#photoadayoct

The beginning of October seems like it was a long, long, long time ago now. I'm not entirely sure why... it's been the regular amount of days, it just seems longer somehow.

It's been a bit of an odd month, but fortunately I haven't really had any major instances of photo-inspiration block. The main problem was Day 5, given that it was completely overcast all day, so I couldn't get a shadow until the following morning.

There are only two Lego shots this month (Days 9 and 10), although Day 10 was a surprise hit... and is now equally tied for my "most liked" photo... clearly my Instagram followers like it when I do things with Lego minifigure heads.

• Day 1: Where I stood (while doing a Lego minifigure photoshoot)
• Day 2: Lunchtime (I went somewhere different for lunch, Zambrero on Rundle Street)
• Day 3: This happened today (this was supposed to be a shot of the conference I attended in the morning, but the photos weren't very good, so instead it's my Veggie Velo lunch)
• Day 4: What I read (I don't read things that aren't on a screen all that much anymore, so reading the artists, titles and prices at the These Walls Don't Lie art show was about it)
• Day 5: Shadow (my big stupid head on my front door)
• Day 6: I’m thankful for (TV shows with great writers)
• Day 7: Light
• Day 8: Angle (one of the many angles of The Festival Theatre)
• Day 9: Red
• Day 10: Emotion
• Day 11: Something close-up (my new headphones)
• Day 12: On the table (for Hat Day supporting mental health research)
• Day 13: Landscape (I'm a city boy, so the parklands are about as landscapy as I get)
• Day 14: Makes me laugh (the people I work with... this started out as a drawing I did on the board at work because I was the only one who didn't have leave listed... one workmate decided I needed to be a Pokemon trainer, then another decided to turn me into Hamburglar, then a third decided that Hamburglar's hat looked Jewish and turned me into Herchel the Jewish Pokemon Trainer)
• Day 15: Dinnertime
• Day 16: Something I wrote (me being very literal)
• Day 17: Fruit
• Day 18: Made me smile today (the Unboxed exhibition at Espionage Gallery)
• Day 19: Letters
• Day 20: 4 o’clock (afternoon snack)
• Day 21: Calm
• Day 22: In my town (one of the bronze pigs of Rundle Mall)
• Day 23: The view from here
• Day 24: Weather
• Day 25: People
• Day 26: Listening to (the Moby Dick podcast)
• Day 27: Morning (going shopping)
• Day 28: Looking back (this vase is the first and only time a guy has bought me roses... and I collected those shells within the day before he went back to the US)
• Day 29: Moon (getting the real moon was too damn difficult)
• Day 30: Clothes
• Day 31: Whatever I please

And we now enter the home stretch... next up is November...

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happy (lego) halloween

Even though Australia doesn't really celebrate it... Happy Halloween from me (and my Lego Halloween crew) to you!

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movies: frankenweenie

A very big (sarcastic) thank you to the two groups of Gen Y 20-somethings who believed that it was okay to talk amongst themselves during the screening of Frankenweenie tonight... between that and your coughing and general wriggling around, you managed to ruin my movie going experience.

As such, I'm not completely sure that I know how I feel about Tim Burton's latest stop motion animated movie.

The movie is a full length adaptation of one of Burton's stop motion short movies from 1984 that essentially riffs on the story of Frankenstein.

Having flicked through the original short after we came back from the movie  there are a number of shots that are essentially reproduced in the new movie, however there are a range of new characters in this new version.

I'm not sure it works completely successfully to be honest. I get that Burton is making a lot of in-jokes and references to very old horror movies, the fact that it's in black and white definitely puts you in that mind-set, but I found myself caring less and less as the movie progressed.

Whether that was because of the distractions in the theatre or not, but I felt like there were far too many additional characters, a number of whom weren't really important to the story. They just seemed to be the typical Burton quicky character rather than them being essential.

I also felt like the movie lacked heart... or possibly it didn't use the off-kilter gothic nature of the original. Either way, it seemed to be a little bit lacking.

As always, it's a good looking movie... and we saw it in 3D, which always works really well with these stop motion movies.

I just wish it was more than the sum of it's parts.

yani's rating: 1 invisible goldfish out of 5

building little traveller 2.0

I've been planning on doing an upgrade to Little Traveller (my Lego avatar/homunculus/alter ego) for a while... and after playing around with some possible combinations from the 128 minifigures in my collection I found one that I liked. Then it was just a matter of sourcing the parts... which was actually more painless than I thought it might have been.

And then all that was left was photographing the transformation.

I was testing out a black background for these shots, because it did make the colours more vibrant, but I also think some of the white pieces ended up a little too blown out. Interesting though.

Little Traveller 1.0

"Hey guys... can I get a hand over here for a second!"

"Seriously, this won't hurt a bit..."

"See, told you so... now let's see what we can make..."

"Step 1: Build a cute, musical, arm-showing, punk-rock boyfriend."

"Hello there!"

"Right LT, take a seat, it's time for a makeover!"

"Definitely the spiky brown hair!"

"This top one is good, happy but slightly quizzical and a tiny bit sarcastic."

"Just slide that old one right off and we'll pop the new one on."

"You're looking better already LT... now for some new clothes."

"It's gotta be the dark blue jeans!"

"Yes... this is definitely it."

"I think I'm going to keep my old top, after all, I am a Little TRAVELLER."

"For you LT... Happy Makeover Day!"

My new Lego boys... Little Traveller 2.0 and Little Boyfriend 2.0

And one more, just for giggles...

I attached all of the minifigs to a 5x2 block last night, and had to arrange them like this so that they would all fix...

Nothing suss... honestly!

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slightly unfocused saturday shopping

Last week I sent Ma home with strict instructions to make sure she pulled together her Christmas list.

I didn't really expect her to do it, so I wasn't overly surprised given that while she did make a list of what she already had for people, she still didn't have a clear idea of what she wanted to get people.

Which then led to a lot of generalised looking in parts of stores we wouldn't normally look in.

But that's generally getting ahead of myself...

This morning was about the same as every other Saturday morning, except for the fact that I found a little tiny lizard clinging to the tree outside. So very cute, although I couldn't take a photo of it that wasn't blurry to save my life.

The shopping portion of the morning was pretty much the same as usual too... I don't think I bought as many groceries as usual, but somehow it came out to more than it usually does... weird (and I don't think I bought that many "luxuries").

After we came back here, I fiddled about with Ma's iTunes account so that it didn't remove podcasts after she'd listened to them, and let her have a look through some of the Instagram photos from Sculpture By The Sea.

Last week Ma also mentioned something about wanting to get a new TV, so I suggested that we go and buy her one. I knew it wouldn't happen, she'd have to have a look at things first, but it at least has gotten her thinking about it seriously. And we did go down to The Good Guys and poke around their TV section for a while.

Now all Ma needs to work out is how much money she wants to spend and how big a TV she wants.

Then it was into the city again and the aforementioned wandering around parts of stores we normally don't. And not really finding anything.

I did pick up another couple of polo shirts and a new belt (my old one died on Thursday), but that was about the sum total of it really.

Now that I think about it though, I think I need to make my own list of what I've already bought Ma... I did start one, but I don't think I've kept it up.

And I'm also going to need to start planning out what goes in Ma's calendar this year since we didn't have a major trip this time around. It might need to be a local calendar this time around... a mix of old and new images... or I could always go back to all of the travel images that didn't make the grade in previous years and use those.

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photo friday: beginnings and endings

This week I thing I managed to untwist my brain a full 360°...

I was feeling all under-appreciated and overlooked and had managed to twist my brain up into all kinds of knots, but then I had a little bit of a brain explosion which made me take myself out of work and go for a big long walk.

And it was good... I think giving myself the opportunity to chew over the problem solidly for about twenty minutes actually did me a world of good.

It might have also had something to do with the fact that for the first half of the week I was kind of caught up with everything I'd been doing... but then after my untwisting, something that we've been working on and waiting for for about a year and a half finally completely randomly got approved this week.

So it's been a little bit of general panic stations and a lot of running around and much muttering.

I mentioned last week that I'd started listening to the Moby Dick audio book/podcast... and I'm about 12 chapters in and I'm loving it. The language is so rich and meaty, and the concept of having a different person read each chapter actually works really, really well.

I was a little annoyed yesterday when I got home just before 5pm to discover a "there's a parcel at the Post Office for you" note in my letterbox... especially as I'd just been past there on my way home from the shops, and the fact that I was staying a little later at work this evening for a meeting followed by a later chiro appointment... so I wouldn't have been able to go to the Post Office until Monday.

Clearly, that wasn't going to do, especially since I wasn't sure which parcel it was waiting for me, so at lunchtime I hopped on a bus, grabbed my parcel from the Post Office (turned out it was my calendar), discovered the final pieces of Little Traveller 2.0 had arrived in my mailbox, then turned around and went back to work.

It took me pretty much my whole lunch break just to get from town to home and back, but I ended up getting back about 15 minutes late because I had to get some food... but since I was staying back it all balanced out.

There's a new food truck doing the rounds... Chimichurri Grill had it's first CBD outing today, so I had to try it out. Turns out that an Argentinian steak sandwich is damn tasty.

Also, have I mentioned how much I'm enjoying the British documentary, My Transsexual Summer? It's very good, it's definitely interesting seeing how the "other half" live... and I'm kind of crushing on a couple of the FTM transsexual (and one of the MTF's too).

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random coupled hotness

Today's Random Hotness is probably a fairly accurate snapshot of where my brain is at currently.

I really need to get laid. So much so that I had a weird (yet thankfully brief) sex dream about someone I know.

So just like yesterday's Lego post was about couples, so is today's Hotness.

This couple is Thomas and Bjørn as shot by Markus Bollingmo. And the rest of the set is just as beautiful as these shots...

I didn't realise until I started poking around his website that I've seen work by Markus before when I used to follow a photo thread on Livejournal, and he always used to take artistic photos (of himself) instead of just random selfies.

And clearly, he still takes beautiful, artistic photos.

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lego same sex couples

One thing I love about photographing Lego is making up my own stories...

And I realised I had a number of "same sex" couples from my last Lego photoshoot.

So I had to invent some details about their relationships....

Oh Mikii, you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind, hey Mikii!

This may be taking the idea of humour as an aphrodisiac a bit far

The first date between Montezuma and Cortes was a little bit awkward

The computational results of our relational equation is less than three

Goofy and Nollie find love on the half-pipe

Some relationships are just doomed from the start

Harry was only really interested in Oliver for his brains

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meandering shopping saturday

Today can best be summed up by the words disappointment, American candy and walking.

It all started out the same as usual... tidying, shopping and suchlike. Although there was a new overly perky girl working at Bakers Delight to kind of needs to take it down from 11 to 9.5 given that it's 8:30 in the morning, but it otherwise an improvement on previous staff.

We also wandered around Target and I bought what should have been $55 worth of stuff, but only paid $38 thanks to one of Target's "secret 25% off everything" sales.

After we were done with the main part of shopping we wandered around to Cheap As Chips because I wanted to look at some of their Halloween stuff (not that I do Halloween, but they had a cool pumpkin light thing).

I talked Ma into picking up a little Halloween top hat fascinator (hatinator?) for Melbourne Cup Day... it was very cute and had a little veil that worked with her short hair.

I also bought a bunch of American chocolate... Reeses and Milk Duds and Whatchamacallit and Whoppers and stuff...

Then after we came back and unpacked everything (much later than usual) we headed out to the Showgrounds for the October Gift and Craft Fair.

As I said to Ma when we first got there, the whole thing smelled of découpage and depression. That's not completely true... but there was a lot of really, really average stuff, and some really cheesy looking stuff.

We did manage to pick up our usual Pudding Lane Christmas puddings and some Broughton River Gourmet sauces/jams. Other than that there really wasn't anything even remotely interesting. It wasn't the Bowerbird Bazaar, that's for sure.

After that we headed into the city briefly... not really for anything specific... but it killed a little time. And we had some lunch in David Jones' Food Hall (a very nice BLT slider and a milkshake).

Then after we dickered around at my place, checked out the photos on the Sculpture By The Sea website (and there really are some nice pieces this year... some baffling ones, same as always, but a number of really good ones).

So while there was perhaps a bit too much aimless wandering and disappointing craft items for my liking, it wasn't a bad day all up.

But I did send Ma home with strict instructions that she needs to prep her Christmas list before next weekend.

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photo friday: sculptural shapes

As I was walking down the hill by Government House this afternoon after work, I noticed a woman walking in front of me.

She had the quintessential "business" look... fitted black skirt, black blouse, high heels, carrying a briefcase.

I wasn't really paying that much attention to her when suddenly she enthusiastically kicked off one of her shoes. And when I say she was enthusiastic, the shoe went at least six feet in the air, and at least six feet from her.

A few seconds later the other one followed, and that one was even more enthusiastically discarded.

She then stepped off the path onto the grass and collected her shoes.

It made me smile so much that I couldn't help but say something.

"That's the best thing I've seen all week," I said as I took my headphones off. She laughed just as enthusiastically as she kicked off her shoes. "It perfectly sums up Friday afternoon," I finished, and she laughed again.

I hope that I made her feel as happy as she made me.

Even though it was my decision not to go to Sydney for the Sculpture By The Sea exhibition this year, I keep catching bits of the news reports on ABC24 in the foyer at work and I'm having a severe case of Sydney Envy.

And doubly so because all the footage I've seen of the sculptures is bright and sunny... unlike last year when we got rained on the whole time we were there.

Plus there are a couple of really awesome, really photogenic sculptures that I really would love to shoot.

Oh well... I just need to keep reminding myself that Outpost next April will be awesome.

Speaking of sculpture...

I went to see the Unboxed exhibition at Espionage last night... which was all Munny vinyl toys that had been customised by various artists.

There were a few nice pieces... Gary Seaman as usual... as well as Luka Va and Caitlin Millard, both of whose pieces I bought (I think Millard's might be part of Ma's Christmas present).

But either I'm really fussy about vinyl toy modifications, or I've seen a lot of really, really good ones, but for the most part, these ones didn't inspire me greatly.

And ones by artists whose work I know pretty well didn't come up to the level of what I thought they could achieve.

Having said that, I've never customised a vinyl toy, so I have no idea how easy or hard it is... I just tend to prefer it when they "respect the form of the vinyl"... and there were a lot of pieces that built on (or hacked it apart) with varying degrees of success.

And in briefer news...

I'm working on putting together Little Traveller 2.0... I just need to collect all the parts (from various minifigs) and then Frankenstein him. I think he may also get a new Little Partner 2.0 to go with him.

So once I manage that there will be a photoshoot.

This morning on the way to work I listened to the first chapter of Moby Dick from the Moby Dick Big Read project... as read by Tilda Swinton, which was awesome. But I also discovered a passage in their that perfectly sums up how I feel a lot of the time...

"...it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off..."

I like that.

And lastly... twelve years ago next Wednesday I created a Neopets account... then promptly forgot about it for about a year, then came back to it and played it up until 2010 when I drifted away from the site.

Yesterday I started thinking about it again for some reason, and realised that I still had two pets attached to my account... just sitting there. So I figured it was time to give them away to good homes.

Turns out I also had several hundred items in my account, as well as four million Neopoints in my bank account. So I spent some time giving away all my items... and when that was done, I started using my cash to buy items from people's shops and then gave said items away.

I'd already dropped one of my pets off at the pound (the one I wasn't really bothered about), but couldn't drop the other one off until tomorrow...

But then a guy sent me a message on the site to ask if I had any other items I was giving away, which I didn't... but I was feeling generous so I bought some expensive items and sent them to him... we got to talking and I asked him if he wanted the pet I'd had since the beginning. It was levelled up fairly well, painted, the whole bit.

I think I pretty much made his day (he's only been playing for ten months)... and I feel better about giving away my favourite pet. At least I got to choose who I sent it to instead of letting some stranger grab it out of the pound. I mean he's still a stranger, but he seems like a nice stranger.

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