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For a number of years, I can't remember how long but this photo is from 2005, we've been putting up a spider web between two big palm trees in our yard. The version above has a stuffed chihuahua as the spider and her children's dinner. I think that was the year when I had just too much of the Taco Bell chihuahua.

Building the web was fairly simple. With some nylon rope I laid out the spokes and used a cable tie to join them at the center. I spiraled out the rope starting from the center and used a cable tie at each intersection. I used additional rope and cable ties to hang it across the trees. It's probably about six foot in diameter. The spider is just store bought from Target or somewhere else.

posted at: 02:56 | path: /Projects/Halloween/SpiderWeb | permanent link to this entry

In 2008 I wanted a fence to encircle the yard because I was growing the number of props and wanted to protect them from kids who where using our corner lot as a short cut and to protect the kids from falling over them if they did try to cut through. I built a series of fence posts with flickering candles inside connected by black chain.

The materials that I used included: 3/4 inch PVC pipe, 3/4 inch PVC couplers (one for each post), black plastic chain, plastic skulls with blinky lights inside from the 99 Cent Store (one for each post), flicker candles (one for each post), wooden/metal stakes that the PVC pipe can slip over and hot glue.

I cut a bunch of 3/4 inch PVC to length (whatever length you want the fence to be high). I cut vertical slots on one of the ends of the pipes so that the chain could pass through (I'll add pictures). I painted these black. I also painted the couplers black.

I didn't want to use the blinker light that comes with the skull. I thought the effect was cheesy (like this is going to be any better). I wanted a flickering effect that you get from the electric flicker candles. It would also be amber not white. To do this I needed to "operate" on the skull. The head of the skull is attached to the base with small screws but not very strongly. I basically pulled the top of the skull off of the base and then punched the small screws out. Now I could pop the heads off and drop in a flicker candle.

I hot glued one side of the coupler to the bottom of the skull. I tried as best as I could to glue it only on to the battery cover. This allowed me to open, and replace, the batteries in the skull if needed (although I didn't use the built in blinker for this project). For storage reasons I did not glue the other side of the coupler to the PVC pipe. The coupler provides a snug fit to the PVC.

I placed stakes in the ground where I wanted the fence posts to be and slipped the PVC fence posts over them. I ran the chain between the posts and capped the posts with the skulls. When it started to get dark I popped a flicker candle in each.

posted at: 03:10 | path: /Projects/Halloween/Fence | permanent link to this entry

Oh thank Jebus! I found the way to kill the system beep on VMWare at the application level. It is so annoying and it is such a pain to turn it off for each shell across every VM.

I found out that if you add the following to the \Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMWare\VMWare Workstation\config.ini file, that the beep/bell is disabled.

mks.noBeep = "TRUE"

Defcon 16. Wow. That's a long time. My first Defcon was 2. This means that I've been attending for 15 years. Dear God, that makes me feel old.

This year's con was good in some ways but not so great in others. I felt that the talks were a bit hit or miss. Friends have told me that the only reason that they still attend is to see friends that they would not otherwise be able to see. I'm starting to feel the same way.

There are five tracks and it's difficult to get from one to the other. The outlines of the talks don't provide good insight on the material that will really be presented. In the program, the talk outlines weren't listed in any order. This made it difficult to figure out was was going to be presented. There were a couple talks that I just plain walked out on. Then I had to hike it to another presentation room to find a more interesting talk.

I'm not sure what the total attendance was this year but last year there were at least six thousand. It just feels, actually it is, too much. I'm not the type of person that enjoys being around a lot of people so it is very tiring after awhile.

I've posted a few photos on my flickr page. Go view them if you like. You should look at Foofus dressed as Zed from the movie Zardoz.

posted at: 04:13 | path: /Cons/DefCon/DC16 | permanent link to this entry