Street Boogie

So when someone crosses the road, there's this point when there isn't quite enough time before a car to just walk across and it's not yet urgent enough to run. To me, this run/walk hybrid of motion ends up looking a lot like a funky dance.

Obsolete Coffee Technology

So I was grocery shopping. Unlike the usual shopping cart time-trials, I was taking my time today and looking at some of the other products that I don't need or usually buy. And then... Sugar Cubes! Really? They still sell those? I actually haven't seen an actual cube of sugar in ages. After thinking about it, it's probably an effect of society's rapid advancements in coffee technology. While I am no connoisseur, I do have a cuppa now and then. Even to the casual drinker, such as myself, it's plain to see that we are drinking the coffee of the future!

One of the first casualties, it seems to me, is the obsolete sugar cube. (Actually, maybe regular white sugar in general.) Not only is sugar rarely pressed and dried into shapes these days, I'm guessing that the use of white sugar as a drink sweetener is in decline. I'm not talking about high-fructose corn syrup either! I mean something like a larger grain, slightly caramel-coloured raw sugar. I think I still see both raw and white available in most cafes but sugar cubes are ancient.

And you just don't order a 'coffee' anymore. You need to order a type of coffee which would be one of several recipes with fancy names. Warm comforting beverages that are made by someone with some sort of certified training to produce - a diploma stating that a particular person is qualified to create designs in thick dairy froth.

A waitress patrolling the tables with a pot of brewed filter coffee topping up people's drinks (for free) is becoming a bit of a relic. The idea that you can order a coffee at the beginning of the meal, with continual top-ups, is fading away. It's being replaced with the suggestion that you could have a coffee and dessert afterwards - relegated to a post-meal experience.

I'm not of the opinion that these changes are better or worse, but I could be slightly nostalgic since cafes and restaurants now feel very different in a reasonably short period of time.

Mr. Bubble

So I was in the park, having my weekly sketching practice. I wasn't feeling too well but I feel that it's important for me to practice drawing regularly. I was overlooking a small natural valley that has a large stage in the bottom. It is a venue for holding outdoor concerts and shows. Still uninspired and a bit cold from the autumn wind, I noticed a soap bubble. And then another one. And another. Actually, they were everywhere.

Following the source of this bubble storm, it turns out it was this guy who collects bubble guns. I ended up having a chat with him about his hobby. He has several battery powered toys that create constant streams of bubbles. Some of his guns have been modified to accept another battery (or two?) for a higher rate of 'firing'. He really was filling up this reasonably large amphitheater with bubbles. Apparently it only works that well if the wind is 'right' and if he is firing with the wind.

At first I thought it was a pretty weird hobby, but the more I think about it the awesomer it is. It was actually quite a sight to see that many bubbles, it did inspire me to do a bit of drawing and quite a few kids at the bottom started to go nuts when they realized that they were in the middle of this bubble storm.

Viking Lander

So I was sketching a scene in the local cemetery. After my drawing, I noticed a headstone with something unusual. It was for a sailor who died at sea by the name of Viking Lander. Immediately, I thought of the Viking Mars mission from the 1970's. It had a Viking Orbiter and a Viking Lander!
When I first saw this I thought it was an odd name... and he couldn't have been named after the the space probe by sci-fi nerd parents. He lived and died long before humans had put anything in space.
The original Viking Lander accidentally drowned at sea. According to Wikipedia, Earth lost contact with the Mars Viking Lander because of a... "Human error during software update caused the lander's antenna to go down, terminating communication." That makes both deaths sudden accidents. The obvious differences are that the remains are over 60 years apart on two different planets.

Sports bar etiquette

So I watched the Super Bowl at a sports bar. This four-hour event was a close game with a last minute touchdown even. Near the end of the game, there was one guy who simply wasn't prepared for a four-hour binge and was pretty out of it. He started getting glasses of water which is totally fine since, in retrospect, we were happy that he was just keeping it all down.
In the final two minutes of the game, he was looking for a place to sit and there was an empty stool right at the front. He sat down with what could have been his third glass and was facing away from the screen. With such a tight final quarter, all eyes were on the game but  everyone seemed distracted by this guy who wasn't watching the game but seemed to be just watching us! In his defence, he had no idea what he was doing and probably couldn't really see anyone anyway. Still, even though there are no written rules about this type of thing, what he was doing is surely bad etiquette. It should be required that if he was to sit there, he must be required to at least pretend to watch the game!
(My rough artwork for this one is available to see on my other blog!)

Grocery show opening

So my friend said that he was attending an art show opening. It reminded me of this guy I saw while grocery shopping a few days ago.
While following the tidal stream of shopper traffic up and down the aisles, there was a stationary object that the carts and bodies had to flow around. It was another shopper looking at a wall of products. What made him unusual was that he was the only one not moving, he didn't have a cart or basket and wasn't holding anything to buy. He wasn't even surveying the nutritional value of the competing brands. He really just seemed to be viewing the whole side of the aisle's shelves at once... as if he was viewing a large painting in an art gallery.
It occurred to me that he might have some kind of handicap (or maybe just taking a break from a really horrible wife) but still, the whole situation seemed very Warholian to me.

Sidewalk pirate

So the other day, I was walking down past the local shops. On passing a woman walking in the opposite direction, I noticed that she had a live parrot on her shoulder. I had to turn around for a second look since she displayed no behaviour that this was unusual. She gave the  impression that walking around with a parrot on your shoulder outside (without it flying away!) is as common as wearing pants. While I concede that this is very cool, it's not something that is seen everyday. A real pirate! AAARR!..

See the original sketch for this illustration by clicking here.

Old fashioned keyboard

So I noticed that there is a key on my keyboard that never gets used. The Grave Accent and Tilde key. It's above the Tab key and beside the 1 key. Maybe you've only now noticed it yourself as you're reading this. It's probably been on keyboards for ages. It's useless to me and I question if we really need it to be the way that it is.
Firstly though, to be clear, I still think that there should be a key there. I understand that some video games require that key for various specific functions and hey, there's no need to mess that up. What I think would be good is that if I was typing something, this key should make a different symbol other than an accent that doesn't even go over top of any letter. Maybe a bullet, a smiley, or even those little scissors that suggest that you should cut something out, should replace the top corner. I'm just thinking something that gets used more commonly.
Sometimes characters just get old and obsolete. Take the index character, for example - It's awesome! It's a hand with the index finger pointing to important areas on a page. It's a bit more than a letter, it's a partial drawing. The only problem with it is that I think typewriters and early computers had a problem with its fine detail. It was dropped and the public forgot it, I suppose.
What I propose is that the world moves the grave accent and tilde characters to the Glyph category. People still need them. They are used in computer programming languages but I'm not sure how frequently. As I write this, I'm likely quite ignorant to just how often programmers are using this key. I still think that they can go in the same place as copyright symbols, trademark symbols and fractions. Still obtainable if you occasionally need them on a page, but not taking up prime real estate on everyone's keyboards.

Superdog

So this happened a few years ago but since it's Halloween I'm going for a festive post. (True story though...)
We were renting a house that lived near a beach. Since it was a quite popular place, all the houses on the road were three properties deep on the beach side of the street. (Meaning three houses shared each driveway.) We were living in a 'middle' house at the time. On Halloween evening, the 'front' houses (that were next to the road) were the only houses that got trick-or-treaters. So that evening, as a result, we decided to go down to the beach as the sun was going down. That we could see, we were the only ones on the beach and we sat down on the sand dune. It seemed like it could be any fine evening, not just October 31st.
A few minutes later, a dog that was dressed up as Superman (Superdog?) appeared on the sand and sat down beside us. We've never seen this dog before and we had no sign of an owner. He just looked out to sea as we did, giving us a reminder that it still was Halloween out there.

Sticks and stones

So there was this kid who fell off his bike. (Not me for a change!) The whole neighbourhood was alerted by the vocal chord siren. Since I was already outside (and looking at him) I was nominated by my street to be the first responder. As I got closer, the cries turned into messages that he had 'a broken bone'. While not entirely coherent, he was repetitive and pretty sure about what seemed to be his knee. Crouching down, I asked him if he could move his foot. He could and did - quite easily too. I told him that because of this, that it probably wasn't broken. This is where the period of rapid healing started. I said I'd carry his bike home (two houses down) and that he could lean on me as he limped home. Although I didn't say anything, after about four steps he was pretty much 100% and I suspect it was the attention that I paid him mostly.
Kids are like that. Something hurts, often only until they are bored being hurt. And adults sometimes don't notice that they are hurt until they see blood or some other indication of injury. Maybe as you get older you start to cry in reverse order.

Hotdog champ

So I've noticed that I've always been a pretty good eater. I also don't usually shy away from a friendly round of competitive eating. By saying this, I don't mean those contests where you have to eat berry pies with hands behind your back or something really body-punishing as several blocks of butter in a few minutes. I was thinking more along the lines of maybe at a pizza buffet with some friends and finding out who can eat the most slices. I've actually won that more than once. I've also had some pretty good success with hotdogs.
That probably started as a little kid when our school had 'hotdog days'. Our school didn't have a place where you could buy a lunch. The staff and parents organised these days every few months as a fundraiser and for something different than sandwiches. One year, my mom volunteered to compile the orders from the kids and make larger orders for the food and drinks from some suppliers. I would always look at the class lists on our kitchen table and compare how much everyone was ordering and order one more of everything for myself. For example, if, say, Bob was having 2 dogs and a doughnut, I would order three dogs and two doughnuts. I don't know why I wanted to and I didn't mention it to any of the other students in fear that they'd want to 'outbid me'. This habit did come in handy several years later in university when I was in classes with a bunch of competitive eaters.
These days, I'm in semiretirement from the sport but I still don't believe in leftover pizza. There's no such thing.

Quiet city

So have you ever been in a usually populated place where it seemed that you were the only one there? While walking my dog there was a period of about ten minutes where there was no wind, visible people or any noise. Usually a reasonably busy part of the area where I live, all and any industrial noise was missing, no vehicles of any kind were moving, and looking around, I couldn't see another person. In fairness, it was about to rain but the quietness of the setting gave me the feeling like it was just me left on Earth. Should prepare for zombies tonight?