Nutritious Accoutrement's

Dad here again; thought I'd show off the the cool birthday presents I just received for turning 30 for the 16th time. Appearently my Awesomeness is only exceeded by the nutritiousness of my dinnerware. Mums made the plate with built in sprinkles; K-girl made the everlasting sugar-cone coffee cup.

My girls: they look out for me!

Introducing the Walking Machine

Dad here. Still trying to build a race vehicle for the Baltimore Kinetic Sculpture Race which is on May 2nd this year. To the right is the inspiration for the design. The race requires that the vehicle be human powered, complete the 13 miles course, and even swim through part of the Baltimre Inner Harbor... which as you can imagie causes many, uh, unintended baths.

I've got a book full of design details that I've been working on for almost a year now (since 'K' and I cheered on last years race) however we just now started building... oonly about 3 weeks to go, and some of that time is already taken for gymnastics, bus conversion, soccer, etc.

Here is a pic where you can see the quality engineering that is going into this monster... anybody out there know the sheer streangth of duct tape? We are building beams from drywall studs for lightness; duct tape for the prototype / layout, rivit & welding for the build. Stay tuned for more disasterous details! w00t!

Mini-Motos

Exhilaration, one of the most unique feelings on earth. when you combine it with riding 45 miles per hour on a motorcycle that is only 28 inches high while on a small track with 20 other people. this is awesome. We peoples are thinking of taking up this radical sport. Sandy-Hook speedway is the nearest minimoto race track.

Here is the wikipedia entry on MiniMoto.

Foam Weapons building

(edited to use public domain photo from tiradora - Maethodoron Winter Invasion )

If you are interested in dagorhir war games, but there are no groups in your area than you can always get together with your friends in your bacyard! it's as simple as that so get out there and start pummeling each other, right? wait, you have to use something to battle with! if you go to this site (DAGORHIR) than it will show you how to make every leagal dagorhir weapon available! these weapons are only hand-made so there is no shortcut to building weapons. personally, I think arrows are the easiest to make but the only downside to that is that you have to have a bow to shoot with.

Coolest Shirt Ever

This is Dad reporting on the story of the hunt for The Most Awesome Shirt Ever.

While at the beach, scrounging around in a second-hand shop I was blessed with the sight of my niece's visceral reaction to a an old 1950's shirt, the fabric of which is pictured here, you can click on it to get the full beauty of the weave.

Her reaction was so ghastly that I think she almost threw up! So, of course I bought it! She won't talk about "The Incident", will you A?

So anyway, it was such a treat to harass the poor lass that I decided to make it a lifes mission to acquire ugly shirts to present at appropriate times (or better yet, inappropriate times). With that in mind, we headed to the fabric store. Unfortunately we were all distracted by cool patterns. I started making this shirt, but once I hit the complex collar and was reduced to a snivilling pool of lameness, Mom stepped in, pushed me aside, "stole my hammer", and saved me. You have to look really close to see the awesomeness of the tiny symbols.

Close-up of collar area: Whole shirt:

Kira's Bus

Here is Kira's proposed paint scheme:

Dad thinks the dots should flash randomly. This is Kiras design. The black lines at the top are an angels halo and wings. maybe it should have more purple and neon green. The back windows will have a stained glass border. The back side of the smiley face pop out stop sign will say "Don't worry be Happy"

Dagorhir summary

(Edited to include video)

Dagorhir, a place where you can get out your anger on people you don't have a clue are while at the same time, making friends with your company. So you ask "what the hell is dagorhir?' well, hold your horses, i'll tell you. Dagorhir is medival warfare where you can hit people as hard as you want with foam weapons. in order to play in the big games, you first have to join a company, such as Orks, Elves, Narnia, Mongouls, humans and romans. If you are interested,You can find a company in your area if you click on this hyperlink . once you have found a company and are in contact with them, you must make your weapons of foam. there are many utinsels for THWAKing with so pick which one suits you. if you are the action type, you should choose a sword, axe flail or club. if you aren't really that anxious about bieng hit a whole lot than a pike or an archery bow would be your choice. the good thing about Guard is that they have practice every week in Olney, MD and thier practices are for all chapters/groups and they also have weapon-making workshops.

If only...

HattenBus Makes it's Debut

Here's the school bus that we've captured from the wilds of New Jersey.

We are still in heated discussion on the paint job, theme, and accessories. All we know for sure is that it can't stay International School Bus Yellow (yes: that's an officially registered color!), so we need to paint it before getting license plates.

That nifty stop sign that pops out has to be removed as well, but we plan on converting it to something else, such as a smiley face or some such.

We have many and many more plans for this puppy!

• RV Camper
• Motorcycle hauler for races
• Gymnastics Team hauler for far-away meets (and they all are it seems!)
• Walking Machine hauler for Baltimore Kinetic Sculpture Race
• MiniMoto race pit bus
• PartyBus for group trips to Orchestra events, RobotFest, Dagorhir, Nashville, RollerDerby, Hershey Park, etc etc...

Welcome to HattenBlog!

When you are on this page, you can check out some of the things that we peoples do for our past time. On the sidebar to the right, you can see what the heck we're up to. if you have any questions, leave a comment. Thanks, we peoples hope to hear from you!