My Second Doctor Sonic Screwdriver arrived!

Or at least the base for it. Trying to figure out how to have it make the noise… that’ll be another matter entirely. There’s no extra room as currently configured, but that’s not actually a big deal – smaller batteries and a couple of changes in switch operation will solve that.

Oh, and the light needs to be blue. Jamie said so, and he’d know.

Please enjoy the only time the sonic screwdriver is seen driving a screw on-screen.

…is under attack! For the first time since 2005.

Yes, that’s right, THE POWERPUFF GIRLS RETURN TO TELEVISION JANUARY 20TH. Mark your goddamn calendars because it is about time.

And if you’ve wondering what that has to do with us, the band – well, here’s a refresher course. The 28 second mark is particularly relevant.

I’d like to hope this glass-window noise-cancellation device could work. It’s only a prototype right now, and I really have to wonder how much of that is purely-computer-prototype vs. actually extant. I tried to make something like it, once, using purely analogue circuitry, and utterly – and I do mean utterly – failed.

But wouldn’t that be nice? Damn.

Second Thanksgiving went well; we had 15 people, as it turned out – a nice size. We were expecting possibly as many as 20, so had a 30 pound bird for the first time in years – but that’s good, because mmmmmmm turkey tacos, mmmmmmm turkey jos, mmmmmmm turkey leftovers on sammiches, etc. 😀

It ran late, into the night, and felt a lot like one of the Homeless Waifs Thanksgivings our housemate Vicka used to throw, before she got her doctorate and moved back to Boston. I don’t know exactly why, honestly; it just did. Good circulation and a crowd large enough to form several groups made up part of that. More new people than usual probably helped too, I suppose.

I imagine the return of the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 Turkey Day Marathon didn’t hurt anything. I missed that – we were singing the “We Gather Together (To Watch Cheesy Movies)” theme over and over again while cooking. We named our turkey Clayton McLargehuge, in honour; Anna told @JoelGHodgson about that on Twitter, who retweeted it. XD

Also, we need more Thanksgiving songs. One isn’t enough.

My long-term undefeated Jenga streak fell this year, I hate to say; that lack of parallax thing really hurts when it comes to tower stability wars. Even when winning the first game, I was telling people, I could feel it – I could be owned, in my current state. And was, alas, the very next round.

We had more music than usual, too, with LasFas and Fred both being around and having more time than usual, and with me and Anna, that made a pretty good bit of jam.

The last people left Saturday, which says a bit about it. We overbought alcohol (darn) and food (like we always do) but it’s all being eaten and much will be frozen or stored.

For real, this is my favourite holiday. How was yours?

In addition to today’s DIY post on monitor speakers, this past weekend was more or less nirvana for Doctor Who fans. If you missed them, I did a 50th Anniversary reaction post called Okay, Moffat, You Can Live, and a second post on the surprisingly delightful related short features. Enjoy!

Honestly, for Who fans, this whole weekend, it’s like it’s raining candy and bacon.

The latest treat is a short feature, The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot. At the start, it makes you think that it’s going to be kind of kind of pathetic and terrible, but don’t worry: it is, in fact, hilarious. Give it time.

Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor: The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot

Well, my goodness, that was very exciting, wasn’t it? So many bits and pieces, but still put together so nicely – you have your bit of a runaround, you have your bit of a base under siege, you have a bit of your timey-wimey, you have your bit of a change of history that doesn’t rewrite everything but still doesn’t end up feeling cheap as it often does; just fun.

I think it’s not spoilery at all to say that John Hurt played Eight and a Half in the Classic Doctor style, which I was entirely happy to see. Best of all, he did it so so well that it integrated seamlessly with Tennant and Smith’s portrayals of their doctors. And did anyone else note the parallel scene with Hurt and Louise-Coleman versus Bradley’s Hartell & Grant’s Carol Ann Ford in An Adventure in Space and Time last night? You can’t tell me that wasn’t intentional.

Well, you could, but I’d mock you pretty fiercely.

Oh, let’s have some spoilers about moments, shall we?

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Seriously, that’s what this is, more or less. Da Vinci took a hurdy gurdy and designed a huge one that goes all the way down to cello range, and set it up to be shaped like a harpsichord. He called it a “viola organista,” but it’s basically a giant hurdy gurdy.

Da Vinci never built his design, but Slawomir Zubrzycki has:

That’s… pretty awesome, actually. ^_^

Found this piece of lost chemistry notes from 2007, while cleaning out a closet. My notes are… occasionally random.

Water is Strange

Yes. Yes, it is.

I’m under medical orders to take it easy, so I am, and that’s cool and all, but boring. So today I made a couple of cloth iPad slipcases. They’re easy and I’ve never made one before. Both of these are multi-layered fabric; the red one is denim on the outside, artificial suede on the inside; the Cutter one has three layers, suede, denim, and on one side…

Okay, 10 years ago, the start of Medical Adventures was Anna’s bike accident wherein she broke her arm. They had to cut away her T-shirt and sweatshirt, and the T-shirt was particularly painful since it was one of her old Elfquest shirts, and a favourite. She said just to throw the cut-up remnants away, but I didn’t.

Blood of Ten Chiefs guards Anna’s iPad

Proof!

The snap is small but metal and pretty easy to open and close; the band is sewn-edge like you’d do with a serger, but I don’t have a serger, so I faked it and applied some anti-fray glue. The art, of course, is rather old! But now it’s adhered against two layers of relatively stiff fabric, so should last a lot longer than it would’ve had it just stayed a T-shirt.

I have a totally superstitious hope that this can be a coda on the other end of this, and what’s scheduled for next month can be the end of it for a long time. I have no rational reason to think this, of course; I’m just resorting to animism here. But at least it has some art in it.

Also I made a minimalist one for Minion Paul; actually, I made it first. His first-gen iPad had a nice case, but Fred peed on it, and, well, finding first-generation iPad cases? Good luck. So I made him a slipcover case instead.

I’d’ve put a patch on it, but he didn’t have one he really wanted attached.

Slab of Red

Pointy there! POINTY THERE!

The only kind of trick to this one was wiring the rim. I was going to do kind of a drawstring thing but that’s kind of weird and lame, and this is kind of cool, and, let’s be honest, no more ineffective than those damned drawstrings.

Spring wire! Stays straight, which is more than you can say for me.

Oh, and if you do anything like this and want to layer fabrics together so make thicker multi-layer fabrics to, say, strengthen old T-shirt fabric so it no longer feels like a T-shirt at all? This is the best steam-on/iron-on fabric adhesive I’ve ever found. I will be using this again.

Honestly, nothing else I’ve used works nearly so easily or so well, and I’ve tried a bunch of different kinds. I wouldn’t go on about it this much except this is one of those solutions I looked for with real effort when I was more seriously into cosplay, and I’m really glad to have finally found one.