S.o.t.D. – Morning Fall – Daniel Masson

Morning Fall – Daniel Masson

When I die, I hope this is playing in whatever the next dimension is.

Prismatica

Just playing around with a camera and reflecting sunlight.

Logo – SpiralGirl

Logo for a web designer.

Typeface Design – Poser

Back in 95 I was doing a weekly poster for a club night. Every weeks poster was different and each time I would draw very loose, cartoony lettering for it. The style was kept very similar, but the letterforms were all slightly different each time. Eventually I took all of the letterforms I had drawn, compiled them into three separate fonts and finished off any missing letters or symbols. I deliberately kept all of their inherent flaws, IE weights being off, just to keep that crude hand lettered aesthetic I had been going for.

One thing that always annoys me is when I see type that is supposed to be hand rendered, and the same distinctive letter shapes keep leaping out at you. How hard is it to convert type to outlines and tweak the forms a bit, so that it really does look like it was hand rendered? That’s why I did three variants, so that I could mix and match different letters, to try and avoid that obvious “set on a computer” look.

S.o.t.D. – Autumn Leaves – Coldcut (Irresistible Force Remix)

Autumn Leaves – Coldcut (Irresistible Force Remix)

A work of beauty.

Totally Tubular – Cow Tails

I made these a bunch of years ago to serve as retention lanyards in a canoe. Keep say a camera bag safely tethered to the boat, and still have it be easy to access. There are other uses for it as well, anywhere you want to prevent something from sliding off or out of something. A friend puts his pack on the front passenger seat and clips it in to prevent it from sliding all over the place.

Made with bungee cord, some 1⁄2" tubular webbing and some 1" tubular webbing. The 1⁄2" webbing went over the bungee to protect it from wear and tear. Just knotted, not sewn. There are fall protection lanyards similar to this which are sewn, but this is not meant to prevent loss of life, just loss of property. No need to sew really.

Poppy

Picture of a poppy I snapped in a friends garden earlier this year.

S.o.t.D. – Not Afraid – G-Spliff

Not Afraid – G-Spliff

S.o.t.D. – Under the Milky Way – The Church

Under the Milky Way – The Church

Easily one of the best songs of all time.

Lighterweight Repair Kit

I’ve spoken on here about my efforts to reduce the weight of what I carry around with me. My repair kit seems to have been growing in size and weight for a while now. It all fit into a Kifaru ChamberPocket and consists of the hussif and repair kit, zip ties, a few more stealth repair buckles, a patching kit for inflatable seats and mattresses, a Goretex repair kit, Tenacious Tape, some other stuff I think – it had become altogether too hefty a bundle.

Decided it was time to scale back. The ability to mend everything short of a rift in the space-time continuum is swell and all, but it’s just too much. For a little two nighter hike not too far from home, that amount of stuff is just silly. It could be argued (and probably successfully) that even this is too much stuff. The inner tinkerer in me is a tough beast to tame though. This assemblage of stuff is about 120 grams, a far cry from the 540 grams of my other set up. I think that one will go into the INCH bag.

Two perspectives of the contents. Spiralling clockwise in the top picture, and spiralling counter-clockwise in the bottom picture. 
(Clicking on them will bring up a large picture.)

1. repair ladder lock
2. adjustable stealth buckle
3. 2 repair stealth buckles
4. 1" D ring
5. 2 siamese slik clips
6. cord lock
7. 4.5 cm x 5 cm marpat McNett Goretex repair material 
8. 6.7 cm x 7.5 cm sage green McNett Tenacious Tape 
9. 50 cm of foliage green 43668 webbing
10. 8 cm of 1cm shrink tubing
11. 8 cm of 1.5 cm shrink tubing
12. 8 cm of 2cm shrink tubing
13. OD “Canadian” 2 cm button 
14. 2 OD 4 hole buttons
15. OD “Canadian” 3 cm button
16. 7.5 cm kilt pin
17. 2 5 cm safety pins 
18. 2 3 cm safety pins
19. 5 cm cotter pin
20. 3.2 cm cotter pin
21. 2 1.8 cm cotter pins
22. assortment of needles
23. ?m of slate Coats upholstery thread 
24. ?m of black Coats upholstery thread
25. ?m of chona brown Coats upholstery thread
26. ? m of gun tape
27. 27 mm ID key ring
28. 20 mm ID key ring
29. 9 mm ID key ring
30. 8 mm ID key ring
31. 6 mm ID key ring
32. O ring for Fenix A or AA flashlight
33. 2 15 cm zip ties
34. 3 10 cm zip ties
35. rubber thimble (I always use these for hand sewing)
36. 10 m of 190 lb. cord 
37. 10 m of 96 lb. cord 
38. 10 m of 45 lb. cord 
39. 17 cm x 22 cm piece of OD polyester/cotton blend

I think about the only thing I’m tempted to add to this is a small amount of thin stainless steel wire. There might be some other things I should have in here, and maybe some things I can forego. Time will tell.

6° of Cameldam

A part on my CamelBak broke a few years back. The Hydrolock, which acts as a shutoff, to prevent the inadvertent leaking of all of your water from the bite valve.

Rats.

I’m a regular at several outdoor and military gear related forums, so I asked if anyone else had run into this. Were they successful in repairing it, or did they have to bite the bite valve and buy a new one.

One poster who lists his location as being Amsterdam NL, says “Hey I have the very part you’re talking about, it’s of no use to me, it’s still in the packaging, and since you’re a fellow Dutchy, send me an email with your addy, and it’s yours.”

Wow, neat.

I send him an email with my address, thank him profusely and ask him where in Amsterdam he is, telling him where I lived.

He writes me back, and tells me that he lives in a town just on the outskirts, Diemen.

Hey I know Diemen really well. My dad coached baseball there, so my every weekend was spent in that town.
He writes me back to tell me that he used to play little league ball and baseball as a teenager with an organization called T.I.W. in Diemen.
Okay that’s weird, my dad coached for T.I.W. Turns out he played at the baseball field that I practically grew up on.

When his package arrived, I thought the address looked quite familiar. Turns out he lives in an apartment building one over from the building my brother lived in during the 70s.

Paddle

I made this in a paddle making class. Solid piece of cherry in a classic ottertail design. I not only wanted to, but I pretty much had to, since paddles for someone my height are pretty much non-existent.

I can’t wait to make another one. Or two. Or three.

But I also need to make some bows as well. Maybe I should spokeshave some of those into existence first.

Hammock – Middlesex Stealth

Looks like some brush.

But there is actually a hammock in there.

Take 12 steps forward and it’s there.

Just starting to be able to make it out.

Pivoting about 45° to the left it comes into view.

Pivoting another 45° past that, and all the way into the woodline now, it can be spotted a little easier.

S.o.t.D. – Faerie Dub – Watershell

Faerie Dub – Watershell

This is not only a fantastic slice of funky, bassy, trippy, dubby goodness, but it also happens to be the creation of my pal Jason Irwin, who I’m lucky enough to get to go canoeing with.

Hitchcraft – FenixLD20

I liked my Fenix L1D so much that I got a 2AA light from Fenix to serve as my backup light for out in the bush.

First the Fenix LD-20 itself. Approximately 15 cm (6") long by 2.15 cm (0.75") in diameter, and the weight without batteries is 56 grams (2.0 oz), and with batteries it’s 115 grams (4.0 oz). Powered by 2 common and easy to acquire AA batteries (Alkaline, NiMH or Lithium), it utilizes a Premium (Q5) Cree 7090 XR-E LED which has a life of 50,000 hours. The LD20 is made of T6 aircraft grade aluminum with a durable Type III hard anodized finish. It’s waterproof to IPX-8 Standards (the IP stands for Ingress Protection and means it can be immersed to 1.5 meters for 30 minutes. Can you use it as a dive light? Probably not. Can you use it in the rain and will it withstand a dunking in a creek? Yes.) The reflector is textured and the glass is toughened ultra clear glass lens with anti-reflective  coating. The beam is a crisp tight spot, with no shadows or dark spots. 

The LD20 gives the user the choice of six output modes, which allows the user to select the best compromise between brightness and runtime for a given task. It’s turned on via a clickable tail cap, and the tail end can be turned so that it locks out - ie it can’t be accidentally turned on. Turning the bezel as tight as it will go, and clicking the tail cap gives you turbo mode (180 lumens {which runs for 2 hrs}) and then lightly tapping the tail cap again gives you strobe mode. The strobe is as blindingly bright as the turbo mode, and makes a really effective self defence tool. Loosening the bezel slightly gives you general mode (9 lumens {which runs for 71 hrs, and is fine for most general use}), tapping the tail cap a second time gives you 47 lumens (which runs for 13 hrs), tapping it a third time gives you 94 lumens (which runs for 5 hrs), and tapping it again gives you SOS mode. Keep the light off for over 2 seconds, the light will turn completely off, and the regulative circuit will be restored. It’s digitally regulated, meaning that the the power drawn from the battery remains at a constant the whole time. No slowly waning light over a very long time. Bright, even light for say an hour, and then it dies. You are given a warning ahead of that point when it flashes on and off several times.

I can still remember how excited I was about the AA MagLite I bought almost 20 years ago. And they’re still selling the same flashlight. I mean, if it was great twenty years ago, why bother changing? Fenix is a company that believes in innovation and this (and all their other products) reflect that.

The only draw back to it is that it has a ring inside the tail cap that comes loose just from the vibrations of walking, and prevents the light from coming on. Now that I know this though, I just open the tail cap every few days and tighten the ring back up. The ring has two dimple in it and any small point will suffice – a ball point pen, a paper clip, the tooth pick from my Swiss Army Knife, etc. – can be put in to one of the dimples and turned to tighten. Really, a tiny inconvenience for an other wise superb light.

But of course, it needed to be jazzed up with a fob. I decided to use some Type 1 paracord, rather than the usual 550 paracord. Much thinner, it allowed me to easily do three Solomon Bars. Do one Solomon Bar and it’s referred to as a Cobra Knot, do it a second time and it’s referred to as a King Cobra Knot. So what to call it if it’s done a third time? I decided to call it a Boa Knot, and I propose that if it’s done a fourth time it be called a Ananconda Knot and a fifth time it be called a Python Knot.

Colour Copies Poster

One of my jobs while at St. Joseph (actually what role didn’t I fulfill while I was there), was to go around to sites and teach the people there about using the software they had. One of the sites wanted a poster to hang in the window to advertise colour copies. I figured it was a good opportunity to do something fun and show the guy there some basic stuff about Illustrator. The site did have some clip art available, so I utilized it as a starting point.

Took this image of a pressman, a vase with flowers, a starburst and some paint splatters I pulled from another image…

…and changed it into this. It gave me the opportunity to show some basic item selection and manipulation, bezier curve point placement and manipulation, using layers, applying colour, applying gradients, setting text, text on a curve, etc. There was a lot more I would have liked to have done to it, but as far as showing a good number of basic Illustrator concepts in one day, and giving them an eye catching poster at the same time, I think it worked okay.

Clip art can be rather limiting sometimes, but if you use it as a starting point and go from there, it has its uses. Like most everything else in life, I’m never really satisfied with stock anything, and have an incessant compulsion to tweak things to my liking, and that extends to clip art.

S.o.t.D. – Shake it Loose – Dolphin Boys

Shake it Loose – Dolphin Boys

I just can’t get enough of music that is chilled out and laid back, and yet a funky toe tapper all at the same time.

Lego – Motorcycle

Got the notion into my head to make a motorcycle. I think the front of it is certainly fine, most of the frame of it seems to work okay, but the whole back end and top needs some works. Perfect excuse to tear it back and rebuild some of it. That’s part of the enjoyment, that whole iterative process. Then there is always that tension about Lego – on the one hand it allows for almost limitless possibilities, and yet you’re constrained by the pieces you have and what they will physically allow you to do. But, it’s always a great mental exercise.