Nature's Beauty

My first attempt at capturing the natural beauty that can be found in the gardens here at home.

Development Methodologies

As you all might or might not know I am not a wood worker by trade, wood working is my hobby.  Technical Solution Architecture is my trade, once my hobby but that is a different post!

To that end I have seen many different methodologies but I have not seen the realism portrayed better than by Scott Berkun and his responders to his blog entry on development methodologies.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

I think my least favorite brand is:

EDD (Expert Driven Development)

This is where the development activities and decision are driven from one expert.  This expert overrules all either by force of will or just because he/she is thought of as the expert and all others defer.  The rub comes in, of course, when the expert is not really an expert...

Windows Live Writer; First Try

Here is my first try with Windows Live Writer.  I like the interface but I am not sure how the interface with Blogger will work out, I guess I will see once I hit the button.  I must say that the set up for blogger was amazingly easy.

Unused Space!

This weekend I decided to use some of the limited unused space that I had in the garage, which doubles as my wood working shop. With this in mind I created a 42" X 86" shelf over the roll-up garage door.

As you can see this is basically a "deck" using the front and side walls of the garage for ledger boards and then a metal strap for the "floating" corner.

Seems to work really well so far! The total cost for this was under $30! What a deal.

April 07 Pens

Three pens were completed today:
This is a acrylic pen turned and finished with a black inlaid gold pen set.




Here we have another acrylic, this one a pencil with a brushed nickel pencil set.


Finally some real wood. We have some paduk on a silver pen set.
This one was turned a bit different. I over-sized the top and put a bit of detail around the middle.

eragon

eragon is a story about a boy, almost a young man, that finds an egg wile out hunting in mid-evil times in the realm of an evil king. The egg, of course, turns out to be a dragon egg.

The cast turns out to be a very good one indeed. Eragon is played by Ed Speleers, he plays the part very well and makes this farm boy turned Dragon-Rider a believable concept. Sienna Guillory, playing Arya the other world princess, is a epitome of goodness and light. Jeremy Irons is the power player in this cast. He plays the, one-time Dragon-Rider, that lost his dragon to a foe.

The connection between the Dragon and Dragon-Rider is classic. They learn to help each other. They team up with Brom (Irons) and the rebels. They, of-course, win out in the end over the evil empire.

The rating on this movie is PG, but it is a bit brutal for the young. I can see a kiddo that is less then 8 or so having serious nightmares over this one. For the preteen and the teenagers this is a great good over evil movie.

The special effects are fantastic and very realistic. The magic that is done is top of the line. The story line is a bit predictable, but still entertaining.

Overall I have to give it 4 of 5.

In the last few days I have create a few pens for the family...