz is about what 10 years old?). I'm not a sports guy, I'd rather watch a movie. I'd rather play a board game than watch a game.

But Jiminy Christmas, fantasy football is the nerdiest circle jerk I've ever run across. On the nerd scale, fantasy football guys make the Star Wars dorks at Comicon look like Hugh freekin' Hefner. Obsessed with minutia to an OCD extent, the blowing up of ghost legends and lore to sycophantic heights, the pointless debates, the tiny-dicked bragging, the twitch twitch twitch at the websites worse than a porn-obssessed meth addict, all that sound and fury signifying nada.

Sports nerds are the nerdiest nerds in nerdville. Most other kinds of nerds I've met have some humorous detachment from their obsessions, but not hardcore fantasy football nerds. Fantasy football nerds are like the mainstream religion of nerdom. Enough people do it, so no one can question it's wackiness. It's serious 'effin business.

So, anyway, I decided to embrace the nerd half of FANTASY football. It's all abstract BS numbers and luck anyway. A weird stat-based game minus the cool, nifty bits. So, I whipped the graphics in this post because every team needs a logo and signed up. Hey, new weird software. I can't think of a better name for my team than The Turf Nerds, but I do like the first fantasy football pic.

Looks like I'll be losing 20 bucks on a stupid game. It's happened before.

Tags: art, project, team

I did some putting together this weekend, too. Putting back together, that is. And I even have pictures.
I glued the bathroom counter, and taped the shower curtain for reinforcements.

Tags: project

Although I don't have any pictures, I put together two pieces of furniture yesterday---an Ikea shelf/dresser and a TV stand. I made. I did. And I learned. This is maybe only the second or third time in my life, I've done a project like this. The furniture was for my son's dorm room.

Tags: project

UNZIP.
PRINT.
POST IN PUBLIC PLACES.
TEAR DOWN.
NO REVOLUTION.


HERE.

Tags: art, project

Tags: craft, project

The first PDF in a new campaign.

Print out PDF.

Post each of the two pages in public places.

Together, but more preferably, not together.

New PDF's later.

This is not destiny.


HERE.

Tags: art, project

Funky Zombie Mask. It's supposed to look 'normal' on the one side, but the kids said it was scary on both sides.


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Tags: craft, project

Now that I have my own pene del diablo (for emergency use only!), I decided it needed it's own case. After all, it will mostly just be in my purse.



I used denim and felt, and I seriously had to hold back from beading it, but since there may be times that Bryan will carry it instead of driving around for two hours trying to buy prepaid long distance phone cards, I didn't want it to be too girly. (You're welcome, Honey.)



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Tags: craft, project, sewing

• 9 medium tomatillo tomatoes
• 4 clove garlic, peeled
• 2 jalapeno chile pepper
• 2 bunches fresh cilantro
• 7 ripe avocados
• Chop cilantro, dice garlic and chile, cut tomatillos into thumb-sized pieces.
• Cut avocados in half, remove pit, and squish flesh out of skin.
• Puree all ingredients in blender, you might have to do it in batches, depending on how big your blender is. If you have a food processor, that would probably work even better, but I've never used one, so I can't say
• For best taste and dipping value, refrigerate for several hours or overnight
• Serve on tacos, or use as dip

Tags: food, project

I'm making more trees, here's a yellow one.



And the back is finished with "Blue Moon" glitter glue.

Tags: craft, project

Today's Thing is from one of Shelly's craft project kits. I deviated heavily from the instructions and eventually quit when my efforts to correct mistakes created too many uncorrectable mistakes. Isn't that what art is all about, living with mistakes.

Maybe one of Shelly's Things could be to correct this painting. I'm not much of an artist, although I did enjoy this project and learned how to mix paints a bit.

See shell's two cents

Tags: art, project

Close up:



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Tags: craft, project

More on this Thing

Tags: craft, project

A while back, I posted Part 1 of this project, go read that for the background, if you want. What I'm doing is kind of an anonymous art project, introducing painted coins into the mainstream. These coins are all painted with fingernail polish, unlike the sharpie markers, this should stay on the coins for a while.
This bunch of multicolored coins, all went into the candy machine at work. And did you know, if you put coins in and press the coin return, you don't get the exact coins back? My painted minions are working their way into regular society.

Excellent.

Tags: project, coin

The new one is rather bright for a photo.



So how many total should I make?

Cross Post

Tags: craft, project

Hey Baby, it's the Fourth of July.

Everyone knows I'm a cheapskate. I don't like giving to charities. I'm poor. I'm cheap. Who knows where the money goes or how it will be spent. (Here's the part where I sound like an infomercial) However, a few months ago, I heard about microcredit in Reason magazine. Then the guy who won the Nobel Prize in economics for developing the idea was on The Daily Show. This seems a way out for a lot of very poor people if the money can indeed get to them. It's like peer-to-peer loaning. Lots of people pool small amounts to loan to the very poor to develop their neighborhoods. There was a story on this trend on ABC news about how even Americans can give to ordinary Iraqis to help rebuild. Man, is there a debt we need to repay. Because it's Iraq, the loans are anonymous, so they can't be tied to Americans and the lendee could face reprisals. Yea, that's our world.

Anyway, for today's Thing, I loaned 25 bucks to a Nigerian woman to help rebuild her market. She looks crabby. With the internet, there's no overhead in paperwork and donating to the lending organization is a charity, while the loan itself isn't. The organization I went through is called Kiva, although many are springing up to help a variety of people. Most of the loans are to women, as they are in the most need, have the least access to loans and are more likely to pay the loan back. Yea, something like 95 percent of the loans are paid back. There is no interest. So, I should get my money back eventually. Hey it's not a lot. If I get it back, I add in another 25 and loan it out again. I remember when I went out to get a car loan after going through consumer credit. No bank would give me a loan. The credit union that did is still my bank today, even though I live 200 miles away from it.

Read more about Microcredit here. There's many more organizations to look at and people to help, even here in the US.

Tags: project

Boring today. (Hey, go download yesterday's music!) I'm just going through all the old comics and updating them for the Comic Genesis site. You can only post them one a day, so for the next two weeks, there'll be a new comic a day there. It's a boring site, but the comics are full sized. I went and added copyrights and date to many of them. The site's been acting wanky in uploading, but is also a bit slow.

I also organized and bagged all of mine and Shelly's meatspace comics. Almost 80 comics already, mostly old and free comics.

My plan is to post a new comic every week on Tuesdays.

Tags: comic, update, project

Thanks to the Playful Painter Blog, I discovered Scratch today. This is an awesome site where you can download their program to make little games. Someone else on Scratch made the template, I just had to change the pictures. But I'd like to try making something from scratch myself.
Click on the picture to go play!!

Tags: web, project

Wanna know what movies are in the TTOTD household? Well, today, I've created a website with most of our movies on it. You can browse, request to borrow and see details on over 40 movies in our permanent library. It's part of Delicious Library and a web program called deliweb. There will be a link called TTOTD Media in the sidebar. Later we'll add games, CD's and books as web space opens up. Check it out.

Tags: web, project

I've created a director's cut of yesterday's entry. There's three new pages, a slightly different cover, a different ending, more Goony-ness, some necessary copy editing and a much improved higher quality presentation. I wanted to see if I could put together a full comic in the comic book format used in digital comics. The format is CBZ. It's basically a zipped file.

You can use a comic book reader like the free Simple Comic or Comic Book Lover for mac or CDdisplayEx or Gonvisor among many for Windows. Since it's just a zipped file with images, you could unzip it and look at each JPEG page individually as well.

The zipped comic is 13 pages long and 13.5 megs. Don't unzip if you use a reader. Click on the picture to download it.

Also, please check out and buy Eric Powell's The Goon as I've stolen his artwork and changed the words. The comic's great. Buy it or it's a fish hook in the eye for ya!

Oh, I tried to get Janice in as the Zombie Master, but it just wasn't working.

Tags: comic, project, update

This free game cost me thirty bucks! A few weeks ago, I wrote about a free zombie game I ran across called Dead of Night. Today's Thing was to put the game together. At the time I downloaded it, Dead of Night was a free PDF with all the maps, cards, tokens, graphics in the PDF. I've found out theat the game is to come out commercially in a few months. So, I decided to print out the 40-plus pages and cut out all the bits.

In just ink alone, I must have spent 30 bucks. The cards are double-sided. There are over 30 rooms, 80 cards, 50 items, 100 zombies as well as other pieces and a 28 page rule book. The whole project took over three hours. I haven't played the game yet, but it looks like there's a lot of customization and turns in the game like a Zombie movie.

Looking at the commercial version online, if the game's any good, this free game may cost me another thirty bucks. The commercial version looks nice, if not exactly the same as the PDF version graphics-wise.

Tags: game, project

It's a week of game-related Things. Monday kicks off with a whole damn professional game for you to enjoy, minus the cards. About a year ago, I recorded the rules to The Shab-Al-Hiri Roach for Shelly to listen to on her ipod at work. Last week, I contacted the nice folks at Bully Pulpit Games and they said I could share the recording on this website. Hooray!

The Roach is a rules lite, GM-less tabletop role playing game. It's not the nerdy elf 'n swords RPG new players think of when they think of RPG's, but a weird Lovecraftian mix of pompous, back-stabbing, dark humored, egotistical college professors and the hotbed of turn of the century small-town college politics. Oh, and alien roaches that infect you and guide your actions. It's eeevvviiiiiilll, I tells ya!

From the website:

The Shab-al-Hiri Roach is a dark comedy of manners, lampooning academia and asking players to answer a difficult question - are you willing to swallow a soul-eating telepathic insect bent on destroying human civilization?
No?
Even if it will get you tenure?

So, you get the idea. The game's got a mean funny bone. The setting is Pemberton college, a small northeast college in 1919. Each player in the game plays a full or associate professor just trying to get ahead. You have your enemies, other players, and your friends, also other players. You create the ever-increasing crazy plot lines around six events of a school year with the help of other players, other characters you create, and cards you draw. The cards are the genius of the game and I think open the game up to people who aren't fully comfortable playing a full-on stats-heavy RPG. The cards tell you if your infected and give you a general guide what to do each setting. And you can learn Sumarian. Think of the game as improv with dice. Act-ING! The game can be played in an evening and actually has an end and a winner. Although winning really isn't the point, it's the journey. The emphasis is on characters, black humor and just plain strangeness.

You'll need a variety of multi-sided die, from 4-sided to 12-sided and that's about it. Visit the Bully Pulpit Games download page and pick up a character sheet, a 1919 events cheat sheet, a comic, a short movie and some extra rules errata. You can check out a 14-page preview before you download the audio file as well. The game does need the cards to play which come with the game, but you could make up your own cards or better yet, go out and buy the game!. You can buy it here. The Roach is twenty bucks and if you buy the game, you also get a rubber roach. Cool. I think as a future Thing, I may try to make some more Roach cards to add to the game. Also, roam around Indie Press Revolution, there's a bunch of imaginative low-cost games both in soft back and the much cheaper PDF's.

About the audio file, it's an AAC file best played in itunes. The file is about 30 megs, contains chapter breaks, royalty-free sound effects and music and a picture you can see in itunes. The rules run a little over an hour. I admit since I didn't expect to be sharing this sound file with the world, I used my crappy microphone, didn't use my super professional broadcasting voice and have a few vocal flubs. Also, I didn't add in the rules errata. I enjoyed reading the rules and, as a future Thing, may rerecord them with some more professionalism and better equipment. Hey Bully Pulpit people, do you need an audio version of your other game Drowning and Falling? Let me know. Love your games, love to help. They've got a free version of Drowning and Falling up.

You can download the rules HERE or click on the third roach.

The Roach commands you!
Read More...

Tags: game, podcast, project, rules

I bought a package of Googly Eyes, and I had to have a cool place to keep them! So I collaged the lid, and glitter glued some eyes around, too!


P.S. I uploaded a new picture for the Felted Flower with Beaded Blanket stitch. The other picture did not have a frame of reference so you could see how small it really is, and that old background was too busy for my eyes!

More on this Thing

Tags: craft, project

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

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

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

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

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 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

Today ain't no big Thang. In trying to promote this blog, I went to this list of social networking sites. I signed up for over 30 of the 55 services, so lots more spam. I haven't seen much traffic from the sign up...I did this a week ago and was squirreling away this for a later Thing. Why are all of these sites almost identical and very sparsely populated? Testimonials lie. Does anyone know of a good blog promotion site to target readers who may be interested in Things?

Tags: links, project

Here's a set of ten small buttons, made from a button kit. Some drawn, some made from magazine pictures. All sporting our web address.
And by the way, today's the last day of April, and every comment left in April will be put into a random drawing, so today is the last day to get entered into the contest.
Hmmm, can you guess what the prize might be?

Tags: project, art, craft

This weekend I sent the following letter to all of the 'family and friends' I could find in our address book, in two e-mails, one from The G, one from me, depending on how you know us. (I know one of my aunties won't even open an e-mail if she doesn't recognize the name) One thing I learned is that our address book is terribly un-updated, so forgive me if I left you off, I'll be working on updating our address book! The other thing that I learned is Murphey's law as it applies to e-mail: as soon as you hit send, you'll remember what you forgot to write! What I left out of the e-mail was inviting you-all again to the forums page, and asking you to please send our site address, or the whole e-mail, to anyone you think might find it interesting. Thanks.


Dear Family and Friends:



Bryan and I have taken on a new presence on the interweb.
 The Thing Of The Day is a blog website with a contest. Every week day Bryan and I will each post a 'thing', photography, comics, crafts, whatever. (Shelly's definition and Bryan's pdf definition)  We'll see who can stick it out the longest, a contest of endurance. Here's the 'official' rules. (Weren't we cute as babies! And if you can't figure out who is who, my kids have informed me that my photo is in black and white because I'm older!)
Please check it out. While you're at it, check out the disclaimer page. We know that we don't all share the same opinions or sense of humor, so please decide what is appropriate for you &/or your kids. 
Feel free to leave us comments. All comments left in April will be entered into a random drawing.
luvs,
shell



If you comment on this post that you received our letter, I'll put you in the April drawing twice! Read More...

Tags: web, project

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Tags: web, project

Today's Thing is a tutorial, I've been playing with a cheap drawing program ($20) called Art Rage. The Mac program has layers, plenty of spiffy brushes, effects and features I have yet to unlock. This picture is the first tutorial. It's not a great painting, but I am an awful artist. I did learn a lot and became comfortable with the graphics pad.

Tags: art, project

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Tags: essay, project, art

Since I can remember, I've had trouble doing the simplest snap-together models. I have awful mechanical and fine motor skills: I can't paint and didn't have a ton of patience as a child. So, last weekend, I bought the Planet of the Apes snap-together model for my Thing today. It's Dr. Zaius.

I thought the box said there was no painting, so I didn't get paints.

Ooops. That'll be another Thing. Here's some more pictures of the model from my new Flickr account. They're artistic.

That's just another way of saying they're crappy pictures.

Tags: project