Sunday 31 January 2016

Opinel Factory

I’ve never owned an Opinel knife, but I do like them and will get one, one of these days.

As much as I love seeing a small scale maker crafting a knife, seeing how things are done by a company that cranks out thousands of knives per day is also interesting to me.

S.o.t.D. - Microphone Fiend – Kid Loops

Microphone Fiend – Kid Loops

Heard this a few days ago. I only recognized it from some of the lyrics. Why do I know this? Used Shazam. Ahhh. I know this from it appearing on a K7 DJ set....I’m tempted to say Smith & Mighty. Different though, a remixed version, or pitched up.

Polygonal Portrait: Roxann

I’ve been doing some over photo illustration, using just triangles. Time consuming, fairly tedious, but I like the results.

And even though I’ve used Illustrator for almost 30 years, I learned a few new tricks doing this. Namely a way to find out how many elements are in use, and a way to quickly and easily close any paths that might not be closed.

The lovely Roxann:

The result.
The original.
The process. 4249 triangles, 13,144 points. Somewhere between 30 and 40 hours of work.

Thursday 21 January 2016

S.o.t.D. - Whisper – Blu Mar Ten (ft. Kirsty Hawkshaw)

Whisper – Blu Mar Ten (ft. Kirsty Hawkshaw)

But this world
Will be shaken by a whisper

And when I feel my world falling down
I think of you

And when I feel I can breathe no more
You speak to me

And then there is that creamy bass line.

Signage: Get More Out Of Life With Coffee

Great new sign at Saint James on James Street, done by Brush Boys.

Monday 18 January 2016

Sunday 17 January 2016

Saturday 16 January 2016

S.o.t.D. - Lonely Vibe – Smote & Verbal

Lonely Vibe – Smote & Verbal

Pop Can Stoves

Just a small sampling of the pop can stoves I’ve made over the years.

$150 for a stove that can burn anything at any altitude? Why? Personally, I seriously doubt I’ll ever end up in a remote part of an undeveloped nation with an unknown availability of fuel to climb mountains. I can reach into a blue box, and with at most an hour of work, and with cheap and easily available methylated alcohol, have a camping stove that will suffice 95+% of the time for 95+% of people. I go on day hikes, weekend camping trips, week long canoe trips in northern Ontario in spring to autumn. For that, these are great. Light, compact, quiet, no smell, cheap fuel. Sure, they don’t work at altitude, they don’t work when it’s really cold and they don’t boil really fast. Oh well.

I’ve made from the complicated, the penny stove, to the simple, the fancy feast stove. And the latter is probably my favourite. A Fancy Feast cat food tin, a hole punch, punch a dozen holes along the wall and done. Wears out, lose it, give it away, sit on it and crush it? Make a new one. Andrew Skurka points out some of its flaws, but if I don’t like it, I have many other ones to choose from. Probably about three times as many as seen in the above photo.

Crane Dismantling

Always enjoy seeing a tower crane be assembled or dismantled. Whenever I watch the process, I invariably figure I would dig doing that as a job.

Blood Donation #50

I reached #50 this week. (I hope I can reach 100.)
Got a pin for reaching this milestone.
I knew I had received some other pins for reaching various other milestones over the years. Decided to dig them out.

That’s why I do it. For the pins. And the free cookies. You should do it too.

(Oh and funny aside...I have a friend who has a violet wand. Curious as to what it felt like, I let him run it down my arm with a few different attachments. Freaky. Like tattooing, but 10 times more prickly. Just a weird sensation. I look at my arm the next day and it left all these weird red pin prick marks up and down my forearm, especially in the ditch by my elbow. Weird. Forget about it. The next day I go to donate blood, and one of the things they do is look at your arms to see you have no needle marks. I hadn’t given another thought to the marks, till the nurse asks to see my arms. Whoops. I look...and they’re almost all gone. Phew.)

Friday 15 January 2016

Thursday 14 January 2016

S.o.t.D. - Telescope – Bop x Synkro

Telescope – Bop x Synkro

The fact that this involves Synkro is of course great. That it is available on blue transparent marbled 12" vinyl makes it even greater.

Tuesday 12 January 2016

Thursday 7 January 2016

S.o.t.D. - Depth – Cidi & Ephixa

Depth – Cidi & Ephixa

I often approach D&B DJ sets with some trepidation. So often they’re relentless, devoid of any sort of groove, exercises in how well the guy that doesn’t actually dance, can mix.

But sometimes you discover gems like this on them.

Monday 4 January 2016

S.o.t.D. - Peace, Love & Unity – DJ Hype feat. MC Fats

Peace, Love & Unity – DJ Hype feat. MC Fats

What a tune. What a bassline.

Excellent Cold Weather Manuals

Excellent set of (English language) mountainous and cold weather operations manuals from the Norwegian military. Even if you aren’t military, anyone who spends time in mountains or outside in the winter might learn something from them. Topics covered include personal clothing, nutrition, winter injuries, safe routing and navigation, bivouacking, avalanche rescue, etc.

https://forsvaret.no/en/education-and-training/coe-cwo

Sunday 3 January 2016

S.o.t.D. - Poly – Robin Judge

Poly – Robin Judge

Toronto producer I’ve recently had the pleasure of meeting. I could say her work is “minimal techno” but that is a far too restrictive, and frankly undescriptive, phrase to describe what she does. There is far too much warmth beneath those chilly synth washes. There’s a logical disconnect and an emotional connect.