Blog du Wren

Birdhouse Factory

We all know I am a circus geek, right? (No, not that kind of circus geek, although chicken is pretty tasty. Anyhoo...) Whenever a circus type performance comes to the area, I like to attend. This latest circus, the Birdhouse Factory, particularly piqued my interest.

Its website describes it as acrobatics + machines + theatre + circus. What's not to be piqued about that? Well, that turned out to be a pretty accurate description. The props really added to the shows. Whether it was the unicycle driven stage or the elaborately geared German wheel*, there was always something mechanical going on on stage.

Besides the standard circus fare of juggling, aerialists, and whatnot, this show had something I haven't ever seen before, which is always a pleasant surprise. There was a trampoline act that was among the neatest things I've seen in a while. Performers would jump off a platform, perform various flips, and then land back on the platform as smoothly as if it was a video being played in reverse speed. So neat!

Another really neat aspect of this circus was their schedule. They performed mainly in smaller towns up the west coast (Bellingham as opposed to Seattle), at least for this tour. So often, it seems to me, a chosen denizen of smaller cities/towns, that culture/entertainment sometimes passes us by. To see groups catering to that leaves me with a warm fuzzy feeling.

Tuesday November 13 2007

File under: juggling, events

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Quiz Night - Crisis of Doona

This past Friday was another fun and successful Quiz Night at the Back Porch Cafe. The categories fell in our favor this week (for the most part) and at the end of two rounds, Crisis of Doona* was in a three way tie for first place. The tie breaker question was about Shakespeare. It turns out that wasn't our strongest subject so we again got narrowly edged out for the win. Next time, though. I can feel next time is going to be the time.

Anyway, as has become our habit here, I thought I would go ahead and post the visual round. Category: . How many can you name? (As always, hover for answers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

(Previous Quiz Night posts (with scans of the visual questions): Return of Quiz Night, Filler, and Quiz Night!)

Sunday November 11 2007

File under: Anacortes, games

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FC6 - Another Jeopardy Comic

Harkening back to my very first comic idea (and to go with my latest link blog post), I present you this week's Friday comic. As you can no doubt tell, my first string artist is taking the week off, so I had to do the honors again. I kind of like this new style I've developed: not good enough that anyone would mistake me for an actual artist but good enough that you can tell what's going on*.

Anyway, I hope to have the first stringer back in for next week's comic. In the mean time, enjoy. (Oh, and if you haven't figured out yet, you can click on the image to get the full size.)

Thursday November 8 2007

File under: comic

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World of Blogs

Besides [somewhat obsessively] keeping a blog, I also am an avid follower of blogs. My netvibes has 60 or so feeds on it. Many of them are topic oriented like environmental blogs, tech blogs, or comic blogs. Mostly those are for-profit endeavors that are maintained by a professional staff. They are updated frequently and are a source of really good information (or entertainment). They help me stay current on the latest developments about what interests me.

A quarter or so of the 60 blogs I monitor* are kept by friends. These are friends mostly from high school or college who, like me, have taken to keeping a personal blog. It is a great way for me to keep posted* on what's going on with them and vice versa. What I noticed the other day, however, is the incredible amount of geography covered by my friends. Each day, I check in on friends who are all over the U.S (Boston, Las Vegas, Ohio, North Carolina, NYC, Baltimore) and all over the world (Japan, Norway, South Africa, Argentina). It is a great way to keep the travel fires stoked while stuck behind a desk.

Not so coincidently, I've recently added Dave Senesi to Blogs du Friends. Worth a look for anyone looking for a glimpse of a westerner's impression of living in Japan.

Tuesday November 6 2007

File under: misc

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Public Transportation Excuses

I've had a very public transportation-y week. In all, I've ridden 6, count 'em, 6 public transportation systems (Island Transit, Whatcom Transit, Skagit Transit, Sound Transit*, Community Transit, and Metro Transit). In some of the downtime inevitably provided by traveling while not having to focus on the road, I started thinking about why people choose not to ride the bus. As kind of a response to some of those reasons, I wanted to share this anecdote in hopes of getting people to maybe reconsider their excuses.

A few weeks ago, a friend was in visiting from out of town. Being that I don't have a car, all our motating* was either by foot or bus*. One particular bus trip got me to stop and realize how many of people's usual excuses we were defying. We were on a relatively unfamiliar system (we were in Bellingham, whose bus system I don't have much experience with), we were going shopping at the farmers market so had a couple of bags of groceries, and we were traveling with a 15-month old in a stroller. Even with all that, the trip went splendidly. Extra time provided by the bus schedule allowed us to explore the town more, the 15-month old really enjoyed watching out the window as the bus cruised along, and we got some good exercise walking to and from the bus stop.

(p.s. I love public transportation.)

Saturday November 3 2007

File under: transportation

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FC5 - Memory Foam

Yes, yes, I know October is over. And no, no, I'm not trying to live in the past. It is just that I had so much fun with the October Friday Comic series, I think I will keep it up until the ideas run out (or my drawing staff goes on strike.)

I really like how this one turned out. I esp. like the art. We went back and forth how best to convey this one, and I think Deanna captured everything perfectly.

Anyhoo, I hope you're enjoying reading the comics as much as I am enjoying coming up with them.

Friday November 2 2007

File under: comic

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Happy Halloween!

I'm not a fan of Halloween. Call me a party pooper (most do). But just because I'm not the biggest fan doesn't mean that I don't appreciate others' love of it. I'm also not so anti-Halloween that I can't admit it has its upsides: candy, clever costumes*, and The Simpsons Tree House of Horrors.

This year I got invited to a costume party. The costume I came up with hardly rivaled any of the others there. Hannah had the best costume of the night IMHO with a dead perfect Ugly Betty. (By saying it was dead perfect, I'm not implying that she was looking ugly. Anyone who knows the show and saw her would get it.) Other great costumes were Willy Wonka, Neo (from the Matrix), and a big fat tourist guy. Seeing the costumes, esp. the ones that were homemade, made me appreciate the holiday a little bit more.

So what was I? Well, have a and try to guess. (If you already knew, pre-post, please keep to yourself. Or if you are the one person that correctly guessd (Joe), sit quietly and marvel at how clever you are.) What you can't see is that I am wearing knee high rubber boots, which may or may not help. Need a hint? Hover for a clue or two: hint 1, hint 2, hint 3, and (big) hint 4.

Wednesday October 31 2007

File under: holidays

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Friday Comic 4

For the final Friday of the month, we've called back in the first stringer. Not only did Deanna draw this week's comic, but she also gets co-writing credit for figuring out how to turn my super vague idea into something workable. I hope you enjoy!

(In this place where I usually link to the previous comics in the series, I will instead point out the new searching feature that will allow you to list all the comics on just one page. Click the "File under: comic" below.)

Thursday October 25 2007

File under: comic

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The Red Note runs the NYC Marathon

Looking for a good time? Call 867-5309. Even better, come out this Friday night for a for some fine music courtesy of The Red Note (and special guest!). The show is at the History House in Fremont* at 7:00. To accompany the entertainment, there will be season appropriate beverages for sale. All the information can be found at The Red Note's website (*)

The show is a benefit to help Chapman raise money to fight lung cancer. The money serves as his entry fee to the NYC marathon, which is in turn donated to lung cancer research as I understand it. Running 26.4 miles is a feat in itself and doing it for the betterment of humanity is all the more commendable. If you would like to support Chapman but can't make it to this Friday's show, click here.

Wednesday October 24 2007

File under: events, misc

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New Host

As some of you may have noticed, over the past 2 months or so, BdW has not been exceptionally reliable. Sometimes it was super slow in loading. Other times, it wouldn't load at all. It has been a source of frusteration for me that I've constantly been trying to deal with by alerting my web host. While he was always quick to respond (as soon as I could track him down), it still meant lots of downtime which isn't good for anybody.

Now, though, I am pleased to announce that I have moved to a new host*. From preliminary tests, it is a big step up. Pages compile uber-fast and the ftp access is also quite snappy. I have yet to figure out how to set up other domains (so troothpicks will continue to stay over at Cheapstream for the time being). Anyway, I guess the point is that things should work better now. If you notice a problem, please tell me. And if you know someone that quit reading because of these previous technical issues, please encourage them to give me another try.

With the move to a new host, I figure it would be a good time to launch some minor upgrades which I will just quickly mention. First and foremost, I've introduced searching by tag. That way, if you want to find all posts about, say, food, you can just click "food" under "filled under:". I also tweaked the way the pagination buttons work to account for space. It is a temporary fix, but I think it is kind of neat. (Scroll down to the bottom and hover over the page numbers.) Lastly, I changed the RSS to be a little more standards compliant. If you've got upgrades that you would like to see*, please let me know.

Tuesday October 23 2007

File under: coding, blog

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