Music to dance to!

Hey folks!

Time for that "something special" I mentioned the other day. If you read my "about me" section you know I'm the bassist for a band called "The Long Black Veils". Well, here's the links to our myspace, twitter, facebook, and even youtube!

We played our first live show at a house party out in the country a few months ago and it went great, you can see the pics all over the myspace and facebook pages. Then our drummer had surgery so we went on a break (and cleaned out the Otter House, drank lots of beers and had a few bbq's lol).

But last week our singer Rob Avalos had the opportunity to open up for friends of ours Sunconscious Fountain at The Next Bar and we had a great time! It was great to be a part of the crowd, drinking and cheering, I usually don't get to be on that side of the stage so it was really cool.

Here's some pics!

Rob tearin it up onstage!

Subconscious Fountain bringin it home

There's more pics on the facebook\myspace and heres a vid from the Youtube channel. This is Rob warming up outside while the P.A. is being set up.



It was an awesome night and we will be heading back as soon as we can as a full band (maybe even putting our drummer on acoustic guitar if he's not recovered yet? Who knows!) So check out my band, check out our sites, listen to the music, and please leave comments, follow us on twitter, like us on facebook, be our friends of myspace, rate and comment our vids on youtube and all that stuff!

K time to get some work done on my ViVi papercraft!

Vivi Papercraft update

Hey folks!

I'm back in black and at it again, Working on my Papercraft before goin to band practice! I've got a pic update of my progress on the Vivi model I've been working on and a few tips that I've thought of as i've been working today. First, Vivi update:

Got the bottom of the jacket, lemme tell you that took a bit of patience!

 Then another piece just above that, this model has tons of pieces!

Okay, I'm still working on it currently (like right now I'm blogging this while waiting for glue to dry!) but I noticed some things that I can share with you all.

TIP TIME!

1: Cut carefully!! Now this may be a no-duh tip, but you'll be surprised how little it takes to screw something up. Here's my example:

Now that's frustrating! As you can see, there are no other white lines on the bottom half of the model, just that one spot. That came from being distracted and angling my blade the wrong way. When you cut a piece, you should angle your blade slightly away from the piece.

This is the angle you want to cut at, tilting the blade AWAY from the piece.

This way the blade is cutting in and UNDER the piece, so if you do screw up by a micromillimeter it wont be bad because you wont be exposing the white paper under the ink of the piece. You can cut straight down also, but I find that its easier to stay exactly along the edge of the piece if you cut at an angle. For your reference, and cause I took the pics:

Straight

Wrong! This is how I screwed up the piece in the top pic.

It will just make your models cleaner and save you from disappointment overall. 

Tip 2: Glue an anchor, then wait!

Most models go in sections, some of them large, some insanely small and delicate, either way, the best way to keep control of the model and get everything aligned is to glue an anchor and wait. 

Start with the center or one edge of the piece, glue it, let it dry, and then you will have a much easier time gluing the subsequent tabs on that piece. It's a pain in the butt to wrestle an entire piece trying to glue multiple tabs. It exercises your patience, but trust me, its the best way to go.

Tip 3: Reinforce!!

Paper, even cardstock, isn't the sturdiest medium to work with, and it can fall apart. To make your models last, you should reinforce the weakest points, obviously the points where its glued together. Whenever your done gluing a piece in its entirety, simply take your toothpick and glue and put a layer on the INSIDE of the model, coating the joints and effectively reinforcing your model. Depending on what stock your using you'll use more or less glue to reinforce. On regular A4 use very little, on cardstock you can be a bit more generous without compromising the paper.

Tip 4: Relax!!

I know how stupid that sounds, but just take it from me, you wanna have fun and be relaxed for this, just like any other hobby. If you're the type that likes to focus and zone out to relax, go ahead and hit it stressed. If you're anything like me, you wanna be relaxed enough to focus and zone out before you hit it. Personally I stick some blues (Son House and Johnny Winter FTW!) on Pandora radio, brew a pot of coffee, clear the kitchen table and go into my own little world.

Thanks again for reading and I hope you get some use out of these tips. As always remember to check paperkraft.net for more awesome models (seriously, those guys have the best stuff) and pretty please leave me some comments :D  

New phone yay!

I got a new phone! So now I can take pics and vids even if I forget my nifty polaroid dvf130.

See, told you guys I'd blog about whatever the hell I feel like talking about :)

Yeah I know, you all have iPhails or Droids, good for you, but I'm poor, so I'm excited for my qwerty keypad, mp3 via bluetooth, and other nifty whatnots. Hopefully I'll get a data plan eventually (blog from phone?) but for now I'm happy.  :)   see, smiley face means happy  :)

I have the black one and wifey got the purple. Samsung Strive. Love this phone!! The only bad thing I can say about it is that there is no 3.5mm jack, which is annoying in this day and age of interconnection. I should be able to load my phone with mp3s and jack it into my car stereo, but alas, no such luck. But I can listen to my music via the extraordinarily loud speaker on the phone itself or bluetooth headset, which is nice on those early morning fishing trips or when I'm doing my papercraft and the wife has the TV on Buffy and that damdedly loud theme song comes on, which is a daily occurance. Buffy I mean, not papercraft, that's weekly or so.

Also, for a 2mp camera it takes surprisingly good pictures and video, and with a converter http://www.nchsoftware.com/prism/index.html you can easily convert videos from and to the .3gp format the phone uses. I've got the last half of Naruto season 6 on my phone for when I'm stuck in line or at a dinner or something.

Here's a pic of my youngest for your viewing enjoyment

Pretty decent quality for a phone right? And thats in multishot mode which means its only 320X240, it goes up to 1600X1200 for single shot mode.

Well that's it for today. Gunna have something special up over the next few days (maybe even tomorrow!) so be on the lookout.

Dinner Time!

Hey folks!

Back from a good day of fishing at the ol Kings River!

As you can see, I have dinner and a sunburn XD I'm tellin you folks, Troutninjatv.com. Dude knows his trout. This will probably be my last fishin post for a while, cause really, how much can you post about it aside from "Look at my fishies!!!". I'm no instructor, which is why I'm referring you to the trout ninja, I'll let him give you the tips he's given me!

Trout fry!

Hey folks, rested up and ready to go trout fishing again tomorrow morning!

And to you doubters, heres some vids from a few trips ago, caught with tips from troutninjatv.com

And it tasted gooooooood lol. I'm going out tomorrow morning so maybe I'll have enough caught to bring home and fry up. I don't like bringing trout home unless I have enough to feed the wife and kid too, that way its a full meal and I feel the fish are used well. Frying up one or two small ones is nice for one person, but it seems to me like a waste, since those smallfrys could grow up to be lunkers that could feed the whole family.

I also do this thing I call Zero Budget Mods, kinda a combination of customization and re-purposing items. It's an exercise in improvisation and can apply to any aspect of life, you just gotta be creative.

Work with what you have right? I'll post up my ZBM bass mod soon, and yeah, this time I actually am talking about Bass Guitar :)

Trophy Bass!

That is, if there's a trophy for smallest bass EVAR!

That's right, I caught that bad boy! I think the picture even makes it look bigger than it was, if thats possible hahhahaha! We caught more and much bigger, but this was my favorite one of the day. I'm sunburned and tired so that's all you get for today.

Going trout fishing Tuesday, hopefully I catch enough to bring home to fry! Happy Sunday all, have a good day!

Fishing Time!!

Hey everybody! (hi dr. nick!)
No, my name isn't nick, but I play one on T.V.

ANYWAYS! Taking a break from the Papercraft to bring you a little FISHING TIME FUN!! Going bass fishing (that's the one with 4 strings right?) with my dad and cousin in the morning, which will be great! But for the blog purposes I'll focus on what I normally do during the week, which is Trout Fishin!! Got a site to reference, if anyone is reading, go check out The TroutNinja!

This goofy guy got me started on the right track when I started trout fishing a while back. Didn't have much time for bass fishing anymore (which I've done for 20 years now) because of travel time and needing to be within cell range, but there's a river running right through my area and I figured, wth, I'll go trout fishin! I've done pretty well on his tips, and I've even gotten some of his super secret bait to field test, so you guys would do well to watch all his videos!

Anyways, so far in my trout fishing area (Kings River Ca) I've noticed two things, fishermen lie alot (big news huh) and trout like garlic. I've caught more trout off Garlic Power Bait than anything else.

I want to get some rainbow-garlic, but for now this is the kind I can find. I get bites on it at the stocked Woodward Park ponds (grass carp and catfish?) and at any spot I go to on the Kings river. Wal-mart stop carrying it, but I found that Doyles market (on the way up to pine-flat) carries it. Also you can order it and all the varieties online (click here).

Another one I've found to work well lately, rooster-tail spinners. These things get the fish chasing your hooks, if not biting them lol. I've literally watched trout chase these things all the way up to shore.

A good tip for you if you plan on eating the fish you catch, don't bother freezing them, they turn to mush when you thaw them out. If you don't catch enough to fry, let em go. You might try taking the first few you catch home to clean and cook just as practice though, cleaning trout isn't the hardest, but it aint the easiest either, it takes some practice. You can find plenty of videos on der Youtube.com to teach you how.

As far as cooking, I prefer to fillet and deep fry, but you can grill or bake as well. I take the classic method, cornmeal-salt-pepper, and kick it up a notch with some Cajun seasoning or Tajun (local mexican chile-lime seasoning). drizzle with lemon juice or just chow down. My favorite part is the tail, cause fried fish tails are better than chips!

That's all I got for today, maybe tomorrow will bring some pics and vids of some fish catching action, but more than likely will bring a sunburn and an early bedtime! Seeya next time kiddies!