Plenty of Nothing

Fruity Oaty Bar Lunch Box

Okay, folks, Douglas' birthday is coming up and he needs this.  (Via fanboy.com.)

ATV Paper Model

February is shaping up to be a busy month at the International Space Station.  In addition to a visit by the space shuttle Atlantis and the delivery of the European Space Agency's science module Columbus, and the departure and deorbit of Russia's supply ship Progress 27  to make room for the arriving Progress 28, there's the first ever launch of the ESA's own supply vessel, the Automated Transfer Vessel, named Jules Verne.  The ATV is an uncharismatically cylindrical piece of space hardware, but you might come to love it if you download and assemble the paper model available with instructions at the ESA site.

History on a Stick

This folding yardstick marked off in years instead of millimetres is so neat my hand bought it before my brain really knew what was going on.
Douglas

Table Hockey Player, Mark 2

Here you can see I've moved up from pencil to ink, resulting in much bolder colour.  The blue background is pencil, though.  I still like the ice surface effect it gives.  The McGill Martlets logo is boosted from the CIS website and Photoshop'd on.  I see I forgot to shade the face, which I'd do in pencil.  I intentionally cheated and left off the stripe at the hem of the jersey so as not to crowd the design.  The figure is just a little too tall as the result of eyeballing instead of measuring, but I could fix it by shortening the stick.  I have to learn to draw wrinkles.  Ultimately I want to get to the point of turning photos into table hockey players.  Next team, Concordia Stingers.

Douglas

You Know, I'm Glad Some Interests Fade Away

There was a time when people were sending him Hello Kitty gear--no idea where it all ended up--but that phase ended fairly quickly.  This site makes me not quite nostalgic for those days. (Link via plep.)

Heather

Table Soccer

Ice hockey has been played in Britain off and on since Lord Stanley and kids got home from Ottawa in 1893, but interest was waning in the 1960s, making the UK a poor export market for table hockey sets, so the inventive minds at Munro came up with this footie hybrid.  But it was apparently no match for Subbuteo.

Table Hockey Player, Mark 1

Here's my first pass at a custom Coleco table hockey player.   I made a team set of University of Ottawa Gee Gees women's hockey players about a year ago using a weird amalgam of  kindergarten  techniques:  coloured pencil, cut and paste (literal, not virtual), computer scanning and  reduction.  Mixed results, eh.  The border is unfortunate, but the blue background has kind of a nice ice surface look to it.  The next time I'll figure out how to do the whole thing in the computer.  Maybe soon I'll have the whole QSSF.  Douglas

Dave Bidini, Collected Works, November 17, 2006

Dave Bidini read from his new Five Hole Stories tonight at Collected Works in Ottawa.  This was his fourth appearance there, a house record, and the third to feature a hockey book.  Five Hole Stories may be his last hockey offering for a while, he said, until such time as he can come at it fresh again.  Not that this book isn't fresh, mixing sex and hockey in five illustrated short stories.  The reading was quick, and padded out with a piece from another book, and prompted fewer questions than last year's The Best Game You Can Name.  A fun book, but definitely a spinoff, like one of those little books Margaret Atwood comes out with between novels.

Last year I lent Collected Works a table hockey set for the show and he signed it!  The player in red is Bidini, copied from the dustjacket of The Best Game You Can Name.  Come over to my basement and I'll play you.

Douglas

Pitagorasuichii

This week I became helplessly addicted to this compilation of chain reaction clips on YouTube.  You can too!

Douglas

Frilly Unicorn?

Do these count as "frilly unicorn" or not? (via Scribblingwoman)

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