I need a new obsession to keep me busy between now and the election. The way this weekend is going I’m going to have to do a full news/internet blackout in the next couple of weeks if I want to keep my sanity. Anyone want to buy me a lathe or a pottery wheel or, like, an easel and a bunch of those … things … you paint on, that I’ve forgotten the name of for some reason?
Holy shit, I really can’t remember.
Canvases! Anyone want to buy me an easel and some canvases? And I guess some paint?
Got thirty more cards done today. I think that’s my limit before my handwriting falls apart and I start misspelling things at random, as evidenced by the fact that I typed “limmit” just now and it was 100% deliberate and not a slip of the fingers. Either way, that’s a fourth of them done. Not bad.
Maybe I’ll make my son a couple more notebooks. He seemed to enjoy the first one well enough. I’ve got all this bookmaking crap lying around, I may as well use it.
… okay, that picture doesn’t have anything to do with the Ren Faire, but … holy cow, y’all, Duolingo gets me all the sudden. I really want to use this as a cover pic somewhere, but it’s completely the wrong aspect ratio for everything and that’s very disappointing.
So the Ren Faire (Ren, autocorrect, you bastard, not red! Ren!!!) was an absolute blast even though I almost died, and the only question is whether we’re going to make this an annual event or something we do every couple of years. We are definitely going to pick a weekend where the weather is better, and if I had any influence over the organizers I would be screaming at them that they need to make this a September-October event and not an August-September event.
After making a huge deal about my outfit here and elsewhere for several days, I ended up going with the kilt, hose, sporran, and … that’s it. Why? I spent four seconds outside in that shirt and discovered that it didn’t breathe at all and if I wore it I was going to die. I ended up just throwing on a regular cotton t-shirt, and … it was fine. One way Ren Faires are different from cons is that nobody’s really making a big deal about taking pictures of each other, or at least they aren’t at this one, possibly because there were thirty thousand fucking people there. I posted this picture already, but look at all the nerds:
Everyone in this picture looks comfortably dressed and there are only a couple of people right up near the camera who are clearly in garb (and I’m not sure the woman in the grey dress, dead center, counts) but there were people walking around this thing in full suits of metal armor. People dressed like Jon Snow from Game of Thrones, wearing armor and fur clothing designed for winter. Ren Faire people are a different fucking breed, y’all. These motherfuckers are warriors. They are also crazy, and I cannot believe that I didn’t see a single person passed out from heat exhaustion all day. I couldn’t handle a shirt and there were people walking around in plate armor.
The Michigan festival is particularly cool because it is a permanent installment. I’m not sure how many of these things are fly-by-night operations and how many have permanent buildings like this, but we were there for about five hours and I’m certain we didn’t see everything. There was a mermaid apparently? No idea where she was. We watched a magician and a few jugglers and I kinda wanted the boy to try his hand at throwing spears at things but he declined, and the horses for the joust were probably the largest I’ve ever seen (did we watch the joust? We did not. Too many damn people too close together and no shade.) and the shops were amazing if perhaps crazily overpriced in certain ways and other than the nearly dying and the half-mile walk on a mud path through overgrown foliage from the parking lot, we all had a hell of a lot of fun.
And, oh, Christ, did I spend a lot of money, to the point where I’m not even going to tell you what this fuckawesome quarterstaff and this fuckamazing war hammer cost:
Let me put it this way: I first had my eye on something they were calling a Dwarven Axe, until I discovered they wanted two thousand five hundred dollars for it.
I did not spend two thousand five hundred dollars. I spent a larger fraction of that than I probably should have, though.
The staff is 6′ tall and the war hammer is 36″ or so and … I dunno, maybe twelve-fifteen pounds? Which is a lot more than it might sound, especially if, when you buy it, they wrap it up in cardboard and bubble wrap, making it hard to carry, and you are a mile from your car, and you don’t know that you’re going to buy a quarterstaff at a different booth in a few minutes. That fucking thing will cave in skulls. It’s a murder weapon. It’s functional art! And I had to carry both of them back to the car in million-degree heat and the next time I go back I’m buying daggers!
(I have my next several weapon purchases planned out.)
Go ahead, ask me what I’m gonna do with those. No fucking idea. But I’m really hoping someone breaks into my house soon.
So yeah. We had a great time, I nearly died, and I don’t know that I’m going to make a big deal about dressing up for the next one, or at least not dressing up for this one again, just because I didn’t feel like it made a difference in the way, say, a carefully-constructed cosplay might. If you show up at C2E2 in a full suit of armor people are going to be asking you for pictures all day. I saw some amazing costumes, easily the equal of anything I’ve seen at a con (or close, at least) and … they were just kinda being ignored by everyone. Like, I wasn’t expecting my silly little kilt-and-shirt combination to attract that kind of attention, but I also wasn’t expecting the best costumes to be attracting the same amount of attention as my silly little kilt-and-shirt combination, either. If I do dress up for another Ren Faire, it’s going to be something more … wizardy, I think. Although I do need to find an excuse to wear the kilt somewhere else. I have been resisting being a Kilt Guy for a while now, and I gotta admit, the things are damn comfortable. I’m thinking of showing up in mine for Picture Day this year just to see what happens.
Any other Midwesterners want to recommend any other nearby festivals?
I have removed the Second Skin from my new tattoo, and the itching is absolutely maddening, so I’m going to distract myself with math. Because that’s why you come here, right? As a reminder, this is the original image, and the question is the ratio of the inner square to the outer square:
The first thing we’re going to do is draw the two diagonals of the inner square. These are, by definition, perpendicular to each other, and they are also equal to the circumference of the circle. Let us define the radius of the circle as x:
What we have now is four right triangles inscribed inside the circle. Pythagoras tells us that the sum of the squares of the two legs are equal to the square of the hypotenuse, which is the line on the left of the square there. Therefore, defining the hypotenuse as Y, we get:
x2 + x2 = y2 2x2 = y2
Take the square roots of each side, and we get:
√(2x2) = √(y2)
And therefore:
√(2x2) = y
Which means that all four sides of the inner circle are equal to √(2x2), thusly:
To get the area of the inner square, all we have to do is multiply √(2x2) by √(2x2), which, conveniently, just gets rid of the square root symbols. The area of the inner circle is 2x2.
Now, we need to realize that since the radius of the circle is x, the diameter of the circle is 2x, and that the diameter of the circle also equals the width and the height of the outside square. So that outer square is 2x high and 2x wide:
Therefore, all we have to do to get the area of the outside square is multiply 2x by 2x, which gives us 4x2. Which, conveniently, is exactly twice the area of the inner square, which was 2x2.
The outside square is therefore twice the size of the inner square, and the ratio of the inner square to the outer square is 1:2.
Or, y’know, you could just rotate the fuckin’ inside square, which makes it visually obvious.
In lieu of a post with actual content, please enjoy this photograph of my pretty new watch on my somewhat less pretty, keratosis pilaris-riddled wrist.
There’s something weird going on with the angle there, btw. The watch band could stand to be a tiny bit bigger, no more than a centimeter and probably not even that much, but I swear it fits nicely and is not cutting off my circulation in any way. 🙂
Now to see if I can make it through the day without any notifications.
WordPress is being wonky and I don’t have a ton to say tonight anyway, but so far school is going pretty well– fourth hour continues to be a sore spot but it’s the only one– and I finally got around to actually ordering a watch tonight after literally months of dithering about it. We’ll see if it actually fits once it gets here! I expect to tumble into despair if it does not.
Anyway, I had to reload about a dozen times to get the page I’m typing this on to actually become available, so I’m going to hit Publish until I actually have a post now.
Before I reveal the truth, let me remind you of the watch:
And, while I agree with the person who said it’s much harder to tell from an image than it is from something you can touch and manipulate, only two people successfully stated that this is a $15 watch, and other similar variants are even cheaper.
Two possible clues: one, and this kinda surprised me, while quartz watches actually keep more accurate time than traditional clockwork/mechanical watches, they are much cheaper, and the largest face has the word “quartz” on it. Second, the larger crown on the right side is visibly out of alignment, and if that thing’s on a funky angle in the picture they’re using to sell the watch, we’re not dealing with a stellar example of build quality here.
So, fully confirmed at this point, and with no slight intended to anyone who was wrong: no one has any idea how much watches cost just from looking at them.
Let me begin with some Statements which are Generally Known to be True:
That I am insanely, irrationally protective of Superman, and do not believe the character has been done right in live action since the Reeve era, with the possible exception of Tyler Hoechlin in Superman & Lois, which I really enjoyed for about five episodes and then mysteriously stopped watching;
That I am fully aware that a set picture is not the best way to evaluate a superhero costume;
That I have been loud and wrong about iconic superhero costumes before;
That I absolutely hate it when nerds do exactly what I am about to do, although I will attempt to mix in some positives;
That I am probably not going to see this movie, not because I am boycotting it but because I don’t see movies any longer, and I feel like maybe that’s could give me an out about having an opinion, an out that I am currently not taking; and
That David Corenswet’s performance is going to be infinitely more important than his costume, as will other minor details like the fucking script, and I know literally nothing about how he’s going to move and act as the character. I do know I’m not terribly interested in Ultraman or Mr. Terrific, one of whom was also in the leaks but one of whom is still technically a rumor.
That said!
Wait. No. Let’s do this first:
Two things are Correct about this costume.
The colors, for the first time in years, are correct, and this says good things about the direction the film is going to take;
Putting the S-shield on the back of the cape in yellow is also Correct.
I hate every single other fucking thing about the fucking costume.
The collar. They’ve clearly drawn inspiration from the New 52 costume, which I hated, and part of the reason I hated it was the fucking collar. Every other and I mean every other live action iteration of Superman’s suit has done the cape/shoulders/neck area better, including Tyler Hoechlin’s, which dropped the cape into prominent gold grommets and still looked better. I hate the collared look. It is, in fact, the thing about the costume that I hate the most.
The S-Shield. This is a version of the Kingdom Come shield, which was fine in Kingdom Come, which was set in the future and involved a Superman who had gone through intense personal loss, and is not fine here. Just use the fucking regular S-shield, Goddammit. This is not a place where we fucking need to innovate. Also it could stand to be a little bigger– if it was right, at least– but that’s not that big of a deal.
The texture. This may not survive the transition into the actual film, but I hate all the little lines and shapes everywhere. The cape looks like it’s made from microfiber, which also sucks.
The belt. Yes, the costume needs the belt, and I’m happy it has a belt, but that belt looks like Batman’s belt. It looks chunky and rubbery for no clear reason.
It’s fucking baggy. Superman wears his costume under his clothes and it needs to be tighter. This also may not survive the transition onto the actual silver screen. In fact, I really doubt it’ll be noticeable on the screen. I hate it anyway.
The wrists. Also borrowing from New 52, and perhaps more obvious in other pictures than in these, they’re pointy, and they look fucking stupid. You also can’t conceal pointy wrist cuffs under a dress shirt.
The briefs. Shut up, Goddammit, the word “petty” is right in the title. Yes, I’m happy they’re there, and I’d rather have them than not have them, but those are fucking boyshorts, not Superman briefs. It’s wrong and it’s wrong for no reason.
The boots. Actually, the boots are fine. I have no beef with the boots.
Do not get me started on Clark’s hair:
(Actually, the hair is whatever; I think Clark would have a more conservative haircut than that ramen-looking GenZ mop bullshit but it definitely makes him look less like Superman, so I’ll deal.)
Okay. I’ve got that out of my system now, I hope. I have seen a couple of images today that I can’t find now where someone took the Corenswet suit and basically Photoshopped in the edits that I suggested above, and it looks perfect, and I’ll update if I find one again. And I will get over it, especially now that I’ve written this. It’s not the most important thing about the fucking movie. All the same: blech.
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