So, I've been trying to take stereo photographs and make them into animated gifs. After a few failled attempts I decided to go to the source.... real olde' time stereo photographs. Here's a first attempt. Click the photo to see the animation. It's to annoying to be on the page. Not as good as these though. Seems like subtle moves are the answer.
This is probably the most artistic picture that I've ever taken. These are contrails from nuclear armed F111 bombers cris crossing power lines. This was taken in Plattsburgh NY in the winter of 1988.
Sometimes you have to wonder who is writing these children's books.
"I love little pussy. Her coat is so warm. And if I don't hurt her. She'll do me no harm."
Syd Barret's bicycle for sale from his estate sale. Nothing else really of interest.
The most profound statement found in any nursery rhyme.
Pecans .... warning, contains nuts. - Found at Whole Foods salad bar, 59th st.
By the way, the tray was filled with walnuts.
Old drawing, but I stumbled across this today and I need a test case to see if the new google blogger beta is working with flickr.
Wednesday will mark exactly 1 year of blogging on this site. Woo hoo. That's more time than I spent at alot of paying jobs. In all that time I've posted, 161 Blog Entries, which works out to a little over 3 blog entries per week. Yeah, I didn't think it was that many either. Now if I only bother to take the time to change the masthead to something a little smaller. I always thought it was a little large but I was to lazy to spend the time getting the style sheet right. A project for next year.
Marie You live here? Oh, it's nice. Did you decorate it?
Navin Yeah, I got all this stuff from the old Cup 'o Pizza place before they tore it down.
Marie Good pizza. (the two of them are eating pizza in a cup)
Navin Oh, this is the best pizza in a cup ever. This guy is unbelievable. He ran the old Cup 'o Pizza guy out of business. People come from all over to eat this.
(they exchange glances)
Link:Spluch Blog: Pizza in a cone
I think they're going to run those "Cone O' Pizza" guys right out of business.
Apparently, Tacone has heard about this and is bringing the 'Tacone' back.
I was taking a look at the Con Edison website and noticed that you can log into your account and make changes to your Con Edison payment plan or cancel service all together. All the information you need is someone's account number. There is no password required or any other information required. When you log in, one of your options is "close my account". So what's to stop someone getting your Con Edison account number and shutting off your gas and power?
A quick web search shows the Con Edison account number for the "Hudson River Club". It's a defunct account now. But that's not the point.
No, I have no idea why I drew this. There isn't any secret meaning. Basically I wanted to get away from drawing people and drawing a mouse in peril is a very cartoony thing to do.
OK, looks like polaroid film has hit rock bottom. In the drug store on a forgotten peg board dangling from a hook. It just wants to be your friend.
Forget about those digital things. It's me! Remember me? Film! If you buy me, I'll give you some free candy. A $2.99 value! Aww come on, where are you going?
(Found at Rite Aid)
This is why I love the internet. There is a group, forum, website or wiki for every stupid thing in existence. Here is a forum for denim freaks. Jeans is one of those subjects that I pay almost no attention to. I buy a pair that fits and is roughly a nice color. On this forum you can read literally thousands of posts including posts like this for "Samurai S5000" owners ....
"I think the best way to size unsanforized denim is to compare to the washed sizing to jeans that you already own."
I had to look unsanforized up on wikipedia.
Old photo from a now defunct band but fun nonetheless. Continental has since closed and re-opened so maybe there is a Geek Farm concert in its future. Thanks to Erica for posting the photo.
Here's something you get when you live in a loose copyright world. New stuff out of old stuff. Halcyonsnow a frequent contributor of the 700 hoboes project used one of my hoboes in a comic. The other hobo he's referring to in the barrel is Beef Grease Porter Dripchin. Great stuff.
I am willing to bet that this is the world's best Kosher, Swiss Style, cotton candy flavored yogurt in the world. Um ..... yeah, it's disgusting.
Oh and It's blue/green ...
Every once in a while I do a quick doodle which looks like a real cartoon or looks better than something that I've spent alot of time on. Another study in facial expressions. Surprise.
The time of the year when every local newspaper in the country starts publishing pictures of witches that have crashed into trees. Oh, never saw that one before! Oh, man! It's a witch and it crashed into a tree! Was she drunk? Har dee har har. When I used to manage a news clippings department, I used to collect these things and post them on the wall. I'd have hundreds of different photos by November. It's about time the newspapers gave this joke a rest.
I don't care what the brochures say, "The Governor Bradford Motor Inn" looked like a dump to me. (found in Plymouth Mass)
A quick study in internet shopping which took all of one Google search and about 5 minutes. I was looking to see if anyone sells "Bug City Candy Tarts" over the internet. I did a quick search to find who sells them in bulk. Particularly the small case of 12 jars. Here are the interesting results for the price of the identical item. I didn't factor in shipping but assumed that shipping was fairly standard.
In decending order.
| www.candydirect.com | $25.92 |
| store.candywarehouse.com | $19.80 |
| www.bizrate.com | $19.80 |
| candy-crate.stores.yahoo.net | $18.89 |
| www.candyfavorites.com | $16.93 |
| www.groovycandies.com | $11.95 |
| www.americarx.com | $10.04 |
| www.ferrarapan.com | $9.95 |
I haven't posted a drawing of the week in a while even though I have been doing them. Here's an example of why. I was drawing this portrait and thought that it was coming out fairly well until I flipped it horizontally and saw how really warped this face was. People start to lose perspective when they stare at something for to long. Just goes to show that flipping a drawing horizontally or in any direction is a good check to see if you're totally gone off the rails.
The flipped image
Some airline crashes, you never hear about. At least the airplanes aren't running windows ...... are they? (found at Norfolk Airport)
Here's another one of those simple things that mask a larger story. I got this quarter as change today. The quarter was gold plated and about 1/2 of the gold plating has chipped off. OK, so now what is the story? I'm guessing that there are basically two possiblities.
Hey, you don't have to rub it in. (Housing Project in Queens NY)
Actually, according to Wikipedia this housing project isn't very bland at all if you like gang violence.
This is a yet another followup to a previous post. I finally made the leader board of Zwok! Woo Hoo! The screenshot is from the moment that I actually became ranked number 300 (the point when you get on the leader board). The song "Velouria" by the Pixies was playing at the time. This would mark the first time that I've ever been on the leader board of any online game. Though this means absolutely nothing it's a one small victory of life. In about an hour some kid 1/3 my age will probably pass me and knock me off the board but until then I am in the ranks of the elite. Time to go to the bathroom, take a victory crap and go to bed. Maybe I can go do something productive tomorrow.
Here's the much anticipated follow up to this blog post that I did last month. I didn't get the job as the director of the Wetness Protection Program, or even get to the primaries where you can vote, but I did make the spash page of the website www.wetnessprotectionprogram.com. Since I really was only hoping to get on the web site (at best), this was a smash success! Considering at least 40 people went to the audition and only 10 people even got their picture on the website, I really beat the odds.
By the way, the button that I'm pointing to didn't say "Vote", it was one of those "Wetness" with a slash through it buttons like the one the woman is wearing. So there is a little photoshopping going on there.
Another aside, one of the people who did make it to the primaries commented on my first post. I think he's "Al Del Bene". Congrats Al, hope you get the job.
I'm watching this old Ford film on The internet Archive. The film introduces the brand new 1960 Ford Falcon (among others) and claims that the Falcon gets 30mpg. OK maybe that sounds impressive in the 1960's but what is the average mpg of cars now? The answer (for 2004) is 22.4 miles per gallon. Here's the chart I used from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. By the chart, you can see that the average mpg of cars (since 1980) has never passed 30 mpg. In fact, in the category of "New Fuel Efficiency Vehicles" the average only hit 30 mpg last year. So a car that seats six adults, is covered in chrome and steel, has no fuel injection, is not very aerodynamic and was designed 40 years ago, is still as good as the present day average fuel efficiency vechicle. At a starting price of $1,912 (in 1960) the smart money is on the Falcon. More details about the Ford Falcon
So whenever I hear this song, I think back to a conversation that I had with an ex girlfriend. The conversation went like this.
Ex. : My sister has a folk band called Folk-us.
Evan: Oh, that's to bad, the name is already taken.
Ex. : Really?
Evan: Yeah, you know, Hocus Pocus by Focus
Ex. : (confused look)
Evan: Jan Akkerman, Thijs Van Leer....
Ex. : (silence)
Evan: Yo dee doh doh doh ee doh doh doh dee doh doh doh dee doh doh doe dee doh doh doh dee doh doh doh dum dum?
Ex. : (walks away)
Though it is a great song, it still isn't my favorite Art Rock Instrumental Song from the 70's. Of course, the title goes to Edgar Winter's Frankenstein.
I find things like this every once in a while. Here is a company that is trying to make money off of MP3s that are freely available on the internet. Here is a listing of songs that they downloaded off my previous band's (Tortuga) website. They want you to use their download application (for $30) and with that application you can then download the songs that we were giving away for free. They're also making money off of ads on their site. I have no idea what the other catches are because I haven't downloaded their software. Yeah, technically they're selling the software not the music, but there are plenty of free programs that do the same thing. I'm not sure if they already downloaded the songs to their servers or they just redirect you to the links they found to the songs. If it's the links then you're not getting anything because they are dead links and I assume that 50% of all their other "songs" also point to dead links as well.
When you're a kid you think that airplanes have to have something to do with magic.
When you get older you start to notice other things. I'm flying on US Airways from Los Angeles to New York. Everwhere you turn, I'm getting pitched another way to spend my money. Here are the ways I counted on my last flight.
This is a great idea. Make your own custom ketchup bottles. Here's mine especially designed for plane travel. Go to myheinz.com for details.
So, I did another Googling of myself. A while ago I posted some old newsgroup entry to this blog that I found through Google. It was a post that I did in 1995 that is still floating around on the internet to the alt.lefthanders newsgroup. I didn't even remember that I posted it. Well here are some more newsgroup posts I did around the same time. Thanks to Google, they're dragging up everything from the beginning of time till now. You'll notice, all the posts that I did in 1995 seem to be about women, music and cartoons. I had different things to think about then. Honestly, I didn't realize that I actually posted that much. The next thing Google will do is pull up e-mails from old girlfriends. Oh, I'm waiting for that. Page One Page Two
Every day this man stands outside on Broadway at around 5:00pm and for about 1/2 hr, all he does is yell the word glory. GLORY, GLORY, GLORY ..... etc. Apparently he's been doing this for at least 10 years. Sometimes he misses a day and on those days I feel like I should go out there and fill-in. I don't know if yelling the word glory gets you into heaven but if it does, this guy is all set.
On my blog, I'm putting a link to some guy's blog where he's blogging about me when I commented on someone else's blog. The cycle continues. Link. Unlike most blog entries that comment on comments of other blog entries we are actually in basic agreement and not flaming the crap out of each other.
Just so you can get the whole story, this is the original comment that launched his comment and blog entry.
The gist of the conversation is that music video as an art form is dead. Though I don't completely agree with that I certainly believe that it is no where near as important as it used to be. Music videos just don't generate that same excitement that they used to and may never again. MTV knows this and abandoned showing music videos a long time ago.
I was always a U68 fan anyway instead of MTV. They always showed the "cool" music videos but then again trying to get a UHF channel to tune in is basically a wrestling match with your TV antennas. Yeah I know, people don't have TV antennas anymore.
Another hobo for the 700 Hoboes Project. Bo 'Bo can remember a time when a velvet portrait of a clown hobo on your bathroom wall was the mark of good taste. He laments the passing of those days and harkens back to a time when seltzer bottles sprayed from every boxcar.
This week, a three for one drawing of the week. I was just randomly doodling and deleted all the crap. There is no story here but you can make one up if you want. Maybe the demon is advising the guy on his date. Or showing him what he'll more likely be doing tonight when he gets home.
Suzi found this commercial audition for Arrid deodorant and prodded me to go and audition for the commercial. The commercial is for Arid deodorant and the ad agency wants you to apply for the Executive Director of the "Wetness Protection Program" something like that. I send them two pictures by e-mail and they ask for a resume. I send them my real resume which is totally devoid of any acting expierence whatsoever. This was Mon. On tues they send me an e-mail "You look like exactly what we're looking for". Can you come in tomorrow at 4:30? So now Wed morning, I'm scrambling to find a suit, a briefcase and all the other things that would make me look like someone applying for a real job. They say when you step off the elevator you should be in character. I have to be at work and can't really wear a suit to work and step out in the middle of the day. So I have suzi meet me at the marriot in Times Square and I can change in the lobby bathroom. Of course as soon as we get there the matinee of the broadway show in the building lets out so the place is flooded with people. I manage to squeeze into the bathroom and get changed. Now I'm running a little late and there are a million people all over the place. I want to take a cab because I'm wearing a full suit and it's about 100 degrees outside. No cabs, so I end up taking a bicycle cab to the place in the suit with my briefcase across my lap. Suzi is holding my old clothes and hanging out at the hotel with Elana till I get back. I get in the elevator and some woman who was a bycycle messenger tells me that my fly is undone. It's wide open. We exchange plesentries I adjust myself and I walk into the place. It turns out that instead of a mock job interview they changed the ad campaign to be an Election campaign. Someone slaps a "no wetness" button on my suit jacket, I fill out paperwork and we're off and running for office. They have a reporter with a camera crew who starts asking questions related to the campaign. "Where do you stand on the issue of underarm wetness?" "How did you first get interested in wetness protection?" No real preparation except for two sheets of paper with some phrases that the ad agency made up. I answer the questions as best I could and say stuff like. "Well I first got interested in wetness protection when my friend Johnny "Two Stains" a construction worker from south jersey was put into the wetness protection program at the behest of the fashion police." "Later I did some charity work with the suderiferous... handing out fresh t-shirts at sporting events and the like." About 6 or 7 questions from this "reporter" then on to campaign photos. Shots of me against a wall, making faces pointing in the air and trying to look political. After campaign photos a have to hold a "press conference" where I'm supposed to give my campaign speech. I'm in a room, behind a presidential like podium with the "Department of Wetness Protection" symbol on it in front of a small audience with cameras rolling the whole time. I had about 2 minutes to come up with my campaign speech. I start out with "This country has a problem and this problem stinks", then I said a bunch of stuff, I don't even remember it all now. I threw in "Ich bien ein schvitzer". (Yiddish for I'm a sweater). I threw in "If we roll on and stick to our principals we can perspire to greatness". Then some press conference questions. "Do you see any swing states forming?" I said something like "Well I see the south as being hotly contested where as Alaska can go either way". Another question... "How is your campaign platform being recieved in Washington DC?" My response. "Well considering the amount of hot air in Washington you would think that congressmen would be more concerned about this issue but instead they are involved with other less important matters like the military and economy". After the press conference, more questions from the roving reporter "Is there anyone that you particularly look up to?" I choke on this question. I mean I've been asked a barrage of questions where I've been making up silly answers for 1/2 hr already, my brain is getting fried. The reporter says "I can ask you some easier questions". I reply. "Well then it wouldn't be as fun". Eventually I say "George Bush because I never seem to see him break a sweat." It's not easy to adlib all that time with questions coming from everywhere and 1) not having any acting or comedy experience and 2) not really having any real preperation. As for comments ... I got a few "great jobs" from some of the people there and a "you're not an actor?" from someone. Supposedly there is going to be an online campaign and they will put a bunch of candidates on the website for people to vote on. The idea wasn't fully fleshed out so they couldn't really tell me how many candidates or all the real details. After this whole thing and my brain was swimming at this point. I walked back to hotel, met Suzi changed clothes in the bathroom again and went back to work. The whole thing was about 45 minutes of non stop ad libbing and my brain was getting fried but it was really fun. I'll post a link to the website if I ever get picked to be on it.
If you ever need to explain to someone why youtube.com is one of the internet's greatest resources, show them this.
Every once in a while someone asks me how to do a "man in the middle" attack. Not that I'm an expert on the subject, but people ask me anyway. Actually people don't even realize that they are asking me how to do a "man in the middle attack" they just ask me how hackers can figure out their password if they type it into a web page or how they can snoop on their bosses e-mail. Well here's the software to do it. I've never used it. It's called "Port Peeker", it's free, it runs on windows, go crazy. Before you do, I'll tell you that evesdropping on people's internet traffic is completely boring. The little I've done in my life, I've intercepted people making arrangements for lunch and people surfing CNN. Ho hum. I'd rather surf CNN myself.
So I found a new game to waste my time and keep me from doing anything remotely productive. Zwok. As you can see I've played 359 games of it already and moved up from 14,000th position to 3342 in a couple of days. This and two dollars gets me on the subway, but it's mind numbing fun. The game is sort of like dodge ball (or multiplayer artillery) with your choice of rolling, exploding, bouncing and other balls. 3 players on a team, all human players. Greatest feat.. being the only player left on my team, being injured against 3 uninjured players and hitting all three players with one brick to knock them all down to nearly fatal injuries. Then proceeding to win the game. OK, again back to reality, this and two dollars gets me on the subway.
Just got an exciting e-mail on my yahoo e-mail account! Apparently I just inherited a fortune. The e-mail starts ...
"We act as solicitors and our services have been retained by Henry Cox, now late here in after referred to as our client. On behalf of late Henry Cox, I write to notify you that my late client made you a beneficiary to the bequest sum of One Million Seven Hundred Thousand British Pounds in the codicil to his will and last testament."
Then it goes on to describe who Henry Cox is, because I get alot of $3 million inheritances from people who I don't know in foreign countries where I have no family, or even ethnic ties sent to me in an e-mail box that I rarely even look at, let alone use. I can't wait till I get my check.
Photo of an Internet Worker Circa 1947
From Real Chicago
So, I'm on the suybway and an MTA outreach employee in his early 50's gets on the train. These people go around the subways looking for the homeless to see if they can give them clothes, find them a shelter etc. He doesn't see any homeless in my car so he proceeds to do a stand up comedy routine about subways. Here's a sample joke.
"This guy asks me how to get to 72nd street and I tell him he should take the number 2 train. I see him later and asked him how he made out. The guy says he couldn't find the number 2 train so he took the number 1 train twice."
At the next stop the MTA worker gets off the train and transfers to the local.
Quick drawing of the week. I've been accumulating a glut of quick ones I haven't posted yet to ride through the weeks when I don't do anything at all.
[09:26] boyohboyineedaman: hi... annyone there?
[09:27] evanrapp: what's the scam?
[09:27] boyohboyineedaman: yeah I have one hooked up on my homepage, cyberfungirls dot coom
[09:27] evanrapp: good for you.. no thanks
[09:27] boyohboyineedaman: oh your there :) hi...
[09:28] boyohboyineedaman: a/s/l (aage sex location)?
[09:28] evanrapp: married, not interested.
Just got released from jury duty and luckily I was able to snag a copy of "Jury Pool News". With articles like "Mongolian Jurist Tours NY Courts", "Nassau Jurist Takes a Seat in the Jury Box" and "New Courthouse Opens in Albany", I can't put this thing down. I have to call about a subscription.
Been lazy this week so this is one from last week. I still need to work on bodies rather than just portraits but I haven't had the drive to practice. This one was quick and dirty.
The Guttenberg project has audio books, most of them are recited by computer voices. Close your eyes and listen to HG Well's "War of the Worlds" and imagine you're a space alien listening to an earth robot telling you the history of mankind.
Yeah, I couldn't stand listening to the whole thing either.
Ever play that free mmorpg Runescape? Maybe they should put an R rating on this thing. Screenshot from today.
This is an open letter to the guy who was parked on the Palisades Parkway last night, in the dark, around exit 14 in the passing lane around a blind left hand curve. If you didn't notice, you almost had 60mph's worth of my bumper up your ass and you're lucky that there was no one in the right hand lane next to me. If you need a place to park, keep it on the grass.
I haven't posted anything for a while. Here's one I did last week. What I really need to do is work on drawing full bodies but I'm to lazy to do that right now. I have to read some more about proportions.
I used to get random IMs from people I didn't know all the time. This is the first in a while.
Start of ltjrob buffer: Fri Jun 23 11:25:36 2006
[11:16] ltjrob: what do you think?
[11:16] eyoevan: about what?
[11:17] ltjrob: the thing from yesterday
[11:18] eyoevan: Oh, that thing? With that stuff that was done? Just great.
[11:18] ltjrob: excellent!
[11:19] eyoevan: I'm glad your happy with it. Lets do it again sometime.
[11:19] ltjrob: hehe sounds bueno
End of ltjrob buffer: Fri Jun 23 11:25:36 2006
So, we have this little toy called the "Alphabet Pal". This is the new and improved version of the toy. The original is green and this one is purple. It has an extra button on the top in the shape of a bug reclining on a flower and all it does when pressed is say "Hi I'm Edison, let's sing along with Alphabet Pal". Dumb button in an even dumber location, because a little kid is going to hit that button a million times and little Edison is going to annoy the living crap out of you. Both of these new "features" are not the big improvement. The toy now has an undocumented feature that censors your child's play for his/her own good. Part of the point of the toy is that it has little buttons, one for each letter in the alphabet and when you set it to one of its modes, the toy says the "sound" when you press the letter. For example, when you child hits a letter "A" it says the "aah" sound. Pretty fun. You should be able to pronounce out words by hitting letters in succession, but now it doesn't necessasarily let you. The new feature of this toy keeps track of which letters you have previously pushed and when you put together two or more letter sounds that the toy maker finds to be a "naughty" combination, it doesn't allow you to play the sounds together. For example here's an audio clip of what happens when you try to pronounce a popular word begining with "F". Audio Clip. It always puts in that "he he he that tickles" when you hit a naughty combination so it can stretch out the time between the naughty letters.
In fact the toy won't even allow you to put together u and k (or u and c) at all. Through some experimenting on my own here are some combinations of sounds that it doesn't allow together.
