Little

Don went to Frankie's and all I got was...

My friend Don went to Frankie's Tiki Room last summer to check the place out: "When I walked in from outside, I couldn't see anything at all.  Not a damned thing!  It was so dark inside, it was like walking into a closet and closing the door. " Evidently the drinks weren't too great to say the least but he did manage to return with a most excellent Tiki Bandit mug designed by Squid.

It took me forever and a month to finally meet up with him and claim it.  It's a really well-done mug from Tiki Farm. Thanks Don!

I read a book...

For my birthday this year I picked up a Kindle Paperwhite. I've tried reading on the iPad before but I never get very far. I either see some notification and go to look at that or I leave the book app to go look up something that occurred to me while reading and next thing you know I'm checking mail, twitter, G+ etc.

The Paperwhite is awesome. The way it lights the e-ink text works very well, is easily adjustable and there's no glare. It also doesn't have all the built-in distractions that the iPad has. I picked out a fairly short humorous science fiction title from my library web site (Year Zero) and read it in a few days. I haven't read a book like that in years. Most other books I have read lately are reference books, cook books, books full of tikis, and coffee-table type books. These types of things are better suited for print or maybe even the iPad than e-ink. For your basic all-text novel the Kindle is perfect.

Amazon link for Year Zero:
http://www.amazon.com/Year-Zero-Novel-Rob-Reid/dp/0345534417

(I wrote this on my iPad while I was doing something else and it occurred to me to write a blog post.)

Almost Tree Time

I found a few ornaments for the tree at Hobby Lobby the other weekend. No tikis, but still a pretty good selection:

I really want to make an "out of this world" type of comment but that would be too cheesy.

Chiki Tiki Shot out of the Blue

No.. the grantbob.com blog isn't quite dead yet... but it's been hard to tell. I came across this little Chiki Tiki shot from Tybee Island at my local Antique and Flea this afternoon.

I doubt it's anything particularly special or rare but I thought the glaze was pretty nice for a Chiki Tiki souvenir. Usually they're dunked in your least favorite shade of brown or icky (snotty) green. Not a bad find at all.

I've picked up some nice tikis this year (and so have Sam and the Bear). I'll try to get some photos soon and do some posts while I can still remember where they came from.

Mr. Bacon and Monsieur Tofu vs. Dalek in the Alphabet Forest

Extermiknit!

Etsy for Dummies

I finally got around to finishing Starting an Etsy Business for Dummies during the long weekend away from work.

Allison and Kate did a great job putting this one together. It goes into every bit of detail someone would need to set up shop on Etsy to sell their wares. If you can use a web browser this book can get you the rest of the way there.  Even though getting around Etsy is probably the least of my problems I found the book very valuable for talking about all the other other elements of an Estsy shop from pricing your goods to marketing your shop. There's a ton of uncommon common sense within.

I have some thoughts in my head for up-cycling and selling some of my Goodwill and antique finds. After finishing the book I think I'm about ready to put together a checklist of fill-in-the-blank items to help me determine if this is really something I want to embark on right now or if I need to do some more homework.

If you've ever though about setting up an Etsy Shop it's definitely worth a read and to have on hand for a reference once you do. You can get your very own copy here: Etsy For Dummies.

Full disclosure: Allison is the spouse of one of my coworkers and gave me a copy with the hope that I'll open up a shop. (She's also a really formidable Words With Friends opponent.)

Walk Day

Today was our walk day for the 2011 Walk to End Alzheimer's. It was in downtown Duluth on the town green. It's a really nice space. They've done a lot with the area.

Start/Finish Arch

The Dacula Drumline was there to get us started.

Slowly but surely... we're off.

We took a pretty leisurely pace but kept it fairly consistent. I forgot to time it but I'd say it was around a hour or so of walking. We weren't the last to finish by far.. so that's always good!

Maximus from the Gwinnett Gladiators was there. He agreed to pose with us since Heather was wearing her Gladiators cap.

Thanks to everyone who sponsored us to raise awareness and funds for Alzheimer research, care and support. Never give up hope.

-Grant

Mystery Penny

I've been doing a lot of house cleaning this weekend. I finally took a moment to take a giant bucket of pennies that had been accumulating over the past 6-7 years to Coinstar.

I was a penny short of $43. One of the pennies that came back was the one show above. It's been through one of those souvenir penny smushing machines at the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose.

I've never been there. I'm not sure if I know anyone who has been there. No idea how I ended up with this one. 

Atlanta Mini Maker Faire

Today Jeff and I headed down to Georgia Tech to check out the Atlanta Mini Maker Faire. It was a nice mix of robots, 3D printers, and other do-it-yourself crafts.

This was a neat home automation project using power over ethernet to control and power things. I liked how they were using recycled antique BlackBerry displays. Evidently you can get old BackBerrys for $1 each in bulk on eBay. See http://smg.tophi.net/  for more info on the project.

Remote-controlled robotic skateboard.

Someone trying it out... we gave her plenty of room.

Make your own drone.

Meet the Proteus 6xi. One day it will be able to see me and use radar so it won't run over me.

Cool stuff/art from Maker Joe.

There were at least 3-4 Artoo units running around.

You can't really have too many.

Lawnbot 400. What could possibly go wrong?

Alas The King of Pops was out of pops.  :(

Thing-O-Matic in action.

(I want a Thing-O-Matic.)

Very cool ceramic robots made by Michael Klapthor.

Panorama of the Georgia Tech campus on the way out.
(I'll have to post a larger version of this somewhere.)