Soon after deciding to attend Fandom Fest (Lousville Comic Con) I started to ponder what I might wear to such an event. The "geekiest" shirt I own is my TauDay T-shirt which I considered, but did not much relish getting drawn into a lengthy debate with some mathematician eager to instruct me on the error of my ways. (This of course assumes that a Comic Con would attract those of superior mathematical prowess.) My son suggested that I dress up as Green Lantern and while the very thought may seem apealing at first, the reality is that I would not subject the general public to such a creation.

After announcing on BlogDogIt that I would be making a "personal appearance", I got it into my head that I should use the event as a vehicle to promote my blog. I had enough badge making supplies to produce a handful of BlogDogIt "tags" to use as some sort of geeky bartering currency - this was a good start. I decided however, that I must have a BlogDogIt shirt to wear and set about plotting how to bring this idea to fruition.

By some stroke of dumb luck I located my original PhotoShop file for the design of the BlogDogIt logo so I was able to enlarge and incorporate this into my design. I saved the graphic as a 150dpi TIFF (to size) and found myself at a crossroads; how do I get from "camera ready" to the runway (so to fashion-speak?)

I had thought about taking this to a custom shirt printer (I imagine they must exist) but to produce a one-off product would surely be outside of my (virtually non existent) budget for this project. I have connections to a vinyl cutter and considered reproducing the graphic as a cut vinyl stick-on but thought it would end up just looking goofy and desperate. I know there are iron-on solutions that use the vinyl cutter but I did not have ready access to the appropriate media. It was a short hop to start thinking of the cut vinyl in terms of a stencil and my internet-based research took a turn down fabric paint alley.

There was a lot of discussion about fabric spray paints and in fact we have several colors available in our crafts arsenal already but I wanted to do white lettering on black fabric so I needed to pick up some "white  something" to do the job. I looked into Stencil Fabric Spray Paint which looked promising. It goes on thick and opaque but seemed a bit too "clunky" to apply (based on the few videos I spied.) I did not want to risk messing this up; since it was down to the wire I had to get it right on the first try. I settled therefor on hand-painting the stenciled fabric with Liquitex Titanium White Opaque Acrylic. My neighborhood JoAnns did not have the Jacquard brand paint - which seemed to be a favorite among many stencil painters - so I went with the closest competing product from their shelf stock rather than turn this into a wild goose chase for the sake of a particular brand name.

My Wife and Daughter volunteered for the hazardous duty of buying the shirt for me - they actually enjoy shopping... me? not so much. They brought back a really cool black-on-black Hawaiian print, silk, button-down that fit all the supplied criteria. Being unsure how it was going to turn out, I was anxious to get this show on the road and wasted little time setting the stage.

 [ Please Continue Reading This Fascinating Tale... ]

The Bigfoot Project (Okanogan Expedition)

Viewer Discretion Advised

The Bigfoot Project (Okanogan Expedition) from JonnyChapps on Vimeo.

First episode - Okanogan Expedition.

The Bigfoot Project heads to the Okanogan Forest in the Cascade Mountain range located in Washington State to begin their search for Sasquatch.

The Bigfoot Project was created by Jonathan Chapin and Bob Johnson to document their travels to prove the existence of Bigfoot. Armed with night vision, trail cameras and audio and video equipment they will scour the areas in America with the most reports of this mythological beast to document once and for all the existence of Bigfoot. 

 

BlogDogIt Note: Before I was bitten by the computer bug I had quite the facination with radios - particularly crystal radios. I discovered Dave Schmarder several years ago as I searched the internet for sites relating to my all-but-forgotton hobby. Dave's website is a treasure trove of information and entertainment - a true labor of love. This article goes up as my way of thanking Dave for sharing his art with the world. Please visit his extensive website. ~ masodo

Crystal Radios

Remember that crystal set you made with your dad or grandpa? I remember my experiences to this day. In early 2002 the crystal set bit me again. This time I really got excited and started building one set right after another. I was going to stop when I built a couple of radios that would display well. But there was no way I was going to quit. So here I am at 78 radios and counting! I hope you find one that you would like to build. See what I have made to show you.

 

Tube Radios

Soon after I started building crystal sets, the lousy summer band conditions convinced me that I should expand my activities in to active devices. Encouraged by my web visitors, I built a bunch of tube radios to experiment with. I didn't build regenerative radios when I was a kid, so this was new territory for me. I am pleased with the outcome and I hope you are too. So, I proudly present my tube radio main page.

 

Solid State Radios

Transistors? Bah humbug. But I've heard that they have become popular and more and more people have switched from tubes to transistors. So far there is only one radio, but I hope to add more. So please accept my meager attempt for now

Audio Amplifier

I love tube amplifiers. But as my solid state section, my amplifier section has only one example to show you. It is a nice small, low powered audio amp. Several others have built this design and are quite happy. So check out my amplifier section and encourage me to make more!

Loop Antennas

Loop antennas have been in my family since I was a little guy. I still have the big red loop that my dad built and that started my interest in these magical devices. I built some smaller loop antennas to connect to my old time radios to improve my reception. My loops are beautiful!

 

 

 Dave' s Own Crystal Radio Collection

On the verge of mental stability.

Adam Juresko

Planet Pulp is taking their amazing online art presence into Hero Complex Gallery for their very first LIVE exhibition titled “RED.”  The title of the show is indicative to a color/ theme that permeates pop culture.  Whether it’s action, speed, blood, a warning or a multitude of other things, the color RED is front and center in each artists piece.

[ continued on blurppy.com ]

Excerpted from: Cosmological perturbations post-Planck - wrap up - By Shaun Hotchkiss

"The big splat"

A commenter (masodo) asked me a question during the conference about something called "the big splat". Now I have to admit that I'd never heard of "the big splat" before he or she asked this question, but google tells me that it is another name for the "ekpyrotic/cyclic" universe, which I definitely have heard of (I think the "big splat" name is before my time).

Masodo wished to know what the implications were from Planck for the big splat and whether it was discussed at the conference.

Firstly, the ekpyrotic universe is a replacement for inflation, but not the big bang. In the ekpyrotic scenario the fluctuations in the universe's density, etc are created during a contraction phase, but then the ordinary big bang still happens after that. Nobody in cosmology doesn't believe in the big bang any more (sorry for the double negative). Nobody. Even the people who used to work on steady-state models now work on oscillating models that are "steady-state" (i.e. periodic) in the long, long, long term. The temperature and polarisation of the CMB has within it evidence of sound waves that were rippling through the universe 14 billion years ago when the universe was ~1000 times hotter than it is now and they look exactly like the big bang predicted they would decades ago. We will definitely gain new understanding into how the big bang happened, what started it, what came before it, etc, etc, but it did happen!

Regarding the "big splat" it wasn't discussed during the conference in a scientific context. Not too many people work on it. If one of those people had been at the conference I'm sure it would have been discussed, but none were. It was discussed a little bit at the coffee breaks but only because Hiranya Peiris (one of the conference guests) was having a public debate with Paul Steinhardt (one of the creators of the ekpyrotic model) over skype and she was canvassing people's thoughts.

The people who work on the ekpyrotic universe (e.g. Steinhardt) have claimed that Planck shows evidence that favours this scenario over inflation. This is not the consensus.

Moreover, both paradigms have issues. Inflation has a problem with initial conditions; that is, the universe has to be in a specific state in order for inflation to begin. It's hard to quantify what a "generic initial universe" should look like so most cosmologists don't worry about this problem. Once that problem is ignored there do exist complete models of inflation that can take us from an inflating universe all the way to today. The ekpyrotic universe is less well developed, but its major problem is that it requires the universe to go from a contracting phase to an expanding phase. I haven't studied the model in detail and the creators of the model have speculative ways for how this could happen, but it does make the paradigm less compelling. Note that there is a qualitative difference in that, once inflation has started, it does work, but this change from contracting to expanding has to happen after the fluctuations in the universe have been generated, so it is a more pertinent problem for the ekpyrotic universe than the initial condition problem is for inflation.

Given this, until evidence does arrive that favours the ekpyrotic universe over inflation the "most probable" paradigm is inflation (at least according to my priors). However, until evidence arrives that overwhelmingly favours inflation, research into alternative paradigms is definitely still worthwhile. No matter how compelling we find it, inflation might just turn out not to be true.

Thanks masodo for the great question!

Fire away if you have any more!!

~

BlogDogIt Note: I have been running into Unhappy Dan for several years now in my travels across the interwebs. I was very glad to run across him again on Technorati, in my search for another stellar blog to shine the BlogDogIt Spotlight upon. Unhappy Dan is primarily a vlogger (video blogger) whose YouTube channel known as SearchForHappy is chocked-full-o-goodness. He has also recently started a new channel called Geeky Inside. Pay a visit to poor ol' Unhappy Dan and he'll take you along for the ride as he travels through life, living the dream...

There is an update to this story
please see the comments below!

People say I am mean, cruel, stubborn, etc. I say I am just Unhappy. This blog chronicles my being Unhappy and everything that comes with it. It includes to a Video blog of me and my family, useful links, and unique posts reviewing my daily experiences and point of view.

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HOBBY SUPPLY SHOPPING!

Today we go shopping for hobby supplies. We went looking for airbrush cleaner and some inks but we end up finding some nifty things along the way. We tried out Michaels and a Ben Franklin craft store and end up being pretty dissatisfied on their pricing for airbrush stuffs compared to DickBlic Online. Both stores had some pretty neat deals on other items but they don’t seem to be the place to go for your airbrush needs.

The Artwork of Rob Gonslaves

 Click On Image To Enlarge