Father's Day Project: Part 2

For the Part one go HERE and read about my original plans for the Think Geek Build-On Brick Mug.

PART 2

Well, Unfortunately when I went to the Lego store near where I live, I searched long and hard on the parts wall for enough green, white, and black pieces to make the 1-up mushroom that I had hoped to make. I was unable to find, in fact, anything in solid green...only transparent green. There was, however, a lot of Blue and White bricks available on the wall so I made the next best thing...Well, let's call it THE BEST THING.


BAM!!

THE BEST THING

It says #1

It says Dad

I even added a blue light for the top, because, TARDIS

Let's face it, the fact that there were no green Legos and all blue and white Legos was pretty much the sign for me to take the design of this thing to the next level.

I call it the T.A.R.C.O.D. (Time and Relative Coffee On Desk), and I think I get more attention from people wanting to look at the Mug than actually asking me to fix network issues.

Awesome!

So, while you decide how you are going to design your Coffee Mug, I'll leave you with This.

Cause nothing says awesome like: Thumbs-up, TARDIS, and animated GIF

Father's Day Gift Project Part 1

So, on Father's Day I received what can only be described as the coolest present ever, a "lego compatible" Coffee Mug from Think Geek. Not only does it look like the coolest 8-bit representation of a Coffee Mug, but it can fit Legos and multiple other types of building blocks.

I also received the Vader's Little Princess book, which is a whole other story in itself. Perhaps I'll talk about it later, but it's definitely sufficient enough to say that this book is a definite must-have for any Dad who is a fan of Star Wars. Not only does it portray the Darth Vader / Princess Leia story in a different tone, but it almost brings you to tears with both comedy and the realization that, even though you may not have an intergalactic princess, she will grow up much faster than you will want her to.

Any ways, the mug. Since it attached to Legos, and there just "happens" to be a Lego store within a 5-minute drive of where I work, I decided to personalize the Mug with Legos to make it as Geeky as possible. I thought Star Wars, but that much of the Star Wars designs and emblems just won't fit too well onto a rectangle mug, I thought I would go with an 8-bit character from Nintendo. The mushroom (1-up, of course) will do nicely.

Now I can't very well just go buy a bunch of Legos and go to town on this thing, especially since: A.) I suck at 8-bit pictures, and B.) the Mug front is just a "little" too small for representation of the mushrooms. Sure I could cut out a few pixels, but then it might just look silly. then I came to the realization that the mug fits Legos all the way around it. This led me to the realization that I could attempt to design a 3D mushroom by implementing colored Lego blocks all the way around it (fixing the pixel size issue) and adding to the cool-factor.

But first I have to design it.

This should work for me to be able to design it. Drawn representations of the Coffee Mug front (and back) and the Left (and Right) sides and the handle. They're all identical to each other in the fact that the Front and Back and the Left and Right are the same number of "pixels" each. This allows for me to wrap the mushroom around the mug  for the full effect. The only issue remains what to do with the unfilled pixels, which I will probably keep as the base color (gray) until the last minute when I can decide what color to fill in around the mushroom.

Pictured here is a better view of the mug representation that I will be using to design the mushroom around the mug.

As of right now, this idea has only started, and since I have a lot of actual work to do at this moment I will have to work on this off and on until I get the design right and then it's off to the Lego store to get the required supplies.

Stay tuned to the progress of my "Mushroom Mug" and we'll see just how awesome this turns out.

Oh  yeah, and a happy (late) fathers day to all of the Fathers out there.

Smoke free day 1

Damn, I would  really like a cigarette.

YAY, since I cannot do this myself, I figure if I get hundreds or thousands of people to yell at me I can stop. It's not the nicotine that kills me, it's the situations where I would normally smoke...you know...like when I have a huge download to the server and some time to kill.

I will not, however, go away from caffeine...just putting that out there...coffee is the only thing I will not let go of.

picture day 1

A techie gives you coffee advice

Look at that sexy man

Technical nerds like myself and business types alike, heck even the normal everyday homebody sure enjoy their coffee. There is one thing I dislike when it comes to the coffee situation, it's when I make a pot and leave 1 cup alone all day long and it gets cold.
Coffee lovers like myself are probably the first ones to yell out Sinner! when the concept of leaving perfectly good coffee out to be wasted. well now, fret no more while I spin you my simple tale of how I solved such a problem not 10 minutes ago.

THE PROBLEM

Personally, for me the thought of drinking cold coffee is disgusting, and equally as disgusting as going to a coffee shop and ordering their Wacky, crazy drinks, worst of all is pouring what would have been perfectly good coffee down the drain. Now I like to drink coffee all hours of the day, sometimes it's great to have in the afternoon so when I reached for my pot in order to make myself more coffee I realized that I had entire cup that I hadn't drank yet. I solved this problem in a less overly sugary fashion and more palatable concoction that I wouldn't mind having again in the future.

THE PREP

all of the ingredients (minus a few sips of the final result)

What do I have in the house? A glass, yes, I have a glass. Some flavoring, yes, I have some Hershey's syrup that I use for ice cream. Milk, yes, I eat cereal so I have milk. Cold coffee, why yes, that is why I am writing this. So: Glass, Milk, Hershey's syrup, Cold coffee; I have everything I need, time to get started.

THE RECIPE

Taking the cup I filled it with about 1/4 cup of milk, I figured that 1/4 cup was all that I needed since it wouldn't be more than any amount of milk than I or anyone else would add to any amount of coffee anyways. Seeing as I don't normally add milk to coffee I had to wager a guess. Secondly, I added my cold coffee to the milk and filled it to the top.

By this time the taste was still too, cold coffee-ish. Which is when I slowly added some Hershey's syrup to the mixture in order to bring it to a taste I could tolerate:  a touch of milk and just enough coffee flavor to enjoy it (your results may vary).

THE RESULT

What I ended up with was a coffee drink that allowed me to not have to throw out my cold coffee, and still enjoy it without having to resort to having to avoid "Hipsters" at a coffee shop. Since it had very little sugar (aside from what naturally was in any of the ingredients, Hershey's syrup not withstanding) it didn't taste like sugar milk with coffee.

So think about that next time, when you end up with cold coffee that would be normally undrinkable. Don't pour it out, you might just like what you make.