Sunday, October 28, 2012

2105 Rio Grande Police Bust

On Friday October 26 2012 at 10:00 a.m., I was riding in my friend's car and she pointed out a very interesting police raid going down. We were driving down Rio Grande Boulevard when I managed to snap off a few pictures of the raid.



2105 Rio Grande - According to the mailbox

Lessons learned: 
  1. Cops like to bust in your door at about 10:00 a.m.
  2. Don't let your tenants become so bad that the sheriff's department wants to bust down their door. 
  3. My phone is awesome and can quickly get cool looking action shots of the sheriff's department busting into crack houses.
  4. Female friends do not want to stop and let you take more pictures, when there is a possibility of getting shot.

Saturday, October 20, 2012

How to Watch or Download Joyce Meyer Videos

My dad likes to watch a preacher named Joyce Meyer preach. However, my family is considering cancelling their super expensive satellite TV subscription. About the only thing they will regret missing are Joyce Meyer's sermons.

Tonight my mom agreed to sew a pair of my pants if I helped her watch Joyce Meyer online. Fulfilling my end of that bargain is the purpose of this blog post. I like blog posts because they are impossible to lose, and can act as a living set of instructions (if updated.) There are five main steps to watching Joyce Meyer online, with her current webpage:
  1. Go to www.joycemeyer.org
  2. Click on BROADCAST
  3. Click on the broadcast you want to watch.
  4. Click on the full screen icon, if you want to watch the broadcast in full screen mode.
  5. If the movie pauses when you switch it to full screen, make sure to click "play."


            1. Go to www.joycemeyer.org
            2. Click on BROADCAST


3.   Click on the broadcast you want to watch.

4.  Click on the full screen icon, if you want to watch the broadcast in full screen mode.

5.  If the movie pauses when you switch it to full screen, make sure to click "play."


If you want to download Joyce Meyer videos to watch later, the process is slightly different:

  1. Go to this web page.
  2. Right click the "download file" link for the sermon you want to watch. 
  3. Click "Save Link As" 
  4. Select a place on your computer to store the file you will remember later.
  5. Click on the file to play it, after it has finished downloading to watch it later. 

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Tile Table - Finished Product




The very first year I made yearly goals, one of my goals was learning how to fabricate tile from its (relatively) principle components. To me, this meant using clay, glaze and:
  1. Rolling it out to an appropriate thickness (3/8 of an inch thick for a 1/4 thick finished tile)
  2. Hand building designs on the tiles, if applicable
  3. Drying them properly (very slowly, on newspapers so it can have some give, covered in plastic)
  4. Trimming and sanding the dry tiles so they look smooth and finished
  5. Bisque firing them in a kiln, which involves loading them in a not dumb way - this is where you find out if step number 1 left any air bubbles in them, creating bombs inside the kiln, instead of pieces of art
  6. Applying glaze in the correct fashion (dipping), the correct period of drying between applications (2 days) and carefully cleaning the glaze off the portions that should not be glazed
  7. Glaze firing them in the kiln, with all the same considerations as bisque firing, except now also being concerned with dripping glaze destroying someone else's project or permanently attaching my tile to the kiln
  8. Bringing the hippy craft studio workers home made wine or beer, or nice microbrew (they were over 21) for the lessons in ceramics, keeping the craft studio open for me, and being extremely liberal in the material consumption policy 
In order to complete this table, I had about three times as many rejected tiles that I did not use. These tiles have since become accents in my father's construction project.

After giving the table to my father and mother for Christmas, my dad has since added an amazing cherry border to the table, as well as resurfacing the metal legs and framing. 

The bright blue with the Zias remind me of the New Mexican sky, and the sandy grout of the sandy earth we have in many parts of the state here.




Thanks to my buddy Jeremy Brewster for taking these picture! If things slow down with my software business, one of my plans is to start another, bigger, tile project at the UNM craft studio. It was a great deal of fun being involved in a creative process there, and that's where I met my friend Kevin Horschel (a.k.a K-Dawg.)