Nokes (Our Dog)
“Get It!” Recharging the driving spirit.
I believe I just finished a chapter in my life that I will look back on and think “Wow, how did I ever make it through that?” I was a full time MBA student, taking three courses during one semester, and one of those courses included Corporate Finance (where cohorts have been known to drop out in the middle of the semester because you need a B or higher to pass the class). My wife and I welcomed our first child, which has been quite a journey in a short time, and then there was freelance work as well as maintaining this blog and Coinopspace.com.
Coming off that stress I find that there can be a need to decompress. There certainly is plenty to do, and I have about 20 plus blog posts that could be written at any given time. A few days of relaxation can recharge that driving spirit. That is why when I saw this photo tonight I thought I would share it with you all. (more…)
Gunsmoke Sideart / Stickers Update
Brian Jones sent me image of the test print he did solely based off the file I did before the colors were matched or anything from the original NOS piece. I love seeing something I vectored in print. (more…)
Nokes First Snow
It started snowing last night, and when we woke up we had a fresh 2-3 inches on the ground, the first snow of 2007 in Indianapolis, IN. This is the first time that Nokes is seeing snow, so we were curious what he would do.
He handled it pretty well. He would drag his nose through the snow, moving with his snout submerged, and then when Sarah would move around and he would hear the crunch of the fluffy powder under her boots he would follow the sound.
He did try peeing on the deck, and no, that isn’t going to fly:)
Later today, when I took him on a walk, and there was ice on the ground, he didn’t like the sound of my shoes gliding on the ice….but he got used to it.
Nokes must be part Shar-Pei
We went to Petsmart last weekend to see the puppies.
There was a one year old full bred Shar-Pei there, exact same coloring, similar tail curl and the exact same coloring right behind both of it’s shoulder blades Nokes has this extra fur that is lighter in color right behind his front legs, and we thought that was weird. But this dog, “Zeus”, had he exact same coloring.
Granted, the head was significantly different. Nokes has wrinkles, but not like a Shar-Pei, but that was the main and seemed to be the only difference. Even the size was exactly the same.
A fellow friend and dog owner told me recently that Nokes has a retriever nose, and they would seem to have some expertise because they had a DNA test done on their dog because the curiosity killed them.
So right now, I think, Nokes is Golden Retriever because of the coloring and nose, Shepherd from the coloring on his chest, and Shar-Pei because of what I said above. DNA testing is really tempting. If it was like $50 I would do it, my curiosity is that high. I was told that the DNA test can only check for about 300 breeds of dogs. I don’t know how true that is, I haven’t researched it. But I would hope my guesses aren’t too far off, and I would think they would be able to check for those three breeds.
Nokes’ 20 Minutes around the block
I got the dreaded yell down into the basement later yesterday afternoon. “Jeff! Nokes is gone!”.
Apparently the gate got left open from the Friday night party and Nokes was gone. We didn’t know how long, at least 20 minutes, and both of us started to race around. Sarah was shaking.
She got in her car and started to drive and call his name. I followed behind her a ways, yelling as loud as I could. It only took us about five minutes and there he came, sprinting out of the backyard from two or three houses down. I know there are some dogs down there.
I figured he wouldn’t go far, he seems a little bit like a homebody dog, but at the same time there is always the fear of the unknown. We know how much we love our dog, and it was scary from the beginning that he was running loose around Indianapolis.
I remember when Jonah, our family’s first dog, made it out in Dearborn. We started at a house I had never been to and walked back to my grandparents house, over a mile, maybe two away. Where did the dog go? He was sitting on the doorstep of the house that we started, having only been there for 15 minutes. Pretty amazing. I was putting all my chips into that idea. Nokes is smart, he’ll come home. We’ve tried to train him to wait for an open road with cars when crossing. Who knows if that sunk in. It makes you wonder, do you take more time to walk him into some people’s yards so it isn’t something so exciting, so appealing? Or maybe doing that would make it worse.
All I know is that I was glad he came home. With substantially busy roads on three sides of us, it is a frightening idea of Nokes running loose.
Zookeeper Sideart Stencils
There was a topic recently on klov about someone wanting to get the sideart from the Taito arcade game Zookeeper vectorized so that they could make stencils.
I posted on the Zookeeper Stencils topic, mentioning that I could do the vectors, but I wanted to see the sideart scan to see how complex the artwork was. The Zookeeper artwork is very complex, with all of the little splatters, and the irregular line work. I posted on the topic asking how bad the party wanted the vector tracing of the sideart, but I never heard back.
I was surfing the other night and came across VectorZorg’s artwork again, and noticed that he had about 70% of the Zookeeper artwork already vectorized. The only part he didn’t have finished was the splatters on the sideart.
So I emailed him and started a dialog to see if I could get a copy of the file that he had and finish the remaining splatter effects. He emailed me back asking who was interested in the Taito Zookeeper Stencils, and I sent him a link to the thread.
You can see a larger version of the Zookeeper sideart if you click the thumbnail. I just took this from VectorZorg’s website. I’ll post any updates if I get them here first.
Update Nov. 18, 2008
Due to some unforseen health issues, Brian Jones has some time on his hands and it appears as if he is about one hour or two into finishing up this piece of vector artwork. All that was left were all the little textured blobs on the bricks, moon and everywhere else.
My guess is that stencils for re-painting Zookeeper artwork will be available sometime in late January of 2008 if not sooner. Will keep you posted as I find out more.
Nokes locked himself in the john
Tonight Sarah came down as I was relaxing and asked if I had seen Nokes. I told her I hadn’t, but figured he was around and would turn up in a second or two of searching. But after I heard Sarah make two loops through the house I started to get worried.
Then Sarah was laughing hysterically from our back bedroom. Nokes must have been digging around on the lower shelf and closed the door on himself. In a little tirade he unwound most of the toilet paper and then chewed up the edge, which was really bizarre. Sarah joked, “Well, at least he won’t have to wipe himself next time he goes out to the bathroom.”
~Side Note: I added three photos of Nokes from this month in the photo gallery. I also added a link at the top of his section so you no longer have to go to “Photo Galleries” specifically to see it.
