We'll see how long this lasts...

My "annual check up" is on Monday.  I put that in quotation marks because, honestly, I've missed the yearly medical exams for, oh, 7 years now?  In my defense, it's not easy to schedule and keep an appointment that you have to make 5 months out (yay healthcare!  U-S-A!  U-S-A!)

I'm not expecting great or horrible news.  I've gained some weight and my blood pressure may be slightly elevated, so there may be some lifestyle changes involved (no, not THAT kind of change).

So, I'm researching eating healthier.  One of the main roadblocks to committing to a dietary change was cost.  I was ALWAYS under the impression that healthier food was more-expensive and that fat was cheap.  That still may be true, but I'm at a point now where I can increase the budget and start looking at healthier alternatives in the grocery cart.  I won't go totally crazy - I have three other mouths to feed and two of them are very particular.  I know I can introduce some things every week or so.  These gradual changes will hopefully serve as a good foundation.

Another brick in my wall is....a basketball.  I am 5'5" and Asian.  I have avoided basketball for over 30 years and for good reason, but now I find it very fascinating.  So, this weekend, I'm going to get a Spalding Indoor/Outdoor NeverFlat regulation size 7 basketball.  I figure this piece of rubber will help with my hand-eye-body coordination while hopefully melting off a pound.  Knowing my children, I'll probably need to get 3 of these (they do so enjoy participating in my torments)...

Will keep you "posted".

(see, that's a basketball term)

Some harmless weekend fun

I was, again, trapped in the house with my children as my wife was attending to a rabbit housecall.


I had wanted to explore tea-flavored cake, since it happened across my Pinterest wall. A few concerns:

• I didn't have Earl Grey
• I didn't want to make an entire cake of one flavor
• My kids don't like sharing

My solution was to make cupcakes. I could divide the batter among the kids and myself: They could make theirs, I could make mine. Plus, it would allow me to explore different teas with the cakes.


Instead of Earl Grey, I managed to get:


A spiced chai latte mix
An herbal black cherry tea

From Left to Right:  Spiced Chai chocolate cupcake with
 whipped buttercream vanilla frosting.  Black Cherry chocolate
cupcake with whipped buttercream frosting.

Megan gets enthusiastic with frosting her cupcakes

Devil's Food cupcake with whipped buttercream and
fondant leprechaun hat (by Cameron)

Using tea for flavoring really does work with the cakes and, I think, is a better option than the artificial stuff.

Hope this helps.

The Sincerest Form

Hello everyone,

I've blogged before about the junkpile at my office, repairing broken electronics, and making sculptures out of unwanted hard drives. It's safe to say I'm a firm believer in "One man's trash is another man's treasure."

A while back, the office was throwing out digital picture frames. Try to remember back about five years or so - digital cameras were in everyone's hands, but people had limited options for what to do after the shots were taken. The picture frame allowed you to take your camera-card, plug it in, and transfer the photos to the internal storage of the frame. Voila, you have a slideshow device.

The market never really took off, in fact, I think recently, the Digital Picture Frame was regarded as one of the worst Christmas presents you could give someone. Clunky interfaces, coupled with the fact that nobody really wanted to go through the effort to manually-update the content on the frame meant another brilliant idea headed to the junkpile.

...where I was willing to snatch them all up.

One of the artists that Gattina and I both admire is Jenny Holzer. Her most famous work is her Truism series. They consist of one line of philosophical text in a bold font which is then projected on a massive scale.

I wanted to make a Truism Digital Picture Frame. It would cycle-through her Truisms automatically.

In total, I generated 254 of Jenny Holzer's Truisms, edited in Photoshop, and loaded them onto the frames (or in some cases, spare media cards).

If I could put my artist-hat on for a second, I really found a new appreciation for these phrases during the editing process. By changing the spacing and/or the font sizing, I had a form of control over the "rhythm" of the phrase. My mind was reading the phrase differently depending on whether it spanned two versus three or four separate lines. I could emphasize a certain word by isolating it from the others.

Also, because these are digitally projected, they convey a bit of what (I believe) is the spirit of Jenny Holzer's work. They're not as imposing as twenty-foot-tall-text, but I think in this form-factor, they're more approachable. I think we're all so geared to TV screens, that we have built a kind of trust with them, and by extension, the content issued from them. It's this trust that makes the phrases worthy of discussion. I won't even pretend to know exactly what they all mean, but am definitely eager to explore them with someone.

I hope my imitation flatters rather than insults.

Cake, love, and the illegality of it all...

It's been a year already?!?

Right, time for another birthday cake. My daughter's tastes have matured since Ni-Hao Kai Lan and Ariel (don't worry, they are still her favorites). But this year's challenge started with:

I want a Gaga cake.

Everyone knows Lady Gaga. Meat-dressed, or cross-dressed, she's the epitome of outlandish. Such a wide-palette to draw from, but this was for a children's birthday party. It had to be G-rated Gaga.

Give me 48 hours and this happens:

I love my daughter and I love cake so much that I will infringe on any copyright.

The "Born This Way" font was freely available. I had to "erase" the "W" and construct a "D" from the existing title. Frankensteining my daughter's head on top of Gaga was simple enough - just have to match the brightness and contrast...

If I had better skills, I would've photoshopped in some training-wheels, pedals, and tassels on the handlebars. There's always next year.

She is my little monster.

Raising Idiots

Wife and I went to see American Idiot. Wonderful music, great cast, engaging sets. The story is still haunting me 24 hours later.

I know my home is as far from broken as can be - I have these incredibly awesome children and a wife that tolerates my idiosyncrasies. Yet, this musical really makes a convincing argument that teens are destined for hardship. Not just by fate, they actively seek it out. Here's a wikipedia of the storyline, for those who can't be bothered with ticket-prices and venue transportation.

I'm disturbed because I'm focusing too much on the teenage pregnancy and heroin usage - rather, the optimist in me should realize that the children DO come home at the end, the protagonist DOES kick his addiction, and even though life throws too much, too soon, regular idiots can rise to the occasion. I remember when I left suburbia home (practically unheard of among tightly-knit, Chinese families) - how risky that must have seemed to my mom and dad. I'll definitely be worrying when I'm on the other-side of the moving van.

Oh Joy. There are plans to make this into a motion picture, so I'll most-likely be revisiting these scars again - and my kids will be even closer to their own teenage years.

Stupid groundbreaking Broadway musical. Hey, did you know "The Addams Family" is now a musical, too? Neither did I. No damn heroin junkies in that show - seriously. Morticia and Gomez are true parenting geniuses.

Where's my life right now? I'm still fixing Apple castoffs in my spare time. Two iPods with two more to go, plus an iPad 2. It's our intention that the tablet be used to augment my son's education (no eyerolling allowed!) I'll be watching over them this weekend in the midst of Superbowl Sunday.

Be safe you guys.

Stop the Stop Online Piracy Act

Hallowe'en y'all

All crazy in my house for Hallowe'en (and why should this year be any different?)

My fridge magnet collection:

(from top left:  brain, zombie head, heart, lungs with trachea, and stomach with small and large intestines)

Made from Crayola© ModelMagic™ and reclaimed hard drive magnets.

For this year's costume, I was inspired by this guy:

Yes, he's death-incarnate in a cute, cuddly, form only found in the finest corporate Chinese sweat-shops.  He was also in my field of vision as I was pondering what I would be for Halloween this year.

I made some rough measurements, did some in-depth analysis, pored over various images (not porn) and got a list of materials together (okay, some porn).

I didn't know how to use the sewing machine (honestly, it's the only machine that still intimidates me), so I sprang for the black hooded robe at the local Halloween costume store.  The rest, I was determined to make on my own.  I fashioned a paper-mache jawline by using a mixing bowl mold, made a skull wireframe using coat hangers, and draped everything with a white terrycloth towel.  I did know how to stitch, so needle and thread bound the towel-skin to the frame.

The eye-sockets are just plain black felt.  The nose is a piece of black plastic mesh - usually found on exterior screen doors and windows.

I also made white "mitts" for my hands using the rest of the white towel.  Fold the towel in half, trace a pattern, cut it out (so you have two mirror-images), sew the edges together and turn inside-out to hide the seam.  

I had to next make the bone pattern.  Silver duct-tape to the rescue.  Perfect because it adheres nicely to fabric, was readily available, reflective at night, and satisfies the number one rule for any project - must include duct-tape.  I noticed the pattern had a lot of symmetry, so I needed to make a lot of mirror-image cutouts.  I ended up using more of the window-screen material as a "release agent":

1.  Apply a strip of duct tape onto the window-screen.  Make sure the tape is long enough for the desired pattern.
2.  Flip over the screen and apply a second strip of duct tape.  You should now have a duct-tape "sandwich" with the screen material in the middle of the two strips of tape.
3.  Use scissors to cut out the pattern.  Peel the tape off of the mesh when done.

OMG, so spooky.  Seriously, Death just wants a hug.

I liked this project because I felt more-connected with the whole Halloween experience by hand-making (most of) my costume.  With each stitch, I felt more psychotic festive and nostalgic.  I was in a place before Wal-Mart and pre-formed synthetics.

Okay, you can stop staring at my duct-tape crotch now.