A. Aronsson’s WeBOLLog

This summer I was invited to join my parents and my brother to camp a week in their mobile home on Öland, an island outside the main land of Sweden. Hesitantly I accepted the offer, but I regret nothing as it was very nice to get away for a while!

While I was there I couldn’t help but spamming photographs with my camera, as well as videos, which I guess is my normal behavior. I tried out my underwater camera housing in the ocean, but the sub surface visibility was incredibly bad, and it was my first prolonged experience of swimming around with flippers and a diving mask, both very cheaply bought.

Instead of writing a ton of text to insert the images into I’ve added titles to the images themselves. My choice of picture viewer for WordPress is Shutter Reloaded, sadly it does not yet support using the title of the IMG tag as a caption, it takes the title from the A tag, but the default behavior of WordPress is to post the title in the IMG tag… I’ve requested it twice, but nothing yet. I relly like Shutter Reloaded except for this small issue.

Anyway, here comes the pictures! In chronologial order, even.

I was going to post just a few pictures, but apparently it turned into quite a lot… oh well. Beneath is the camera running while I soak it in fresh water to dissolve the sea salt which would otherwise store up in the underwater house making the buttons wonky.

Just a little late, but I still have more summer pictures! Not sure when the next batch will be posted, but that will most likely be the last for this years summer :)

My original sketch for this figure was a bit simpler, with just five wheels, but while I was drawing it on the computer I added one wheel to the sketch. But after finishing that version of the figure I decided to add another two wheels, just because they fit. And I think that made it into an interesting piece of art.

Belt3
2008-09-22

Linework

The belt goes back and forth between the different axels, but as it does that it also travels forward- and backwards while only bending around one axis.

As this is a fairly complex figure to draw, to say the least, I decided to try a new way of depicting the process. Below is a video of each save state. Before removing all reference lines after finishing an element I save a new file, in the video I fade between them forward in time. I think it ended up easier to follow than the actual time-lapse videos, but I do wonder if there is a way to save all AutoCAD steps as they are logged, and then replay the drawing in some way… will need to research this.Anyway, the video is best watched in its native HD resolution available by going to Vimeo!

With this posting I’ve caught up with myself so from now on postings of impossible figures will be further apart. I create at least one per month, as I’ve set that as a rule for myself, to keep at it. I tend to get several ideas at once though, so I think I will be able to manage two per month, if time and brains permits. We will see.

Yesterday I got a very interesting email from the user Loniek of hlawka.com. He finds optical illusions and impossible figures interesting, and thus he has painted one of my figures as a perspective anamorphic image on a corner of his… studio? It seems he’s a photographer, but it might be his combined garage too as there’s a car in there.

I found it very heartwarming and tingling to see someone recreate one of my figures, especially on a wall! Very inspiring too as I’ve been fascinated by anamorphosis art for quite some time, and this sparks my imagination!

He recorded and published the process at Vimeo, and the video is available in HD if you click over to the site! I have also embedded it below :) Awesome!

Thank you very much for sharing this, Loniek! :D

I first drew this figure on paper in perspective, a bit distorted. It was fairly complex so I decided I would draw it in an parallel projection to make it easier on the mind… bad idea. It was a great hassle to get the right lengths on everything, so I aborted that and went straight for the computer instead.

This figure probably has the most complex chain reaction of proportional relationships between surfaces in any of my figures so far. I basically worked my way through the entire thing without stopping, as one edit lead to the next and so on. I also found that in the end the lines didn’t match, but through error location I found the two mistakes which had caused the oddness, as well as another minor glitch. I finished it after four hours of concentration.

Framework
2008-06-27

Linework

The outside of this figure makes up a traditional tribar structure, but embedded in the middle is a cube-ish framework. Between them there is a large amount of impossible connections.

I screen recorded the entire process of this figure. I’ve been a bit indecisive about posting how I create these pieces as it’s something I feel fairly unique doing, but it is fun to share. Hopefully it takes a bit of skill and motivation that is uncommon to make these creations. Below is the video embedded, but it is available in HD resolution by following this link to Vimeo!

Earlier I posted that I had acquired a trampoline to put in my parents garden, as I myself live in an apartment. Shortly afterward I got curious of how well it would work in water, if at all. It was quite a strange idea, but it got stuck in my head, so I had to try it out.

To make it possible to launch off of the trampoline into the water I wanted to increase the height by extending the legs. I checked if it was possible to order more leg parts, as they were stackable, but that was only possible if you actually had a broken part to replace. Then I checked the price for manufacturing extensions, which was more than half the price of a completely new trampoline! So I ended up buying a second one and used those legs for the extension.

For the trampoline not to sink in the sand on the lake bottom I prepared boards to have as feet on the legs. These were then attached with a rope to stabilize the structure somewhat.

To test the rig out I brought together a number of friends and headed out to a beach belonging to the second largest lake in the country. It was in my first week of vacation so it was cold in the water, a friend guesstimated 14°C, but it was the only weekend this summer that this amount of my friends were available!

To see the process and the end result, watch the video below! Enjoy!

Two weeks ago we were visiting a couple of friends to test out pistol shooting at a pistol shooting club where they are both members. I set out with two cameras, my Ixus 75, and the borrowed Sanyo Xacti VPC HD1A.

My plan was to film both myself when firing and the target at the same time, I ended up partially successful. It was a bit stressful to set up two cameras while getting information and instructions of how to safely fire a bullet weapon, but I somehow managed.

During the day I tried different levels of zoom which made some material fairly blurry and worthless, but some of it ended up usable. To my slight surprise It was the clips recorded using the digital zoom in addition to the analog that would display enough detail, I guess it is a smart camera that uses those extra pixels in the sensor when zooming digitally.

Below are a few pictures from the event, and the resulting video from all that recording!

All in all a very interesting and teaching experience, thank you Jönköpings PK. I might join a club myself in the future, to work towards marksmanship.

This Thursday I finally got my NeoCube! I ordered it after seeing it online, somewhere, at April 30th. So I had waited just about 10 weeks! I’ve been plenty busy with other things in the mean time, but I was still happily excited when it arrived!

The mail arrived directly in my mailbox, all the way from the US, which was nice. I ordered the Cube-Tastic Value Pack, which at that time was $10 cheaper! The popularity and availability is reason enough to increase the price, I think, so the new price is justified.

Building with these magnetic balls sure is a new experience for me, very interesting. It took me a while to re-realize how the relationships between magnets makes them behave when arranged in a structure, but after that a whole lot of possibilities opened up in my mind.

Below is a video I compiled yesterday. I’ve been trying out a camera I borrowed at work, a Sanyo Xacti VPC HD1A. As my floor is all wooden boards the camera sways a bit when I move around, even with it mounted on a tripod. It’s extra noticable as the camera is zoomed in. I also had problems with the weird MP4 format it uses for its media, rendering errors when fading between clips and choppy playback. I ended up re-encoding the lot of them! What a hassle! Luckily, I found a neat application for doing just that!

This was the pinnacle of my modding “carrier” of Halo 1, which was shortly after it begun. After that I mostly experimented with weird stuff and looked for hidden things.

Here lots of shaders have been swapped, as well as models, projectiles, particles and mainly… vehicle speed. I managed to get the level dark, so the fire from the wheels would be clearly visible.

It was a ton of fun to record, maybe I should boot up the old Xbox with a patched map…

2003-08-25

It was my turn to make the handle the table at the morning break at work. The company supplies with bread, butter etc, but this means you have to get something extra fancy for Friday, preferably something you baked yourself.

Previous times I had either ordered at a bakery or baked only one thing myself. This time I baked everything myself, very gratifying, but time consuming! I spent about four hours on Tuesday and the same on Thursday baking large (about 3x normal size) buns and chocolate Swiss rolls / dream cakes (direct Swedish translation). I decided to make large buns since I figured some people might leave for work without eating any breakfast at home.

As baking is not my common activity I setup my compact camera to capture a time-lapse of the process. It’s a trivial event, but I think time-lapse footage in and of itself is a fascinating compression of reality. I decided to be a bit creative with the editing too.

2008-05-12 & 2008-05-1

This is a collection of videos from Halo:CE on the Xbox from around 2003. Most of it is with modding or other hacks (everything but the first clip!). The source material was captured with various weird USB or PCI devices, so sound and image quality varies greatly. Sound can be especially bad, beware.

2003