Webthoughts

I found a great post on a web forum on how to "Pixar" your car—basically, make your car look like the cars found in the Disney film Cars.

Here's my first attempt:

Although the eyes turned out great, the mouth definitely needs work. The big problem with the mouth, I think, is that I used the wrong type of mouth for the front grill of the truck. What would probably be better would to use Mater's mouth and replace the entire grill, or to use the mouth from Chick Hicks or Tex to better integrate between the grill and bumper.

If I get some free time, I'll try a new mouth and see how it turns out.

Here's a nice throwback to a simpler gaming era. Although it's not perfect singing, they are obviously having lots of fun and still manage to put on an enjoyable show.

Okay, so another side of me is coming through in this post, but I just can't keep it contained! I'm super excited as I just found out that one of my favorite comic books from the 80's is coming back (at least for a limited run)—Captain Carrot and the Amazing Zoo Crew!

I had heard that they had made an appearance last year in the Teen Titans series, but missed it when it was on sale. But, now it looks like they're getting their own mini-series!

Seriously, I'm so excited I'm twitching!

Happy π Day everybody!

So, here's what I look like in Springfield—or at least as accurate as I could make it look. No receding hairline in real life, but what guy in Simpsons World doesn't have a receding hairline?

You can create your own avatar at the Simpsons Movie website. Sorry, it's all Flash-based, so there's no direct link.

I'm very much looking forward to this movie. Really, I'm not sure how they're going to make this a "bigger" event than one of their standard television episodes, but I'm still looking forward to it. This might actually be a movie I might go to see on opening night.

While I'm at it, I'll go ahead a mention that I live about 15 miles away from Springfield, Nebraska which is one of the Springfields throughout the country vying to be the site of the world premier of the movie. Go ahead and vote for Springfield, NE (even if Nebraska's movie isn't that great).

Last night, my wife and I went to Vala's Pumpkin Patch to spend time with some people we know. As the night settled in, I took my camera out and took a few pictures of the fire we had going in our firepit. I was quite pleased with how they came out, especially this photo:

(Updated to fix a sizing problem with the picture.)

Just a quick note to say that my wife and I watched Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium this evening and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Anyone who says that a purely innocent and fun movie can not be made anymore has not seen this movie and is a cynic anyway.

Although the movie does have a message (and a fairly deep one at that), it still makes with the light-heartedness, gentle humor and, as the title indicates, wonder that kept us smiling through the entire film. I had never heard of the movie until we picked it up on DVD, and I have no idea how it did in the theaters, but I am beyond glad I watched it. It really reminded me that not all good movies need to be PG-13 or R-rated, have a hard, driving story-line or require sex and violence to be entertaining and worthwhile.

Although we just rented the DVD, we may just have to pick up our own copy. It's that worthwhile.

HAH!

I just got back from the Sing Around Nebraska concert at the Lied Center for Performing Arts in Lincoln, Nebraska. I had a niece performing in the concert as part of the Children's Honor Choir and my wife and I decided to go to the concert to support the family.

To be honest, I didn't really want to go to the concert, but I was pleasantly surprised. I really enjoyed some of the pieces by the uNL University Singers and the Nebraska Wesleyan University Choir. The York College Concert Choir did a decent job (although none of their pieces were anything that really appealed to me) and the UNL Varsity Men's Chorus sang a song that I sang back in my college days as part of a Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia concert.

Good job to everyone that participated in the concert!

So...this is exciting only because of my acknowledged lack of woodworking skills, but I spent a good portion of this past weekend building this:

We had previously had a pre-fab cedar bench sitting in front of our house that we had purchased at Menards a few years ago. However, a few weeks ago, several of the supports split and that was the end of that bench. My wife and I had looked around for a replacement in various stores but found nothing that we really liked.

So, on Saturday, I decided that I'd just throw caution to the window and build a cedar bench, rather than just buying one. I had found plans (links to a PDF file) for the bench in an issue of Family Handyman from 2003 and it didn't look too difficult, so that's the direction I went.

I purchased the lumber and supplies at a local Menards (lumber and supplies cost about half of what a good prefab bench would cost) and spent most of the afternoon and evening on Saturday cutting the wood and assembling the pieces. A few hours on Sunday were spent putting the finishing touches on (adding the trim pieces and rounding the corners). The article claims three hours to build this bench, and I believe them. But it took me about seven hours, all said and done.

I had a lot of fun doing this and had the opportunity to use some power-tools that don't get used all that often. I definitely have a good sense of accomplishment with this!

Plus, the bench is very comfortable to sit on!