A few years ago at an office Halloween bash I themed my costume to fit the lifestyle that most people knew I was part of – a die-hard cyclist.
It’s a simple, but effective, costume that doesn’t take much effort to put together.
Making custom props for your Halloween yard display can be as simple as throwing together some scraps of wood to make some creepy looking entrance columns.
For last year’s haunted cemetery display, I built two columns out of scrap plywood. To increase the spooky factor this year, I also added a flickering lantern box, also made out of scrap plywood and some cheap portfolio covers.
Here’s last year’s column. It’s a simple hollow 1/2″ plywood box mounted to a plywood base. To give it some depth, I also added 1/8″ plywood strips to the edges and used the same strips to create a cross on three sides. Dry brushing with a lighter grey helps age the column.
Capturing good photos or video while riding your bike can be a bit tricky, not to mention potentially hazardous to your health.
However, fastening a small camera to your bike can be as easy as attaching it to a small tripod that’s strapped to your handlebars.
The small Gorillapod is a quick and easy way of wrapping your camera to just about anything, whether it’s a backpack strap, handlebars or your buddy’s helmet. While the Gorillapod is an extremely versatile tripod overall, for cycling pics it works best on smooth pathways in dry weather. In rough terrain or wet weather, it tends to slip and bounce around too much.
Another tripod option is the UCO Ultrapod. This is an extremely lightweight tripod, with an included velcro strap that makes it easy to quickly lash it to your bike. The ball and socket swivel makes it easy to adjust the angle once it’s attached to your bike, although the Gorillapod is easier to adjust while on the move.
Lastly, if you’ve got a few spare parts kicking around in your bike-bits-box, the folks over at Photojojo have a cheap but functional solution for building your own bike mount.
If you Google “how to get rid of wasps” almost half a million results are returned. So why aren’t my wasps cooperating with all the advice that guarantees their gleefully awaited demise?
The wasps that are slowly invading our house are not making it easy for us, either. They don’t build nice big nests that can be easily plugged and poisoned or knocked into a bag. No siree, these little buggers are making their nests underground, under our front step. And underground under a big bush. And under the siding on our house. They’re also getting annoyingly territorial so it’s a mad dash from the truck to the door these days. Read the rest of this entry »
We were hit with a surprise dump of snow several days ago, which made for some interesting and challenging cycling.
When I woke up at 5:30, it had just started to snow. The weather forecast had called for up to 2 cm (about 1″) of snow - no big deal. However, when I left the house at 7:30, there was almost 25 cm (10″).
The flakes were huge, traffic was at a standstill when the cars weren’t sliding into one another, and cyclists were slowly but surely moving along much faster than the other traffic.
I strapped my little digital camera to my bike and slapped together the following cheesy little video of the day’s bike ride to work.
The folks over at Gizmodo have posted an update on BigDog, a robotic quadruped “dog developed by Boston Dynamics.
If you haven’t seen BigDog in action, it is, as Gizmodo states, “so stunning, it’s spooky.”
While I think it looks more like a huge bee than a dog, I wouldn’t want it chasing me either way…
Elliottzone.com