Sharing A Video

AT-AT Day Afternoon

I want one.

Uwajimystery #15

Durian Flavour Wafer

Hua-Hua-Huaaaaaaaaaa Oh god hgrabrillll-whoaaaapfff-ahhhfuuuuuck. Best describes this weeks Uwajimystery. It is actually another Hmart item but I'm sure you could probably find it at Uwajimyaya.
Hang on a second, the package is still open across the room and I can catch wafting smells every now and then. Ok, so Durian Wafers, now I thought Durian Chips was pretty bad, and I did state that I thought Durian Flavoring probably did not exist. This product does in fact have Durian Flavoring, which is worse then actual Durian. God the smell is still on my fingers I need to go wash my hands. I just don't understand this stuff, the smell just penetrates and sticks in my nose. I'm still just not sure on the smell I can't get over the sweet sour fowl smell. At first you notice the sweet, and your like hmmm, then your like, wait, what the, ahhh oh god, what the hell was that. It does this every time, it draws you in with its sweet smell then bends you over and has it's way with you.

Instead of Durian Flavour they could have substituted month old bong water and gotten the same results.

I don't want to do this anymore.

Just keep telling yourself it's only a vanilla wafer. I did eat one whole wafer. I regret eating one whole wafer. This is by far the second worse thing I have ever eaten, the Mochi-Choco Cheese Pie is still by far the worse. If you think I'm being over dramatic or hamming it up check out these other reviews here and here.

Check This Out

Functional Furniture 

I need to go on a shopping spree at this place. Especially for a bed, this whole sleeping on a mattress on top of crates of sculpture is getting pretty old and sore on the back.

Preview of things to come

Haulin' Art

I'm working on finishing up the time lapse I took of my cross country road trip from Seattle to New York. I have all the photos put together and I'm working on tweaking it just right. There are a few parts that I had to cut out where it was just to blurry or the exposure was way off one way or the other. It took a lot of time to work through it especially on my slow computer. I think I should be able to finish it this weekend or next week depending if a certain someone(my co-pilot(this person(morrea seal))) sends me some pictures of some landscape shots and state signs. I tend to cut video time down to make it easier to watch but I think I'm going to let this one be as long as it needs to be. So pretty soon you will be able to watch the country fly by from the comfort of your chair. Until then here is a map of our journey showing each place we stopped for the night. The second night we slept in the truck in a Walmart parking lot which from the map it's still just an empty field in the middle of South Dakota.

View Directions to W 24th St in a larger map

Sharing A Video

How My Mind Works

I don't have time to write a thrifty for this Thursday but I'm going to share a video instead. This video is a good representation of my mind, both of my memory, problem solving and imagination. I'm able to clearly visualize things in my head which is why I hardly sketch or draw my ideas. I'm able to take an object like in this video and deconstruct it in all its parts and visually move around it in my head. My memory as well is not smooth when I visualize someplace I have been before it is very choppy and jumpy moving from one image to the next sort of like my time lapses. I just like this video because it's just a good representation of what's going on in this big melon of mine.

What I'm Up To

Install Video

I just finished putting together the time lapse I did of us installing John's show in New York. It was shot over a three day period and consists of 15,833 pictures.

Recomend You Watch

Hump Day

Hump Day is another Seattle Independent film. The plot is pretty simple, on a mutual dare two strait dudes decided to make a porno of themselves doing it. The story line follows the two friends through their decision not only to plan this but their actions leading up to the day they will hump. The movie overall has a great feel to it, there are a lot of great shots around Seattle. It was actually filmed in two weeks and all of the conversations were improvised. Its a great film, very funny and leaving you in suspense all the way up to the end wondering if they are actually going to go through with it. It's available on netflix for instant view, go watch it.

Uwajimystery #14

Durian Chips

This weeks uwajimystery is not something from Uwajimaya but something my sister found at Hmart, Durian Chips. Yes Durian Chips. Now just to be clear these are not durian flavored chips but actual pieces of durian fried into a chip. I'm guessing there is no such thing as durian flavor because who in their right mind would create that. If you don't know what durian is or you do but you have never had the wonderful opportunity of being in its presence it has been both described as the best and worst tasting thing on earth. Here is a little snipit from wikipidia.

British novelist Anthony Burgess writes that eating durian is "like eating sweet raspberry blancmange in the lavatory." Chef Andrew Zimmern compares the taste to "completely rotten, mushy onions." Anthony Bourdain, a lover of durian, relates his encounter with the fruit as thus: "Its taste can only be described as...indescribable, something you will either love or despise. ...Your breath will smell as if you'd been French-kissing your dead grandmother." Travel and food writer Richard Sterling says:

... its odor is best described as pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock. It can be smelled from yards away. Despite its great local popularity, the raw fruit is forbidden from some establishments such as hotels, subways and airports, including public transportation in Southeast Asia

So some asshole decides to make a chip out of this stuff where he then decides to sell it at Hmart where my sister finds it and thinks it would be funny for me to try it on my blog. Great.

I have nothing else to say.

The chips are sealed in this fancy most likely NASA designed bag to trap and seal any odor from leaking out to keep unsuspecting shoppers from having the chance to catch a small whiff of what is lying beneath that silvery surface of deception any lies. 

Read this bullshit.

So after wrestling with the bag which was hard to open probably because god did not want these to ever be opened, I caught my first whiff of wafting confusing arrays of varying sweet and sour smells. Now when I say sour I don't mean it in the good sense like sour candy or sweet and sour chicken. I mean sour as in rotting sour smell, like a piece of chicken that has spoiled in the fridge, then forgotten for a few months then opened again, tossed into the trash where it sat for a week, then was tossed into the back of a garbage truck where it sat baking and mixing with a few tons of trash on the hottest day of the year, then dropped off at the dump the same day as diaper day, mixed together for a few hours, then it's compacted more into a train car bound for a landfill, which that very train just happens to be going by you when it derails and that same piece of chicken goes flying out and smacks you in the face. That is pretty much it.

God,  To make it worse it looks like pieces that have fallen off of Tree Man's hands.

Now is this the worse thing I have ever eaten, no. It is though by far the strangest. Its flavors and smell just can not be pinpointed. My mind keeps drifting between the sweet and putrid smells. I just cant keep my mind from imagining rotting things. Nothing good about this, stay away, far away.

Sharing A Video

Fremont Solstice

Here is a video I put together of my day spent at the Fremont Solstice fair/parade. Overall I took 3068 pictures that now make up this time lapse.

Bike

Before and After

Here is the before and after shot of the beach cruiser bike that I bought and gave a paint job. I'm strongly leaning towards keeping this bike because it just looks so awesome.

Before

After

This was actually an easy and fun little project, I would like to find more bikes like this to fix up and resell.

Thrifty #12

Bikes

This weeks thrifty post is not something I found in a thrift store but something I bought off of Craigslist. I don't look on Craigslist all that often and this is the first time I have actually bought something off of there. What I bought is two bikes. They came as a pair, and although I was only looking for one bike I just could not let this deal pass. I have been looking for a bike for a while, nothing fancy just something that I could give a paint job and ride leisurely around town. I was sort of interested in an old Schwinn cruiser type bike but they are hard to come by cheap.

So back to the two bikes I bought, one is a newer beach cruiser and the other is a regular old mountain bike. Both of these bikes are is perfect ready to ride condition and the beach cruiser even still has those little rubber nubs that are on new tires. I don't think I will keep both of these bikes because I just don't have the room. I'm still not sure which one I will keep and which one I will sell. I think I could probably sell one for even more then I paid for both which would actually be kind of nice, I just need to decided which one.


Here is a picture of the first bike. It's a Diamondback Topanga SE. Its your typical mountain bike. Nothing to fancy, good tires and gears. The paint is a little worn in some spots and I think I may give it a new paint job, still not sure if it will be worth it though. Its a good bike and I rode it around today to and from Fremont.

The second bike is an Electra Beach Cruiser. Now this is a great looking bike and fun to ride around even though it's technically the girl version, which I don't really care. Its a fixed gear bike with no hand breaks and an internal three speed shifter. It has a comfortable stance and wide handle bars and big knobby tires, and pretty flowers.

Now I decided to give this one a new paint job, not that I don't like purple, I just want to give it a more unique style. I decided to paint the fenders and chain guard black to match the handle bars. I was a little unsure what color to paint the frame and even thought of going all black. Then I decided to try some of the extra paint we had left over from the bell project. The color is sort of an orange rust color. I'm still not fully sold on it yet and I will have to wait until everything is put back together.

Here are some pictures of the painted pieces, they are drying tonight and I will try and put it back together tomorrow.

Any comments of which one I should keep, anyone want to buy one of the bikes? Maybe I shouldn't tell you how much I paid for them if you want to buy one but...

Cost of bikes off of Craigslist: $37.50 each

And also in case your counting this is my 101st post. I didn't notice that yesterday was my 100th and maybe I should have done something special. Then I remembered that every post is special, at least that's what my mom says.

What I'm Up To

Windfall

I finished installing the bells for Lead Pencil Studio's temporary instillation at Seattle Center. You can read more about the project here. As well from my earlier post here.

The hanging of the bells went pretty smoothly and a lot faster then we thought. In all we hung 1020 bells, four different types. The collective ping of these bells is pretty impressive. If you sit in the middle of the space you can actually hear a breeze flow through the space form one side to the other.

Here is a picture I took of the bells hanging in the trees.

Here is a picture of the space taken from the highest possible reach of the lift I was using.

You can see more pictures of this project here.

Sharing Some Stuff

OK GO End Love

Here is the new music video from OK GO. I love the use of time lapse in this video. Its great to see the shot sped up and slowed down. Its a great example of pretty much everything you can do with time lapse. Also I love the goose that decided to just hang out with them for half the video.

Recomend You Watch

Bass Ackwards

Bass Ackwards is the new film by Linas Phillips. Its the story of a man, Linas, trying to find something new once he looses everything tying him down in his current situation. He decides to leave Seattle and drive back to the East Coast in a VW bus that has had the middle cut out. This is sort of the short gist of it but there is so much more. This movie really hit home with me, maybe because I see so much of myself in it. Maybe because I myself just went on a road trip from Seattle to New York. Maybe because I feel like my life is sort of similar to that of Linas'.  I can tell you this movie is probably not for everyone. Give it a try you might like it. 

Just so you know this trailer is pretty bad at portraying the story and feeling of the movie.

You can watch this movie now on Netflix watch instantly section and you can also watch it on YouTube for a small fee if you don't have Netflix.

Uwajimystery #13

Tako Chips

This weeks uwajimystery is a bag of Tako Chips, octopus flavored chips that is. Now, I have had and really enjoy shrimp chips and I have tried other sea inspired chips as well so octopus flavored chips is not to surprising. I sort of think most sea creature inspired flaevoring all sort of taste and smell the same, like the sea.

The packaging is pretty good as well as the little octopus shaped chips. One thing I don't get is the why the octopus character is wearing snorkel gear. Looking on the back you can see that the chips get most of their flavor from three things, octopus flavor(how ever they get that), paprika, and red radish powder. The rest is an assortment of wheat, rice and soy. Opening the bag the first thing you smell is something like day old fish that has been in your trash. Its just an overwhelming fish odor. This is the main reason I never smell the bag of shrimp chips when I buy them, its just not a good idea. Individually each chip has a lesser fish smell and when you eat them its lesser still, its more of an after taste. They have an addictive crunchy texture to them and its hard to eat just one.

Do I like octopus flavored chips, yes, I find them just as good as shrimp chips. I don't really get any octopus flavor, although the few times I have eaten octopus I haven't noticed a really strong distinct flavor, it just tastes like the sea. Would I choose octopus chips over potato or tortilla chips, no.

Sharing Some Information

Whole Grain Bread

I found a great informative video about the differences between wheat, whole wheat and whole grain bread. There is actually a huge difference not only in the ingredients but also the health factors and the amount of nutrition your get from each. White bread actually does not provide you with a whole lot, its basically just starch. Its important to eat whole grain bread as this video shows.

Somethink I Saw Today

The Rock Stacker

Tonight as I was walking in Fremont I saw a guy in the distance on the sidewalk yelling. I have seen him before about the same place across the street from the Nectar and he is clearly homeless or has some addiction or mental problems not really sure. As I got closer I could hear what he was yelling, he was yelling "Sit down Devil! Sit down!" over and over again. As I got closer still I could see that he was yelling at a stack of rocks that had one stacked on top of the other around seven feet tall. It was pretty impressive and a little sketchy because it was in the little planter area between the sidewalk and the parking spots on the street. If the stack was to fall it would probably land on one of the cars. I was amazed at how high he stacked those rocks, I just wonder how long he had been at it. I had my camera with me and I wanted to take a picture of it but I was worried about the guy because he was still dancing around the stack yelling "Sit down devil!" so I thought I would just ask him if I could take a picture. Standing about ten feet from him on the sidewalk I was about to ask him and as I opened my mouth he pointed at me and yelled "DON'T YOU FUCKING SNEEZE!" I took that as my cue to leave.

Thrifty #11

Kodak Duaflex III

For this weeks thrifty I will share something I found about a month ago, a Kodak Duaflex III from the 1950's. Its one of those simply designed waist held point and shoot cameras similar to the brownie hawkeye I found earlier. I love these cameras because of their simple design and function. The only problem with them is that they all shoot out of print 620 film, so I decided to do something about that. I found that with a little modification I can make this Kodak Duaflex III into a 35mm camera.

This camera could not be more basic, there is no focal option, a set aperture, one set shutter speed, pretty much as basic as a point and shoot camera can get. I thought this camera would be an ideal candidate to try and modify to a 35mm. I found that a 35mm roll was just slightly to large to fit into the original 620 film roll holder. I discovered that by removing stamped sheet metal holder opened up just enough space for the 35mm roll to be held snugly in place when the back cover was closed. This was fairly easy to do and really does not take any structural or cosmetic element away from the camera.

I then used a plastic 35mm adapter I had form my Holga 120. All I needed to do was cut it down to size to fit inside and flush with the original 620 film plane. I then just used some glue to fill in the gap, used a razor to cut off the excess and hit it with a black sharpie. In all, it took me about an hour to modify this camera.

I use the original 620 film spool and simply attach the end of the roll of film with some tape. Now, it is a little tricky figuring out how much film to advance for the next picture, with the 620 film you could look through the back window to see numbers printed on the film. With 35mm film I needed to cover that window to prevent light from damaging the film, which you can see that black piece of tape above. So I came up with a formula when winding the knob for the next picture. I used a marker to put a dash on opposite sides of the wheel. After you take a picture you turn the knob 1 and 1/2 turns. You do this until you take 9 pictures at which time there is enough film on the spool that you now only need to turn it one time around. It was a little tricky at first but I quickly got the hang of it, its just hard sometimes to remember how many pictures you took.

I tried taking a few pictures with this camera not knowing what would come out. I was a little worried just how much the Image would be cropped and if the lens was still good or if the film plane would match up. I was a little worried that all the pictures I was taking would not come out. What you see through the view finder now is not what will be on your film, you half to imagine the cropped image when framing what your shooting. I took this camera to folk life and I also did a few night shots using the bulb setting and doing some multiple exposure shots.

one man band

balancing performer falling

Fremont bridge at night

Multiple exposure shot of traffic

You can see more pictures of this camera here.

You can see more pictures from this camera here.

Any questions or comments of the modification this camera. If you are interested in making one for yourself I can try and elaborate more it you feel my explanation was to brief or to vague. I was actually surprised how simple it was to do. I'm going to enjoy taking more pictures with this camera.

Recomend You Watch

Up There

Up there is a short documentary about the dying art of large scale hand painted advertisements. The ones that today can mostly be seen fading away on the sides of buildings. Almost all of these hand painted advertisments have been replaced by vinal printed posters. This video documents the last few artist still keeping the art alive. And if your watching and wondering, yes it is sponsored by Stella Artos. I do somewhat shy away from corporate sponsored art projects but I'll let this one slide.

Enjoy. If you want to watch it in HD click to watch it on vimeo.

Look

Look At It!

Television is a drug. from Beth Fulton on Vimeo.

Uwajimystery #12

Boss First Class

This weeks uwajimystery is a coffee drink called Boss First Class. First off I'm not sure I'm good enough to drink this and I'm a little surprised they even let me buy it. There are many other assorted Boss coffee drinks that I could choose from but I though that I might go ahead and try something out of my league. I figured why not? I should live a little and experence the finer things in life for once.

I'm assuming the F stands for fancy.

It smells and looks just as one would assume, fancy. I was a little worried because the can does say keep refrigerated and it was just sitting on a shelf in the store but I guessed something as high class as this does not need to follow the rules or basic food handling laws. Not like those other lesser coffee drinks.

So I took a sip and while I was waiting for my door to be kicked down for intruding past the curtain in to the realm of first class I analyzed the flavors waltzing across my tongue. It tastes exactly like Bayview Manner coffee. That is to say that it tastes like watered down coffee. A little disappointing, I thought maybe for a brief moment that this drink might change me and I might develop a more refined vocabulary or invest in the stock market or hire a lobbyist. Alas, its just another crappy coffee drink.

Enjoy,

What I'm Up To

Bells and Other Things

So the past week has been pretty busy putting together bells, putting together multiple time lapse, and helping install a show at Davidson. Mostly all this stuff, especially the time lapse, has taken up most of my time so that's why I haven't been posting regularly. I'm planning on starting up regularly again here soon. Until then here are a few things I have been working on.

The show I helped install at Davidson Gallery is for Barbara Robertson which is opening on the 3rd.

I posted more pictures of the bell project on my flickr here.

I have a ton of more stuff to share that I'm working on. I'm almost finished with the road trip time lapse and the time lapse of John's install. All in time.