Epic Box Pumpkin

Continuing the pattern of holiday themed epic boxes, I introduce the Epic Box Pumpkin.

Happy Halloween Everyone!

Haibane Renmei Communicator Costume

For this years halloween costume I decided to go with the Haibane Renmei Communicator, at the suggestion of one (or two I forget exactly) of my friends after watching the series at school last year. I had mentioned that it would be a cool costume, so with that push, this year I actually spent the time to bring it to life.

Below is some basic steps I followed, if you are interested in making a similar costume, as there was very little to no information beyond a few cosplay pictures online. So I hope this helps others out looking for a design.

The mask was made out of two halves of a styrofoam craft ball, then routed into shape and then finished off with a good sanding and eight layers of white acrylic latex paint to smooth it down. The black color is permanent marker as I was so sick of painting and sanding at that point. The pendant is also made from styrofoam and a similar process but a brown marker.

The costume is made from my own designs and a combination of tunic 1 from Simplicity pattern 4795 and the hood from cloak A in Simplicity pattern 5840 which is modified for the longer back strip and a rounded flop at the top. The the striped front was of my own pattern , which could have been longer, but still looks fine non the less.

The belt is a standard leather belt. I was too cheap/lazy to buy some red cord.

The wings where made of foam poster board which I used a wood rasp to round the edges. Then covered with thick acrylic brown paint to get a wood like pattern. I added tassels to the six holes drilled into it. The wings where attached to the striped front via two longer strips at the top. I drilled two extra one inch holes at the top of the wings and used two extra straps that looped through and connected to the longer strips that go over the shoulders.

The stick is also foam, a rounded ball and two wings that I cut out of the leftover foam poster board and then painted. he halo is copper wire. The stick is a old handle from a rake or some other garden tool that broke, which the top part is wrapped in leftover fabric.

- Time Required -
Sewing = ~16 hours
Painting/drying = 1 week

Total cost: $42 (Stupid expensive styrofoam!!!)

I like how I get better and better at sewing each Halloween season. I expect next year will be even better!

Halloween costume confusion

With this years halloween costume finished, I was thinking back on the other costumes I have had over the years. However it did not take long for me to realize the trend of people having no clue to what I am going as. Now for a few of the costumes I have to admit that it was expected that my idea was obscure, but some times it was just annoying. For a bit for fun let me give some examples with the reactions I received. Oh and if you do not notice, I have never had a store bought costume.

Green Power Ranger (Back when it was just starting!)
- Had no clue, I was too early as next year there where other kids with commercial ranger costumes.

Red Coat Costume (I liked the hat)
- Thought I was a pirate... sigh learn more history people!

Chinese dragon (of one)
- Had no clue, I thought it was cool, and it even ate the candy.

Kosh-tume V1 (Babylon 5)
- Had no clue, sort of understood when I said an alien.

Custom Dn'i Cloak (Myst)
- Had no clue.

Kosh-tume V2 (Babylon 5)
- Most had no clue, a few B5 fans caught on.

So for this years costume, which I will post in a day or two, I expect the same as usual. It is funny, as I am so used to it if someone I do not expect knows what I am I was be flabbergasted. Still, I am always far happier with a unknown custom costume, it just fits me better.

Installing Quicktime 7 in Snow Leopard 10.6

On small annoyance with 10.6 and Quicktime X is the some important older components do not work yet. So in order to use these older components you will need to install an older version of quicktime 7.

1. First off download quicktime 7 from Apples website here.

2. Right click and select view contents of the Installer and view the Contents folder.

3. Expand the Archive.pax.gz and open the resulting Archive folder.

4. In the Archive/Applications folder drag the Quicktime application to your Utilities folder

5. In the Archive/System/Library/PreferencePanes double click the QuickTime.prefPane and have it install for all users.

6. Register Quicktime pro if you have a license key.

There you have it a easy way to use Quicktime 7 in 10.6 with out having to reinstall your OS.

Mac OGM to iPOD conversion

This is more of a post for my self because I always forget what the name of software tools, so here is my simple guide to converting OGM files on a Mac.

1. Download D-Vision from http://www.objectifmac.com/

2. Download and install the Xiph quicktime component. from http://www.xiph.org/quicktime/

3. Click tools and use the OGM Demuxer function to split the OGM file into separate parts.

4. Open the AVi video only file in quicktime 7. (Snow Leopard aka 10.6 will need an older version of Quicktime as vr X does not work with the Xiph component yet)

5. Copy the audio track and use the "add to movie" option to insert it over the video track.

6. Finally use the export option in quicktime to export it as iPhone or iPod format.

This works fine under 10.5 and below, however as noted in 10.6 you need to use the older ver of quicktime, see my guide on installing Quicktime 7 on Snow Leopard here.

Online IE Testing

I had stumbled across IE Netrenderer a few weeks ago, it is a site that lets you put a url into the form on the page and will return a picture of how that site looks rendered in different versions of Internet Explorer. For me as a mac owner this is awesome as it allows quick page testing in IE. I have been using Crossover to run both IE6 and IE7 and for the most part works quite well, however Crossover has some issues with occasional things like transparency in IE7 and can not run IE8. So for final tests IE Netrenderer is perfect for the job. As an added bonus it also allows you to do an overlay of IE6 vs IE7 for ironing out these few small differences in site layouts. Check it out for you self, if you are a Mac or Linux user I guarantee this is something you will want to bookmark.