My day gone

Listening to: Fear Factory - Machines Of Hate

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I leave for work at 6:45am, and this has been the view a few times this week:


I leave work at 5:00pm, and this has been the view on my way home:


Losing basically a whole day of sunlight is quite a depressing feeling. The price of working for The Man I guess.

Every Breath Leaves Me One More To My Last

Listening to: Dream Theater - Pull Me Under

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When I was younger, I used to spend a lot of time building plastic models of cars, aircraft, ships and anything else I felt like making. I wuold go into the hobby shop, much like other kids in candy stores, and spend hours (or at least what felt like hours) ogling all the kits that were on the shelves. I would look at the huge 1:15 scale Formula One car kits up on the "top shelf" that was always waaay out of my price range. With my jaw on it's way to the floor, I would drool over the complete kits that were on display in the glass cabinets, amazed at the level of detail the maker had put into it. The exhaust stains from the exit pipes on the Spitfire engine; the grease marks around the drag car engines. It never failed to impress me.

Occasionally, I would also flip through the model-making magazines in the newpaper shops, gob-smacked by the effort the top-line makers would put into their work, even going so far as to scratch-build models, something I still struggle to comprehend.

Recently, I have been working on a little side project here at work (to be announced further down the line), and while investigating and researching said project, I came across a whole new arena of model makers that I never knew existed.

The art of origami is something I grew up fascinated by, but never did I realise paper modelmaking was so huge. I think the best example of this is Yamaha Motorcycle Company's Japanese website, where you can download highly detailed PDF files of paper model kits of their motorcycles, as well as animals and season scenes.

I printed out one of the motorcycle kits, and and am in awe of the people who have designed these kits. The level of detail is unbelieveable. Right down to individual wheel spokes, and chain - even the front struts are separate parts. But if you think that's detailed, check out the Ultra Realistic Model section, where you can download separate sections of a motorcycle. The exhaust system is enough to blow your mind. It'd take a fair bit of patience and time to build one of these kits. Guess who printed one out last week? ;-)