Real-Life Legos

There is a machine out there. That makes giant lego blocks. Out of mud.

Lego blocks you can build houses with. Houses you can live in. 

HOW COOL IS THAT??

Wouldn't it be awesome to be able to crank out a house in just a few hours? 

Of course, mud can melt in the rain, so it might need some extra ingredients mixed in, but as a temporary fix it could be revolutionary, and for desert climates with little precipitation it could be a wonderful new technique for quickly building shelters, houses, sheds, etc. Whatever is needed. 

But look at that. Just look at that. Real-life legos. Spectacular.

Plushie Procrastination

Have you ever had the inexplicable urge to make stuffed animals?

Well, I have. More specifically, I did yesterday and do today. I don't know how I manage to get from my email to instructions on how to make adorable plush critters, but there you have it.

I found a whole bunch of adorable plushies on Etsy, especially video-game-themed ones, like Pokemon and creatures/characters from Zelda games, and I also found a few instructions for various stuffed animals. Now I just want to make so many plushies, it's ridiculous.  

LOOK AT THIS KIKWI from Skyward Sword!!!! SO CUTE!!!!

And this adorable Korok plushie from Wind Waker!!! 

And this tadtone plushie from Skyward Sword!

I'm on a Zelda kick here, huh? Man, Etsy is a dangerous place.

This, on the other hand, is a tare panda pillow. A pillow that I want.

DO YOU SEE THIS MEW PLUSHIE??!!! I CAN'T TAKE THE CUTENESS!!!

Unfortunately, it's a bit expensive for such a small stuffed animal ($15 and it's only 5 inches tall)

so I found this tutorial for making a Mew plushie. 

The finished product of the tutorial looks like this:

Not QUITE as cute, but still pretty damn adorable. It looks like a sort of time-consuming project, though, so who knows if I'll ever get to it. Maybe this summer, once the semester has ended. Once it's too hot for stuffed animals. . . :(

I think I want to try making this plushie first:

It's a "Cube Monster", so it's basically just a stuffed cube with buttons for eyes, a yarn line for a mouth, and little ears. It seems like a good beginner project, and look at how cute the final product is!

Unfortunately, it would still require buying fabric and stuffing, either finding and using a sewing machine or sewing by hand, and actually setting out the time to do it. Which I don't really have right now, what with all of my papers and things. 

So instead I read through these tutorials and look at these adorable fuzzy things and imagine making them. But that doesn't really help me write any scholarly papers either, so. . .

Hmmm. . .

This one I want to make for one of my friends, who loves pandas. 

How could you not love pandas, if they look like this?

There's even a tutorial for it.

And, some more tutorials can be found here:

General:

How to Make Plush Toys

How to Make a 3D Plush Pattern from a 2D Drawing

Specific:
Monster Plushie
Mushroom Plushie
Bunny Plushie
Humanoid Plushies
Humanoid Plushies

And this can be used to print out a pattern the exact size you want it.

If only I could take a crack at this now.
Maybe you can do it for me?

Procrastination: Typewriter Edition

So today, instead of getting started on my homework, I looked at pictures of typewriters on the internet.


Why, you ask? How did I get there? 

Well, I started out somehow finding Script Frenzy, the script-writing version of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Apparently it starts today, and lasts for the month of April, and you have to write 100 pages total of a script or screenplay (or multiple scripts or screenplays) within that time limit in order to "win". There's no prize, and no one actually has to read your script if you don't want them to. It's just a way to motivate writers to actually get writing.


So. I thought maybe I should do it. 


Especially since I have two unfinished scripts cooking in the back of my brain--one for a radio play, one for a movie (length TBD), that I really need to finish. The radio play needs to be done before the school year ends, because it needs to air before the school year ends. 


In other words, Script Frenzy is the perfect excuse for me to finish this radio play ASAP. And to possibly also work on the more long-term movie project.


So I registered for Script Frenzy. The website has a picture of a typewriter on it. That reminded me of how cool typewriters are. Which made me try to find a picture of mine on Google, because I don't actually have a picture of my own typewriter. And then I got lost in the magical and infinite land of the internet.


Some of the gems I found:

Girls with Typewriters:

A Typewriter Girl:

People with Typewriters for Faces:

Typewriters with Their Own Faces:

A Monster Typewriter:

A Typewriter Monster:

Typewriters in Modern Settings:

A Typewriter Pillow (of all things):

This lovely graphic of a typewriter typing fish:

And this rather fantastic vintage advertisement for typewriters as emancipators of slaves to the pen:

The Ward

Last night, thanks to the unseasonable heat, I had a hard time falling asleep. So, naturally, I decided to watch a horror movie. By myself. In the dark. Sounds like a good idea, right?

Well, actually, it was a good idea. Because it ended up being pretty good.

I discovered the movie a few months ago because of The Playboy Club. 

Amber Heard in The Playboy Club

After seeing some clips from it, and learning that the main actress (Amber Heard) was out and vocally supportive of LGBTQ rights, I wanted to find out more about her and which movies she'd been in. 


One of them was The Ward, a horror movie set in the haunted women's ward of a 1960s mental hospital.

Well. How could I resist a movie like that? Especially with such a lovely leading lady (and a lovely supporting lady--Lyndsy Fonseca, anyone?). Period piece? Mental hospital? Ghost? Count me in.

Of course, I thought maybe I should wait until I could see it with some friends. Watching horror movies by yourself tends to be considered a bit strange by most people.

But it takes so long to get people together for an event like that! And Session 9 and The Woman in Black are already next on our list of movies to watch.

So last night, bored and hot and really wanting to go to sleep, I decided to give in and finally watch it.

It really exceeded my expectations.

I was worried that there might be some issues with the whole accurately portraying a mental hospital thing, and that they might portray it as more of a horror than it really was, or portray it as not as horrible as it really was, or what-have-you. But, having not actually experienced a 1960s mental hospital for myself, it seemed a pretty fair representation to me.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

What really struck me about this movie, right from the get-go, was how well-made it was. This was no low-budget gore fest. Now, maybe it wasn't the best script or even the best premise in the world, but this movie was really well-made.

And I could tell it would be right from the opening sequence.

I think I would put the title sequence of this movie right up there with those of True Blood

and Dexter

and American Horror Story.

Really fantastic cinematography. Just beautiful.

And the music. Seriously, the music. Very good.

Lyndsy Fonseca in The Ward

That creepy female voice? Yes.

On a more superficial note. . .Lyndsy Fonseca as a little 60s nerd? So cute. So. Cute. I would totally have a crush on her character (Iris) if she were real. 


And Amber Heard is pretty as always, even with the weird almost-dreadlocks hair she had going on in this movie. But that's just me being a lesbian. Doesn't really have anything to do with the quality of the movie itself, just the attractiveness of the actresses. So. That's enough of that.

Anyway. . .


Plot-wise. . .it was decent. A classic ghost story, mostly, with sadly fake-looking SFX makeup for the ghost/monster that looked like a rubber Halloween mask. The acting (in terms of the main characters, at least) was good, and the set was certainly good, and as I said earlier, the whole movie was aesthetically pleasing; but a lot of the scares were predictable, and I never felt like I had no idea what would happen next. 


Unfortunately, I accidentally read a huge spoiler before I watched the movie, so the big plot twist at the end wasn't a plot twist to me, as hard as I tried during the movie to remove all memory of what I'd read about it. 


So, because of that (grrr!), I can't really be the best judge of its plot because I knew how it ended beforehand. Still, I would say that while the movie wasn't especially unique or original, it was very enjoyable, and is one of the better horror movies I've seen. I might not put it at the same level I would put The Skeleton Key and The Ring, but it is probably at least at the same level as The Uninvited, if not a little better (or maybe a lot better, just because of how pretty it was). 


Regardless, I would definitely watch it again. 


Even if only because I can't get that damn music out of my head.

First Letterbox Accidentally Thrown Out :(

The very first letterbox I ever saw, the one that introduced me to letterboxing in the first place, was a little tupperware container hidden inside of a hollowed-out book in my local library. A friend of mine showed it to me. She had actually found it using the clues, because she and her family hunt letterboxes together, but for me, finding this little secret in the most unused section of the library (inside an outdated Atlas in the reference section) was a wake-up call to the fact that there were countless other people out there who wanted to hunt for treasure just as much as me, and that there was actually this whole "letterboxing" hobby that I could participate in. I've longed to do so ever since.

But today. Today I found out that the Atlas-hidden letterbox is gone. On the planter's website, it said it was "inactive". I emailed the planter to ask why, and they replied that a librarian accidentally threw it out.

NOOOOOOO!!!

Terrible news. It had such a neat series of clues to get to it, too!

I'm wondering if maybe I should work with this planter to replace the letterbox. That was such a great hiding spot for a letterbox, it'd be a shame to not have one there.

But this letterboxer is pretty prolific (they have planted 352 letterboxes!!) so I don't know if they would really want the help of a newbie like me.

I think I'll see what happens with my own letterboxes first. Let's do one thing at a time, here.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail of Letterboxing

A prolific letterboxes named Choi has a Monty Python and the Holy Grail-themed series of letterboxes.

There's one for the Black Knight, one for the Trojan Rabbit, one for the Bridgekeeper, one for the Knights Who Say Ni, etc.

There are 16 total boxes in this one area (!!!!), and every single one represents another character or event from the movie! This person is dedicated!

I have not yet had the time to explore this fantastically themed series of letterboxes, but I am definitely looking forward to doing so in the near future.

Indie Games/Helsing's Fire

I've been on an indie video game kick recently. Looking into what it takes to make one, what some of the better ones are, how to get them, who made them. . .and so on and so forth.

Some of the better ones I've experienced myself are World of Goo and Helsing's Fire--the latter being one that I just discovered on this most recent kick. It's a game for mobile devices (like iPods, iPhones, possibly Droids but I'm not sure) and it is a very original puzzle game with a nice visual style, good music, and humor. I'm surprised I hadn't heard of it sooner. I actually found out about it through Autostraddle, and then kept seeing it popping up in various indie game website's top ___ lists of recent indie games, so I decided it was worth checking out. $0.99 on the Apple App Store and I got something like 120 levels of gameplay. Pretty good deal, if you ask me, especially considering the quality of this game. Normally I don't pay for games from the App Store, but this one is definitely worth it.

You play as Helsing (as in Dr. Van Helsing, from Dracula) and his buddy/servant Raffton, using a torch and tonics to rid the land of Dracula's evil minions. The unique part is that the game's puzzle mechanics are all built around light, and getting the light to fall in exactly the right places at the right times. It's very interesting and sort of hard to explain without pictures, but you should check it out. Really. I would recommend it to anyone. Helsing and Raffton's fist bumps and high fives at the end of every level are also pretty great.