Steampunk

A few months ago I stumbled on some music that I just LOVE. It was Abney Park. After listening for a while I started trying to figure out what it was and eventually learned the genre is Steampunk. A little more research revealed that Steampunk isn't just a music genre, but an entire sub-culture. I don't really know how to explain it other than it being anachronistic of the industrial age with a great fondness for restoring the beauty of machines and the repurposing of anything.

I that vein, I have found a nice rusty diamond-plate background to put under the parchment of this blog. I like it better than what was there before. I guess I need to start looking for some shiny brass accents to put here and there.

There's a lot of cool stuff going on in Steampunk, I wish I had the time and intestinal fortitude to join in! Here's a couple of cool examples, but you'll have to do more research on your own.

Steampunk R2D2


Steampunk Laptop (totally functional!)

Our Christmas Morning

We had our family Christmas about 10:00am after everyone had breakfast and was fully awake. Peggy's sister Janet and her husband Tom had been vising from Chicago since the beginning of the week and shared our Christmas. Much fun was had by all.

Peggy's new pajamas (with feet!)

Klara gets her own perfume


Charlotte enjoys her new MP3 player


Tom and Janet Join in the fun


Mayhem opens her stocking


Reilly doesn't waste any time


Twister's first Christmas

Christmas Eve at Mom & Dads

We did the usual . . . spending Christmas Eve at Mom & Dads house. All the cousins played the parts of the nativity and Mom showed a nice video of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and a singer that sang about the animals around the manger and their gifts to the Savior. It was very nice.

We also scored some awesome prime rib and fresh home-made zupfa bread. YUMMY! Thanks Mom! I was still a little sick, but ate anyway. I'm glad I did.

Panoramic shot of Mom's Living room


Getting Ready for the nativity play

One more tweak!

I got to work this morning where I'm stuck with a crusty little 17" monitor and had a look at the blog. Even though the screen resolution was set to 1024 pixels wide, I still had to scroll left and right. It seems the automatic margins are being forced in at a minimum width. One more little adjustment and it fit nicely.

Super-shiny!

Blog Experience

Whew! I just spent way too much time monkeying with this blog tonight. For starters. I was sick of the dang thing being default formatted for 15" screens. Blah! Who uses those tiny things anymore anyways? Sorry if that's you, but you need an upgrade. Seriously, big LCD monitors are cheap and they'll make your life so much better, and all your dreams will come true.... (Okay, so if you're on a laptop then you've got an excuse.) I went from a 19" LCD to a 22" high-gloss widescreen LCD on my desktop and HOLY COW! It's friggin' AWESOME. Only about $170 at tigerdirect.com - watch for deals!

(Steps off soap box.) So, as I was saying...I got into the blog template HTML and went for broke. I had to stretch the background to 1024 pixels wide, then tune the side bar and the posts to fit a little better. That's right, that skinny-ass sidebar was just stupid-useless. It was soooooo cool the way it just used to cut off all the gadgets. I know there's gotta be smarter coders out there.

After those tweaks I noticed the parchment texture didn't fit anymore. Okay, lets see if Blogger.com has the correct size....of course not. I made my own, then had to open an account at Photobucket so I'd have a reliable place to load them from. Got that working then the world was all shiny again.

Oooh! Another dull spot - no tunes! I went to playlist.com and banged together a quick playlist so folks could enjoy listenting to the junk I like listening to. (Admit it, you like it and you know it!) Well, do ya suppose maybe the stinking flashplayer could be easily sized to fit the blog sidebar...uh....NO! CRIMINY! I cracked open the embedded HTML for that and fixed 'er up real good. Now it fits without scrollers, plays the songs all the way through and shows 14 songs at a time instead of just 3 or 4.

Hmmm...missed it by that much: Those greedy "buy this cell phone" and "go to this trendy website where we'll try to get your money" ads just had to go. I got back in there and hacked those off too.

Yup. Shiny once again!

Charlotte "The Littlest Goalie"

Charlotte played soccer again this season ( I think this is about her 4th or 5th season). She has a blast playing and is still learning the basics. At her level the city league coaches are usually parents that haven't coached much before, so there's not much strategy involved. Just a crowd of kids trying to kick the ball as hard as they can, hopefully in the right direction. Charlotte has a grip on one thing though, goalkeeping. She's absolutely fearless and has taken some pretty good abuse proving it. She'd like to spend more time in the goal, but "everyone gets a chance." Oh, I feel so warm and fuzzy now. LOL!

These boots are made for goaltending

Klara's Volleyball Thing

Klara's only been playing volleyball for a couple of seasons now and is doing very well. Her coach says she has a lot of talent and recommended that we sign her up with a club team so she can make the most of her skillz. It's a little too expensive for us to get into right away, but hopefully things will loosen up a bit soon and we can go for it. In the mean time Klara will stay with her current coach and UNDEFEATED team!

Don't be fooled. She's serious.

Klara - Screenplay writer!

Klara saw me using the video camera to do some recording for a church project and wanted me to record her. I was on my way out and told her to write a play, then I would record it when I got home.

An hour later I returned to find a properly written screenplay with stage direction and all! We recorded it then I took the opportunity to learn Open Movie Editor for Linux to edit her show. Here's the result!

Klara's Halloween Play 2008

OKAY! Time to kick this thing off!

I caught this video of Charlotte helping grind wheat a couple of weeks ago. When she turns around and looks at the camera halfway through is the first time she realized I was recording her, so she really acts that way when nobody is looking!

Charlotte grinds wheat when she thinks nobody is looking.