Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Preparations for a NERF Battle

To prepare for the church NERF battle coming up next month, I made two flags out of my old home-ec materials and a long wooden pole. I sawed the pole in half and sanded it smooth, and then attached squares of cloth with wood glue.

I also made a poster advertising it in Photoshop and on the way to Michael's put it up on the Edwards Hall bulletin board.

Goblin Green

After going on a morning walk around Asilomar and 17 Mile Drive, I went over to Michael's house. Aside from the usual activities... Guitar Hero, trampoline, and Rome Total War (as well as practicing clarinet/bassoon for almost an hour), I helped him paint some of his Warhammer miniatures. Warhammer is a fantasy battle game that Michael, Riley, and Matthew all play. It involves painting small miniatures, usually about an inch tall, and playing a huge battle game with them that can sometimes last all day, using dice, measuring tape, and a terrain table (the dining table covered with fake trees and grass).

I personally don't care much for the game; it is extremely pricy and turns take way too long in my opinion. However, painting the miniatures is still a lot of fun, and I ended up finishing four goblin archers in the half hour or so we were painting. I used, as would logically be expected, the color Goblin Green for the skin, and the cloak was Bestial Brown with a red ink wash. Various other paints were used for the weapons and such, including a metallic gold (what the "official" name is I have no clue).

Michael invited me back over for more of the same sort of activities.

The Goblin miniatures I painted, minus the fake grass on the base.

Friday, June 13, 2008

By the Lakeside

This is my latest claymation that I did today while waiting for my mom to get back from a run. Its kind of short and goes a bit fast, but besides that it turned out pretty well.



I think I will make a fish taco animation sometime. Hmm...

The Demented Cartoon Movie!

A couple of years ago, Riley found this hilarious and quite odd animated Flash movie online:



Download the flash movie file here.

The Blog Widget

I created this blog widget that anyone can put on their site, showing the past 15-or-so posts with images. I've actually had it for a while, but just recently decided to put it up.

If you want to put it on your site, click the "get widget" button at the right.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Faking a Macro

I was experimenting in Painter again and made this "macro" closeup with some bugs, after finding out that there were additional nozzle tools I had not seen before. I used the soften and depth of field filters under focus to create the effect. Because of the crude nature of the older program, it looks better at a small size, like below.

Art Lessons

Today my dad taught an art lesson to Lauren Ryan, the granddaughter of one of the artists in his gallery, and I. We worked on painting a scene based on one of his older paintings. Personally, I didn't think my painting was very good, but everyone else seemed to like it.

My Painting

Lauren's Painting

My Dad's Painting

A New Clarinet

For the past couple of weeks, I have had no clarinet to practice on because Ms. Priest collected them at the end of the year. Today I went to the high school and got a new clarinet from Mr. Hoffman, the high school band director. It is a Yamaha, which isn't nearly as nice as my old wooden Buffet. However, it's still nice to have a clarinet again.

Photo of the Clarinet

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Another Day at Tijmen's

Tijmen and Yann walking to Rite Aid.Today I went over to Tijmen's house for the last time in a while, since he is going on road trips and camps for most of the summer. I walked over to his house around 9:30 and we played MarioKart Wii for about an hour until Oliver arrived. For the morning, we did video games, mainly SSB Brawl, and drew with chalk. He got this really cool chalk (and "chalk-paint") that appears 3D when you put on glasses. Much to the annoyance of Oliver, I drew a giant wall-eyed weirdo.

Around noon, we finally got in touch with Yann and he came over soon afterward. We tried to have a water balloon fight, but there were hardly any water balloons. Tijmen got the idea to walk over to Rite Aid and get some balloons, so we walked over and also got ice cream at the stand in the back of the store. After we got back, we had a really awesome water balloon war for most of 2 hours in his front yard. Many times, Tijmen would get on the roof and bombard an unsuspecting Oliver below. As well as using regular water balloons (styled to look like grenades) we would fill up normal balloons so they could hold what seemed like a gallon of water. When we ran out of balloons, we switched over to sprinklers, watering cans, and just about anything else that could hold water. I left and walked home around 5:30 and was home by six.

Tijmen playing the piano in the morning.

Working with the Crayola Chalk Paint

The Divide

I finally came back to the Fractal Design Painter program on our old Mac, which would later become Corel Painter X. With a similar nature as Mediterranean Village, I made this using the Nozzle tool, excellent for realistic scenery.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

The Past Few Days

I've been kind of busy and lacking on writing, so I'll briefly run through the last couple of days...

Sunday morning was a church youth group meeting, and Michael and I decided to organize a church NERF battle at Cypress Street Park. I made a poster and the date is set for the 20th of July. Later that evening, I went over to Michael's and we had a movie night and watched Austin Powers, as well as playing Guitar Hero.

Yesterday I went over to Michael's in the afternoon where we did the usual activities, as well as walking on the PG recreation trail. Later in the evening was a scout Court of Honor, where I was presented the Oceanography Merit Badge from last weekend. Following the normal one was Chris Simmons' Eagle Court of Honor, and the night concluded with some cake (from a distance it looked like it was going to be Angel Food Cake, but unfortunately it was normal vanilla cake; still good all the same) and ice cream.

This morning my mom took he and I (Riley was supposed to come as well, but didn't show up) to the Del Monte Forest where we had a NERF gun battle. We also planned for the church event later on, and I will make flags out of old home-ec materials to play Capture the Flag.

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Our Garden

Being a long summer day with tons of free time, I decided to take some photos of our garden...

Lavender

Nasturtiums

Yellow Flowers

Checkers in the Sun

Here's a really awesome picture of Checkers on my bed basking in the sun. We have it as our desktop background now.

Saturday, June 7, 2008

The Start of Summer Vacation

Today marks the start of ten weeks of summer vacation. My stepdad Brian was going on a run at Garland Ranch in Carmel Valley, so I invited Michael and we went with him. We brought two Stream Machine water guns originally used at Brian's friends' annual canoe trip a while back. While Brian went on a run, Michael and I had a water fight, played catch with a football, and ate a bunch of Trader Joe's Veggie Sticks (really good crunchy potato chip snacks) for three hours. Toward the end, we ran into Lauren Dykman from my history and english classes at school, who was on a hike in the area. Unfortunately, when we got back to the car, Brian realized he had brought the wrong car key. Luckily, my mom was at work at the Treadmill at the crossroads not too far away, so Brian went over and got the key from her.

8th Grade in Review

Favorite Music
Led Zeppelin
Rush
Queen
The Beatles

Teachers
Period 0) Mrs. Murphy; P.E.
Period 1) Mrs. Rookstool; English
Period 2) Mrs. Terry; Spanish I
Period 3) Mr. Gamble; US History
Period 4) Mr. Godfrey; Physical Science
Period 5) Ms. DeMarco; Algebra I
Period 6) Ms. Priest; Advanced Band

Popular Music
Rap and Hip-Hop Genres

Friends

Michael WoodruffMatthew Johnson
Tijmen Teering Yann Brown Austin Myers
Riley White Oliver Bunten

Friday, June 6, 2008

Caledonia Park Picnic

Cody sings along to The Final Countdown.Today was the last day of school, and the promotion picnic for 8th graders at Caledonia Park, near the post office in PG. I woke up around the normal time, 6:30-ish, and wrote the entry for last night, and then got ready to leave. I got to school around 9:15 and waited for 20-or-so minutes for us to group in our homerooms before leaving. Cody stopped to listen to The Final Countdown on my iPod and was singing along through the whole song. The walk took about 15 minutes total, and we talked about numerous things on the way, while Oliver played his Nintendo DS while walking.

Riley throwing a football.After we walked down, Oliver began taking pictures of everything and I, after eating a chocolate muffin, played catch with a football with Riley, Michael, and later Matthew as well. This lasted for the majority or the picnic and was very enjoyable. Other people were playing with giant beach balls that had somehow come into the vicinities. Later on, as Oliver joined in, we began a game of "monkey in the middle" with Oliver as the monkey. Mr. Godfrey, Mr. Gamble, and Mrs. Riedel were the only teachers I saw there, as most others had classes in other grades as well.

We took a break at a picnic table and Oliver and Matthew began playing a game of checkers on a huge checkerboard on the table. It soon turned into chaos, and checkers were scattered all over the grass. Nikki began listening to my iPod and singing along... "Riley in the Sky With Diamonds" and "Riley's Garden" along with other songs by the Beatles with Riley thrown in.

A group of 8th graders including Aaron (second from left) and others.

At noon the picnic ended, and I rode back to Matthew's house, where we had fish sticks for lunch and then played Wii and jumped on the trampoline. I also helped him set up a new Yahoo! email address.