Eat Cake!

I've been diving into the computer rabbit hole lately.

On the serious side, I'm trying to better my tech-skills, getting more fluent in photo manipulation and 3D drawing, with an AutoCAD course starting soon.  But on the more playful side, I've been discovering the joys of Portal and enlarging my creative-mode Minecraft kingdom, Blocksterdam.

Travel poster based on Minecraft image - believed fair "adaptive" use

Minecraft in creative mode is pure designer catnip!  I don't care much about the survival-mode monsters or the finicky crafting really, but I love the sandbox freedom to build.  My biggest project - an entire far-flung kingdom with trade routes by boat, rail, road, and even balloon - was sparked by a game update (in a supposedly survival type game be this noted!)... a game update that included adding colored glass and four kinds of tulips.

My first response was to help build a cathedral with stained glass windows.  Natch.

My second was to build Blocksterdam, my Venice of the West.  Here dueling tulip princes wage trade wars between themselves at home among the quaint canals of Old Blocksterdam and, abroad, against the Cactus King, the Rose King (war of the roses?), and the nefarious Poppy Cartel.

Portal?  Oh, I'm eatin' my cake.  * Polishes fingernails on shirt, looking down all humble, humming. * "Anyway, this cake is great.  It's so delicious and moist.

Look at me still talking when there's Science designing to do!"

Gotta script to read.

Monsterpiece Theater

I just saw this great little Muppet masterpiece and thought you might enjoy it: the Monsterpiece Theater rebuttal to Godot... "Waiting for Elmo."  HERE

What else has been going on?

Well, Fun House's brilliant version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is over... hope you caught it.  A great experience.  Gidion's Knot at Kitchen Dog was struck this last weekend - it took 30 times as much time to strike all that classroom set dressing as it did to strike the two walls!  Venus in Fur is now open at WaterTower Theater and The Other Place is about to open at Circle Theatre in Fort Worth.  

Now for me theater design is just simmering, while architectural things are boiling.  I've been very busy with continuing ed sort of stuff.  First came the yearly ADA seminar (that's the Americans with Disabilities Act), which is always amazingly persnickety.  Don't get me wrong, I'm entirely for the goal of removing architectural barriers... but is it really sensible that the government mandate emergency flasher alarms and roll-in showers for all those deaf, wheelchair-bound firefighters?  Or that the rule is that, if a company's breakroom has no stovetop or oven and only a countertop microwave then that food prep area need not be wheelchair accessible (i.e. kneespace at sinks, limited reach ranges etc.) but if that microwave is built-in then it MUST all be accessible?  ADA rules are filled with such logical... idiosyncrasies.

Also a front burner project for me right now is learning to use Sketchup - a very cool, free, 3D modeling program (with its own amusing idiosyncrasies).  I'm researching CAD classes too, as it seems time to improve those skills.

3D Sketchup model of Circle Theatre: non-commercial, self educational use!

Here you can see my first ever 3D CAD (computer aided design/drafting right?) project, a little Sketchup model of Circle Theater's stage.  Those fat tubular columns at the corners gave me an extra tool to play with.  Just don't look too close at the klutzy construction, huh?  I've since started a much more complex model of  a hypothetical architectural project which also has cylinders - tilted at weird angles, sloping surfaces, cut-in windows....  And I'd thought making this little stage was a bit of a monster!

But I can see that, once I get practiced enough with it, Sketchup is going to be rather fun.

So...  Think AutoCAD is going to be a real hoot then?