Finding (Steampunk) Stuff on eBay
Lizabeta tells us how she finds stuff on eBay, and while she gears it towards steampunk (which of course I love), her tips can be used to find just about anything.
http://steampunkbitz.wordpress.com/2008/07/09/steampunk_resources/
Zomg HDTV.
I have finally leaped head first into the land of high definition. And by god is it beautiful. I got a Phillips 47PFL7403D/27. 120Mhz (or 2ms) refresh rate. 47 inches. Things look unnervingly smooth on the tv. Like pans and people’s motion. It’s really quite odd! I find my eyes now being more sensitive to people’s motion in real life, looking for how smooth real life really is compared to what the TV shows. Oh, and of course, being able to see everything in much more detail is great. Lines and edges are really smooth! Very happy with my purchase.
Tags: 47PFL7403D/27, hd, hdtv, hi-def, high definition, tv
Wondercon – Impressions; Gothic Lolita Evangelion
I went to Wondercon a bit, but I wasn’t overly impressed. The shop area was pretty big, and I tried to peruse every single booth. I found a gothic lolita Asuka from NGE that I liked and purchased. Supposedly there’s a non-matching Rei out there, but the different size and base put me off from it. If they attached together in some fashion, I’d be much happier. Ah well.
I saw little to no cosplayers there. Most disappointed. I was unable to make it to the “parade” though, which may account for that. Apparently the parade was done on stage, as opposed to around an area where people could get nice close up looks.
Hopefully next time I’ll get a better chance, and not miss the parade.
[retroposted on 5/26/2008]
Tags: asuka, evangelion, gothic, nge, wondercon, wondercon2008
GDC 2008 – Impressions
Overall, I think I had a good time at GDC. I got to listen to many different talks, and see lots of interesting things.
I’m excited about that emotion sensing headset, as it can open up various new types of input to a computer. Not sure what to do with that input yet, but I’m not being creative about it yet.
I saw an MMO called APB that looked really great. The character creation system is unparalleled. The dynamic mission system seems pretty awesome too.
There was a steampunk styled video game being promoted (along with cosplayers) called Recoil: Retrograd being made by a Denmark company Zeitguyz.
I couldn’t get my laptop to connect to the internet through their wireless network, so I was unable to update at all during GDC. And then promptly forgot all about it when I came back to the real world. And now that’s all I can remember since I’m retroposting.
[retroposted on 5/25/2008]
Tags: apb, gdc, gdc2008, mmo, recoil, steampunk, zeitguyz
GDC 2008 – Emotiv Head Set
Interesting piece of hardware here. A headset that can detect various changes in the EEG of a person’s brainwaves: Emotiv Systems‘ EmotivEPOC.
Apparently there are common EEG signals that are preprogrammed into the software that allow recognizing of traits such as enjoyment or frustration. The software also allows training of specific EEG patterns to match particular actions (such as levitating an object).
They had a booth set up where you could try out the preprogrammed actions as well as the trained actions. I was able to train a few actions and try them out together. The device was capable in detecting when I was thinking one action as opposed to another, but became confused if I trained the same action with multiple different thoughts. It appears to be key to think the same thought every time training an action. This makes perfect sense.
A very cool tech demo. They said that the device is not intended to be a main input device, but is intended to be supplementary. So, you wouldn’t use this as the main way to control a game or computer, but instead give the software additional input — perhaps about your reactions to certain events, or how frustrated you are.
[retroposted on 5/25/2008]
Tags: brain control, emotic, gdc, gdc2008, input, io
Character: Malcolm (Lshoan Harah)
On most Sunday nights, I can currently be found portraying a vampire named Malcolm at the Vampire: The Masquerade troupe game Lshoan Harah. Malcolm is a Nosferatu, whose face was smashed into a fence and had his right ear mangled by his Sire. This is my first attempt at his makeup.
-
- Malcolm Makeup
Adventures in Hair Dye Land
So, the blue faded into a mottled mess. It was interesting looking though, various shades of blue and gold (due to the original bleaching process). So, a new bleaching was done, to attempt to get an even color to start with. Of course, this wasn’t exactly the best idea. I actually ended up with platinum roots, with green ends. No pictures of that part though. Applied the purple dye, which came out very well, but since there was no red left in my hair to begin with, under most lighting (which tends to be florescent) my hair appeared blue. It looked brilliantly purple in my bathroom (which has very warm tungsten lighting).
The back of my head faded much faster than the rest of my hair. I figure that it must have rubbed off on my pillowcase (since it was purple instead of its original gray). I had some purple and blue dye left, so I mixed it together, and used that. It turned out fairly well, but looked more blue than purple.
After this faded, since I was going to be visiting my parents, I attempted to dye my hair black. But instead it looked navy blue. When I went to get my hair cut, I asked the girls there what they thought. They told me that since my hair had no red pigment in it, not only would it look blue, the dyes would tend to fade a lot faster. So, I dyed my hair red. The faded parts looked really great as red, and the navy blue parts were then close to black. Then on top of this, I used the black dye, and thus my hair was indistinguishable from my natural color.
And that’s the update on my adventures in hair dye land. I’m sure many more adventures are to come!
Pictures after the jump. Read more
Playing with ustream.tv
Colin and I were playing with the recording feature of ustream.tv. This is what resulted:
Tags: evangelion, intartubes, nge, streaming video, unit02, web service
‘Cause You Gotta Have Blue Hair
I finally dyed my hair. I’ve been wanting to do the blue hair thing for a while now, and one of my friends helped me do it this past weekend. Seems to be a big hit so far.
Process:
- Apply bleach
- Let sit 60 minutes
- Rinse
- Apply bleach
- Let sit 60 minutes
- Rinse
- Apply Blue
- Let sit 30 minutes
- Rinse
- Apply Blue
- Let sit 30 minutes
- Rinse, shampoo, rinse, condition, rinse
- Observe the awesome
Pictures after jump! Read more