I found this picture of the bed frame we made, inspired by a similar construction by my dad (Big Fig). Want to make one? (more…)

Wombat's Nimbus, my Sorting Hat. Click for closeup.

I’ve got another animation, click below to view.

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A little something I made a few years back. I have a nice Sorting Hat to show you also, except (like ol’ Jack here) he’s unpainted as well.

Doesn't he look happy to see you?

You probably want either a close-up or one that sits still; I have both for you. Click below.

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My JavaScript muscles feel just a little tighter lately, thanks to my job. At least, compared to how they were a week ago when I was just getting started with the task of formalizing our budget. What started out as a way to ensure our company was “recession-proof” (not that our organization managed to reap any real benefits from the “good times”) has turned into a major all-consuming crusade to ensure our success.

The task of gathering the necessary data from various computer systems & paper records would, under normal circumstances, be fairly straightforward. Unfortunately, there is the dark ages: the period of time our company wasted attempting to appease to a hopeless, outdated, expensive and disabling petulant child of an Inventory/Financial software package. Extracting information from this opaque mystery is both time-consuming and painful.

The other problem I have been facing is a chart of accounts (both in the aforementioned train-wreck, and in its replacement which we have been using for a full fiscal year) which lacks some of the granularity a leader would need to make good decisions & steer the ship away from the rocks.

Now that I’ve compiled most of what is needed, I needed to make sure it would be used. The eyes of some in the staff tend to look a little glassy after being exposed to only a few “numbers” (indicator ratios, statistics, bank balances), so it’s important that:

By the way, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, is available on amazon for those who are working on their Christmas shopping

Awesome book, though I would settle for Visualizing Data by Ben Fry

After a couple of gigantic spreadsheets and one attempt at an OpenOffice Access database, and not feeling particularly good about the results, I decided to deploy it as a web app over the company intranet running on my workstation’s web server. It was looking pretty good, but I’m not fantastic with ajax-style interactivity so it was still half-baked. That’s when I came across ExtJS, which has sped up the production & increased the quality of the application in most areas, but the learning curve for the massive, object-oriented & JSON-related JavaScript library has been hellish.

Here’s a screen shot of what it’s shaping up to look like:

I’m really learning a lot from this entire project process in part because, if anyone else in our small business is able to handle any of these tasks (I’m thinking of the owner, manager & the bookkeeper as 3 people under whose jurisdiction this might fall) they sure aren’t stepping up to the plate, and I am receiving absolutely no guidance or help in creating a sustainable (company staff will be able to use this tool ad infinitum once it is finished) way for to keep our heads above the water in hard times. I’m having to learn new techniques & terminology, analyze and discover trends that can be used to lead.

It’s a very tiring process, so I hope it pays off and I retain some wisdom from the whole experience.

Update on my It’s a Small World project:

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Another successful Halloween event in the bank.

Before

After.

I’m dead tired & have to wake up early for the Halloween event that I’ve been preparing for, but I’ll at least leave this much to the internet:

ship's helm in background, faux rockwork up front

Mike hard at work, beard just chillin'. I though sepia might make the chinstrap look more majestic, but I still look like a bum!

Just wanted to let you in on a little secret project of mine. I started by combining a few of the best photographs of the It’s a Small World ride facade in paint.net (Windows only), manipulating the images until vertical & horizontal lines were (moire or less) straight. In new layers above the composite image, I drew line-art of the major features of the ride building’s design.

It's a Small World project progress photo, at the top-left you can see my inspiration file. I hope to somehow digitize it to allow you to peruse what fascinates me.

My intention is to cut basswood or balsa to match the individual geometric design elements, then position/arrange & glue them in place to make a faux-3D IASW which I will place in a 20″ x 9″, 1″ deep shadowbox. If it goes easily enough, I’ll probably make a few more to sell on Etsy. I’m still having trouble deciding against taking the time, using thicker basswood planks & carving the elements in relief.

In the most recent Tales From the Laughing Place, there is a feature article on the creation of It’s a Small World for Disney Hong Kong, there is an image of a simplified (and somewhat larger) IASW model. It’s flat, cut to profile & painted like the ride building. It looks like a great re-Make: as a gift for a young child’s.

I’ve picked up some tiny white pumpkins with which I will have my way.

pumpkins on one of my favorite bookshelves

I want to do something nice, I’ll probably try Martha Stewart’s Lacework Pumpkin (previous mention). I am interested in making something that can last. So I’m counting on the fact that they are small to help it (whatever the final result) to hold it’s structure. The only time I’ve seen some scientific method applied to preserving Jack-O-Lanterns, the results were not heartening (see myscienceproject.org). Of course, if I feel like a long-term commitment, I could freeze-dry my art.

I’m also working on part 2 of my pirate cannon instructable and the soon-to-come ship’s helm project. I hope by the new week, to turn this indiscriminate heap of foam into 2 amazing Halloween props:

Halloween pirate foam molding