@Gunwallace- I will have to rewatch that Bob's Burger episode… I didn't notice that at the time! I'm still waiting to get up to that episode in Archer! :D

@Bravo- you are NOT that old! Ha! You DO like to play up the age thing. :)
I know how you feel though.
A while ago I went to a friend's get together at a bar, she's in academia, fine art. Anyway , I showed up in my fave Led Zeppelin T-shirt and there were a whole lot of young students there. Long story short, we started talking about music and I could not relate to those young guys in terms of the stuff there were into AT ALL!
I'm quite a lot older than I look, and I also don't keep up with any of the latest trends and haven't since I left uni so I was stuck talking about what was popular when I was still in school as well as the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, the Who etc.
I was fricken grandad there! Besides which it was like talking to 5 year olds, they were so full of energy and positivity. :)
So I didn't hand around too long there. Being treated like a wise elder is annoying.

Okay. I fell asleep playing Tiny Tower Vegas on my smartphone (you build a tower with hotels, shops, and gambling). I was having fun playing one of the Blackjack games…

So I fall asleep and dream that this big tough guy breaks into my bedroom, picks me up, then violently throws me into the back of a van parked outside my house. I'm interrogated… the owner of a casino accuses me of “card counting”. Try as I might no one would believe I wasn't. Another of their agents pulls up with a suitcase full of money from my house. They then let me go, telling me they're taking my winnings back due to them being illegally won.

Then I wake up… and deleted the game from my smartphone. No way I'm ever gonna play any casino based video games ever again…

ozoneocean wrote:

@Bravo- you are NOT that old! Ha! You DO like to play up the age thing. :)
I know how you feel though.

It ain't the years, it's the mileage. And while not as old as Ian Anderson I do remember when Jethro Tull was played on popular music radio. AM music radio when FM was still in its infancy too! Such a brief moment that was.

…. Long story short, we started talking about music and I could not relate to those young guys in terms of the stuff there were into AT ALL!

I listen to just enough popular music to know what they're talking about. And my wife listens to it all the time and she is older than I am. But she was under a rock during the days of The Who, Pink Floyd and Zeppelin so she doesn't relate to them! Irony.

…
So I didn't hang around too long there. Being treated like a wise elder is annoying.

I've gotten used to it, but then I have been treated like the wise elder since I was in high school. It's that whole Silent Bob trope. Don't say much and everyone acts like it's some incredible revelation when you do say something. I always lived by “It is better to say nothing and be thought a fool than to say something and remove all doubt.” Now of course being so much older I've come to understand that it's fun to be thought a fool because it doens't matter what anyone thinks. I know I'm a fool and I'm having fun going on and on.

I'm dreading Christmas shopping. -__-

I do most of mine online these days. Thanks to St. Tim Berners-Lee I no longer have to join the hordes of despair on Oxford Street two days before christmas, looking for that last elusive pair of taupe gloves. Only problem now is having to pay for it all year. Surely my ship must come in soon?!
But it's all worth it to see those rosy cheeked laughing faces on christmas morning - enjoying liquid breakfast in the greyhound pub. And the kids have a great time opening their presents too.

We should have some festive ghost stories. I love a creaky old chiller at christmas.

Hey Oz, is it actually colder there right now? I thought there was that whole southern/northern hemisphere thing going on. Where your winter is in the middle of my summer, kind of thing. Is your christmas tree just like… a cactus? Does your Jesus-stable just have a wombat and a platypus?

- - -

How do the people that live in places without winter get older? How do you know that another year is dying, without seeing the days grow colder and shorter? I love winter, because it is the contrast that makes me feel alive. And summer makes me feel dead.

I don't know any festive ghost stories, appart from the Dickens one… I could make one up. That seems like a very northern hemisphere thing :)
@Kroatz-
It's slowly getting warmer here. There have been a lot of days around 24C (about 75F), which is light jacket weather, or shirt sleaves if you're out and about rather than sitting in an office with the airconditioning on no matter what the temperature is outside T_T
It should get hotter soon though. Real summer seems to start later and later here.

My Xmas tree is two peices of painted silver plywood: each side is cut into half a pine tree shape and joined together with hinges in the middle and then stood up half folded…
Think of a Xmas tree shape cut out of paper, then creased down the centre so you can fold it a little so it can stand on its own. My own silly design. It stores flat the rest of the year when I'm not using it.
I don't really like nativity scenes that much/

Summer really happens at the begining of the next year here. The year slowley fades out in light warmth, and then just around Christmas and new year it ramps right up to give us a preview of the nightmare oven hell heat we can expect in Janurary and Febuary.
The year is reboad as a firey pheonix :D

ozoneocean wrote:
I don't know any festive ghost stories, appart from the Dickens one… I could make one up. That seems like a very northern hemisphere thing :)

A say, are you implying that we are inlined towards foolish fantasies of a supernatural bent? Well that's true I suppose! At christmas any ghost story will do though - it doesn't have to have a festive theme, just some highly unlikely ghostly premise.

I could go against the grain and tell a true story, of the only time I was gripped with fear at the imminent appearance of a hideous, nameless entity! I might even be able to find some pictures - not of the entity, but of the haunted house in question. Actually it wasn't really a house so much as a 1930's converted factory/warehouse building, but there was definitely an entity! Or something a bit dodgy at the very least.

ozoneocean wrote:
I don't know any festive ghost stories, appart from the Dickens one… I could make one up. That seems like a very northern hemisphere thing :)

Actually some of the coolest festive ghost stories I know are from Hawai'i and Polynesian culture. Hardly Northern Hemisphere :-)

Doing Chirstmaas shopping with Pele in your backseat.

bravo1102 wrote:
ozoneocean wrote:
I don't know any festive ghost stories, appart from the Dickens one… I could make one up. That seems like a very northern hemisphere thing :)
Actually some of the coolest festive ghost stories I know are from Hawai'i and Polynesian culture. Hardly Northern Hemisphere :-)

Doing Chirstmaas shopping with Pele in your backseat.

Yeah…. I have this tendency to think that all married men are married to goddessess… ;)

Hawaii is in the nothern hemisphere still…
Hahaha, when I first read the Pele thing I thought you meant the soccer player! I only just got it now :D

ozoneocean wrote:
Hawaii is in the nothern hemisphere still…
Hahaha, when I first read the Pele thing I thought you meant the soccer player! I only just got it now :D

Only geographically. Culturally and mentally it's far south.
As if Brazil acts “Southern Hemisphere” They're all Northern Hemisphere except it's warm at Christmas. Rather than hemispheres maybe we should be thinking tropical versus temperate regardles of what the calendar says? Since when is October the 10th month? Really! Octo- is EIGHT!

I'm glad I decided not to go the whole graphic design route. My older sister asked me to do the invitations for her wedding, with little hand-drawn images of her and her fiance. I don't mind, except that she seems to want it to be kind of a pinteresty Zooey Deschanels type thing and that's not really my style. I sent her a picture of something I was working on earlier and she was like "That's great! Except can you do it more ?" I don't feel like I'm a good enough artist to switch up my style at will like that, so I'm already feeling a little frustrated with it. And of course it's for a wedding, so it can't just be *good enough*

Edit: Took some serious inspiration from kawaiidaigakusei on face shape and it's going better now. My sister better freakin like it though.

I saw the girl who used to bully me in high school today. She didn't look great and she's just working retail now, not in school or anything. It kind of made me feel good, but then also guilty for feeling good. XD

That's the best sort of revenge- pity. :D

Revenge is a dish best served with gratin potatoes, but that's because everything's best served with gratin potatoes.

Why do fans of a work do creepy things? That much dedication to a fictional work… wow… I think I have a better understanding about why that artist who did that one webcomic took it down. Y'know… the one about the woman who had this problem… everything she ate went to her chest.
Anyways…
http://www.cracked.com/article_19314_the-5-most-insane-acts-fan-dedication-ever.html

I have no idea about those potatoes but they sound delish…

Lonne- that guy could've saved thousands if he just ate hotdogs till he looked like Alex Ross's superman.

Gunwallace wrote:
Revenge is a dish best served with gratin potatoes, but that's because everything's best served with gratin potatoes.

Au gratin (or Ugh rotten) potatoes if made badly are some of the most hideous distortions of a vegatable ever perpetrated on a hungry person. They're served by any and all instiutional cafeterias since they're easily prepared and warmed. But can be hideous, watery, even slimy so mcuh like a fetid swamp in the midst of your plate.

Oh yeah, leather hard horse-um-beef “steak” with watery, slimy ugh rotten potatoes. And tasty, crisp peas. I despise peas but the peas were the best part of that meal. But I was starving after a hard day so I smothered everything in steak sauce, held my nose and chowed down.

Have a poorly made version of a potentially great dish and you're ruined for life.

Roasted red potatoes with onions on the other hand are magnificent and if burned only become closer to french fries. Undercooked they're soft but still great with ketchup. Damn I'm hungry. I still have roast beef and roasted potatoes left over from my B-day party.

bravo1102 wrote:
I despise peas

You deserve some credit here. It's not easy to despise a pea. There's not that much to them really, apart from the greenness and the roundness. I've tried to revile aubergines and even abhor curly kale without success, so I know how difficult this is.

—
All set to start work on my secret santa. I need something to distract me from the increasing ringing in my ears, so that's good. It's somehow comforting to know William Shatner also suffers from this, which proves tinnitus is no barrier to musical talent.

Peas are good. Not mint flavoured peas though, those are revolting! So artificial and gross.

——

I'm working on my sword belt now; modifying the slightly more modern style sword belt I already have into an old fashioned early 19th centruy one.
It's a LOT harder than you'd think! That leather is thick and tough… I firt had to completely dismantle the belt, taking out all stitching and buckles and fittings so that it's just a tough strap of black leather.
Then I have to cut it neathly into peices of exactly the right length, punch perfectly plcaed holes in it and attach new fittings in the form of three steel rings, sword hook, S-buckle and some other special buckle… with stainless steal screw studds.
Then there's 5 straps of varying lengths I have to attach to the 3 rings in a specific order: 3 for the sabretache and two for the sabre.

The project is very straight forward really, but the leather is so effing bloody hard to work with it makes very stage a thousand times more complex.

First thing's first, Happy belated birthday, Bravo! I guess it is still appropriate to say if you're still eating left overs from your b-day party.

Sorry to hear about your shelf collapsing and your car battery burning out. I know you spent a lot of time working on those planes.

==

I seem to have fallen off the forums the last two weeks. I have been binge-watching the Louis C.K. Series “Louie” which has been the reason for my absence as well as uplifted mood. If there was ever an award for best spokesperson of self-deprecating banter, Louis C.K. would be the recipient.

It had rained a lot last week and news reports say an even bigger storm is approaching from the Pacific Northwest. It is not really cold, but there is a gust of wind blowing that causes my curtains to do that really spooky motion, so I shut the window. The rain is welcome, especially after the long drought in Southern California. Drivers are typically nervous when it rains because the streets are more slippery with oily streets, but I find that everyone slows down, even if it only means driving ten miles under the speed limit. I really like staring at the freeway while it is raining because the cars seem to drive in slow motion as everyone is more cautious.

The other day, I was driving around my old high school when a couple of students darted out from behind cars and started J-walking in front of my car. Then a group of about fifteen teenagers followed them, so I rolled down the windows and told them that they should not be crossing at a non-crosswalk because it is illegal. Anyway, all those little punks did was shrug and laugh. I don't know what boils my blood more: their ignorance for the law or the fact that I am now a grumpy adult in the eyes of high school kids.

I really need to skip on the coffee. I have no idea why I even drink the stuff, but when I do, I get this intense burst of rapid energy that all comes crashing down at the end. I get so caught up with what I have done so far in my life and what I still have left to accomplish. I am not a fan of the anxiousness that follows the caffeine withdrawal.

I am starting to feel the urge to board a bus, a train or plane and take a break from this place. I even thought about grabbing a world globe and blindly picking the first location on the map to escape.

I decided the best cure for stagnation was to clean my room. I ended up laundering all my colored clothes (about three super loads) and tidying up the area around me. It makes a world of difference for my productivity when my space is organized.

==

Kroatz wrote:

I've almost finished my first novel. I have no idea if it is any good, but at least it has all the necessary components that are present in any good book. Like superheroes, attonements with fathers, time travel, questioning the existence of god, people dying, a massive forest that shares one consciousness, crossing a couple of thresholds, genetic manipulation, dragons, immortality and all its problems, and of course a lot of thematic subtleties.

I can't wait to know how it's going to end.

Is your novel written in English or in Dutch? When it is all complete will you make and audio version? It would be interesting to hear, regardless of the language.

==

@Oz
It sounds like you have become your own Leathersmith. Those animal hide materials are difficult to work with because of the thickness. I imagine it is like having to sew together two leather belts, which would be difficult with a basic needle and thread. Have you trained in how to use a sabre? I have only studied with fencing foil, but I suppose sabre and rapier could use similar techniques.

My sister bought a really nice brand new digital camera last year but is so enamored of taking photos with her smart phone she has never used it. So she gave it to me. But the battery charger was missing. Enter Ebay. I found one for super cheap because electronics direct from Asia is super cheap. But three days later I'm told it's out of stock. Is the universe telling me to stick with my ancient battery-draining monster of a digital camera?

Funny it's the same maker and style camera but ten years ago it's this huge monster with an immense lens. Now all the same features are in something as thin as two CD cases and more than 30% smaller. And don't even mention digital SLR around me. It's not that SLRs are too complex or anything, it's just when I tkae a picture I want to point and click not fiddle with all kinds of controls and options. Just don't want to be bothered. Besides there's a snob/pretentious quotient there. Show someone a really nice photo and they say, “Take that with an SLR?” Um no. “Ooooh” Like you're beneath contempt because you don't meet some process standards even if the final result is as good or superior to theirs.

Like the expert mathematician who gets every answer right and finishes the test first but fails the exam because he didn't show his work. He didn't need to do any of it! Why labor over a process when only the result should matter? Nah, do it the hardest way possible so you can take pride in putting in more effort thn the result is really worth. Or not. Just get it done already and stop talking about it.

@Bravo- that's right, it's results that matter, not the tools, unless you have a specific fetish for the workings- Which is fair enough if people do (this was handmade in the original way etc), but that's a different thing from the end result which is the same no matter HOW it's acheived.
Keep trying to get that charger! Try Ebay in other countries too if that helps, the “world wide” option on the left in the search options.

-@Kawaii-
Noooo! I am far from a leatherworker! The most I've stiched is thin, normal leather as patches on clothing, watch bands and a pouch for a tablet, stuff like that. Working with real thick stuff like this is almost beyond me! I'll only be using studs, no stiches. I have these special steel studs that screw together. But even that is damn hard. I would not like to do this sort of leather work seriously. Way too hard!

As for sabre work, there's apparently a very big difference between modern sport sabre fencing and old stye military sabre drills. A lot of evolution has taken place in the sport so that it's evolved into its own thing, like kendo has moved on a lot from kenjitsu and bushido etc.
This guy adresses it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH8auVrYL3M
It's very interesting!
There are no experts to teach me here… so I'm content to wear the sabre like it's part of a costume rather than a weapon. I would like to do military sabre training one day though.

—–

Maybe you feel older than thse crappy students but you're also 10x smarter too! Content yourself with that :)

Just compare this Royal Armouries video on light cavalry saber use with fencing. A world of difference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDFPiF3xXCQ
Using a sharply curved blade from horseback is nothing like fencing. You're cutting and hacking not scoring points. You want to kill or dehabilitate your opponent not touch him. And the target hopes for a glancing blow or that rolled cloak to get cut and not flesh. Look at the cuts from horseback and you'll quickly see why rolled cloaks and big hats were good defences against cavalry sword attacks. Anything that defects the blade or throws off the aim is a good thing that could save one's life.

Big hats and rolled cloaks as a defence are more a thing characteristic of rapier fencing from a couple of centries before the heyday of the sabre in the 1800s.
Smallsword (and other weapons like it) took over from rapier as a universal thrust-centric dueling weapon. I think people may sometimes have used the cloaks and things when fencing with those.

Sabres can stab, but they're better for the cut. I think the type of sabre the British used during the Crimean was especially bad for the thrust- they had a rod on the back edge to provide all the stiffness (pipeback), but they were amazingly springy so would bend away when stabbing into thick clothes and not go through. The Russian's thick wool greatcoats were enough to protect them.
-Probably that second sword shown in the vid.

I would love to do that sort of thing BTW, but I haven't ridden in many years and I'm a bit rusty now… I got up to a decent level when I used to ride. I was pretty good at jumps, dressage, gymkahna… but it's been SO long. :(
All my riding gear was black back then, so much like my hussar gear now.
(finaly finished the sword belt YAY!!!!!! Belt sander paired the leather better than any blade and the drill worked better than any punch)

Ohhhnooooo…every time I ignore the forums for a couple days I come back to novel-length discussions of military garb/vehicles/etc between oz and bravo. XD

@bravo: I think I forgot to wish you a happy birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

—

I'm pretty sure one of my Christmas packages got lost in the mail…stupid USPS. It departed from the first USPS facility like 12 days ago and it hasn't moved since. Tracking can be pretty sketchy within the US, but I always get an update when it reaches Canadian customs. Since that hasn't happened, I suspect it just got lost at that point. I've never had something take that long to reach customs. I contacted the seller and they said they'll work out a replacement if it doesn't come, but wanted to wait longer (which is understandable). Just sucks that it almost definitely won't be here in time for Christmas.

HippieVan wrote:
@bravo: I think I forgot to wish you a happy birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
—
I'm pretty sure one of my Christmas packages got lost in the mail…stupid USPS. It departed from the first USPS facility like 12 days ago and it hasn't moved since.

Thank you for the belated birthday wishes. Since there is still leftowver cake it's still relevant. :-D
As for the package: Check Canadian customs! Many of my Canadian chums tell horror stories of packages falling into that abyss until frenzied inquiries are made to the Canadian government.

Any package I get from Asia has had to be personally signed for and sometimes the postman forgets the first notice. Grrr. Whatyamean second notice!? I was home ring the doorbell!

Oz@Russians in greatcoats. That was their secret weapon since the 18th Century and an unspoken reason to wear greatcoats on campaign. Light cavalry sabers were often less effective agaisnt infantry in greatcoats. Send in the heavies, all the lights do is nip at their heels.

bravo1102 wrote:
As for the package: Check Canadian customs! Many of my Canadian chums tell horror stories of packages falling into that abyss until frenzied inquiries are made to the Canadian government.

Canadian customs has definitely been known to hold packages longer than is seemingly necessary, but they are pretty good about scanning it upon entry. When that's the issue I'll usually have a tracking update that says “Customs Clearance,” and it just hangs there for days. I suspect it never got to them and was lost by the USPS, especially because tracking stopped long before it would have reached the Canadian border. :(

I feel bad that the seller will probably just have to swallow the cost of USPS' mistake.

I always worry about stuff in transit. :(
BUT, I've almost never had stuff lost, even traveling all the way too Australia from thousands and thousands of Kms around the entire planet (I can only think of one thing lost right now), so the postage system is pretty damn good. I've had more emails and text messages lost than parcels and letters by a massive margin.

———

OMFG! There is some Islamic nutjob holding people hostage in some crappy Sydney shopping centre or deli or something and the whole country is goung crazy. Bloody Australia. In countries with real terrorisim they don't act like babies over stuff like this- it's more akin to a sordid domestic seige by a crazed husband or something like that and yet the fuckwit press is talking about “securing airspace”.
Everyone who gets carried away by terrorisim or Islamaphobia needs to be shipped of to Afghanistan, Iraq and Israel and forced to live there for a while so they get a sense of perspective.