How to make a Better Batman

This is not my idea, it was stolen from another website out in cyberspace...

The only raw materials that you will need are an umbrella and a hooded zippered sweatshirt. You will also need some tools and supplies: needle and thread, pins, pliers, scissors, and something to cut the umbrella ribs, such as tin snips, bolt cutters, or cutting pliers. Unscrew the top of the umbrella. Pop off the short wires that hold the ribs to the part that slides up and down the stem of the umbrella – they are like staples, and you can use your pliers as a staple remover. Then use the pliers to untwist the two wires holding the ribs to the plastic parts on the stem of the umbrella. Unthread the wires from the ribs, reserving wires for later use. (see Fig. 1)

Halloween Post 2

Ideas for when you’re late to a party and have 20 minutes:

Edgar Allen Poe: (the Raven) Buy a 1$ black bird at the dollar tree, and tape it to your shoulder. If it falls off during the night make a dead parrot joke out of it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npjOSLCR2hE

Bat Costume: Make a bat costume out of an umbrella, a black hoodie, and a black skirt (see how to make a bat costume).

Leaf Blower: Tape a leaf on a string to a hat with a brim. I’m a leaf blower, phhhh!.

Devil in disguise: long tan coat, mustache, and two red horns made out of construction paper. (sneak around sneakily).

Facebook: Tape a book over your face.

One direction: one way street sign on a white shirt.

Counter strike: sign that says no more counters.

Feeling under the weather: weather sign above your head taped to a stick on your back.

Halloween Post 1

Arf! You didn't think I would forget Halloween did you? To start off the fun, I found some ideas to dress up as just in case you forgot to create a costume. :) These are perfectly viable, and very easy/inexpensive ideas. And they are great for laughs.

Cat out of the bag: Wear cat ears. Hold an empty bag or pillowcase. Purr-fection!

Tickled Pink: Dress from head to toe in rose or fuchsia. Accessorize with a feather boa.

Self-Portrait: Carry a large, empty picture frame (minus the glass) and hold it in front of your face.

Buccaneer: Tape a 1$ bill to each of your ears. Now you’ve got a buck an ear.

Pumpkin Pi: Dress in orange. Cut out a pi symbol from black paper and tape it to your shirt. Look infinitely more festive.

Bottleneck: Grab an empty bottle from the recycling bin. Tie a string around it’s neck, then loop it around yours. Complain all night about “traffic on the 501”.

Split P: Cut out a large p from a piece of colored construction paper, then cut it in half. Tape it to your hoodie so that the zipper appears to slice through it.

Fork in the road: Wear black. Using white duct tape, make a line of dashes (your lane lines) that begins at one ankle and ends at your collar. Fasten a fork along the route.

Iron Chef: Wear a chef’s hat or an apron and hold an iron. Bonus points if a friend dresses as Mario batali.

Ceiling Fan: Ready? Ok! Use adhesive letters or masking tape to spell go ceiling! On a shirt. Carry pom-poms or mopheads. Short pleated skirt optional. 

Happy Halloween!

update

Well, it's been a little while, hasn't it?
It's funny how life can get in the way of life. And so on and so forth. In the minor notes category, I have been low on sleep, and a bit on edge lately. :( We have lots of things on our to-do list which take multiple steps to finish or accomplish, such as DMV visits. These are becoming a weekly thing. However, step one is finished. Hooray! we passed the DEQ checkpoint. Now on to the DMV for stickers. This reminds me, so far I have opted not to brand my new (relatively) car with any tattoos or bumper stickers. This seems to me a good Idea. However, I do have a few fun bumper stickers I am tempted to attach via magnetic strips so they are removable. Lets see, we haven't managed to meet anyone in our new town yet, short of the grocery clerks we see almost on a weekly basis. We sometimes stop to chat, but only for a moment. I'm still not sure if they recognize us yet or not. We would like to start a game night ministry at our church but have not had a chance to talk to anyone about it. Tuesday nights are the college/post college group meetings but Tuesdays have a way of slipping away from us. On the plus side, we have been going on walks, I just bought a pair of converse shoes (a birthday present from my Gma Mary, thank you!!). We have been playing games, including the new starcraft II computer game.

A brief intermission while I give a short review to Blizzard on their Starcraft II. We have been playing the campaign, which as opposed to starcraft or Warcraft III, is actually worth playing! It has a great storyline, interactive missions, side missions, lots of awards and achievements, and well put together. However, they cut off the campaign a third of the way through, and make you buy the next two thirds in installments such as the heart of the swarm. Free play, which is custom maps is set up fairly intuitively, but it can be hard to find games to play with your friends. the maps are in difficult-to-navigate lists buried under menu after menu. to find a decent tower defense for example, you have to click on arcade, then on custom, then on genre, then on tower defense, then you only see the most popular. bookmarking games, or saving them locally can be a pain in the neck.

Back to my life: the rabbits have been very quiet as of late, which is nice, I think they may be missing all the chaos of college life. :P We are usually out of town during at least one day per weekend, which makes us run down all the more, but we need people interaction and it can be hard to host parties at our place. :( In any case, this weekend should be fun, and hopefully not too busy. We are both ready for a nice long break from everything, which is coming middle of November.

Anything else? Not sure, feel free to comment questions or thoughts.

--shaggy--

Story Write

Hey, this is shaggy,

Today I will be going over a few scenes from books which may never be published. These scenes are inspired by similar works of fiction, so don’t expect them to be totally original. Some people focus on their characters, and let them tell a story. I don’t have too many voices in my head, and most of them never quite turn into characters. Don’t get me wrong, I am fascinated by different people, personalities and attitudes but I prefer to observe and appreciate rather than to find my own. Someday they will come creeping in, but I am a visual person who prefers creating scenery and scenarios. Perhaps someone can come along by with characters to fit the scenes. Alrighty, here is the first one:

Weather Here (WET)

Good Marning, woof woof, *shakes water off*
Well, after my morning walk in the rain, I thought I would pass along some true-isms about Washingtonians. These have been around for a while, but they are still humourus.

You know you're from Washington/Oregon when:

Use the words "sun breaks" and know what it means.

Consider if it doesn't have snow on it or has not recently erupted, regardless of altitude, it is a "hill" not a mountain.

Only honk your car horn if a collision is imminent, NEVER for anything else.

Personally know someone from Alaska.

Consider swimming an indoor sport.

Think skiing always means being covered from head to toe, in snow or water.

In winter, go to work in the dark and go home in the dark, but only have an eight hour day.
You know all the important seasons: Almost Winter, Winter, Still Raining and Road Construction.
You buy new sunglasses every year, because you cannot find your old ones.
You measure distance in hours.
You think people who use umbrellas must be tourists.
You get a bad sunburn on the first really nice day of summer.
You become frightened by the bright yellow orb in the sky until the 9-1-1 operator tells you it's just the sun...

A post of no significant meaning, other than to remember not to ever invite mathematicians into your house, or elephants for that matter

Several Mathematicians get together for a party. During the hors devours, they notice there is a large white elephant in the room gobbling all the peanuts. Not knowing what to do about it, they asked the only scientist who was willing to come to the party: Newton. Newton declared that through the laws of motion, the colder the elephant is, the slower he would continue to eat the peanuts (newton suggested they use alchemy to turn the elephant into gold, but the mathematicians pointed out this would do nothing to change the elephants intake speed). Therefore, they elected to put the elephant into the refrigerator. They divided into groups to decide the best way to fit the elephant into the refrigerator...

Mathematicians, and their silly rules

Yip Yip, good morning everyone!
Below is an excerpt from the scrolls of a famous mathematician of which I found lying around an old hobbit dwelling. Enjoy:

Most mathematicians are familiar with -- or have at least seen references in the literature to -- the equation 2 + 2 = 4. However, the less well known equation 2 + 2 = 5 also has a rich, complex history behind it. Like any other complex quantity, this history has a real part and an imaginary part; we shall deal exclusively with the latter here.

Many cultures, in their early mathematical development, discovered the equation 2 + 2 = 5. For example, consider the Bolb tribe, descended from the Incas of South America. The Bolbs counted by tying knots in ropes. They quickly realized that when a 2-knot rope is put together with another 2-knot rope, a 5-knot rope results.

grumble stumble snarf

Mondays are certainly dreary days. First my master woke up early, while I was still trying to sleep. He fumbled about for a bit in the kitchen, and even knocked over my water dish! It is cloudy and dull today, the weather finally cooled off however, which is nice for a sheepdog. :) However, once he went off to work, the house quieted down, and I was able to curl up on the floor next to the dresser and keep my other master company. We've been dozing for a while, just enjoying the relaxation. I think later today I may take myself for a walk and get the mail. Rather hard to turn the mail key with my nose though, I might have to take my master for a walk. :P In other news, the rabbits are still asleep (thank goodness they had a marathon Mao session the other night, that's what I get for posting the rules online), so I think I'll make myself some apple cider.

Mao

A ludicresly complicated card game for all you fanatics out there. :) Enjoy!
"Borrowed from Wikipedia, and modified for your viewing pleasure.

Rules of Mao

Part of the traditional experience of Mao is a new player being forced to learn some or all of the rules of the game through observation and trial and error. New players are not given a list of rules, they have to discover on their own.

Public rules

·        "The only rule I can tell you is this one"

·        “Goal is to eliminate all your cards”

·        “Plays like uno (place a card which matches either suit, or number)”

·        “Point of Order”

Rules of play

·        Each player is dealt an initial hand of the same number of cards, (7 cards).

·        Use 1 deck for every 2 players.

·        Place deck in middle of table, and flip the top card face up.

·        The dealer says: "this game of Mao has officially begun".

·        Players cannot touch their cards until the game begins.

·        Players can play any card which matches either the suit or value of top card.

·        If the player has no cards he can play, he must instead draw until he gets a playable card.

13

Good (woof) Morning on Friday the 13^th.

Here are some friendly words of advice:

Never open a black umbrella in the house. Black is the color of unlucky-ness. However, I have learned that opening a pink, orange, or tabby colored umbrella inside a dwelling to cause not bad luck to fall upon the owner. However, three days after the fact they surfaced covered with tiny scratches and sheets of strange colored fabric.

Yawning, although often considered cute by humans when pets yawn is also considered bad luck. In the olden days, when humans wore less suits and built things out of stone, there was a lot of fear by us dogs about silly things. Our life spans were shorter, and strange things could happen. An innocent yawn could bring about the devil, or in worst scenarios, lead to a deep peaceful slumber, and the humans may assume we died and bury us. We had to be very alert, and often found secret places to hide to take our naps. It was popular for those places to be up and out of the way, such as the roofs of thatched buildings.

Aaaarggg

Sometimes people are very hard to get along with. This is why I prefer the company of animals. People can be nosy, ornery, obstinate, and demand to have things their way (By the way, the people I am referring to aren't part of our group). It can be very tiring to work with them, to keep up a good front and to smile. But that is often our job. Grrrrr... Wish I had a good game of pinnochle with the rabbits to look forward to. I'd say more, but that may not be the best idea.

To end with, the weather is nice, I think I'll lay in the grass and chase butterflys the rest of the afternoon.


Grrwoof!

Looooong update

Whew! It's been rather hot this summer, too much running around and not enough lakes and streams to cool down! While my master has been slaving away, and "claiming" to be trying to catch up on sleep, I have been doing all those wonderful summery things that all dogs should be doing. I've read books, laying out on the grass, using my paws of course! Ever tried turning pages with your nose? Quite difficult, quite difficult indeed. In between my book spells, I have been walking myself around the park, and taking long naps in the sun. Highly recommended for all! Oh! The other day I ran through a cornfield, creating what humans call a crop circle. I do this to confuse them of course. :) Halloween is beginning to pop up in stores, and soon will be the first holiday of the new school year! Not counting labor day of course. I am rather excited about Halloween this year, as my master lives in an apartment complex, and we see/meet all the kids in costumes! The last two or three years we have had candy all ready and almost no visitors. :(

The Muse

An owl I met today on my afternoon walk to the river. He said his name was Muse. An interesting name for an owl, yet I inquired no further. I enjoyed the pleasant conversation we shared as he flew alongside me on my usual solitary sojourn. I asked him what his occupation was. He declared in a decidedly British accent, his voice soft and clipped, "I flutter over the shoulders of others, often adding to their work, and I give them something, a tangible object they put into their writing, or story. And in return, they give me perspective, a way if you will to look through the eyes of another."

Snoopy

*I had a few snoopy comics posted here, but alas they have dissipated. *

A fellow enthusiast. Woof! I may do the same today. Live it up!

*Please Note, this is a comic by Charles Schultz, one of my favorite comic book artists. Seeing as how he signed his name on the comic itself, I don't this can be construed as plagiarism or anything of the like. :P

rain

Rain can be very refreshing, and really helps with the air quality after a couple of weeks of hot sun. After the rain knocks the hot air, and fumes out, the air smells fresh, and the landscape is greener. The grass is still too wet to roll around in, buy my master promised to take me to the pool this afternoon! I'm looking forward to a bit of doggy paddle-ing, and then stretching out to dry out while my master sits in what he calls a "hot-tub". Why humans like the contraption is clueless to me, I hate hot water. Warm water is fun, but only for so long, then I need to dry out. It is rather boring though, my master has to work late today, and he said something about picking up food on the way home. Alas.. I shall have to be patient and wait for another hour. I guess I will go join the bunny's poker game. I think the blue one cheats though.

Woof!

in response to a friend

words and thinking aren't working for me today, the weather is rainy, and work is rather humdrum and blah. But in in any case, I shall endeavor to phrase this as best as i can:

First of all, there is a joy which comes from God when we step away from our own issues to help someone in need. Jesus made a point of picking disciples who had not quite conquered their own issues to join Him. This led to two powerful messages for us: 1) God calls the imperfect, 2) God teaches us along the way. Jesus time and time again used His disciple's greatest weakness and turned it into their greatest strength. Peter is a great example for one. I believe God gives us joy, and great happiness in doing things for other people.

R2D2

Thought you may be interested:

http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/?cid=wwa-us-kwa-mac-aos 

Meet R2D2, probably the most common joke about this new machine. That, and that it looks like a trash can.

joking aside, i was impressed with the specs:

1 processor slot (Intel 12core proc)

2 video cards (AMD oddly enough, both pulling at least 2 gig of ram)

4 ram slots (I'm behind on how much one slot can hold, but lests say 32-60 gig of ram depending on how much you want to spend).

Upon inspection, It seems like these three boards (the main board, and 2 graphics boards) are arranged in a sort of triangle, with a backplane port in there somewhere. The only cooling is the center of the piece, which uses one fan to cool the entire gadget. the cpu, and video cards are all facing in towards the center, and it is assumed the bottom of the unit contains the power supply.

I also noticed after inspection, there are no monitor ports on the darn thing. I was confused until i remembered that apple has their new "Thunderbolt" port, which is a fancy way of saying this port will do anything with the right 30$ dongle connected to it. :P there are 6 thunderbolt ports, so i will assume you can probably hook up 2-4 monitors at least if you really wanted to.

Finally, Apple is introducing a new type of flash hard drive storage. this is essentially a card connected to a PCI-E slot. This card is supposed to be about 10 times as fast as a standard 7200rpm basic hard drive. They didn't bother to mention how large the storage card is (64gig-512gig my guess), but who knows?

in any case, this whole strange contraption is about 6 inches wide, and about 9inches tall, allowing for a beautiful look, but rather limited upgrade capability.

Worry

I tend to worry. A lot. This has become more prevelent with a great many people I talke with and converse with. Our society, and in a way, life as we know it has become economically more difficult. An entire mis-placed generation, all of whome remember 9/11, graduated into a bad economy, watched gas prices soar, and ipad sales plumet are not prepared for what is ahead of us. We stay in contact better, but spend less time having genuine conversations. There are all kinds of things to worry about. America is in more than a slump now, I believe it is a spiraling effect which we may not claw our way out of.

math?

So, (woof) I can see my master never did get back to his silly mathematics post about integration. I shall take over for him and teach you my way. :)

Integration is just a fancy word for a grassy hill in the sunshine. Yep, that's all it is. A grassy hill. I happen to be laying down, enjoying the green grass, and slightly cloud covered sky when I begin to think. Dangerous pasttime eh? I begin to wonder if there are any dwarves living under this hill of mine. Heavens to goodness I would hate to be interrupting some mining excavation of grave importance. Then I realize it could just as easily be a goblin horde beneath me. How many are there? I ask myself. Well, that depends on how large the area is, and how many nasty goblins would fit in an area that size. Now I'm no great shakes at math, so I make a rough guestamate. The hill is about an average hill, that is no bumps or strange curves. Let us assume a "bell-curve" sort of like that liberty bell you humans go to gawp at.

Integration

The second part of calculus is simply about finding the area under a curve. Pre-calculus mathematics accomplished this by breaking an unknown area into parts whose area they could calculate. for example, a surface like a bell curve can be approximated by drawing small rectangles along it. the smaller the rectangles, the more accurate the approximation will be. Newton and Liebniz both discovered that you can use calculus to solve these approximations for an infinite degree of accuracy. Using integral calculus, it is possible to continue making the rectangles so small, they can calculate the area under a curve to total accuracy.

An integral is a set of rectangles from one given point, to a second given point on a graph, underneath a known curve (an equation of a line). I will finish editing this later.

A Year of Excitement

Wow, packed summer ahead much?

The Hobbit Desolation of Smaug         December 15th, 2013
Star Trek Into Darkness                      May 16th, 2013
Ender's Game                                     November 1st, 2013
The Lone Ranger                                July 3rd, 2013
World War Z                                     June 21st, 2013
Superman, Man of Steel                     June 14th, 2013
Elysium                                              August 9th, 2013
Fast and Furious 6                             May 24th, 2013
Wolverine                                          July 26th, 2013
Oblivion                                             Now Playing
Despicable Me 2                                July 3rd, 2013

Bilbo for president!

Throughout our history, we have had 44 presidents. For fun, I have listed them below:
18th Century
George Washington,
19th Century
John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, Grover Cleveland, William McKinley.

A brief introduction to advanced mathematics

Calculus is a scary word. As a high school senior, I dropped out of AP Calculus after the first semester. However, I later took Calculus I, II, III, and IV in College. I will begin by listing some prerequisites to Calculus I, followed by a brief introduction to Calculus I (called Differential Calculus).


Prerequisites:
At least one year of algebra is required
One year of stats is helpful but not required
One year of physics is helpful, but if you have not taken physics, then this will help you there too!

Grey Days

Sometimes, a day just is grey. You curl up on the grass near your kennel and it starts to rain. Woof, and now no sunbeam to fall asleep to. However, in these days, some ray of sunshine always manages to shine through. My masters fed me hot chocolate this morning, and brought me to work with them. :) We didnt' play catch, but I got to ride in the car for a few errends. Besides that, I hear a party of some form is going on this weekend. And partys are always fun.

In other news, the hobbit is coming out in december (you know, that time of the year when humans bring big pine trees into their houses, and fluffy white stuff blankets all around). I hear it will be a really good movie, with lots of dwarfs and hobbits! I know my master considers himself a hobbit at times, so he should be really excited! woof! Squirrel! Oh there I go again, getting distracted. I began reading master's book yesterday about hobbits, and it is quite intriging. Not to say I haven't read it before, but I never noticed the Dwarf song continuing throughout the novel. If you look up the song misty mountains cold, you will find a singer by the name of shadowca7 who sings all 20+ verses. Its quite haunting, and beautiful.

Woof for now,

clouds (not to be confused with clowns)

As i wake up and roll over to what used to be eggshell blue sky, this morning there is a thick blanket of clouds all around. Although the nights are warmer, the days have cooled off by a solid 15 degrees. The wind is slightly blowing, waving the leaves on the trees as if saying good morning to all around. I suppose clouds are a necessary part of the Oregon skyline, but I do hope they burn off soon. I have a pool to get to.

In other news, I would like to test some ideas in regards to a scene for the upcoming murder mystery night.

The scene:

picture a large yacht, with a dinner party aboard. Guests have arrived to enjoy a wonderful evening of a cruise. Dates invited, and encouraged. cocktails, and fancy food all in abundance. At the stroke of 10:00pm, a luscious diamond will be presented, and auctioned off to one of the guests.

memory

I'm losing my mind! Ack! Yip, yip. I seem to be spending so much time learning at work, and in memorizing things, that I am always forgetting things. Ask Katie, I seem to forget anything that's not nailed down. :P Yet on the other hand, I can quote entire sections of movies (such as below) without a quip.

"In many ways the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer their work to our judgment.We thrive on negative criticism which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that the average piece of junk is probably worth more than our criticism designating it so. There are times when a critic risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talents, new creations. The new needs friends.

Glass

Yip Yip! Welcome to something dogs run into if it is too shiny or see through. Cats often run into glass as well, hehehe.

Well, glass is said to be a liquid, and is now classified as a solid again, (them sciency people have an even harder time making up their minds than us dogs!).

However, I hear that large search engine (google) has made some glasses with no glass. Confused? It's a new pair of glasses which have a small camera and microphone attached to them. They record movements and sounds from a persons point of view.

Atom

Woof! Woof! Woof! How many atoms did it take to write this sentence?

IBM just made the world's smallest movie, using only about 100 individual atoms to create a simple picture of a boy playing with an atom. In terms of movie storage, using new technology, it may be possible that an iPhone could hold enough data to hold every movie ever produced.

Friends

Good Afternoon (Woof in dogspeak), to my dog and cat readers,

Recently during my long stays in the kennel of boredom, I have been reading up on Friendly numbers, not to be confused with Amicable numbers. Even numbers need friends! Simply put, a number is a friend to another if the fraction of the sum of its divisors over itself is equal to the fraction of another number.

Introduction

Good (yip) MOrning fellow mammals! (the extra O was for a yawn)

After my master came home the other day going on about a small black box where the lights were all blinking the wrong colors (end of the world, right?). I decided to write about solutions, and simple pleasures in life which do not take a rocket scientist to hold a conversation with (yip yip). The grass outside for example is a wonderful shade of emerald green. The grees are gently fluttering in the almost non-existant wind, and the clouds hang over like a lazy sunday afternoon.

Theres a small litter of kittens on the wall, not quite sure how they got here, but here they are.  *purrrrr*

Hmm, I should probably help with that silly box. Maybe licking it will help.

Woooooof