The Scarab Jerusalem Project

July 18. 2017 - 304 Days to Keycon

Having attended the Society for the Ethical Treatment of the Kraken Tea and Bazaar I found myself wanting to go back and revisit my and my families Steampunk attire. I've had a few ideas rolling around in my head and it seems like a good time to start working out a few new twists on the old bit's and bob's that I have laying around and adding a few new pieces.

And when I finally unpacked some of my boxes I found more of my old stuff which is giving me a chance to get some ideas and start a plan to get to where I want to be.

I've had an idea rattling around in my head for awhile. A Victorian newspaper man based on my favorite of fictional journalists, Spider Jerusalem.

But why not a ancient relative of his?

The final piece was given to me during Natasha Klassen's mummy unwrapping. A Scarab charm come up, offered to a sad, sad, person. As I was a sad, sad, person I eagerly indicated I would like the Scarab. Thus was born the idea for Spider's great, great, great, etc... grandfather Scarab Jerusalem, newspaper man extraordinaire!

There's going to be the necessity of ordering a few pieces. Black pants and a Black vest I think are a must. I found a place, Hats in the Belfry that sells a 'John Bull' style top hat that I like.

The hardest thing I think will be the Steampunk Live Shades (Live Goggles?).

One of the things that fascinated me most about Jerusalem in Transmetropolitan was his sunglasses, the 'Live Shades' which were capable of taking photographs. So of course I wanted a pair.

$100 plus shipping later I ordered a pair of sunglasses with a 1 megapixel on board camera. I wore them and took various pictures with them for a couple of years until tragedy struck and they broke. But, me being me, I kept the pieces thinking I could use them some day.


I've got the ball in motion for getting those made. Today's technology, 3D printing for example, allows all sorts of things to be made as long as you can model it on a computer. Joy of joy's! I know people who are capable of 3D modeling!

It's good to have connections.

It's probably going to be a labour of months to try to get everything together. I still have to check the camera parts to ensure that they still work and see if my computer can read the 2GB flash drive.

Stay tuned. I'll post updates, and maybe some video as I work through the various parts of the costume.

~Corey the Geek

The LEGO! project

July 17, 2017 - 305 Days to Keycon

My parents introduced me to those little interlocking bricks from Denmark that, since the 1960's, has been holding the attention of generations of children, young and old alike. Many of the first sets that I received from my folks were the space sets which were popular at the time.

Flash forward thirty odd years and many of those old pieces are now in the possession of my oldest son Riley. I never got rid of those brick sets. Sure, many pieces have been broken or lost to the ages but I still have much of that old LEGO.

I had the idea, as a bonding experience between Riley and I, to try to recreate - or rather rebuild - at least one of those old sets.

It's going to involve going through the pieces that we have and trying to source out the pieces that are missing.

I'm aiming to rebuild this set. The instructions are available on brickinstructions.com with a link to a parts list on rebrickable.com

picture credit: brick instructions.com

I'll be documenting the build over the course of the coming weeks and maybe months as we tackle this old set and maybe look at what else we have that we can maybe create.

Stay tuned!

~Brother K'Bob

Thursday June 29th, 2017 - 323 Days to Keycon 2018...

Welp, it's the start of a new year, a new cycle to the next Keycon and little has been related as to what happened at the last.

In a nutshell, I slept. Like, a lot. I was tired. I was around for a bit but the majority of the weekend was sleeping in our room.

Jenn and I were exhausted.

But we're here in a new cycle for the upcoming Keycon 35, May 18th-20th 2018.

A lot has been happening around here though. We just completed a new move into a rental property that is not government subsidised. It's been two weeks of what seems like non-stop moving and the house, while sloooooowly coming together, is still a disaster as we try to put our lives back together.

However, with the move comes the probability that we can move forward on a few projects.

Geeky plans for between this year and Keycon 2018:

1) LEGO. Yes, the childrens brick toy. I have a bunch of LEGO from my own childhood and I'm planning on trying to put together one of my old kits. I know that there are parts damaged and missing so I'm probably going to have to try to source out parts to replace them. I'm hoping to use this as a bonding project between myself and my stepson Riley.

2) Hagrid. I've agreed to play Hagrid (I was voluntold by my wife) at Keycon 2018 as a quest giver. It'll involve putting together a costume and a couple of props. I'm personally looking forward to creating his little pink parasol/wand.

3) Qui-Gon Swag. A mercenary... swag giver? I'm still not 100% on this one. All I know is that I have a Hasbro Clone Trooper helmet that I had bought a few years back from Value Village and I want to create a custom costume around it. LED blinky eyes and the whole nine yards...  I'll see what comes around on this one.

4) K'Bob's headpiece. It's been years since I've done a headcast of myself. My last one got thrown away, it was too much trouble to keep hauling around. I NEED to make a new Klingon head piece and it's time. I've got the concept down for a quick and easy character, I just need the turtle shell.

Those are the four main ideas that I'm going to be moving ahead on. We'll see how it all shakes out this year.

Stay tuned Geeks!

April 7, 2017 - 42 days to Keycon

Things have been mighty quiet around the K'Bob blogs as of late.

I've decided to amalgamate my Brother K'Bob - Mutterings of a Mad Klingon and 359 Days to Keycon blogs into one. I at one point was trying to keep up four blogs and it started to seem, well, silly. This blog will be my sounding post, about me: a place to spill the contents of my diseased mind onto teh intrawebz and infect the world wide web.

Here you will find stories from my home life, snippets and facts about the town we live in with regards to my interests. Things I'm up to. Things you probably don't want to know about but will still read with morbid fascination.

You'll find angry rantings. Incomprehensible mutterings. The occasional art. Magic! Madness! Despair!4

In other words, the things that make me... well... me!

The other blog, https://meetthegeeks.blogspot.ca/, will start updating again soon.

As soon as I get my shit together.

Or all you'll find here is a constant flow of apologies.

February 19th, 2017 - 89 days to Keycon

Unfortunately my weight has been doing a yo-yo so I can’t report on a lower weight than last week, I’m sitting at 289.6 lbs, but I can report that I’m moving along with my goals.

I’m working on incorporating more exercise into my regular day. I’m going to try to be consistant with my push-ups on a day to day basis and adding jumping jacks into the routine. Something physical to get my heart rate up and hopefully kick start some real weight loss.

Had a simple breakfast this morning as well. Grape tomatos, shredded hash browns and bacon.

I hate to admit it but I am feeling a bit discouraged about my attempts at weight loss. Despite my weight falling below 290 it has been steadily creeping upwards again despite the fact that I have been drinking nothing but water for the last few days with one evening having a couple of rum and sodas.

In other news, Riley and I are continuing to look at ideas for a Youtube channel. Riley has desperately wanted to become a youtuber so when I was running down ideas and watching some youtube channels, like the backyard scientist, I started thinking, why not a science channel? Riley loves science and a lot of these channels include ‘science’ experiments. It seems like a natural idea.

I put forth the idea to the boy and he loved it, so it’s a go.

It’s going to take a couple of weeks of pulling materials together. But in the mean time I figure we can go through some ideas together to see which ones we want to include.

So stay tuned for Wrecking Ball Science.

As we move forward Riley and I will need to test out some of the experiments beforehand and look at the science behind them. Part of my plan is to get Riley learning without him realizing he’s learning. I’m hoping this will also develop into a lifetime love of science.

The other benefit is that it gives me a chance to work on my film making skills so we’ll both be gaining an education. It’s a win-win concept for everyone.

It’s taking a bit of sourcing, trying to find materials in the city: it’s starting to look like I’ll need to order a bunch of stuff off Amazon. I know we can just use stuff we can find at any dollar store to begin with, but I really want to use proper flasks and beakers to add to the science ambiance.

It’s always been a problem with me. I can’t start something without the “proper” materials. Everything has to be perfect from the start. Everything has to look professional. And it’s that mindset that never allows me to start anything. It’s a personal flaw that I really need to get over.

We hit a couple of thrift stores yesterday and found a couple of books and some glassware that’ll work. We found a non-graduated beaker that I’m pretty sure started life as a french press, but will do fine for our uses. We also found some stoppered glass bottles that we can use to store material. A lot of the stoppers are broken but there a few that still work. They can all be made use of.

We also grabbed a couple of books on kids science experiments and Chemistry for dummies.

All in all it was a successful day. Riley and I got some bonding time and we moved forward on our goals.

Forward and onward to SCIENCE!

February 15, 2017 - 93 Days to Keycon

Today I'm going to be sharing a post from a little over three years ago. Three years ago when I found out my life was going to change significantly. And boy has it...

The blog post, from my soon-to-be-deleted blog, maybe, was titled: Thoughts on becoming a father:
“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!” 
― Hunter S. Thompson

Ah, the late, the great Gonzo professor of journalism Hunter S. Thompson.  Strange that I should start a post about my, as yet, unborn child.  A little stranger coming into my world to change my life forever.  Or at least for eighteen years.

It started with Batman.

There we were, two Thirty-somethings watching The Dark Knight Rises.  Maybe it was Anne Hathaway's catsuit.  Perhaps it was Tom Hardy's hypnotic voice.  One thing leads to another and, well I won't say anymore on the subject.  But I blame Bane.

Damn you Bane!  This is your fault!

Five and a half weeks later I get an ominous message via Facebook.  Yup.  She's pregnant.  She should'n't have been able to get pregnant, or so her doctor said.  But there it was in a little conversation box at the bottom of my screen telling me that my life is about to change.

What could I do.  Suicide was'n't an option.  I started looking at travel prices to Tibet with the vague thought of becoming a Yak farmer.

What?  It's a good life.  You get to wear a funky hat and a Yak fur coat.  And when you get lonely there's plenty of pretty Yaks for one to fu...

...nevermind.

I took a couple of days to collect my thoughts and talk to a few people.  Then I called her back.

We agreed to meet and discuss options.  We met at Portage Place for lunch.  I was a bit nervous as I knew she would be.

                            My baby mama ~ A geeks eye view

Well, we sat and we talked and we decided that it was going to happen and that we could easily co-parent.  We began making the announcements to friends and family.

My mothers initial reaction was less than enthused.  You see, as of this point she was not aware that I was seeing anybody so I'm sure she was picturing some heroin-thin, chain smoking prostitute named Candy.

I'm sure she was pleased to have seen Jenny, who has more of the girl-next-door thing going on, walking into their apartment.  Jenny charmed them.



My mom has always wanted to be a grandma, but with my troubles keeping relationships together it did'n't seem that it was going to happen.  The best her and my father could hope for was cat sitting from time to time.  Their small hairy grandchild.

Now she's not only going to have a grand child, but she also gets to spend time with Jenny's two young children as well.  She's thrilled and is already spoiling them.

It's odd that I should have started off this post with a quote from Hunter S. Thompson.  When we started discussing baby names Jenny suggested Hunter if it should be a boy.  After a moment of shock I realized that I had never considered the name but was immediately struck by it.

Hunter Toews.

I like it.

It took several months before the child would present it's junk.  Between legs together, umbilical cord in the way and a shadow from Jenny's belly-button, the brat was doing everything but covering it's privates with one hand and flipping us off with the other.

He's since started co-operating.  We are pleased to discover that we are having a boy.  We're now at 32 weeks, but he's measuring at 37 weeks.  He's going to be a chubby boy like his daddy.  Unfortunately he's also inherited my clown feet.

Got his daddy's clown feet.

Well, here we are, approximately four weeks to go.  It seems a little unreal.  This is actually happening. But I'm looking forward to the arrival of Hunter Brian Daniel Toews.  My legacy is secured.

And my sleep is threatened.  So what?  It's going to be a hell of a ride.

And here we are, Three years later on that little strangers third birthday. Has it been a hell of a ride so far?

I'm going to have to say yes. 

The past three years have flown by and it's been a privilege to watch that little man grow and advance. some of it still doesn't seem real. We've had ups and downs since then. Jenn and I got married and I'm not a father to one, but to three kids. My life has changed ultimately for the better. 

This year will be Hunter's first trip to the con. I'm looking forward to it!

~Brother K'Bob

Another weight loss post

February 07, 2017 - 101 days to Keycon

This blog was meant to be a day to day of one year in the life of a fan, a year getting ready to re-enter Winnipeg's fannish community, but is somehow turning into a weight loss blog.

I've been sick for the last couple of days. All of us have been sick really. We’ve had a cold/flu that’s gone from one to the other, I thick Riley, our eldist, is the only one that has been unaffected.

The illness has definitely helped, I was at 288.8 this morning which was a good feeling. It’s nice to see some results after a month of being good. While I haven’t completely cut out soda, I’ve reduced it to once or twice a week and not a whole bottle of it in one night either.

I’m also starting a new experiment today; I’m getting up fifteen minutes earlier. It’s not much but it allowed me to make breakfast, a thing I don’t often have time, or desire, for in the morning.

I made breakfast burrito’s. In this case they were egg, onion and ham with home made salsa. To drink is water with Mio, a non-sugar flavoring.

I would have made the tortilla’s to go with it, but I didn’t have the time. I think sometime this week I have to sand and re-season my cast iron frying pan to make some fresh flour tortillas.

For those interested, the salsa recipe is from www.food.com:

Chi-Chi’s Salsa Copy Recipe

2 green onions, diced
2 ripe tomatoes, diced
1⁄2 teaspoon salt
1⁄2 teaspoon black pepper
1 dash Tabasco sauce
14 ounces stewed tomatoes

Directions

Cut up stewed tomatoes and combine in saucepan with onions, fresh tomato, salt and pepper.
Bring just to a boil.
Boil hard 1 min and remove from heat.
Put half of mixture through blender just to mince fine, but not to puree.
Return to remaining half of mixture.
Cool and refrigerate in tightly covered container.

I didn’t put in the tabasco sauce because I wanted the kids to try it. However, even without, the pepper adds a bit of bite so I’m expecting that they’ll probably say it’s too spicy.


I also screwed up and bought crushed tomato’s leaving me worried that I might have made spaghetti sauce instead of salsa.

I would recommend that you only pulse the mixture, I ran it through a couple of times and pureed the sauce, leaving me with a smoother texture than I would have liked.

It yields approximately two jars of sauce and, unfortunately, in the off season for tomato’s, costs about the same. However I’m reasonably confident that there are fewer preservatives in the mixture and overall it’s probably a bit healthier and more natural.

I’m going to experiment in the next couple of weeks with adding garlic and other ingredients to it to change up the flavors a bit and see if I can come up with a K’Bob Signature sauce.

Cause why the hell not.

To add a bit of a fannish notion to this blog, the idea for breakfast Taco’s came from none other that Robert Rodriguez in the behind the scenes portion of Sin City. Sin City Breakfast Taco’s.

Check the video below.

It's the most important meal of the day.

~Brother K'Bob

A distasteful milestone

January 31, 2017 - 108 Days til' Keycon

This year I hit an important milestone in my adult life. A hateful, ugly, 300 pound milestone. For the first time in my life my weight ballooned to the 300 pound mark. 


It's not an achievement that I ever wanted to make. Not the sort of achievement any middle aged man wants to make. But there it is. A three followed by two zeros starring at me from my bathroom scale. 


Three hundred. It's a base and low number. 


So, in these times, I must fall back on the sin of pride and try to figure out how to lose that weight that has made all my pants too tight and means I have trouble fitting into some of my favourite and loud Hawaiian shirts. 


So I've started a new regime. I want to get back to my old weight of about 260 or so. It's a decent weight for my build and certainly a lot healthier than the bulk I'm currently carrying. 


First to go was the sugary drinks. I was at a point where I was drinking, on average, about one two-litre of Pepsi a day. Excessive no matter how you look at it. I was drinking roughly one cup of sugar a day. More depending on what else I consumed during that day.


At work I walk approximately 11 - 15 Kilometers daily. So that is something at least with regards to exercise. The only days that I don’t do that is on my weekends.


I've also taken inspiration from a young woman,identified as Estella Gong,at the time a computer engineering sophomore at University of Central Florida, who, back in 2014, filmed herself doing pushups for a hundred days. She said that she was self consious of her body and hated being called ‘scrawny’ so she participated in a challenge called ‘give it 100’ which challenged people to get better at a skill for a hundred days and post videos of their progress.

She went from barely being able to do a pushup to doing clapping pushups and making it look easy. Watch the video below.

I’m not following any sort of fad diet set series of exercises. I’m going to continue to eat as I normally would. The only real change is that lack of a two-litre a day and my breakfast bag of ripple cut potato chips. Beyond that I’m just continuing with walking and doing pushups whenever I have the energy.

I’ve been at it for about two weeks so far. My weight is currently 294 pounds down from 298. I was at 292 for a couple of days but we had a games night and I may have drank another two-litre. 

Oops.

I’m going to be continuing throughout the next couple of months working on loosing enough weight so that when the snow starts to clear in a few months I’ll be a bit more comfortable starting to jog again. 

Until then it’ll be no Pepsi on a daily basis, pushups and walking at work. 

I’m aiming for about 30 pounds by the time Keycon comes around. 

We’ll see.