Back, with Batman

I managed to lock myself out of my websites and haven’t had any new Unknown Dog material for my regular readers. Both of you will happy to know that I am back in the saddle and will hope to have some catchup pics and posts for your consumption.

In the meantime, I’ve found that my kids love being photographers. We have a little camera that is drop proof, waterproof and all that jazz. The [Olympus Stylus 1050 SW] is surprisingly kid friendly, though it is clearly not targeted for kids. The happy coincidence that the 2 and 4 year old can easily press the button and get instant feedback from the big LCD screen on the back of the camera is ever so useful.

While I first handed the camera over to my budding Ansel Adams with a pretty fatalistic cringe and fire-and-brimstone threats, I’ve progressed to offering nothing more than a brief overview and a briefer warning. My prodigy child has instinctively grasped his father’s nuanced strategy towards quality photographs: The more pictures you take, the better the odds something will be in focus. Barring that, you might get lucky and make something that can be passed off as art.

It is very cool to see Gabe start to form some sense of composition, or at least stumble upon it by luck. The 3 pics below were Gabe products- I put them together and cropped the left and center panes to space the whole, but I didn’t monkey around with anything besides that. Blog format may truncate the pic, so get clicky on the zoom icon for the entire thing:
gabe's photos Click for full size!

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Stool project

A stool for Gabe.

gabe's stool
Built from plywood scraps and glue, with a few brads to hold the legs in place while the glue set. Getting the bevel cut for the 15° legs drove me nuts for a while. I finally broke down and looked it up in compound angle table.

gabe's stool
Glue up complete. Size 3 soccer ball in the picture to get an idea of how big it is.

gabe's stool
Primed and …

gabe's stool
Painted! Paint was Rust-Oleum Wildflower blue. In a spray can. I was surprised at how easy it was to get a nice finish from a spray can. Used the same brand of spray primer underneath. Painter’s Touch, I’m a fan.

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Gabe and the pumpkin patch

Gabe had a school trip to a pumpkin patch:

Surveying the crop

The kids had free reign to pick any pumpkin from the field they wanted.  Gabe really weighed his options, and prolly went through almost a dozen before he found one that he felt was the right size, color, with no black spots and not too dirty.

gabe

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Gabe chilling out by the tractor:

gabe

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Graydon and Granny snapping beans

Graydon and Granny

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Gabe and Graydon in the leaves

gabe and graydon

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Gabe Anderson, MD

Gabe got dressed up as on ophthalmologist for Community Helper day:

gabe

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Gabe, soccer, cats

Gabe likes playing soccer, though he is mostly taking part in a cat herding exercise:

gabe

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Workbench project complete

Sturdy workbench built on the cheap:
workbench

  • Laminated 2×4’s construction for the legs
  • Through tenons on legs and stretchers
  • Large oak dowels pinning the tenons came from an old broom handle
  • Heavy-as-lead top is a solid core door rescued from a dumpster thanks to a hot tip from Lady Colglazier.
  • All solid wood construction not including lag bolts connecting the frame to the top.

workbench

workbench

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Catching up with Gabe

Gabe has hit the big 4.0 and is doing all kinds of 4 year-old stuff:

GabeClick for full size image
First day of pre-K. This was the only picture the jaded scholar would allow to be taken.

GabeClick for full size image
Finding cool walking stick looking bugs in the back yard

GabeClick for full size image

GabeClick for full size image

GabeClick for full size image
Gabe is playing soccer this year, too!

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Nerd Alert: Trim trailing LF/CR characters in Oracle

Lots of Nerd Alerts lately, but I haven’t unloaded the camera to see which family pics turned out to be in focus…

PROBLEM: Your data has zero or more trailing commas followed by a non-printing character, typically LF/CR.
SOLUTION: regexp_replace!
Continue reading

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