Inspiration and Picasso

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working.” - Pablo Picasso

My wife showed me the quote above, knowing it would resonate. I'd say that this was my reason for believing everyone should make some art every day. But really I just think it's fun.

Picasso rocking a snapdown hat.

Photo from http://spicezee.zeenews.com/gallery/617.htm

The Red Bride, short story by Samantha Anderson

I liked this first-person short story on Strange Horizons. It's less than 2000 words but it packs a lot of complexity into that length, under the guise of a bedtime story.

The night before I read this story, I saw a snippet of Kill Bill on TV and it included this image of the Bride from that movie. She probably counts as a red bride:

Spaceship art in Austin airport

I took a photo of this art in the Austin Bergstrom airport because it looked like a spaceship. I didn't quite know what it was about, though, until I bumped into this article on the city website, which explained that yes, this really is meant to be a spaceship...but a spaceship made from photos of Austin landmarks.

Modesty survey tells Christian Women how Christian Men want them to dress

I'm having trouble getting over this modesty survey. It seems to have been done with some sense of rigor. But the whole enterprise is about telling women what to do, under the guise of providing some guidance in our complex modern world.

I think the part that scares me is I can see some women really wanting to hear the answers to this thing. You know, because they want to marry the sort of guy who would think this survey is a good idea.

To me, it has a subtext of "the women ought to dress a certain way so as not to stimulate men's uncontrollable libido," and that assumption that men can't control themselves puts the onus for self-control, and blame for the results, on women.

Image is a public domain 1912 postcard scan from Wikimedia Commons, showing a bathing machine, a device for preserving women's modesty while bathing

Old-style tyranid warrior

Received a bunch of old figures from a friend recently. Here's the first one that I've assembled. I had to put this one together because you couldn't tell what it was going to look like from the sprue. It's an old-style tyrannid warrior figure from Warhammer 40k. This one is a little over an inch and a half tall, but has 7 parts.

The Perils of Badminton

This Youtube vid looks like it's going to be an ordinary sports newsbite about Olympic badminton. But you have to stick with it to the 1:30 mark to see it get weird.

Photos from robot camp

Chloe with friend Sarah (left); they got to be in the same small group

Our friend Sean, Sarah's brother, working on a bot with a vertical conveyor that he used to pick up balls from the floor by pressing them against a wall in a game where you tried to get balls to the other team's side of the wall under a time limit

I envy the kids the chance to do robot camp...not least because they played capture the flag when they had breaks

Notice the manly choir shirt on my boy Ethan here. You can't actually read anything into it since his attire is mostly random but we're happy he does enjoy choir so much.

What, me, mad scientist? I'm going into zoology. This robo stuff is just a sideline.

Ethan and Chloe went to robot camp last week. Chloe's group focused on Lego NXT robots, while Ethan tried a new-to-us system called Vex, which has erector-set-style parts, and a brain that can control 8 to 10 motors. On Friday they had a showcase with some battlebot-style games; it was a lot of fun.

These photos are all by our friend Twila.

Chloe was ready to kill something because her robot didn't work the way she wanted when she displayed it in autonomous mode. I had to trot out a story about my own time at camp, when a program I wrote screwed up on a big screen in a big auditorium. I may have embellished a little.

Chloe came home from day one of camp and started building things with our Lego NXT set, and it was a lot of fun to see her play with programming it.

Crazy steampunk figures

I assume this is for some steampunk wargame or something. Not just steampunk; alternate history Nazi Germany still around with steampunk whatever. More pics at the link.

Illustrated Tweets

These were funny. I enjoyed looking at the pics and then reading the Tweets that went with them.