Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Goulet Pen's November 2010 Ink Drop - Final

Finally, it is time to post the November Ink Drop Maze. This maze is three pages long. Each page was drawn using two different inks from the Ink Drop. All of the inks were brown of one sort or another.

The first page on the maze was done with Noodler's #41 Brown and Private Reserve Sepia. The latter ink was the bonus sample this month. The #41 brown is a rich dark brown which worked very well for the maze. When I think brown, this is the color I picture. The Private Reserve Sepia is very light and seems almost watery on the page. It will shade very well. Even with a fine nib the shading shows. For my mazes this ink is fairly useless though. I'm sure it will have its fans for different uses, but I'm not one of them. It is too variable to reproduce well.

Here is the first page:


The second page was drawn with Noodler's Walnut and Diamine Saddle Brown. The Walnut was my second favorite of this month's inks. It is a good deep brown that shows more shading than the #41 brown. It worked very well in my Pilot Fine nib. It dried faster than the #41 as well. The Saddle Brown was in the middle ground of these browns. A redder brown with more shading and therefore more variability than either of the two Noodler's inks. It is a good ink, I could use it.

Here is the second page:


The third page was drawn with J. Herbin Lie de Thĕ and Diamine Chocolate Brown. The Chocolate Brown is the best of these two and about even with the Saddle Brown above. The only draw back was the slightly longer drying time. I get sloppy with the longer dry time and I tend to smudge the linework if I'm not super careful. The Lie de Thĕ is not a favorite of mine. It is too light for me. It seems to fade when drawing at some angles. Again other people will differ, but that is the way I see it.

Here is the third page:



The bottom line for me is that either of the Noodler's offerings are great inks if you like brown. I would go with the Noodler's #41 Brown myself, although the Walnut is darn good. I'm running the Walnut out of a pen right now and I may have to try the #41 again to do a back to back comparison.

There you have it. If you need a hint on how to solve the maze, I gave it away in the previous Ink Drop post. Tomorrow I'll be taking a break to be back on Thursday with the next page of the first maze.

Jonathan

Monday, November 29, 2010

A Maze - Page 11

It is Monday again??! There seems to be a pattern developing here. It is time for the next page of the first maze. Midori has caught up again and she might have a request soon for a particular page, but I haven't seen one yet. So, I will post the 11th page of the maze.

You might have seen Midori's comment about my Taco Bell Thanksgiving. I had talked my wife into an all you can eat buffet at Taco Bell for Thanksgiving. She put up a fight, but I can be very annoying. We had the real dinner on Friday when the family could get together. But a pre-feast at Taco Bell would be a treat. I was ripped off. The Taco Bell in Santa Cruz was closed! What is that all about? On Saturday I asked the guy at the Taco Bell I go to in Santa Clara about it, and it turns out that they would have been closed too. What is going on? Isn't anything sacred anymore? So, we went to a little Falafel shop down by the Boardwalk. Fish and Chips and Veggie Burgers did the trick. Plus I got to take some more pictures of my maze down in Santa Cruz.

Here is page 11 in its scanned and edited form:

Page 11



Here it is in the wild down in Santa Cruz.



It was very nice down there. There were quite a few out of town visitors out for an after feast walk on West Cliff. Once the sun had set everyone left and we had the whole stretch of coast to ourselves. The air was crystal clear. Monterey was brightly visible across the bay. The horizon was sharp as a razor blade in tones of blue.

Tomorrow would be my day off except that it is the last day of the month and I have to post the November Ink Drop Maze. So, look for that tomorrow.

Jonathan

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Goulet Pen's November 2010 Ink Drop - Part Two

On Thanksgiving I finally finished drawing the line work for my November Ink Drop Maze. It is a simple three page affair using the six different inks which came in the November drop. I'll talk about the performance and qualities of the various inks in a following post. What I want to discuss in this post are the various stages that I go through to create one of these multiple page mazes.

From time to time someone will see me when I'm working on my maze somewhere. I take it with me most places I go so I don't waste the time spent waiting somewhere. Waiting at a train station, airport, doctor's office, or traffic light (just kidding about that one) can be tedious, but if you have something to work on it isn't a waste of time. Just pull out the maze and a fountain pen and get to work.

But that is beside the point, the point is that sometimes a person will see me working on it and ask, “What in blazes are you doing?” I love to explain it to them. It is a book length maze. Yes the whole book is one maze. Once their eyes begin to glaze over I they usually say something like, “I don't know how you can keep track of where it is going. You must be a genius or something.”

That makes me smile, because there is hardly anything in the world more mindless than drawing a maze like this. That is why I'm so good at it. The brain can go into off mode and the hands and eyes keep on going. Or since my brain insists on trying to get some exercise, it can think about something else and I can still be productive. The reason is because I have no idea where the maze is going. There are only two things to keep track of, which I call the “Ins and Outs”. This is a list of where the maze comes into a page and where it goes out. As long as at the end of the drawing there are no left over items in the list, then the maze will be roughly correct.

I say roughly correct because it would take a miracle for there to be a solution to a longer maze without some editing. Both of the big mazes that I have totally finished had some need to have changes made for there to be a solution.

Let me show you what I mean with the November Ink Drop Maze. Here are all three pages of the maze.
Notice that the labels in the exit circles are only penciled in. This is so that I can make changes if I have to.


Now here are the pages printed out on which I found all of the paths from In Node to Out Node. Along the edge of the page I have listed the beginning node and end node of all the connections. A maze is just a Mathematical Graph after all. At some point I may discuss some of that sort of thing, because the power of graph theory is only now beginning to be realized.


Anyhow, here is the graph that represents the maze. Although each of the connecting lines has a little arrow on it which is the symbology of a directed graph, the maze should really be thought of as a simple undirected graph. This is because a person can travel or trace his route either direction. There is a problem with this graph though. The problem is that the end is not connected with the start. Only a very sick person would post a maze with no solution. That is the sort of thing you learn to do in Evil Medical School.


Here is the graph again with changes made. I made one change so that there will be a solution to the maze. Then I made two more changes so that all but one of the nodes will be reachable by some path. The only circle that you cannot reach is 2H. In an ideal world that sort of unreachable node would not exist, but then neither would world hunger. So one node out of twenty-four is node not bad.


I will post the maze for you to test it out as soon as I scan and edit the pages. Tomorrow is a day off for me, but I'll have another page of the big maze for you on Monday.

Jonathan

Friday, November 26, 2010

Drawing the Line - 6

Last week, while we were still in our Indian Summer, I took the opportunity to roll out the Line an extra time. This was so that I could get a segment 'in the can'. No, I don't mean visiting the restroom. I mean so that I would have the material to do a post about the Line even if the weather is gets too bad some week in the future. Or if I'm too busy with one of my other projects to roll out a segment.

Anyway, this Line segment was rolled out last Wednesday. If I get my tenses wrong, it is just because I get confused easily. I try to roll out the Line during the late morning hours. After commute time and before the wind kicks up around noon.

So, I threw four prepared rolls of cash register tape in my back pack and walked the 1,360 feet to where the last Line segment ended. Remember it was past the gas station and just past a mail box. After rolling out the 11th roll of the Line, this is what it looked like.


Following the normal Line rolling procedures, I connected the 12th roll and continued to roll. After 12 rolls the Line arrived here.


Attaching the 13th roll and continuing on, we got to here.


If you look close you can see a grandmother and her grandchild walking along the Line. I wondered what the kid would think about the long strip of paper laying on the sidewalk. I don't think he even noticed it. It was apparently just another small part of the big world to him.

Anyway attaching the 14th and final roll of the day, I continued on and got to here.


This is the very end of the Line.


It was disappointing that I didn't get to talk to anybody this time. There were some college students on their way to class, but they seemed to be avoiding me by crossing to the other side of the street. Well, they are Santa Clara University students and not UC Berkeley students after all.

While I was gathering up the Line a UPS truck began to pull into one of the driveways to a apartment complex. When he saw the Line in front of him, he stopped and looked over at me to see if it was OK to cross it. I waved him on and he called out, "Sorry!" It is amazing how cooperative people have been during the project so far. All except for the day time guy at the gas station.

As I was walking back to base with my Line, I stopped at the station to buy more Pink Popcorn. Now that I was past the station, the guy in there was quite friendly. He had just been afraid of what his boss would have said about the Line snaking through the station. I can see his point.

So, thus far you have seen 1,880 feet of the Line Around The World. Stay tuned, it is only going to get better!

Jonathan



Thursday, November 25, 2010

A Maze - Page 10

Happy Thanksgiving!

Where I come from everyday is a holiday, every meal is a feast. So don't expect any mercy from me today. Just for a change of pace I was thinking of skipping a couple of pages in the order. Instead I will just put up page 10. My brother and his wife came to visit yesterday and had the privilege of witnessing the rolling out of the Line. You will not see the results of that segment until next week, but I think they had a good time.

Work is continuing on my November Ink Drop maze. Five colors are complete and there is only one more to go. I'll have an update on this project on Saturday. I might actually complete the maze before December. I really had no idea that it would take so long.

Midori's setback sent her reeling and then her holiday projects came a long, so it might be a while before she is at the point again. I know that there are hundreds if not thousands of readers out there too shy to request pages. Until you do it will be up to me to decide what comes next.

Anyway, here is the scanned and edited version of page 10.

Page 10



And here is page 10 in the wild. It is only the patio again. I thought I had one from Santa Cruz, but I didn't. Darn. But you can see how brutally cold it has been the last couple of mornings. For California that is.



Tomorrow I will have an update on the Line Around The World. Remember to breathe between bites of turkey.

Jonathan

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Musical Interlude - 3

More than likely everyone has some favorite music. The music that no matter how many times you hear it, the magic still works. Perhaps it takes you back to a special time or place or reminds you of someone. Or maybe all of those things. Maybe it just makes you remember that you were young once.

For me it is the music of a band called Renaissance. The first time I heard their music must have been in 1976. Yikes, that is a long time ago. I must have played my old LPs of the band to death. The thing that is so amazing about them is that almost no one I talk to has ever heard of them. How can something I find to be so incredibly brilliant and important be so unknown to the majority of people, even those of my own age group?

Nowadays the world of music is so huge. All the of acts I grew up with are still there at least in recorded form. There is the real old stuff my dad listened to. And then there is the music of the more recent generations. Some of which is actually music. All told it is a vast pile of stuff. It is no wonder things get lost in the noise nowadays. But back in the 1970s there wasn't all that much to choose from. And yet I don't think I have ever heard a Renaissance song on the radio. Back in the day or on a classic rock station now.

True, many of their songs were long, but some were short enough for air play. It is strange and frankly I sometimes wonder if I'm a bit strange for loving the music so much.

Here is one of the short pieces that could have been a hit.



Annie Haslam is the lead singer. Her voice is the absolute best of any singer I've ever heard. And I enjoy many female vocalists. Natalie Merchant, Enya, Mary Black, Loreena McKennitt, Sarah Mclachlan, and more are all to be found on my iPod, but Annie is the top. I love the casual way the band is playing in this video. It makes me darn jealous of their musical talent.

Anyway Annie is still performing if rarely, solo and with a new incarnation of the band. If you are in the area of Pennsylvania you might be able to see her. She is doing a couple of Holiday music shows. Check it out here.

Annie's new passion is painting. I really like her style. I have purchased two of them myself. They are small enough that the prices are quite reasonable. She has done several violins. I mean she actually paints on a violin. They look fantastic! Check out her work here.


Thursday is Turkey Day, but that is no excuse to skip the next page of the maze.

Jonathan

Monday, November 22, 2010

A Maze - Page 9

It is another Monday and I trust you all have been eagerly awaiting the next installment of the first maze. Midori suffered mightily when she hit a dead-end. It may take a while for her to fully recover. Today you get the 9th page of the maze. It turns out that it is a significant one, for it is the end of the first 10 percent. Using a little bit of math you can figure out how long this thing is. I still don't want to discourage readers by just blurting it out.

Well, here it is in the scanned and edited version.

Page 9


 

Now here it is in the wild. It is back down in Santa Cruz. You can see the pier and behind that is the Santa Cruz Beach Broadwalk, where everyone has a great time.



The weather has turned here. It has been wet and cold for the last few days. I'm hoping to be able to roll out some more of my Line Around The World sometime, but we shall see.

Jonathan

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Drawing The Line - 5

It is clear that the Pilot Easy Touch ball point pen I have been using for my Line Around The World Project is going to fail me. It only has a few hundred feet worth of ink left in it. This means that it will soon be time to write this Project off as another of my brilliant ideas that failed for some reason beyond my control.

As an aside, here is an idea I came up with today while I was in the shower. Imagine a company that will store online all of the memories that a person would like to have in a future life. Say that you put a 1000 bucks in a bank account before dying. Instead of your heirs receiving and living it up with the windfall, you keep it secret and store all of the information you will need to collect it if you are reincarnated. The company, for a fee collected in advance, will keep the information safe and available to the new you. If it takes a century or two to find it, all the better, for the interest will swell the account to a huge sum. Of course there are some technical difficulties to work out, but there the idea is for anyone that wants to run with it.

Back to my Line, just when it seemed doomed, a new product arrived on the market in time to save the Project. Noodler's has produced a roller ball piston filled pen called the Nib Creeper. Here is a picture of one I ordered:


This pen will allow me to carry on with the Line Around The World Project using a small number of pens. Instead of using 50,000 or more regular ball point pens, I can use this refillable one and a few hundred bottles of fountain pen ink. I have already done some scientific testing with this pen and discovered that one load of ink will draw a line 3,266 feet long, or 0.62 of a mile. That is as far as the Pilot ball point. According to the folks at Noodler's it has been specially designed to be low maintenance. It is possible to purchase replacement nibs for it at a cost of 2 per dollar.

I have purchased two of these pens. One as the main line pen, and the other as an emergency backup pen. Thinking ahead I also purchased two different inks from Noodler's Polar inks series. These inks are mostly water proof and will supposedly not freeze up in winter conditions. Hopefully these will work in Arctic conditions. That will be the true test. The colors I'm testing now are Polar Black and Polar Blue.



Armed with this new writing instrument and ink I am well prepared to face the rigors of the project and will carry on.

Tomorrow is a day off, but the next page of my maze will be posted on Monday.

Jonathan

Friday, November 19, 2010

Drawing The Line - 4

The days have been quite mild here in California. It was down into the fifties a last week, but for the last couple of days it has been in the high seventies. Even at night it has not dipped very far into the fifties. But be that as it may, I have to think of the bitter days ahead when I reach the far North with my Line Around The World. For that is the way I have chosen. I will go North at the intersection. That way I can visit my friends.

Come to think of it, circling the world North and South is easier. All except the polar regions should be a piece of cake. The polar regions will be a problem, not least because of the long nights during the winter. So, I figured I had better test out how well the Line would show up in pictures at night. With two rolls of tape prepared, I headed out into the deep night and walked the 1,100 feet to where last Line segment ended.

From there at the intersection I turned North.


Looking back at the end of the 9th roll of tape it is possible to see the Line on the sidewalk.



Adding another roll to the Line and we are well past the gas station on the corner.



There will be obstacles along the way, but the Line handled this one easily.


I also wanted to test out a larger backpack to see how well I could pack back a long line segment. It worked perfectly.


After collecting the Line, I stopped in at the gas station to purchase a supply of Pink Popcorn. I had noticed they had it when I had asked if I could cut across the station's property to make more progress. The day time guy said no, so I had to take the long way round.

Anyway, I fell to talking with the attendant there. My wife and I wave to him when we come back from our evening walks. His name is Abraham. He has been in the United States since 1984. He is originally from a part of Ethiopia which is now Eritrea. He left there before independence and seemed to think that conditions were better there now. I asked if he ever thought of going back. “No,” he replied. “But it is hard here now. Ever since those crazies on 9/11, it has been bad.”

He asked where I was from. I'm not use to being asked that, having been born and raised in the US. “You look Dutch,” he said. Yikes, I can't put my finger on just why I felt a flood of emotion at that crack. Not one to throw cold water on a conversation, I just answered, Oh, mainly Irish and English I guess."

Then he asked why I was fooling around with the paper tape. "It's Art," I replied knowing that the real explaination would confuse both of us. "Oh, I see," he replied.

So that is my new line about my Line. It is Art.

Anyway, it occurred to me that just being out and about in the Silicon Valley, I was really already seeing quite a bit of the world.


Jonathan

Thursday, November 18, 2010

A Maze - Page 8

It is Thursday which means another page of my first maze is due. As I write this I haven't seen a comment from Midori, but I'm fairly sure that she will want page 8. That is the one I'm putting up today. Since I started this Blog I've been very busy. I asked myself, and then after I thought about it for a while I asked my wife, if there was something I normally do that I wasn't getting done now. Was the work on the various Blog projects interfering with anything? She replied, “Cleaning the bathrooms.” That is true, but I put that off as long as possible anyway.

We determined that even though the Blog has taken over all of my free time, nothing important has been left out. True I don't play my racing games, or Replay Baseball anymore, or ride my bicycle, and I haven't watched much TV lately. But I'm making great strides on my fourth maze and may even finish drawing it by the end of January. So things have a way of working out.

The November Ink Drop maze is coming along. The reason it takes so long is that I have to use 5 pen loads of ink using two pens. My rule is that I must use all of the ink in a pen before flushing that pen out to change colors. This means that I do a lot of work on the fourth maze as I'm working of the Ink Drop mazes. For instance, during the time I did the three October mazes I also did five pages of my big maze with the same colors. So far in November I have finished three pages in the big maze using the ink drop colors.

Anyway, I've finished with three of the colors. Only three more to go. Here is what it looks like so far:




So, that is that. Now it is time for the 8th page of the big maze. First the scanned and edited version.

Page 8


 

Here it is in the wild. Well, it is only looking off my patio, but I liked the way the leaves have changed since the first 'in the wild' picture I posted.



Tomorrow I will have an update on my Line Around The World project. I have made some progress.

Jonathan

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Pen and Ink Log

Making lists of important things is one of my occupations. It doesn't pay well, but it is a passion. My journal pages are the place I make my really important lists. These lists include, but are not limited to:

Books that I have read.
Books to read.
Albums or CDs that I listened to and what I was doing while listening
Fastest Laps around various race tracks. (Computer simulations only!)
Flight hours and destinations (MS Flight Simulation)
To do lists for days off (I can usually carry over 90% of the previous week's list)
Work hours
Motorcycle rides and mileage
Bicycle rides and mileage
Daily food log
How much I owe Micro Soft for Solitaire
Letters and Cards sent
Wants and desires list (wish list)
Idea list (pretty short list)

Most important is my pen and ink log. Until I bought my first fountain pen I didn't have such a list. Why would I? It would be rather tedious. Not that that's a bad thing.

It would look sort of like this:
1/01/2003 Pilot Easy Touch Black Fine
1/24/2003 Pilot Easy Touch Black Fine
2/25/2003 Pilot Easy Touch Black Fine
and so on....

Actually now that I've done that, I wish I had kept such a list. I'll put it on my To Do list, or should it go on my Idea list? I don't know, but I'll figure it out.

Here is a picture of my Pen and Ink Log which is in my current journal.



At some point a list may become important enough to merit its own notebook. For instance, my Flight Hours log is now kept in its own book. Since my current journal is to be retired at the end of the year, it was necessary to transfer the Pen and Ink Log to its own book. My buddy gave be a nice orange notebook with Clairefontaine paper in it, which is perfect for the job. Here is a page from this new listing:





Each pen has its own page. At some point I want to have each ink I own and use to have part of a page with sample writing. I have great plans for this log.

Of course until the end of the year I need to make an entry into both lists, the old and the new. Yep it is happy days around here!

Jonathan

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Drawing The Line - 3

What is this mysterious third problem which I encountered as I started my Line Around The World? If you have read the posts that led up to this ambitious undertaking, you might remember that when I was a wee lad I was impressed by a TV commercial. Of course, you have all been likewise impressed. Maybe it isn't the same commercial that so impressed you, but there is at less one for everyone. That is the whole point of the multi-billion dollar advertising industry. For example, I was also taught by a TV commercial that the Wet Head is Dead. Remember that one? So even today, forty years later I never use any hair tonic. My hair blows free, Robert Redford like, in the afternoon breeze. Which is odd. They must have been selling something, but I'm not using it on my hair, or anywhere else on my body I can think of, whatever it was.

Anyway this vividly remembered commercial for some ball point pen or other stated that this said pen could draw a line around the world. Of course I had to see for myself. I was skeptical. I told my wife that it probably wouldn't even reach Sacramento. That is only about an hour and a half drive away from where I'm sitting.

So imagine my utter shock and dismay when I discovered that the vaulted ball point pen I was using for this adventure, will fail me after less than a mile. Oh dear, I'm sorry. I forgot to tell you to sit down first. A mile! Either I have spent a dollar fifty on a seriously defective pen, or perhaps my memory of that commercial is slightly flawed. Could it be that the man (or woman) that was holding the pen while standing on the highway (or Bonneville Salt Flat) said that the pen could write a line a mile long? Could this statement that have impressed anyone? It certainly doesn't impress me now.

This resounding discovery was made in a very scientific manner. Simply stated, I measured the level of ink in the pen and drew a line along a measured course. After wards I remeasured the level of the ink.

Before drawing the line the level of the ink was 81 mm.

A line 800 inches long was drawn on a notebook page. Here it is.



When remeasured the level was 79 mm.

Just to be really scientific about it, I did a second trial.

Level before: 79 mm
An 800 inch line was drawn.
Level after: 77 mm

Therefore, both trials show that it took 2 mm of ink to draw a line 800 inches long. With a little math we can find that a line 30,800 inches can be drawn with the remaining 77 mm of ink. This works out to be 0.486 of a mile. So all told with the portion of the line I had already completed, the pen would go for about 6/10ths or 3/5ths of a mile. Even with a significant margin of error for measuring, it is doubtful that it could make up a several thousand mile shortage.
This discovery struck at the very heart of the whole endeavor and came even as the project had taken root in my mind. Of course I could go on, replacing the pen every half mile. The thought of running 50,000 pens out of ink did have some appeal. In fact a lot of appeal! But combined with the need to purchase 1.1 million rolls of cash register tape, it didn't really fit into the budget. Fortunately, at just this moment a new product came onto the market which solves my problem and fits into the spirit of the venture.

More about that later.

Jonathan

Monday, November 15, 2010

A Maze - Page 7

It is Monday and I hope you are all rested and ready to work. Here is the next page of the first maze. Midori is leading the charge. She seems to be making good progress. At least she is going forward again. She hasn't said so, but I believe that the more you work on these particular pages, the easier the next one is. This whole maze is stylistically much the same throughout. Since it was my first one I was just trying to see if I could actually draw such a long maze. I didn't really think about making it difficult to solve. In fact, even now I don't get too tricky.

Here it is, page 7. First in its scanned and edited form:

Page 7




Here it is out in the wild. I know Mark and Midori can tell where this is:




In my next post, I will try to answer the question that Midori asked in the comments. It had slipped my mind that I hadn't explained the third problem I encountered with my Line Around The World project. So I'll explain that one. I'll probably have it ready tomorrow which is a day off, but I have quite a bit of stuff to cover. Prepare to be shocked.

Jonathan

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Drawing The Line - 2

Yesterday was one of those brilliant Autumn days, with bright blue sky, yellow, green and red leaves and a sun that came as a warm friend. This is my favorite kind of day, except for a fresh Spring morning where you can almost hear the growing things all around you. Or one of those lazy Summer afternoons when it is all you can do to stay awake to read while you sip Mint Julips in the shade of some ancient oak tree. Or of course, those cold rainy days snuggled up inside with all the excuse you need to spend the day watching football games. Let's just say that yesterday was the kind of day that makes my top four.

Anyway, instead of sitting up in my room working on the Ink Drop Maze, I played hooky. I decided to take advantage of the weather to roll out some more of my Line Around The World. Since this was going to be the first venture out of the apartment complex I knew it should be a short line segment. It took only a little over an hour to prepare three rolls of cash register tape. After throwing them and a few other things in my backpack, I headed out to where the line had left off.


Here it is with the next line segment attached.

I headed East out of the complex because I haven't decided how I'm going to handle things like the Pacific Ocean. It is only thirty miles away, so it is best to postpone that challenge. Here is the end of the 6th roll of tape.



It was just after this that I meet a very nice older lady (probably 80 years old at least) on her way out to do her grocery shopping with her caregiver. When I told her I was on my way around the world she seemed amazed and happy. Why she should be so happy that I'm going around the world, I don't know. We just met. I can understand why my wife is happy about it. We talked a bit as I helped her to her van. She waved as they drove away and I wished that I had gotten her address so that I could send her postcards. She would get a kick out of it.

Here is the end of the 7th roll.

And here is the end of the 8th roll. Notice how the wind has pushed the line out in the street a bit.




And here is the very end of the 8th roll.


It made it to the intersection. Now I will have to decide which direction to continue.

Here is the view North:


Here is the view East:



And here is the view South:



It will take some thinking to decide which is the best way to go!
Instead of carefully rolling the line back up like I did last time, I had to just gather it up in handfuls. Here it is at home again.


And now all rolled up again.


Now, it is back to the Ink Drop maze. Remember, Sunday is a day off for me, but there will be another page of my maze up on Monday.

Jonathan


Friday, November 12, 2010

Goulet Pen's November 2010 Ink Drop

It is that time. Time to revel the November Ink Drop from Goulet Pens. I don't want this to be a spoiler page for members still waiting for their inks to arrive, but I noticed that it is possible to discover the colors if you really want to know. If you don't, I'll give you fair warning, I will be telling which colors make up the Mudslinging Theme. Scroll down if you want to know the secret.

















This page intentionally left blank.





That always cracks me up. I mean, it was blank until they print that notice on the page. Then it is not blank anymore. So what does it mean? Or are they just messing with my brain?








So Brian and Rachel Goulet came up with the theme “Mudslinging”, based on the recently concluded election season. I thought there might be a chance of some red or blue for the GOP and Dems and a couple of browns. But they went whole hog into the mud with this Drop. We have 5 browns and a bonus sample which is, brown.

The colors are:

Diamine Chocolate Brown
Diamine Saddle Brown
J. Herbin Lie de Thĕ
Noodler's #41 Brown
Noodler's Walnut
and a bonus of Private Reserve Sepia.





Well, sometimes you have to get down and dirty, and I have already started to do just that. Again I'm testing these inks with a series of mazes. The first ink is done as you can kind of see in the photo. When the series is done it will be a simple three page maze. It will take at least a week to finish, so don't hold your breath.

Jonathan

Thursday, November 11, 2010

A Maze - Page 6

Here is your Thursday dose of the first maze. Midori has been a real trooper and has requested page 6. And she shall have it. The thing about this serial posting of the maze is that I can see into Midori's future. This is because once I had finished drawing the maze, I had to go through and find the paths to each circle. This was to make sure that there was a solution. It was a time consuming process, but I do know where each circle leads to. Well, that is, as long as I don't lose my pile of printed out pages.

Anyway here is the scanned and edited page.

Page 6


 
Here is page 6 in the wild. Of course this is the Museum again. I like this shot and I'm happy Midori happened along this path.



On Monday I will have another page for you. I heard that the maze was spotted at another location, so I'll hit the road to try and get some pictures.

Jonathan

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Drawing The Line

Despite appearances, I have not been idle when it comes to my Line Around The World Project (perhaps to be retitled, The Subway Line). Most of the work that I have done on it is on the theoretical side. Let's face it, it is a little more difficult to draw a line around the world than you might first think. I've been thinking, running tests, and planning. No more of those running out of paper incidents for me. There are probably problems ahead that I haven't considered, but I have solved (with help) the ones that have come up at the start.

The first problem I encountered was the very time intensive process of taping sheets of paper together. The large sheets of paper were nice, in that they gave plenty of room for my line to move and express itself, but it is not strictly necessary. Thanks to Midori's suggestion to use cash register tape, a great deal of taping has been eliminated, with resulting time savings.

The second problem I faced was when my wife looked at the line running down the hallway towards the front door and said, “I suppose I'm going to have to learn to vacuum around that..” Of course that wasn't what she meant. Men understand this sort of thing. Sometimes we just pretend we don't. However since I would soon be halfway around the world, I knew that eventually she would pick up that starting portion of the line and toss it. Then where would I be?

And I'm sure there will be other situations when portions of the line will be run over by uncaring traffic, or be swept away by flowing lava, or even be trampled by herds of clumsy elephants. In other words, it is very unlikely that the line would exist complete and pristine by the time I get home. I mean, look at the French. They are already rioting and burning cars over some minor changes to something or other. Can you imagine the chaos that will take place when I come along with my line. They will be totally bent out of shape by the Political and Environmental aspects of my line. You see, I'm trying to plan ahead here.

Anyway, as it turns out, in solving the first problem I also solved this second problem. The cash register tape is perfect for a retractable line. Line segments can be drawn in advance and rolled out as needed. After a period of time (long enough to record the event in pictures) the line can be rolled up again and be safely stored away. It is a different way of looking at it, but I believe it is a realistic and valid way of doing it.

There is a third problem which was a bigger blow to my mind, but I'll save that one for later. It is time to get the line out and see what it looks like. I know exactly how long it is, but I haven't seen it rolled out yet. Here goes.

Here is where I left off before.


Now I add the first line segment to it.

This first segment gets us around the corner.

Adding another gets us here.

Add a couple more and we zip along to here.


And the last of the segments takes us to here.

As you can see, we have almost made it to the public street.


Now to prove my concept I retracted the line by rolling it back up.



I should be able to make much more rapid progress from now on. That is, if it wasn't time to work on the November Ink Drop mazes.

Tomorrow I will have the next dose of the first maze for you.

Jonathan