Got an email alert today telling me Ross Noble is coming back to the Olympia Theatre, May 4th 2009. After seeing him there last year I’ve been waiting for this and of course booked my tickets today. If you haven’t seen Ross live before take it from me and really try to get to one of his shows on this UK tour.
Right so as everyone can see I haven’t touched my blog in a long time and I wish I could say I was busy but I really haven’t been, I’ve just let things slide the last few months. But now it’s time for Halloween again and I’ve got nothing!!!! Not even a decent idea!!
Thanks to everyone that emailed me lately wondering what I’m doing and looking forward to seeing this year’s creation so I really need to get started on something.
I’m still a bit pissed that I didn’t pull of my big plan last year and would love to try it again but here’s the question, should I put all my effort over the next few weeks in to something that might fall apart again or should I go for something that I can actually do and manage within the time?
Please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions leave them in the comments.
*** Update ***
Not great today and only for a win in the final race it would have been a bad day. The day finished with Kazal getting a placed finish and Cousin Vinny getting a win so the day finished in profit.
For this second costume I was just told “big black wings”.
The design started by first thinking that these wings needed to be fitted to the person and needed to be light enough to wear all night. After a bit of thought it was decided to use black water piping and black cloth.
The pipes were bent into shape and left sitting for a few days so that the curve would hold.
The next step was to cut a piece of wood that would be used as a back plate to which the pipes would be attached. Two shoulder straps were also attached to the back plate and so this allowed the person to wear the wings comfortably all night.
The wings were made from black cloth. A hem was stitched on one end of the material and this slid over the pipe allowing the material to hang down and form the wings.
To finish of the wings and give them a better look two black feather boas were stitched along the top.
To finish the costume of the back plate was covered with left over material and the person was added to the wings. It’s up to the individual as to what they wear but I’d recommend something similar to what was done here as it gave a very good overall appearance.
To start of sorry to anyone that was expecting something great here but my initial costume failed to materialise so I was forced to go to plan B on the morning of the fancy dress ball and so the “Head on a Plate” costume was thrown together in a few hours with help from my brother.
The idea is simple, a large monster type creature holding a plate with my head on it. The monster is created by putting an old mask on a stick straight above my own head. Then create 2 arms which hold a plate that fits around my neck. The monster and I would then be covered in one long black cape/dress thing.
To start, a frame was made that sat on my shoulders and had a piece of wood attached that would hold the head. The frame was made using a back plate to which 2 lengths of black water piping was fixed to. The 2 pipes were bent over and tied to the back plate using some washing line rope. A piece of pipe insulation was put around the rope so it wouldn’t dig into my sides. The piece of wood was screwed to the back plate and newspaper was wrapped around the top to fill out the head.
Next a length of fencing wire was attached to the upright wood and this was bent into the shape of the arms. When the wire was the correct shape it was filled out using newspaper and a pair of rubber gloves was put on the end to save time on trying to make hands. The right arm wouldn’t stay in place so it had to be propped out plus a black bag was wrapped around the head as the newspaper was showing through the mask.
To dress the creature was easy. I used an old scream cape to cover the main body and an old mask for the head. To cover my own lower body I’d wear an old long black skirt. A hole was made in the chest area of the scream cape for my head to fit through.
The plate was simply just an old tray which was sprayed sliver and some padding put on the cut edge so I didn't cut myself during the night. An addition to this was a piece of elastic to hold the plate tight to my neck as I found that the plate tended to slip out when I walked.
And that was the costume completed. All in all it only took a few hours, was simple, light and comfortable to wear and in the end it won 3rd place which just shows sometimes the simple things just work better.
The “Davey Jones” costume on the left was the overall winner and well deserved as all that was real seaweed!
Sorry to anyone that’s been coming to the site looking for new content. I’ve been pretty busy lately with work and now it’s only 2 weeks until Halloween and I haven’t started my costume yet so I’m really under pressure. But what all that means is that I’ll have a load of things to write about when I do have the time to sit down again.
The things to come will include:
Halloween Costumes - I’m making 2 this year maybe even 3
MAME Cabinet - I’ve finally finished my MAME cabinet and got it up and running
Virtual earth - I’ve been doing some nice virtual earth map integration with WindGuru to produce weather maps for surfers
Plus the usual Bebo, web stuff and other things I’ve gotten up to
All I can say now is keep checking back, new posts will appear soon….. hopefully…..
In my boredom I’ve decided to try a new sport, kiteboarding. I looked around to find as much information on the sport as I could and came accross the following sites:
From reading through the fourms on the sites it soon became apparent that I needed to get lessons before doing anything else. This put me in contact with the LSD Kiteboarding School at Rosses Point, Co. Sligo and I went for my first lesson yesterday (Sunday 23rd). If anyone is considering doing kiteboarding or are just looking for something different then I suggest giving the boys at Rosses Point a call. I had a great day out and I’m looking forward to getting back to finish the lessons and then moving on to getting into the sport more myself.
From the comments being left on my other posts people seem to be having trouble with the visitors map feature on Bebo.
The above picture shows the box at the top of the visitors map page and shows your current account setting and the options to which you can change it. The box on the left shows your current setting, which in this case is “Public”. On the right shows the two options you can change this to, Anonymous and Off. Your profile has to be set to Public in order to see the pins on the map. Point to note here is that Bebo seem to be only showing pins for people who have visited your profile in the last 24 hours, so your map might have nothing on it for times.
If you see something different from what’s in the picture above then your account is different in some way. I’m guessing Bebo have different settings depending on your age.
