Cloudy

 Aaaah, man, it's been one heck of a week. It was so heckful in fact that I couldnt be bothered getting up for the first two days of uni this week. It's a tough life I tell ya. I mean, yeah, I'm gonna regret it next week when we have to show some fruits of our labours for interim critique. We gotta present two poster designs for a play of some sort, the template designs for a website we have to build, and also an illustration or something of a metaphore, using hands as the subject matter. Or something like that. I don't really listen. I just ask someone who was and they sum it up in a single sentence what our teacher took an entire class to articulate. *turns to teacher* Seriously, I know if you come to class and give us all your material in 5 minutes it might make us wonder how much you're getting payed and whether it might be way to much, but at the moment you're not exactly a great example of a communicator. And that's what we are as designers... Which leads me to some more invisible people who I'm going to loudly stage whisper to for your amusement. I, Izak Flash Man, am not training to be a fine artist. You, idiot face, must realize that if it weren't for us "useless degree" people you would probably be stuck with websites like this, and you wouldn't understand any sort of advertisement because they would look like this.

 Ok, I'm sorry for that. Peace out homies. Next post: Casinos and suits (It's true!)

Blue Chicks

This is a collection of pieces I did over my six week break. I have always wanted to do nifty things on photoshop (Painting wise, not filters and effects) and so I sat down and did these. I present them to you from my first attempt to my last attempt, so hopefully you can see some sort of developement. If you'r offended by scantily clad impressionistic blue girls then maybe you should skip this one. I tried applying the style to buildings (Which is my goal) but I had less than favourable results, so instead I did the next best thing. Sigh, I guess I better get back to the work at hand. Oh yeah! Read this short story. It's a classic, and if you listen to it while playing the Braid Soundtrack then it will make you feel super sad at the end.

Taupo Road Trip (Day 3)

I came back from my late night walk at about 2am or so. So not really to late I guess. Anyway, I'm sneaking into me and Hanna's room, and I'm sitting down on the bed and Hanna in the other bed suddenly gasps as if she just saw me. Scared the crap outa me. She was asleep probably having one of her freaky dreams.

I wake up at about 8 or so, Keir and Matt are moving around in the lounge getting packed up and eating breakfast. I couldn't bring myself to get out of bed till Matt came in and we had a "HEEeeeey" off. (Say a prolonged "hey" like Tila Tequila or a male hair dresser and you'l know what it sounds like.)

Keir and Hanna Nicked a bunch of the Shampoo dispenser stuff. Lol.

We get out of the motel by 10 and went to the glass blowing place. I hadn't really thought about glass blowing and molding as an art form before, just because it never really fit into the scope of what I have been studying etc (And it's being a little bit of an obscure niche market). So that was a cool experience. Opened my eyes a little to the wonders of it all. Watched a guy stick his rod of iron glass into a million degrees hot glory hole. Yeah. It was called a glory hole. Go ahead giggle, this ones free, its on me. No one will judge you for being immature. Not in the comfort of your own home in front of the computer anyway.

Next stop Mickey D's with the Aeroplane. One thing I noticed on this trip was how hungus I have been lately. I eat and eat, get full, but about an hour later I'm famished again. Hopefully this means I'm on my last growth spurt which will see me soaring at a staggering 7 feet tall. That would be cool. Being 7 foot tall. The horizon will be that little bit further away than for everyone shorter than me.

Now for my favourite part, we went to the snow. Woot! Keir hadn't seen nice looking snow before. Just that crappy brown slush, and ice out of fridges. Hanna wanted to get up the mountain, since anyone who's read her blog will know she's wanted to conquer Mt. Everest. Mt. Ruapehu is a good place to start I think. You know. I can't recall Matt's opinion on pretty much everything. I'm pretty sure most of the time his opinion was that he was gonna drive.

We got half way up the mountain to the lodge. Where we took a quick poo poo break. Hanna wanted to get a pic of the place so she ran down in front of it to get a good angle of it with the mountain. Then she comes running back. She was out of breath. She asked me whether I thought the air was thinner where we were. I told her she had just been running. True story.

We found a park higher up the mountain and got onto the snow. It was wicked cool. Totally nailed Hanna with those snowballs. Hanna, You're just gonna have to be sneaky if you're gonna want to ice me. 

I got my sweet as Beany there! We spent more time in the store than we did on the snow. -_-, But yeah. Beany. It's gonna have a hard time competing with my Headspace hat (Which used to be black but is now a grey). I guess in the winter it's gonna win out.

Then it was the long slog home. The mountain was in the opposite direction of where that was, so it took us a little while more to get to Hamilton. 

We got to Te Awamutu and decided to go see a movie at the cute little cinema they have there. I went there with headspace to see the Lion Witch and the Wardrobe. The theatre was about our living room x 2 size. So it's really cozy. And half way through it had an intermission. Which was handy since everyone was dying to take a piss.

Unfortunatly it had no showings of anything we wanted to see. So we went to the Tron for the movie instead. Walking through the mall Matt reminded me that I still hadn't asked for any numbers. I realized he was right, and fortunatly there was a bucket load of girls walking past as he mentioned it, so I picked the closest one and just straight up asked her for her number, then added as a subnote that I "Lost mine or something like that... you know." She just sorta stopped dead in her tracks and didn't say anything, just staring at me doing an "O" face (Not that sorta O face you creep). I think she was recapturing her motor skills cause I could see her face start to move in the negative, and her friends were pushing her along. I totally didn't even want her number anyway... Maybe a little... sniff.

Me & Matt Watched Karate Kid while Hanna & Keir watched Knight & Day. We all came out of our respective movies pleased with our choices. Jackie Chan, come on, he's awesome, admit it. So is Cruise, you just need to leave your gossip magazine info at the door when you see him is all.

We dropped Hanna off in the carpark of her uni. It was dark and rainy, so no one could see the tears. Then we went home, freaking out at signs that looked like shadowy strangers on the side of the road. I slept in my own bed, and it was epic.

Unfortunatly I had missed an entire week of uni, So I started the semester a week behind.

It was worth it.

Taupo Road Trip (Day 2)

We woke up at about 8 or 9 or maybe 10 exactly. The night before we had a non meaty meal 'cause of Hanna's unfortunate vegetarianism. It wasn't that bad actually. But this morning we had bacon and chicken periods. Then we went over what we would be doing for the day for possibly the millionth time. And then we shot out for a huge day of doing whatever we wanted.
We decended upon Huka falls, and while checking out the map of the area we managed to watch some random back into another random in the carpark. "You were in a total blind spot!" cried the person that had artistically rearranged the back corner of Random #2's bumper.
Here's a picture of Huka Falls from my perspective.

After pretending to be tourists who loved the local fauna we went to "Craters Of The Moon" as it's lovingly called. Pretty much Taupos answer to Rotorua. It's this spit of land which has all these vents and steamy holes from all the volcanic activity around there. In the distance we could see a cloud factory. It's powered by Sea Lions (Hanna says that Walruses wouldn't do as good a job), but we have to free them for some reason. Bad wages or some such nonsense a well put together union could deal with. Keir also got her kiwi here. Which made kiwi sounds funnily enough. I guess it makes more sense than the kiwi which made haka sounds.

But yeah anyway, steam! Walkways! People who don't read signs or like walkways! That was a real Lol moment actually. At one point I decided to jump in a bush, came out with a pretty sweet scratch. It took my mind off my insane itchiness though. We were pretty wasted by the time we got to the car. We got to the museum and ran around taking photos there as well. Keir didn't know about the no taking pictures sign. Oops. Probably should have said something when I saw it. If you go down there you might still find my sweet drawing I left on the wall in the primary school corner thing.
Afterwards we treated Hanna to the playground. Thinking about it now I realize that we promised the girls they could go on the miniature train later. Looks like later is going to be longer than they expected.
Then we drove to Burger Fuel (which was walking distance away). If anyone reads this and is in either NZ, Saudi Arabia or Australia, and you haven't had burger fuel, then you SUCK.. Wow that's a weird place for the franchise to go, Saudi Arabia? Seriously? Oh anyway, I had a list of challenges for the trip. One of which was to get 10 numbers. Hanna was the only one to get a number, but she's got the whole upper hand of being a pretty girl. Damn your prettiness! A guy working at burger fuel looked like some famous person and Hanna was gonna leave her number on one of the doofers for him to find. She was kinda freaking out till Matt whipped it off her and gave it to him. His name turned out to be Elliot (and not "nips" as the receipt said). He texted her back. 1 point to Hanna!
Ok what happened after that.. We went to the amazing maze and slide. So we ran around that and got bruised up by the slide that slide you out of the maze. it was pretty cool. The girls liked the slide. Matt liked figuring out the maze.
Then we knocked golf balls into the lake. That was pretty fun actually. There was a pontoon out there that if you got a ball onto (two sand hole things and a regular hole) you get some stuff or 10,000 bucks. Matt got the closest pretty much hitting the side of the pontoon.
Then we went home and chilled out watching movies and using the spa. Good end to the day. (Although my night lasted a lot longer than everyone elses, going out for a walk into town and checking out the nightlife from a distance. Saw a buncha stickers around town by their resident sticker artist. Quite colourful. No decent shots though since my camera sucks at night.)

Taupo Road Trip (Day 1)

This is for Wednesday the 14th (last week).

I got up a little past eight in the morning (Cause you know, sometimes I don't get up till a little past eight in the evening,) and got packed. I've always been proud of my belated packing skills, although two nights in a motel, there's not a whole lot a guy like me needs to pack. A single pair of underwear, on the second day I turn them around, then on the third I turn them inside out, then on the fourth day I turn 'em around again. IT'S ECONOMICAL DON'T JUDGE ME. 

Matt and Keir were Nannas and took forever to get out the door. They had some legitimate excuse. I can't remember what it was so I'll just make it up... As they were going out the door, Milly the dog jumped out of nowhere and ate Keir's copy of the Codex of Cigas. Fortunatly Matt is well versed in using the Heimlich maneuver on domestic animals (after that one time when his little brother got swallowed by their jack russel.)

Anyway, We dropped off a book at the library, Halo ODST at the video store, tanked up with 50 bucks of petrol (Gas, for all you crazy Americans, You'l find lots of it in a bit of your ocean.) got a box of Coke to last us the trip down (Consequently we didn't get through the 25(?) cans until our trip back two days later) and then we were set!

So we set sail for Hamilton. I asked if anyone had a camera, when we realized that the only cameras we had were on our phones, and after a discussion about how we may as well do nothing at all if its not being recorded pictorially Keir set about her personal mission of taking photos of practically everything with her phone. She was gutted we missed Jew road. Sigh, our antisemitic friend will never be able to see it now! 

Really useful text directions

When we got to Hamilton to pick up Hanna we suddenly realized that text directions without a map are pretty much useless. So through texts with her and good old kiwi taking wrong turns but it being ok ingenuity we managed to find the university.

And then we found Hanna! Woo! Finally! My entire readership of this blog in one place at the same time! Then came the "getting to know everyone" part of the trip. Which wasn't bad, because they're all such cuddly people anyway... Hmmmm, We played an epic hard game of eye spy, either that or we all pretty much sucked. We went through some sweet pine forests which are failing to offset our self imposed carbon tax, we were gonna take a look, but Matt said that the car would probably get stolen. Thats a pretty tall order for woodland animals. Since you know, there aren't any people for miles around, and the only ones who are around already have a car of their own.

We made it to Taupo intact, and we were pleasantly surprised by how nice the Motel was. There was a limpy cat, which Hanna enjoyed giving pats and cooing threats to about cuddling it up and taking it home with her.

Pre Taupo stuff

Chris 'n Zara looking at Aux from the waitakeres

Aight well this week has been huge so I should start at the begining of the week and work my way forward like a good person who believes in linearity. Monday I started back at uni, and for the rest of the week I skipped it. Ha! Take that first impressions of a new semester!
Tuesday, Chris, Zara, Jono, Izak the awesome, and little Chris drove off to the tron to attend regular sized chris's bible study. We got treated like aucklanders strangely enough. And had various friendly jibes pointed our way. After that we went back to civilization.
Wednesday through to today (Saturday) on the other hand, is a completely different story in which deserves its own post. So that's what I shall do.
Here I found another old Bone sticker on our way back from the tron. I gapped it out the car to get it. Ha ha. Never let it be said I sit idly by and let iconic stickers slip past.

I'm loosing control of my own body!

..Is something I realized just now. Which has inspired me to write this post. You see the other day something truly spectacular happened to me. It was my first time. And well, you would think it would be a whole lot more traumatic than it really is. I mean there was blood and stuff and I thought there was some glass stuck in there, but passing out really isn't really such a big deal.
You see once in a blue moon I'm prone to get super pissed off. Usually it's because of the computer not doing what I tell it to. or maybe it's the fabled male period i've heard rumors about. Either way it didn't change the fact that my tablet lagged every time I tried drawing anything on photoshop. So I resorted to rearranging the mouse with a technical "Hulk Smash". Unfortunatly the glass cup beside the mouse got involved in the tussle and shattered everywhere. Hand: 1 Glass: 0 Mouse: Oddly untouched. So I'm like crap, looking at the side of my hand to the shards of cup everywhere. There's a decent puncture and I can see about a cm into the side of my hand. So I close up photoshop and stuff and go down to mum in the other room. "Hey I think there's glass in it." I waver. She tells me to sit down while she gets plasters. she leaves the room and I sit down, looking at the side of my hand with blood popping out of it. Then the edges of my vision darken out and then I'm on my face on the floor. Mum's waking me up. It felt like a really good sleep but I had only been out for a few seconds. My breathing was all constricted, I don't know if that was the fainting or perhaps getting myself in the gut on the way down. Anyway I was fine and my hand was dissappointingly ok. I have had worse cuts and bruises that deserve passing out, but to be honest this one wasn't so bad. On the upside I couldn't feel the carpet burn on my face or the tweezers poking about in the side of my hand.
The moral of this story, make sure you do a full virus scan, disk clean up and defrag before resorting to any sort of violence. Be it with your computer or friends, family and strangers. The ridiculousness of running away from a brewing domestic to go do spring cleaning on your computer will be sure to sooth any situation.

R.I.P. Totally sweet coke cup.


Second situation in which I have realized I'm slowly loosing grip on my own body is this strange prickliness I'm getting lately. Whenever I get a hot flush (Aka getting embarrased, running, walking, doing anything strenuous) I get super super itchy. I was in the shops today and I looked as though I had flees. I wonder if its some sort of crazy allergy or something. Its only just started happening. 0_0

R.I.P. The bygone days of non itchiness, If I had known our moments together where fleeting I would have treasured them all the more.

Graff Hunting day

Well I couldn't decide what I should do in this post. I guess I'm going to just have to hold back on everything I was going to share. For now Ill skip back to three days ago. I haven't gone for a graff hunting trip in a while with a decent camera. There's been this spot on central park drive that I have been meaning to get at for a while now. I had to find a way in though, the whole place is barbed wired up, but if some graff heads can get in then so can I! And I did. After prowling around it, looking for the hole. Heh heh, shifty eyes.

You can see this one from Lincoln Road, near the motorway end, it's massive. I never knew what it said before. But it gave me a good lol when I did.

And randomly by chance I saw these guys tagging up a wall. Kind of a cool way to end the day.