Seasons Greedy-ings

So I think Kodak stole my artistic genius.

Picture it -- Tarrytown, December 2010: We wanted to send one of those photo holiday cards to everyone, but we didn't have one particularly good photo of the four of us. Instead, we decided to go with a "year in review" approach, and show one photo from each month. I couldn't really find a design like that, so I decided to make my own. I realized I could fit 12 photos around the border perfectly, while maintaining the right aspect ratio. I printed it as a standard photo on KodakGallery, and I was pretty happy with the result:

Aren't we adorable.

Fast forward a year, and I go back to kodakgallery to pick a card to send this year. I see these cards:

Those jerks stole my card! Cleverly, they made them different enough to prevent me from releasing my team of attorneys on them. Not putting our actual pictures in was a particularly wise move of their part.

In all honesty, putting 12 photos around the edge of a card isn't exactly rocket science. And who knows, maybe these cards were there last year, and I just missed them. But I like to think I was ripped off, as it makes me feel like I have skills.

Halloween 2011 - Homemade James the Train Costume

Surprise, surprise, Darren wanted to be a train again this year. But he wanted James this time around, so last year's Thomas costume could stay in the attic -- good thing, too, as the boy has grown quite a bit, so I think Thomas would have been busting his boiler with Darren inside.

So I got to return to the world of cardboard and spraypaint to make this year's costume. Originally, I thought I'd just repeat the same design as last year, only a bit bigger, but Amy pointed out that James looks a bit different than Thomas. He has a long round boiler instead of a square one, as well as a few other minor changes. Parental guilt kicked in, and since I was building a new one anyway, I updated the design along the way. Continue reading "Halloween 2011 - Homemade James the Train Costume"

Halloween 2010 - Arcade Game Costume

When choosing a Halloween costume, I try to pick things that will appeal to my co-workers, since they're the ones who will end up staring at the costume all day. And there's usually a contest there with cash prizes, so it helps to butter up the judges a bit.

Last year I had the idea of dressing up as an arcade game cabinet, since one of the sites my company runs is www.retrogamer.com, which features a ton of old 80's arcade games. During the course of this year, I was assigned to work on Retrogamer, so it became a no-brainer choice for this year's costume.

My goal was to create a working wearable arcade cabinet, capable of playing a whole slew of old games, and hopefully even including a working "coin" slot that accepts candy for payment. I planned on a cardboard box for the body, an old laptop running off a battery for the screen/computer, a USB joystick for the controller, and some Vex robotics kit parts for the coin slot.

Continue reading "Halloween 2010 - Arcade Game Costume"