Insomnia

Basically...I cant sleep

Paint'n plastic to look well...not plastic

In preparation for my (and my gf's) Halloween costumes, i cracked out the acrylics and had a bit of a play, I haven't got the goggles yet so i had a bit of an experiment with an old Tommy gun that was laying around (from a gangsta costume years ago)- I love how I have all these props and paints hanging about :D so for about 15 mins or so i had a play with silver, black and 'burnt seanna' brown and just mucked about for a bit. And these are the results...

To be fair for my first ever try at anything like this (things like painting war-hammer figurines I despise with a passion ) I'm pretty chuffed, admittedly i went a bit mental towards the back of the gun, but it seems that dry-brushing is totally the way forward... smudging and rubbing thinned layers seems to work for crevices (wipe the remaining paint of surrounding areas), but I'm not a fan for using it in other areas. I was contemplating using gold paint and giving a bit of a steampunk style to my goggles although i really like the gun metal colours :D 

So: 

1.rough up plastic with some sandpaper

2.Paint with a black undercoat

3.Dapple with a dark grey/silver with a dry brush

4.Repeat with lighter metallic colour

5.use dry brush and highlight colour to crate scratches

Unlike today i would totally let layers dry completely and probably use much less paint (thin them up with water or something)  and give my goggles some dents and scratches with some form of heavy duty tool...but for 15 mins I'm pretty chuffed

Meanwhile On the Internet...

Source: loldwell via thedailywh.at

Also... THIS is pretty cool

Everytime someone joins the group ect this guy gets submerged in skittles... a good waste of the internets power i feel :D

The commentator is just talking rubbish throughout the whole thing and its a bit funny :F

'he looks frustrated like he's struggling at sudoku'

i don't really like skittles

Things of the Day

First Thought of the Day:

If Balloons don't pop when you put Sellotape on them, why don't we make balloons out of them?

This was followed shortly after with 'Why the hell am I dreaming of my old art teacher (Mr Bennett) coming onto me whilst i discuss with a mate about how Sam Clarke is so tidy?'

Room Temperature of the Day: MINUS A FUCKING BILLION!!! I lost a toe to frost bite whilst I was still in bed!

General Observation of the Day: After My mums 40th, we now have obscene amounts of cake in the house, some may say enough to sink a boat of cake (not a cake in the shape of a boat - obviously). We have uncomfortable amounts of cake, its oozing from our pores.

HOLY SHIT THAT SCARED ME! of the Day: Our 'Bin Cuboard' (which doesn't actually have a bin in it any more but instead is named after its legacy) has developed a squeaky hinge, however instead of adopting a stereotypical creaky door sound of 'EEEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRR', it sounds like a baby kitten in distress, it systematically made me jump about 3 foot in the air (apparently i'm scared of distressed kittens) and make me look. TWICE!.

Self note of the day: This post needs more pictures

Cupcakes and Dogsnot

Today I have made a creation so great that even the Chilean Miners are no match for such news. In Preparation for my Mothers 40th 25th Birthday, I have made some cakes, Not the bog standard sponge cakes I always occasionally  make, decorating them with pride in a vain attempt to cover their bland taste. Today I attempted something new. American style cupcakes... Being a MAN I obviously made them as epically manly as possible (obviously).

If you want to be as manly as me (I'm currently head butting a frying pan cos i'm so hard) Here is my ever so Manly Recipe. If you're really manly you can pay a prostitute to cook it for ya'

Dan's Mega Manly Cake Recipe
180g of Unsalted Butter
180g Caster sugar
3 Medium Eggs
1 Teaspoon of Vanilla essence
180g of Self Raising Flower
Half a Teaspoon of Baking Powder
A Dash of Milk


Method 
1. Cream together the butter and caster sugar (this is long as hell so make your bird do it)
2.Beat eggs (to a bloody pulp) and add these and the Vanilla essence to the butter mix.
3. Sieve the flour and Baking powder (through your teeth), whilst folding it in to the mixture (and swearing profusely whilst scratching arse)
4. The Mixture should fall off the shovel (spoons are for homo's)  if not add the milk (i used  Cow milk but snake or shark milk adds to the overall grittyness of the cakes.
5. Shovel into Cupcake cases, I used sawn in half beer cans (although they didn't really show up in the picture too well as i was shouting at kittens whilst taking pictures)

6. Throw into a furnace/burning car wreck/oven at gas Mark 5  for 15-20 minutes (this is the perfect opportunity to go to the pub, discuss football or surf the web for girls with their gash out)

Decorating 
Basically cream lots of butter and icing sugar into a bowl, threaten it until it whisks itself , add a tsp of vanilla extract and 4 table spoons of milk, until it looks half decent, add colouring and decorations  however the hell you want.
 I personally used blood from my shirt and crushed glass, although bottle caps, ring pulls, concrete dust, or torn out pages from porno mags work equally well...

And here's some well fit bird with cracking bangers to prove how heterosexual and masculine I am *Downs 4 pints of beer*

                                Courtesy of Gorillamask 

In other news i came back today to find my dog with (I presume) his own snot across his face...

Nice.

Stuff I Like

Via The Daily What

If You Go Down to The woods Today...

The girl came down on Sunday and we ate vast amounts of Chinese, bakery products, and overpriced milkshakes (as is the fashion at the moment), but our main even was going into the woods and having a bit of a forage, because at the heart of it all, we are both nature bods... 

our main haul was these little fella's...

 Chestnuts :D these things remind me of my childhood where me and my Grandad used to collect them and eat them all :D Omnomnomnom:D so we stashed up on these , so we can cook them up and add them to salads, and maybe cous cous? i don't really know I'll probably just end up eating them all :D

But chestnuts were not the only highlight, we found loads of cool fungi...

and these,

and my personal favourite....

It's funny how my favourite looking one is the one that screams 'DEATH TO ALL!', and yet we all have that urge, niggling at the back of our heads what it tastes like... burning. Probably.

I would love to know if the others were edible tho, but I cant seem to find a decent resource online that looks reliable enough to use...

OH WELL!

I asked anna but she Didn't have a clue...

Things I Find at Work Pt. 3 Nature Addition!

Today I have been Gardening and so we have nature making an appearance :D YAY! My favourite :D
My first Find was this chappy,

and would you believe it? another bloody Toad! 22 years its taken me to see an example of Bufo bufo and in the space of a month I find 2! And s/he's Miniature! Really laid back just chilled out on my hand whilst i took a picture:D AWESOME!

Next on my list is this Badman Magpie checking out his reflection in car windows...

he was making the most awsfull racket ever, and i managed to sneak a little closer

I find magpies get a bad press (my mum despises the things - especially the bald one in the garden, despite me trying to convince her its a monk), I on the other hand admire Corvid's(magpies, crows, ravens ect) despite the plural for crows being a 'murder of crows', I admire their intellect, and the amazing self awareness they (can) exhibit, despite the lack of cortical structures within the brain (these are linked with self awareness and Theory of mind in mammals). I would totally own a Corvid.

Now for some invert's (Yes)

Found these guys when i was digging up the flower beds, they are without a shadow of a doubt beetle larvae but i have no idea what species at all, my first thought was some sort of chafer beetle (think may bugs) but the colouring just isn't right (chafers have white bodies and orange heads) they look nice tho :D

The last think i found was that nature is stronger than metal after hitting a tree root...

 I was down a Tool... well thats it for today :D

Bramble: Bain of my Life

It's happened by letting some invertebrates into my house i have inadvertently released the addiction within, i want to buy more, breed more, convert a shed, get some more species and use obscene amounts of scientific names. This has been catalysed through the conversations with fellow bug lovers both within my social circles and at the AES show on sat ...
One thing I had to do today was collect bramble for the leafies. I had forgot how crap that was.
You end up getting cold, turned into a walking freak of a pincushion and look as perverted as humanly possible without actually doing anything perverted.
In the process of going into the woods cutting bramble and putting it into my bag, i have in essence become an escaped tenant of B... then you have to wash the stuff then put it in the cage and remove the old stuff, which in the process of dying has become as hard and brittle as weathered glass with a hint of malice, waiting to stab my unsuspecting digits at the earliest opportunity. Even when wearing rubberised gloves, somehow covert spines manage to locate any available loose seams and shoot to kill. often i take my gloves off to find there are more thorns inside the glove then there were on the out side... i mean seriously...did i put them on inside out or something.
Bramble is the main reason that i have never kept obscene amounts of stick insects (its the cheapest universal food around), I'd rather have hoards of escaped crickets then a handful of biological nails in my hand, that's for sure!
To make my ongoing battle aaginst the dreaded blackberry traps, i have been gardening at work, and guess what lurks in the bushes? BRAMBLES! like enraged rabid squirrels it strikes...

Bramble: The silent killer

My presents :D

After the AES I trundled off to anna's where she has a surprise in store for me, knowing that i love a good bargain, am a serial collector of junk, love old things and am decorating my room she bought me these beauties.

and 

they are both massive and wiegh roughly 5 times the weight of the sun, and whilst i think they are ducking awesome (and consequently think my bird is bloom'n fabulous) what she failed to remember was that i had to 1. carry these home on a 3 hour train journey across perilous ravines and Clapham junction 

2. that after getting off my last train i have to cycle up hill.

effectively she tied a ball and chain to my leg hindering my journey...somewhat , but in a way where i couldn't detest at all (as if the ball in the metaphorical ball and chain was made of cake or filled with tropical fish.

this matter was made all the worse by the fact that it was monsoon season here in Surrey and i had to drag my cargo (and bike) upstream, against the flow of water, fish and fragments of building. In reality i just got a bit wet had some tea and the world was all well agin (and then i watched a BADMAN  programme of submarines being used to smuggle cocaine into America... but that's far too interesting for this blog)

Basically, in short

I love my Girlfriend because she is a massive nob (it's ok i tell her this everyday ) and she gets me cool stuff 

Things I find at work Pt. 2

All of these i found today and they are a nice mixed batch

so some kind on nut key, a hair clip (curiously found in the mens changing room - I always find really odd stuff in there), the obligatory chunk of metal and a shopping list '2 onions, 2 pop somethingies, rosemary sprigs, sage leaves and pear barley. How very middle class, 'do pass the pear barley dear, I need something to wash these rosemary sprigs down with', actually i really like the word 'sprigs', god knows what was to be made from the contents of this list... :D
towards the end of my shift one of my coworkers kids came in 'kirby'. He can be a little tyke at times but today he came and helped me clean windows (legend) and i gave him his own little bucket and spray to help me (hes 10 so is perfectly capable of doing a decent job). Afterwards we found an ink pad and some stamps.
This was the end result...

i do especially like the one with a picture of a worm that says 'smart' as i had no understanding that worms are animals renound for their intelligence.

all in all  a good day :D

The Spoils of War

Ok so as promised here are my purchases from the AES :D
first off are the leafies Phyllium siccifolium for all you geeks :D
ive kept leaf insects before but never this species but paying £10 for 8 (when they usually go for £4 each (trade price) you can't be too picky, so i snatched up these bad boy's (and girls)

as you can see they are a nice size and as i have a few friends within the 'animal show' sector im planning to breed some and flog them to make some cash :D leaf insects generally go quite quickly as they are uber desirable within collections and who can blame collectors for wanting them?
This lot are a bit battered (even if I exclude the one that lost a limb yesterday when she decided to shed in transit- she will be fine, it will grow back in her next shed :D ) i imagine these critters (wow that sounds really American)  were probably kept in high densities and when that happens they tend not to differentiate between food (i.e leaves) and each other, and it is for this reason that you should never keep leaf insect species with other stick insects ;)


My Favourites however are my Deroplatys dessicata (Dead leaf mantis) ive kept these before and they are gorgeous however i sold them before they reached adulthood :(
they are only little at the moment but adult females are pretty damned bulky and im planning to have one free range in the front room (its almost a tradition in our house) 
here are the little fella's :D

in the last pic you can really see the shape of the protonum (the back bit behind its head) and as they mature it becomes more pronounced and arrow shaped in this species (this is why i love them... i cant wait till their markings appear on the inside of their 'arms' 
like this one:D

(old skool picture)
they have all been fed and put to bed now :D so they have no chance of eating one another 

lets hope they don't cark it on me ...i'd be gutted

The AES

i had a FANTASTIC DAY!
I was aware that i was going to have a good day when i ordered a tea at the train station and i got this...

a

and these..

so there i was drinking my brilliant (yet overpriced tea) and after getting off at Teddington i had the most insatiable urge to urinate. After 10 minutes of fruitless public convenience searching (and finding a drinking establishment comically named the 'Bloated Mallard' (which was unfortunately closed at this untimely hour) i weighed up my options  do i wait and have a wee at the show (knowing i will be in the line for an hour) or suck it up and find a corner to wee in? and so like a drug peddler i searched for the darkest most secluded alley or corner i could find. Unfortunately for me Teddington (at least in the stations vicinity) is quite a suburban  area and i feared that flopping out my member  would cause numerous female types to swoon and scream 'Think of the children'' so i was forced to relieve myself within the station itself. Looking as auspicious as i tried not to be i sauntered into a darkened corner and  felt my bladder thank me 'cheers mate i'll be good for a few more hours.

Eventually i reached the AES (Amateur Entomologist Society) show.
In the line i befriended a 16 year old called Ryan who i bestowed my life's wisdom on regarding inverts, which he lapped up like an eager yet slightly terrified puppy, and after 45 minutes or so we got in, my hand was stamped and in I went.
And this is what i saw...

Lots of Arachnid's

Lots of pinned stuff

The thing is i usually look at pinned bug's and feel a little sad, but after keeping bugs and pinning them myself (although mine die a natural death not a chemical based one) and the fact i'm currently decorating my room in a neo-Victorian style, i have really begun to appreciate them. But today I was on a budget so i couldn't spend all my money on décor. Even if there are stalls like this one...

Giant barnacles, Nautilus shells, urchins, fossils, shells and even horseshoe crabs (which i would of picked up if they didn't smell of fish). All perfect for my room...alas not today  i thought as i thought the impuslsive 5 year old within 'i have bills to pay and things i need to do' i begrudgenly explained.

What i was here for was one of 2 things:
Mantid's :

Of which there was shit loads! picked up 6 baby Dereplytus dessicata for a clean crisp £10 note and some fruitflies (which my mum hates because they get into her wine)
and some leaf insects (i'll take pictures after work) in all i spent £22 although i could of easilly spent 10 times that if i had the money.

After the show i had planned to go and see my girlfriend and then the transition began, i was no longer a 'entomological enthusiast with an interest in praying mantids' i was 'the freak on the train with strange stuff in his bag'.

At one point one of my leaf insects began to moult en route (movement whist moulting can cripple them) and so i had to use my mad bug skills and a pen to sort him out so he didn't end up in the bin.

The fact is i was so engrossed in helping out this unfortunate little critter i was oblivious to the hoards of eyes that were staring at me with an inquisitive caution as if they were watching a 5 year old girl swinging round a battle axe.
looking up and seeing a carriage load of people staring at you is obviously a bit intimidating, so i broke the tension by passing them around (the old bloke sitting opposite was mightily pleased, but the 5 year old boy in front just peered over the back of his seat and his gaze bore into my soul...

And the ticket man comes along 'tickets please', so i handed him my orange striped permit to travel on the locomotive device, he clipped it, and passed it back, and i gained this cheeky little fellow :D

So off i hopped and grabbed some lunch for me and the girl and i continued with the bug theme by picking up a 'butterfly muffin' each,

these things were sickly sweet but i was content :D