Google image search "cryptocurrency" sometime it's amazing lmao

Ketchuppost_001 - Some stuff I got up to while my web site was busy mining cryptocurrency

Big Break

Ever since I got my boat and have started paying attention not only to the big areas of green on the map, but also the big areas of blue, I have been intrigued by the Suisun Bay/San Joaquin River/Sacramento River region. These waterways themselves are too large for my pretend little boat, but there is a whole huge network of sloughs, smaller rivers and creeks, and lakes branching off of them.

Big Break is a marshy area off the San Joaquin River, protected from the full current and boat traffic of the river and therefore tiny blow-up boat friendly. It's also way the hell over there in Oakley, which is not where the sunglasses are from, even though spiritually it feels like it is.

This was kind of exciting, because I sort of have this ongoing challenge of seeing how far I can get on public transit to go do a nature thing. Oakley just about ties with Inverness in Point Reyes as far as distance from home goes, and Oakley is the furthest east I've been on transit.

Not too much to write home about here, easy water, saw a sea lion that scared the shit out of me. The visitor center/launching facility was nice as most of the ones built by parks districts around here tend to be. I'm excited to check out more spots in this general zone even though it's pushing the upper limit of how far I can reasonably travel in one day.

map of the extended san francisco bay area, with a pin drop at big break regional shoreline.

a crane, some water, and the distant silhouette of mt diablo

Sausalito night boat

This October, I paddled along the Sausalito waterfront in Richardson Bay as the sun was setting. I had been out at night once on the Oakland Estuary with just a headlamp, which as far as the Coast Guard is concerned is adequate for paddlecraft. Richardson Bay, however, tends to have more boat traffic in the evenings, so I decided to make regulation-ish boat lights.

For small vessels, the setup is supposed to be, roughly speaking, red and green lights on the bow: red on the port side and green on starboard, and an all-around white light, usually higher up/towards the center. I had some cheapo LED clip-on bike lights - a set of one red and one white. I painted a few coats of highlighter-yellow nail polish over the lens of the white light, and it actually came out looking like something close to a normal green light! I think the blue undertones of the white LEDs helped even it out.

For the white all-around light I just wore a headlamp. I guess if I wanted it to truly be all-around I'd have to make one of these

dumbass kid in a fire helmet with a flashing red light on top — I love how "big dumbass beacon light on top of a firefighter helmet" is a type of hat that only exists in firefighter costumes for children

Anyway, everything went just fine; sunset was lovely, I saw a bunch of seals and pelicans, and I guess my lights worked out ok because I didn't get run over! When I passed other boats with their lights on it was like "ah yes, hello fellow legitimate marine vessel."

This will definitely become one of my go-tos for days when I don't feel like traveling as far. Maybe one day I'll see if one of the waterfront restaurants that sit on either side of the public dock will let me in with a giant, dripping backpack.

me holding a green bike light against my white robe in my closet to show the color

me in a mask with all my boat stuff on a ferry

Losing my mind and becoming a 6' tall baby bird

In the couple weeks leading up to Halloween, as my annual SADD was kicking in, I was propping up my mental health by constantly googling "Pesto penguin baby." (for anyone reading this not in October 2024 - Pesto was an abnormally large penguin chick born at the Melbourne Zoo.)

pesto the giant baby penguin touching beaks with his parent, half his size — At his peak rotundity Pesto weighed as much as both of his parents combined

I memorized his perfect Shape, his egglike body, his wings with their exaggerated curves, and his overall aura which is something like "toddler that has just been set down after being carried" or "child lost in grocery store"

I entered a weeks-long fugue state, assembling a life-sized Pesto costume to a degree of detail and accuracy no one ever asked for. I knew my legs would proportionally be way too long but that made it even funnier to me. I decided to be Tall Pesto but also make the costume wide enough at the bottom so I could tuck my knees inside.

sketch of a tall figure wearing a pesto costume that leaves most of their legs exposed — Early concept sketch

First order of business was to nail down the size and shape of his perfectly ovoidal body.

I decided that rather than using stuffing of some sort to fill out the body shape, I'd build a crinoline-type structure. This would cut down on weight drastically and would also accommodate my folded-up legs.

pencil sketch of an 1850s woman in a hoop skirt frame

I took a photo of myself next to a measuring tape, so I could scale it in Rhino. I modeled his body shape to scale, and took the circumferences of cross section curves, which would become the frame.

3d model of pesto's body shape (large brown egg) over a photo of me, with circumferences marked up and down the body — New LinkedIn pfp?

Then, I built a full-scale mockup out of wire, so I could test out the size and shape of the wing and start to figure out the pattern for the fur pieces. I googled "egg plushy pattern" assuming someone out there had to have made one. Sure enough, someone had, and I learned that an egg can be made out of 5 roughly petal-shaped fabric pieces.

wireframe mockup of the body with a paper wing taped on — Prototyping his Shape with wire, muslin, and a rough paper cutout of his wing

For the crinoline, I used a construction method from historical reenactors and cosplayers online that seemed sturdy and relatively easy. PEX tubing (used in plumbing) held together internally with wooden dowel pins and attached to each other with vertical lengths of grosgrain ribbon.

white cage structure for pesto's body made of white tubing and ribbon — They should've made them this way back in the 1800s, this stuff is like $30 a roll on Amazon. Way cheaper than whalebone

I learned a trick from a fursuit producer's blog where you brush the back of the edge of a piece of fur with a cat slicker brush, to pull fibers through from the front and disguise a raw edge. This worked beautifully on the wings.

strip of brown fake fur with no visible cut edge

strip of brown fur from the back, the top half has a visible raw cut edge, and the bottom transitions smoothly from fabric to fur

Furry Reddit also advised to use dog clippers to shorten fake fur, warning everyone that using people hair clippers would end in tragedy. I bought Amazon's Cheapest Dog Clippers and they worked great. I used these on the wings and head where Pesto's fur is shorter.

I made the beak, eyes, and toenails out of Sculpey polymer clay. I'm not a clay artist and it shows. Luckily all these pieces were painted, and cured Sculpey sands surprisingly well. Mineral oil + q-tip on pre-cooked Sculpey also helped smooth out some of the lines.

contraption made from multiple clamps, holding Pesto's beak while it is sculpted

a side profile of Pesto on my computer, and a piece of clay modeled to look like his eye and eara side profile of Pesto on my computer, and a piece of clay modeled to look like his eye and ear

I built Pesto's feet using some pointy-toed shoes of mine, with cardboard "bones".

I sculpted some toenails out of clay, and made the tops of the feet out of some old faux ostrich leather I've been moving from apartment to apartment for the better part of the decade.

black suede pointy toed shoe with rolled up kraft paper "bones" taped on top

black pointy shoe with muslin clothespinned on top, over cardboard "bones" — Testing out the top of the foot shape in muslin

front of a foot with bumpy black "skin" and black toenails

I used papier mache to add structure to the insides of the wings, head, and feet. For the head, I covered a baseball cap that fits me well with plastic and used it to build a snug-fitting "cap" to attach the fur and face elements to.

head, feet, and wing shapes covered in colorful newspaper grocery store ads — I used the french spelling but didn't include the accents, because the french only deserve a medium amount of respect

So anyway,

lol

me covered from neck to knees in a fuzzy brown egg. my toes are censored by bluebird emoji — I knew this body would be massive; I built it directly from a scale model, but I still died laughing when I saw it in person. I think the fur added at least a couple inches to the diameter

giant baby penguin on embarcadero in sf amongst people half his size

pesto with legs tucked up into his body and just the ends of his feet sticking out — All that advanced engineering was worth it just to be able to do This

pesto in an ornate lobby, looking very baby — Somehow Pesto was allowed on the boat party even though he's not even 1

Oh also, I met a Moo Deng (late 2024's other baby animal sensation, a pygmy hippo who loved to bite things and make a whole assortment of cute faces). The puffer vest was such a clever choice

pesto, with body rotated 90 degrees so the wing is in front, posing with a guy dressed as moo deng the baby pygmy hippo. they're wearing brown rain boots, tiny white sparkly short shorts, a pale pink mesh crop tee, and a brown shiny puffer vest with a hood. and some cute little ears

One last trip to the Russian River

October is weirdly one of the hottest months in the Bay Area, so Atomly and I decided to go to the Russian River one more time before it got too cold.

atomly smiling and driving a car across one cool old steel bridge, with another in the background

Moody fall day at Mt Diablo

Mount Diablo SP is one of my local go-to spots for when I have no plan. I have been here approximately one million times and sometimes just make up a route as I go. These photos are from an aggressively cloudy aggressively fall day this past November. Mt Diablo is beautiful in the spring covered in wildflowers, and late winter when it's green and the waterfalls are flowing, but this might just be my favorite Mt Diablo color scheme. I think it suits the harsh and dramatic landscape so well.

foggy sky, a grey pine, and some yellow heart shaped leaves