Mike DeWolfe : The Daily Edition

So, I have been experimenting with how to lay down the most optimal amount of foam. Because I am using a positive molding process (positive: material goes over a surface; negative: material goes into a mold), I have to contend with the material I lay down expanding in the wrong direction. The spray foam (e.g. Great Stuff) slowly and inexorably puffs in the direction of least resistence-- the air. When it sets it looks like a burn victim/bubble bath gone wrong. So, I started experimenting with corralling . The downside: it uses ALOT of duct tape. The upside: it does work. I have to take a one week break from this project. When I resume, I will try experimenting with tin foil (it's not just for hats anymore) plus some duct tape. If it goes very well, I may write a long piece of sculpting with Great Stuff foam and post it to " So Very Helpful ."

This from the Tribune : BOGOTA, Colombia: A nationwide blackout hit Colombia on Thursday, with authorities struggling to determine the cause of the electrical grid's collapse. President Alvaro Uribe told journalists in the southern city of Cali that authorities would "know in a few minutes" the cause of the blackout, which took place approximately at 10:15 a.m. local time (1515 GMT). He said the blackout "appears to have affected the entire country." Luis Alarcon, manager of state-controlled electricity distributor ISA, told Caracol Radio that the power outage appears to have begun with an undetermined technical glitch at a substation in Bogota and quickly spread to the rest of the country. He said work crews had re-established power to about 20 percent of the country and hoped to reconnect the capital Bogota and other cities in a few hours. So an entire nation drops back to pre-1850 levels in a heartbeat. No one in the North American/Northen media thin...

Happy Birthday to Martial Arts Master, Jet Li and darn funny guy, Kevin James . What else happened on April 26th? Take a read! These links go to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is great: if a topic sparse on information, they allow to go in and add new information. April 26 is the 116th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (117th in leap years ). There are 249 days remaining in the year. It is the first day following the spring equinox which cannot be Easter Sunday in Western Christianity. Events 1478 - The Pazzi attack Lorenzo de' Medici and kill his brother Giuliano during High Mass in the Duomo of Florence . 1564 - Shakespeare was christened (this is not his birthdate). 1607 - English colonists of the Jamestown settlement make landfall at Cape Henry , Virginia . 1802 - Napoleon Bonaparte signs a general amnesty to allow all but about one thousand of the most notorious émigrés of the French Revolution to return to France , as part of a reconciliary gesture with th...

Here's a wild mash-up: prosumers and the poor. The premise: you find a poor person and team up with them. Capitalize on their misfortune and then split the profits. I don't know what to think about this. Is it a kinder, gentler version of bumfights? Is it using them as fodder? Is it a bad idea? You the jury decide. For me, I'm ordering a "I'm on the street, drunk and homeless and all they gave me was this lousy T-Shirt" t-shirt. By thew way, if you have a hankering for irreverent crap: click here

2011: the year of financial ruin. Nuff said.

I have continued to work on my Cthulhu sculpture. What was a woeful combination of cat litter bins and a leftover BBQ is now looking a little more sculpture-like. If you missed my last post, the plan: turn all of my recycling and leftover junk into the foundation of a sculpture. My goal: to make a sculpture of the Great Cthulhu from the Lovecraftian mythology. While I started with a very precise look, I looked around for artwork-- examples to talk a lead from. It turns out that almost every artist has their own take on what Cthulhu looks like. So, Add me to this pile. I have built mine with a big tail, small legs, large arms. It will have large wings with the characteristic head o'tentacles. My logical foundation for the dimensions: Cthulhu is a sci-fi/horror character built as a creature of space where legs (read: walking) are overrated. The tail is a counter balance. It's true means of propulsion will be its wings. For that matter: wings, arms and legs mean that Cthulhu is s...

On this Earth Day with the Inconvenient Truth before us and ice melting and all the plagues unleashed upon the Earth, Starbucks did something nice. They offered free coffee for people who showed up with their own mugs. Aw.... In the two stores I went to, most of the A-Holes in the line-ups didn't bring their own mugs. They just wanted to have paper fills with coffee. Earth Day, like Christmas, is the one day you can act totally different and feel good on the remainder of the days for having done so. Not me. I made a point of driving to as many Starbucks as I could to get free coffee. If I could have left the car idling, I would done so. It's not that I hate the environment: I hate Starbucks (though I seem to love their coffee). Also, I hate all of the arbitrary ways that we are a working for a better planet. Here are my ways to help the Earth: Download music . CDs are toxic. Shipping them is causing an onslaught of greenhouse gases. Shift the model to downloads for money. Bette...

And here's a transcript of what he said: I wanna tell you something okay, and I wanna leave a message for you right now because again its 10:30 here in New York on a Wednesday and once again I’ve made an ass of myself trying to get to a phone to call you at a specific time. When the time comes for me to make the phone call I stop whatever I’m doing and I go and I make that phone call at eleven-o-clock in the morning in New York and if you don’t pick up the phone at 10:00 at night and you don’t even have the god damn phone turned on. I want you to know something okay, I’m tired of playing this game with you. I’m leaving this message with you to tell you, you have insulted me for the last time. You have insulted me, you don’t have the brains or the decency as a human being, I don’t give a damn if you’re twelve years old, or eleven years old, or that you’re a child, or that your mother is a thoughtless pain in the ass, who doesn’t care about what you do as far as I’m concerned, you ha...

I like to see what happens when automation goes a little wrong. Start stacking tabs and things like titles get shortened. Take Google Analytics, shorten it and a little too much...

There was a Wikipedia piece on parts of the globe that Google Maps has purposely blotted out. Alot of the locations are military installations and nuclear power plants. Ironically: the security in these places is strong. Go to the Ukraine and you can likely use a credit card to jimmie all of the locks that lead into a nuclear plant's reaction chamber. Mask those locales from suspect purposes? Nah. I said, "was a Wikipedia piece" because it was slated for deletion. Before it's gone, I snagged a copy: Google Maps or Google Earth contains digital images of the earth; a number of sensitive locations are digitally obscured or blurred [1] . Many other areas in Google Earth have been blurred by governments keen to stop people seeing sensitive sites [2] . There was This is in contrast to portions of google maps where only low resolution photographs are available, or where atmospheric or photographic conditions resulted in reduced resolution or clarity. Contents 1 R...

I have started a Project Diary on my part of the ThoseDeWolfes site . Over the course of the next few months. I am going to build a 6-8 foot tall sculpture of the Lovecraftian creature, Cthulhu. Why Cthulhu? He looks cool. Lovecraft had some great ideas and some lousy ideas. If he were alive today, he'd like be a shut-in and a trekkie. Back in the 1910s and 1920s, he had to make up his own combination fo sci-fi and horror. As I am a shut-in and a geek, I guess I'm drawn to his work. Why a sculpture? I love to sculpt. Because of space limitations, I haven't been able to work on anything large. An overhaul of the deck and a cheapness on my part (I ain't paying no junk man $30!) I thought this could be a wild project. What am I using? I am recycling. We did an overhaul of our patio. We junked old wood. We had chunks of a BBQ. I had rolls of wire mesh. I have a lot of crap. Rather than throw it away, I am going to work it into a sculpture of Cthulhu perched upon a pede...