| celtic knot peacock |
[May. 11th, 2008|09:40 pm] |
One form Jan that I never got around to coloring and posting.
Riding home in tornado conditions is a lot of fun. Especially on a scooter. We just got home from a trip to the parents for mom's day. We hopped on our scooters and started out.
Then about a 10th of a mile later we had to pull over because the wind in front of us went from 60 mph west to 60 mph east during the same second. It died down to normal 25 mph winds and we continued on our way dodging downed trees, bricks etc. We made it home and called mom to let her know we made it and she seemed even more out of it then when we left. After we left they turned on the local news which was all weather and the center of the spiral they saw on their TV screen was right over their house about 2 minutes after we left.
We got in and took off our rain gear which is all hanging in the bathroom and will be ready to do it again tomorrow.
Tornado watch[0] ends at midnight. The fun never ends.
[0] A watch isn't the same as a warning. |
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[Mar. 24th, 2008|01:15 am] |
The guy second oldest guy who has the same Y chromosome as myself complained that I didn't have a place on my website for all my celtic knots.
Problem solved.
Adjust your font size to make it look right. |
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[Feb. 9th, 2008|12:04 am] |
I finally ran out of pictures of things I drew weeks ago. Looks like it I will need to go through the sketch book and take some shots of new things. |
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[Feb. 7th, 2008|10:28 pm] |
I got this as close to scale as possible while working freehand. Ten rungs per coil, 3 nm long, 2.5 nm wide. Science meets celtic knot.
Came home tonight with a few pounds of hops to hold for a massive beer project that is coming up. Too bad for me that I will only get a tenth of the them to use for myself. The street value of this stuff goes up every day because of the global hop shortage. We have 2 more years to go before the situation gets better but I have a feeling that even after that the price won't ever go down to what it was now that brewers have shown they are willing to pay more than they have been historically paying. |
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[Feb. 6th, 2008|09:12 pm] |
Number one hundred looks like it isn't even that knotty. |
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[Feb. 3rd, 2008|09:49 am] |
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[Feb. 2nd, 2008|09:01 pm] |
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[Feb. 1st, 2008|06:53 pm] |
First of three or four leaves. |
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[Jan. 31st, 2008|06:35 pm] |
This is a partner to the D posted 7 knots ago. I haven't drawn anything in the last two days at work because I have been under the weather. I have another ~5 drawings or so before I run out an have to draw some more stuff but I am feeling a little better today and should be back on course soon so that you won't have to see the scraps of my sketch book.
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I have an ascii art planned but don't know if I will get to it tonight.
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Spurred by a post from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) halfempty:
My last knot post had a bit about consumption in it. His post does too. To take one line more or less at random, "We feed more than 70 percent of the grains and cereals we grow to farmed animals".
Balance that with this from Pravda which talks about how humans need meat and that even the best and knowledgeable vegetarians tend to not get the balance of amino acids right.
I don't see meat as murder. I do see the western view of meat as extremely unhealthy. I try to keep meat intake to a healthy level. This isn't easy. Just 7 years ago I was having to eat 4000+ calories a day just to stay alive. Doing that on a meat free or reduced meat diet is nearly impossible. Now that I am down to around 1700[0] calories I have a lot more room for low cal vegy foods without running the risk I might loose 5 pounds and end up in a hospital. I try to keep my meat intake to 4 ounces or less per meal and don't see meat as being required once a meal or even once a day like so many Americans. When I eat out I try to eat vegetarian because it is cheaper. If I can't or feel the need for meat I try to keep it in moderation. I won't order a thick burger unless there is someone to share it with.
Lentils are tasty but are never found in America as fast food. Potatoes are great but are always fried or mashed pseudo-potatoes. Beans are good but too high in fat. I will eat a boca burger once in a while but on the whole I try to avoid faux-meat foods. The amount of environmental damage caused by Roundup ready soy beans isn't much better than the amount of human edible food we feed to calorie inefficient carcass farms. Not only that but there is a world of tasty veg food out there that does just fine not pretending to be meat so there is no need to eat bad meat substitutes.
My request to those who haven't tried it that the next time you go out to eat take a look at the vegetarian portion of the menu and get something on there. If you have never heard of the menu item then that is even better because eating only things you know about is way to limiting. It may not change your life but it should save you a little money, a little land and maybe a little guilt. If you do it often enough it may save you some inches and some medical conditions.
Am I a saint? Hell no. Once in a while I require a big hunk of meat. Tonight I will, for the first time in many years, eat a large porterhouse steak with too much gorgonzola cheese on it.
By the way, if an ignorant vegetarian ever tells you, as they have told me, that chimps don' eat meat just remind them that they are known for those sticks they put into termite mounds for a tasty snack. They aren't pulling berries out of the termite mound but bugs which are animals. If they pretend to not know about the termite stick trick then you have my permission to remove their incisors with you fist or boot.
[0] this number is abnormally low for a 6'2" person but I have a desk job and don't get enough of a work out because I have an untreated herniated intestine that might get really angry at me if I started moving more. Yes I am going to get this problem fixed soon. |
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| notman |
[Jan. 30th, 2008|08:44 pm] |
If you collect any non-virtual item[0] then you are a consumerist. If everyone on the planet were like you then there wouldn't be enough resources to go around.
[0] basically any item that uses word 'collectible' in its marketing. |
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[Jan. 29th, 2008|10:02 pm] |
Last year I spent almost $1000 on a scooter. It was the biggest expense of my life. Today I put $2500 on a new one. Cash. And it won't even be here for another week or more. |
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[Jan. 28th, 2008|08:38 pm] |
I did 5 different phoenix drawings till it finally dawned on me that I should go more abstract and not too detailed before I got one that was right.
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Saturday: won poker
Sunday: fixed scooter
Monday: Got tax refund and my 401k loan check. $2300 in one day.
As soon as they get one in stock: new scooter.
Another thing happened on Saturday: I got the gift that stopped giving a long time ago. Someone gave me a digital camera. The kind that uses floppy disks. I can't wait to charge the thing up and see how it performs. I have always wanted one of these things but couldn't afford the $1000+ price tag from when they first came out. Now I get to play with one, get bored with it, and donate it to someone else to play with. |
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[Jan. 27th, 2008|08:07 pm] |
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Last night own at poker. I am once again tied for first place for overall number of wins.
I finished rebuilding my scooter today. I haven't felt this manly since the first time I walked into the tool department at a Sears and got an adrenaline rush. Only two left over parts which I have it on good authority is a remarkably low number. I am back on the road.
I could never have done this without the help of our landlord. The unit under ours has been empty and awaiting remodeling. He let me use one of the bed rooms for the rebuild. Free of charge. It took almost three months to tear down the scooter because I didn't have all the right tools and had to wait till I could afford them. It only took me about 10 man hours to put it all back together.
Once I finally did get it back together I did run into one problem. I was idling at 17 miles per hour. But I was able to fix that with just two adjustments and now it is running the way it was before I broke it. I am one happy camper. |
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[Jan. 26th, 2008|12:14 am] |
Here is a sample piece including the pencil work so you can see how a piece starts from simple lines, gets flushed out, the under over is figured, the ink is done and the pencil erased.
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I worked on rebuilding the scooter today, have two hoses that don't connect to anything but I will figure that out tomorrow. After that rolled a smoke and drank some beer I made. A few months ago a supervisor of mine asked if I felt that living in VA was messing with my head because I decided to do my own engine rebuild, roll my own smokes an make my own beer and was showing the 3 habits of highly effective red necks.
Maybe I was just born 70 years too late. |
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[Jan. 24th, 2008|09:21 pm] |
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Today I felt lie unstreaching myself and doing a little bit of my old style pre-ascii pin and ink art with some of my new celtic knot work. Maybe on day I will do a celtic knot naked lady out of pin and ink hand drawn ascii on black canson paper with shading done in chalk and tie it all together. I know most of you haven't seen any of my pin and ink work before because most of it didn't survive the move to VA though I did get some of my sketch books back so some small examples survive. I always wanted to do ink work that looked like it was printed with carved wood cuts.
I decided to go with a simple two color lithograph style color scheme on this one which when combined with the coloring really looks like it was done from a wood cut. The colors were darker but 5824 said I should tone down the green a little and when I did that I had to town down the gold a little and the results are, I think, actually very sweet. |
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[Jan. 23rd, 2008|09:03 pm] |
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[Jan. 22nd, 2008|11:08 pm] |
Reminds me of a Pisces sign.
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After two months of buy tool, take apart scooter, find need for new tool, save money for tool and repeat I finally finished tear down of scooter. I am now starting the rebuild process. Should take about a week and I will be back on the road again. Then a week or so latter I will have the loan money from my 401K loan[0] and the money from my tax return. With that I will buy a brand new scooter. Then maybe get the other broken scooter fixed. Then I/we will have 4 scooters. One to play with (break), for 5824 to drive, one to loan/backup and one for me. For scooters in just about 12 months. If I don't have dependable transportation after that then I am going to be at a loss to explain whats wrong with me and two wheeled vehicles and will be afraid to ever try the even less reliable 4 wheeled kind.
[0] Took out loan last night before the markets opened this morning. I figured about a two weeks ago that since no one else will lend me money[1] I would loan myself the money and get 9% back on it which is going to beet the hell out of what the market is going to loose this year.
[1] never had an auto loan, never had a credit card. |
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[Jan. 21st, 2008|09:32 pm] |
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| knot redux |
[Jan. 19th, 2008|09:42 am] |
My mom wants to feel more and more like a grandmother so she asked that for her birthday I do up a design of all the grand kids initials in knot work and she prefers the ones that have dark negative space because that will work with the house decor which is (in order of appearance) white, red, black and chrome. The first step of that was figuring out the letter designs. Which is a pain because doing the same knot style 5 times is not easy and requires one not too get bored an fuck off.
I have designed the way the rest of it should look and done some sketchs of it it but haven't finalized it all yet because I want them to ok the design first before I spend hours of my life trying to be as perfect as I can be since I won't be able to digitally tweak anything I make an error on in the final work.
The good news is that even though there are two sets of grand kids that they all have the same last initial. If my family was the baby-dady type I could have had to draw 8 instead of 5 letters which I wouldn't have even bothered with. The other good news is that I am not responsible for any of these grandkids and have lots of time for projects like this.
Redux:
Back on November 26th I posted a celtic knot clover. That was before I learned to milk the Gimp. Someone in ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) ihearttattoos asked for a clover. So I pulled out that image and doctored it up a bit and made it look much nicer.
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[Jan. 18th, 2008|06:39 pm] |
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