IdyllopusPress Presents

Month: October 2005

  • Reading up on Stop Animation for H.o.p.

    Some time Monday the landlord is dropping by to look at the radiators. We’ve had glorious heat all weekend. Turns out that the heat was supposed to be on all last week but the person sent to check out the boiler’s health and turn it all on didn’t cut it on, they just checked its…

  • Stop animation character study

    [clear] When we got back from vacation we kicked straight back in to relentless rut. I’m going to meditate on that some today. While working.I am constantly amazed by this child. Hates anything that isn’t to do with drawing or (now) animation possibilities. Math? Numbers? He’s got a bit of that dyslexia thing going and…

  • Any one for Seconds?

    So imagine this. You enter the UN building and find a seat on the floor. You’re there to hear Thomas P. M. Barnett, author of “Blueprint for Action” speak. But it’s all virtual reality. You are there in Avatar form via a computer with the hardware for it. Thomas P. M. Barnett is there in…

  • Some people don't have to remember to dance, they just do

    In the meanwhile, I try to teach H.o.p. about the earth’s yearly cycle. I’ve been telling him about it for several years and he’s been fed all the information through a number of enjoyable educational venues. Ms. Frizzle tells him about it. Astronomy disks tell him about it. He likes what the planets look like,…

  • Talk amongst yourselves about Harriet Myers–we'll make hydrogen sulfide

    Yeah, yeah, I know. Harriet Myers, Harriet Myers. Whatever. We’ll see what the Bushtroll does next. In the meanwhile, we made hydrogen sulfide!!! And it smelled real bad. Bad enough that it chased H.o.p. from our little science lab (kitchen). “Eeeeeew, yuck! That stinks!” and he ran. It’s tough doing science when your seven-year-old flees…

  • I am a lousy scientist – exploring inertia

    Krampf’s science this week involved exploring Newtonian inertia via the simple experiment of putting a glass over a marble on a table top, pushing the glass in a circle which causes the marble to spin in a circle, and you should be able to pick up the glass and have the marble spinning within it…

  • Yes, yes, I knew we weren’t living in Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood

    One thing I didn’t know when moving in here, but discovered last night, is that we have 33 sex offenders registered within 1 mile of us, 21 of them being convicted for sex offenses against children, the majority of those registered within less than a hop, skip and jump and the rest are between us…

  • What’s up with all the police

    Half a dozen cop cars and a dozen police have someone pinned down at one of the two side entrances to our building. Marty met a couple of our neighbors in the other building, everyone piling out to see what was going on. No one knows. A little police activity brings the people together and…

  • Fierce pumpkins and happy cactus

    First, a distant relation in Kansas sent me this link with a Flash on How to carve a pumpkin like a pro. I knew there would be a punch line but I didn’t know what. H.o.p. came running up behind me, “What game is that?!” I told him, “How to carve a pumpkin like a…

  • Two more movies from H.o.p.

    H.o.p. likes the idea I’m posting his movies for friends and relatives to see, and this afternoon he did two for the blog. The little program he works in employs a fundamental form of flippad onionskinning. What you draw is what you get. No panning and zooming. No copying of images you’ve already drawn and…

  • "…an individual expression of a timeless longing for human dignity and freedom"

    Rosa Parks has passed on. I felt that as a person, if I did not want to be mistreated, there was no way I was going to stop being mistreated if I accepted it continuously… — Rosa Parks Actually no one can understand the action of Mrs. Parks unless he realizes that eventually the cup…

  • A couple of ghost animations by H.o.p.

    All right, so family and friends are primed and expecting to see fabulous little animations (linked below) by H.o.p. Well, come on, what you’re going to be seeing are animations by a seven-year-old done on his rudimentary but pretty ingenious little Reader Rabbit program where you draw and overlay little sketches and can turn them…