Thrifty #10

Stuff In Books

I tend to buy at least one book every time I go to Goodwill or value village. You can often find some amazing things and they are always so cheap. Sometimes you can find some hidden things inside of those books that people have left there. Here are a few examples of things I have found in books.

I found a book on the North Woods and inside was an envelope labeled: To Dad

Inside the envelope was a letter.

Now I don't know if this letter was given to this dad along with the book or the letter was placed in the book from something separate.

I found an amazing book done for a show that was at the Seattle Art Museum back in the 70's called Northwest Traditions.

This must have been sent to a donnor or someone associated with the museum because on the inside was this letter that must have accompanied the book in the mail.

Anyone know a Peggy Aspinall?

The last book I will share is One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest that looks like it was written in by someone inside the cuckoo's nest.

This book is filled with these little doodles and small reminders and notations on almost every page. Some of them clearly relate to the story but others are completely random.

I haven't gone through every single book I have bought page by page so maybe there are other strange or amazing things that are just waiting for me to discover. Hopefully I find some money stashed away in one.

What I'm up to.

More Work

All work and no play make Ian do this.



If you feel dizzy after watching this it's not from motion sickness, it's just that your mind can't handle so much awesome at one time. I go sleep now. More work tomorrow.

Recommending You Watch

It Might Get Loud

Over the weekend I watched the documentary It Might Get Loud. I have been wanting to see this since I saw the trailer awhile back.



I must say I was not disappointed when I actually watched it. I was worried at first that it would just be these three guys sitting around talking. It goes so much deeper in to each of their careers and their styles of playing. Having these three come together is great because you have three separate generations of players.

Jimmy Page is somewhat the pioneer and laid down much of the foundation of what is played today. His style is a no nonsense one where he is just naturally talented and doesn't want or need much more then himself and a good guitar. Moving on to the Edge you see in the start of his carrere he wanted to be like those great rock and roll types he grew up listening to but he wanted to take that to the next level. The Edge bases most of his playing on manipulating the sound that he is playing. He uses filters and software that he has spent hours upon hours tweaking to get just right. Jack White's style of playing is sort of a rejection of the Edge's and even goes back even before what Jimmy Page established. Jack White wants you to be able to hear the imperfections in the instrument. He wants you hear the story of that instrument. He would rather play a guitar he found laying in the gutter then the nicest guitar that money could buy.

It was interesting to hear the story behind each of these legends. It seems like the electric guitar has had a very long time in the limelight. It will be interesting to see overtime just where it goes and who will be the next great player to take it someplace new.

Uwajimystery #10

Rice & Peanut's Drink

This weeks Uwajimystery is fairly mild but still strange nonetheless. Rice & Peanut's Drink.

Who are Rice and Peanut? Do you think they may be two friends who wanted to capture some fame off of their names? What better drink for Rice and Peanut to come up with then a rice and peanut drink. Then with all food products you have to go through the challenge of coming up with a catchy name. Seeing how Collon was already taken I guess they decided to just name it after themselves. Rice and Peanut's rice and peanut drink may seem like an odd pairing at first but thinking about it more it seems fairly fitting. I have had a lot of Asian dishes with both rice and peanut that taste great. I'm sure Rice and Peanut also figured this out as well. 

Upon opening Rice and Peanut's Drink the first smell is of course peanuts, you don't really smell rice. Pouring it into a glass it is a fairly thick drink with a few speckles of bits what I'm guessing is either rice or peanuts. Its a healthy brown color if there ever was a shade of brown that could be described as healthy. Actually looking at it sitting there in the glass it sort of reminds me of this.

The first sip reveals a mild peanut taste and a rather strong watery taste. Rice doesn't really come through for me. Peanut's peanuts seem to dominate the drink. Its a bit odd tasting, it can be described as watery peanut soup. You could probably get the same effect if you put a little dab of peanut butter in a glass of water and mix it up a bit. I'm not really sure where rice comes into play with this drink. Odd.

Random Clicks

More Canon Ae-1 Pictures

Here are some more pictures from my Ae-1. You can see the rest on my flickr here. The pictures range from Bellingham, to the Publix Hotel, to Lead Pencil Studio.

Here are a few.

Currently Listening To

Song Of The Moment

I heard this song while working at John's a while back and it has slowly become my favorite song of the moment. It took me a while to discover just what this song was. John had it on a burned cd that was only marked FEB. He didn't know what the song was. It wasn't until this morning when I heard another song from this band that I discovered who played it. Its the song "Curs in the weeds" by the band Horse Feathers from Portland. I love the cello and especially the fiddle in this song. I'll probably play this out in a week or so then I wont be able to listen to it for awhile.

What I'm up to.

Sleep

In the time it would have taken me to compile the time lapse I did today, then go on to explain just what it is and what I'm doing, I'm going to go sleep instead.

Recommending You Watch

La Moustache

La Moustache is a very interesting film with one WTF moment after another. It starts off simple enough with a man sitting in the bath tub shaving his face. On a whim he shaves off his mustache he has had for years. Thinking that his wife and friends will be surprised he is shocked and mad at the end of the night that no one has noticed. He suspects that his wife is playing a game on him. That's when it gets a little strange. Everyone claims that he has never had a mustache. He knows he had a mustache, you the viewer knows he had a mustache but everyone else claims he didn't. This is only the beginning of his plight, suddenly his whole world that he knew starts to disappear. People and things that he knows exist and that you the viewer have seen him interact with start to suddenly not exist at all. You are not really sure if he is going crazy or if the people around him are or if this is one big joke.

I found this movie to be very captivating and somewhat frustrating having to watch what this guy goes through. You as the viewer see the world through his eyes. You believe that the things that people tell him don't exist actually do because you have seen them with your own eyes. Watching his movie must be what going crazy feels like.

Here is the trailer.



I definitely recommend you check out this film.

Uwajimystery #9

Cheetos

(sort of)

This weeks Uwajimystery is Cheetos, mysteriously flavored Japanese Cheetos to be exact.

They appear to be genuine Cheetos made by Frito Lay. The flavoring appears to be from another product giving the Cheetos a speckled coloring rather then the neon orange powder like the normal Cheetos, the way god intended them to be.  Also what is up with the dude in his underwear riding a raft?

Upon opening the package the first smell is somewhat sweet and a little salty. Nothing all to unpleasing but also nothing that really stands out to just what the flavoring is. The first taste is somewhat sweet as well but then that mysterious flavor comes at the end, seaweed. It is an odd paring of salty and sweet. Having a Cheeto as the carrier of this combination is not all that great as well. I'm really not to sure of what to make of this product. I still can't wrap my head around the combination of the smell and the taste.

Do I recommend Seaweed Cheetos? I guess if your a Cheeto fanatic and you want to experience Cheetos in all their forms go right ahead. For me if I want to eat some Cheetos I will stick to the chemical orange cheese kind. I wonder what other kind of Cheetos exist our there in the world.

Random Clicks

Canon Ae-1

I got a few rolls of film developed that I took with my Canon Ae-1. Its always a crap shoot with film, sometimes the shots you think will look great come out all blurry and some random shots you take are actually the best ones. The pictures I uploaded to my flickr are sort of the best from two rolls. They range from pictures I took up at Casey, to my sisters and to John's studio. I still have a half roll in the camera with pictures from Bellingham but those will half to wait.

Here are some of the pictures but you can see the rest here.

Tucker lying on the couch wondering what I'm doing.

Random dog fetching a stick out of the water at Casey.

I love lamp.

Pineapple Upside-down Cake.

Planning On Doing

Time Lapse

So I will be driving across the country here in a few weeks from Seattle to New York. I'm thinking I would like to do a time lapse of the drive. Now this would be a huge undertaking not only with the amount of data and battery consumption but also figuring out how to program the time interval. I could bring my lap top to control the camera but then I would have to deal with figuring out how to charge that as well.

I have been looking online for some solutions and I did find two timer controlers made for canon cameras one was a cheap model which was the Satechi TR-C which has the limitation of only being able to shoot a maximum of 399 pictures in one setting. This would mean that I would have to reset it about every hour or so. The second option is a canon brand controller called Canon TC80N3 This seems to be exactly what I would need but it costs $200. So I then decided to look deeper in the interwebular tangle of tubes for another solution.

That's when I found this site. It goes into detail on how to use almost any Texas Instrument grafting calculator to control the time interval of your time lapse shoot with virtually endless intervals and shots. So I just bought an old Ti-83 for $20 and i should be able to connect the mini jack of the calculator up to my camera. If this works it would save so much time, money and hassle. Now all I have to worry about is all the data. I would like to have an interval of 10 seconds giving me 360 pictures every hour. I think if I drop the quality down to small I should be able to get a days worth of pictures on a 16gig card.

As for power I think I may buy a power inverter to plug into the cigarette lighter and then just plug my camera into that. So I think I have all that figured out. So now I just need to make some sort of mount and also I think I will build some sort of insulated enclosure to lessen the noise of that continuous click. Even though the truck will be pretty loud and we will probably be listening to music it might get annoying just having it open.

Will I actually put all this together and do it? Maybe. It's sort of a once in a life time thing. It is a pretty big undertaking though.

Thrifty #9

Welsh Spoon

This weeks Thrifty post is not actually an item I found in a thrift shop it is actually an item that belonged to my grandma and was given to me last week. Its a Welsh Love Spoon that is carved from a single piece of wood.

The spoons were carved by young men for the girls they wished to marry. They were often presented to the girls father to prove to him he was capable of providing for his daughter. There were symbols in the spoon that show different things. The lock and chain in this spoon show security and safety.

The more elaborate the spoon shows off the skill of the maker and also proves his capability to support a family, supposedly. Another element in the spoon is the carved balls which show how many children the man wishes to have. The balls were the hardest part to carve. It takes a lot of patience to carve out a ball and cage from solid wood. The more balls you carve show the more patience you have and also show that you could probably handle the number of kids that you could carve out.

Now its nice to think that this is a tradition to show off the wood working skills of a welsh man wanting to marry a woman. I think this tradition was started and perpetuated by all the fathers of the daughters in Whales. Well just think about it. If you force your daughters boyfriend to carve you one of these before they get married, he is going to spend all of his time with his hands on this and not on your daughter.

What I'm up to.

Work

All I have been really up to is work and work and more work. I'm working on finishing two projects for two different artist right now. One when I finish it I will be driving it to New York and helping install it. The other project will sit for a few months before it will be installed up at the border crossing in Blaine. So much to do in so little time. Its good I have a lot of work now because after may 15th I probably will not have any set work until some time in June. The next few weeks will pretty much consist of 10 and 15 hour days every day, then drive out to New York and work for a few more long days installing then have a few days to explore the city, then fly back home and start working on stuff for my etsy shop the next few weeks after that. Busy, but I'm doing stuff I enjoy so its not all that bad.

Here are some pictures of the project I'm working on for Lead Pencil Studio. You can read more about this project Here and Here.

So we have all the large sections done. All that is left to do is finish a smaller section and then stitch together some of the pieces. If you look at the pieces there the one on the right is the center the second and fourth pieces are the sides and the third and fifth pieces will sit on top of those side pieces. Hopefully they fit together. 

Also sitting in the yard are some benches that will be installed along 12th ave in the next months or so. They are actually carved out of old street curbs from around Seattle.You can see one there in the foreground and the rest in the background with their stands sitting in the middle.

Recommending You Watch

Big Rig

I watched the documentary Big Rig last week and I found it fairly interesting. I think one of the goals of this film was to open up our eyes to the trucker culture and maybe even quash the belief that all truckers are racist rednecks. I think this film actually enforced the belief that most truckers are racist rednecks, at least some of the people they interviewed were. It was also interesting hearing from almost every one they interviewed their belief that the government was trying to tell them what to do and was taking away their freedom and independence. They did interview a wide range of people from all over the country, some that will surprise you and others you can read like a book from the first second. 

My favorite part and what seemed to make the move from me was the interview from Jacek. He seemed to be the only one who could see the job for what it was. Everyone else seemed to have a lot of personal baggage they took with them on the road. 



If you like documentaries I would recommend this film. Its a fairly easy watch and you get to meet all sorts of interesting characters.

Here is the trailer.

Uwajimystery #8

Cheese Pie

Why do I do this to myself. There is no simple way to start off this weeks Uwajimystery other then saying this is by far the worst thing I have ever eaten. Frickin' cheese pie. I knew when I bought it that there was no way in hell that it would taste at all good but I had no idea how bad it would actually taste.

Yes, that is cheese and yes that is chocolate.

Do I even half to explain myself? CHEESE AND CHOCOLATE WTF!!?!

It looks innocent enough and even somewhat edible, don't fall for it.

How can I explain what eating this is like... It tastes like cheese wiz that has been spread on a chocolate bar. Your initial reaction is somewhat trying to understand just what the hell is in your mouth, then it hits you. The most god awful combination anyone could come up with. Why God Why? After spitting out and rinsing out my mouth over and over again I almost felt like crying. I felt violated. That taste would not leave my mouth. I think along with of worrying about all the lead that China is putting in toys we should also ask why the hell they are putting cheese in our chocolate.

Here is a video of John eating it for the first time.



For the love of god do not eat this. You have been warned.

Busy Weekend

Taking Down Bloom

I was up in Bellingham on Friday and Saturday taking down John Grade's instillation at the new Whatcom museum. The original plan was to walk them to the bay and thrown them in the water like he did at the show over in England last summer. You can see the video of that here. But at the last hour there was a change of plan. You can read all about the controversy here. So we had to come up with a new plan. In the end it turned out really well and it ended up being much more public and city involved. You can see some photos from the Bellingham Herald here. I'm working on putting together a video that Moorea and I shot of the event but in the mean time I have some photos. 

First off lets have a look at the pristine waters of Bellingham bay.

Beautiful Bellingham.

This was the original location where we were going to toss the sculptures in the bay.
 

Here is the start of the procession at the museum. There were about 100 people there at the start and then a few hundred when we got to the end.
 

Once the procession began I started taking video with my camera so you will have to wait a while until you can see just what happened to the sculptures but below you can see all that was left of them.
 

There were nine pieces in the procession and all that remained in the gallery was this loan piece which was partially melted away by the pool of black ink. 

 You can see the rest of the photos here.

Sharing Some More Stuff

Worlds Dumbest Dog 

I just had to share this video. The combination of the owner and the dog are just priceless.

Sharing Some Stuff

Russian Board Games

I love the styling of these 1920's and 1930's age Russian board games. Some have a great art deco design and are somewhat similar to the Soviet poster art around that time. I have no idea what any of this says, I am assuming some of these games are similar to Risk. I found this via my intertubular source but the original source is unknown. Enjoy.