Author: TechyDad

A Make or Buy Doctor Who Quandary

Doctor Who, Geeky Pursuits

Ok, I’ll admit it.  I’m having a case of Craft Envy.

Where ever I look, people are making some amazing things.  Jen (of Cake Wrecks and Epbot fame) made a steampunk White Rabbit costume as a follow-up to her steampunk Lady Darth Vader costume (Lady Vadore).  Pinterest is filled with crafters posting their handiwork.  Even in my own house I can’t escape the crafting.  B seems to be perpetually knitting or crocheting some new, cool project.

I want in.

A little while after I got a sonic screwdriver for my birthday, I began thinking about Halloween.  Usually, I don’t think that far in advance.  I tend to consider the holiday about a week before the actual day.  Which, if I want a costume, leads to a hurried rush through stores or a raiding of my old costumes.  This time, though, I began to wonder if I could pull off a Matt Smith’s Doctor costume.

Side Note: David Tennant is my favorite Doctor, but I thought that Matt Smith’s look was a bit more iconic and easier to pull off… especially since I already had his sonic screwdriver.

Matt Smith’s Doctor basically needs: A pair of black pants, a brown tweed-ish jacket, a light colored (perhaps cream or blue) shirt, burgundy suspenders, a red bow tie (bow ties are cool) and a fez (also cool).  Looking through my clothes, I found a jacket that would work as well as pants and a shirt.  That just left the suspenders, bow tie and fez.

Now we get to the quandary.  There’s an official Doctor Who bow tie/fez set that can be purchased online and in a few brick-and-mortar stores.  I also hunted down a few locations online that offer suspenders of the kind I need.  So I could easily buy the remainder of my costume and be all set.

But part of me really wants to MAKE some or all of the rest.

I’ve found tutorials via Pinterest on making your own fez, bow tie, and even your own suspenders.  I also priced out the materials.  The fez would cost about $5, the bow tie about $2, and the suspenders around $10.  For under $20 I could have everything I need to complete my costume.  All it would take is a bit of sewing.  (Something that I’m perfectly capable of doing.  In addition to cooking, I hand sew anything that needs sewing in our house.  Take THAT male stereotype!)

However, then there’s the big yellow hat lingering in the room.

A few years back, I got the urge to be crafty and made a “Man In The Yellow Hat” costume to go with my son’s Monkey costume.  I bought a cheap foam hat, glued on foam balls to increase the height, and then glued on yellow felt to make it all the right color.  It came out spectacular.  By which, I mean it stunk.  Bad.  I still have it, but it is hidden in a closet upstairs.

If I go the crafting route, I risk spending $20 and having another yellow hat incident.  True, this time I’d have guidance and wouldn’t be simply making it up as I go along.  However, there’s still plenty of steps that I could mess up.  Perhaps I’d cut out the pattern wrong.  Maybe my stitching wouldn’t be up to par.  My gluing might leave globs of glue visible.  The yellow hat might wind up with a decidedly UNCOOL bow tie/fez/suspenders to keep it company.

Worse still, I might fail and leave myself no time to buy a professionally made bow tie, fez, and suspenders thus ruining any chance my Doctor costume has to see the light of day.

I’m not sure what I’ll wind up doing.  Maybe I’ll tackle one of the items (perhaps the fez) and buy the others elsewhere.  Maybe I’ll buy the fez/bow tie set from a store near me as a backup plan while I attempt the crafting route.  (I can return the purchased items if the craft is a success.)  All I know is that I’m getting the itch to craft!

Would you buy already-made items from the store or take the crafting route?

(It’s worth noting that, after I wrote this, I realized I might have written a similar post awhile back.  Sure enough, I did: about building or buying a Sonic Screwdriver.  The answer to that conundrum was to constantly postpone the answer for a year until B bought it for me for my birthday.  This quandary, however, needs a slightly faster resolution.  I even almost made the exact same icon to go with the post until I found the one I made for the sonic screwdriver post.)

NOTE: The “build vs buy” image above was composed of “Tools, Hammer, Spanner” by Andy and “Money – banknotes and coin” by n_kamil.  Both images are available through OpenClipArt.org.

Saying Sorry

Life

sorryTonight starts Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.  During this time, we fast for 25 hours.  (That’s 25 hours without food or drink.  No, not even a sip of water!)  The purpose of this is to help focus on everything we did wrong in the past year, to seek forgiveness, and to think of ways we can be better in the coming year.

This doesn’t just apply to religious rules, though.  Seeking forgiveness is important in your person-to-person relationships as well.  (In fact, Judaism says that God won’t forgive you for a sin committed against another person until you first seek that person’s forgiveness.)

Sadly, many people find it apologizing tricky.  They either don’t realize they should apologize or give half-hearted efforts that fail miserably.  Worse still, some people will go through the apology steps and then will proceed to repeat the behavior that the  apology was issued for.  So how does one apologize properly?

Mean It

If you don’t feel sorry, your apology will fall short of the mark. So before you even begin, you should make sure that you actually mean your apology and you aren’t using it to "get out of jail free."  This isn’t to say that you should just do bad things and not feel the need to apologize.  If you wrong someone, you should give a heartfelt apology, but the heartfelt part is a requirement, not an afterthought.

Don’t Shift Blame

Nothing adds salt to the wound more than an apology which starts off fine but veers into "but it was really this other person’s fault!"  It’s even worse when you turn it around and blame the person you are apologizing to.  Yes, things are rarely black and white and situations might have blame enough to cover both sides.  However, an apology is not the time to quibble over who is to blame for which portions.  An apology is the time to take responsibility for your actions and try to make it right.  If you apologize right, the other side might even reciprocate and apologize for their portion.  If they don’t?  Well, as I often tell my kids: You can’t control other people’s actions, only your own.  They might be in the wrong for not apologizing, but your concern should be that you did the right thing, not that they did the wrong thing.

No Excuses

This is similar to "Don’t Shift Blame" but here you try to give a reason that you see as acceptable to explain your behavior.  This can be very tricky to do right and should be avoided where possible.  If you do feel the need to give a cause to your actions, make sure to emphasize that it is an explanation for your action and that it in no way makes your action acceptable.  However, people might still take offense and see your explanation as an excuse so it’s best to just leave this off entirely.

Change

Saying "sorry" and then immediately doing the same thing over again doesn’t work.  The person might accept your first apology, but they won’t accept your second or third or fourth.  Similar to the boy who cried wolf, people won’t believe you even if you eventually decide that you WILL change.  Your apologies will only be empty words.

Don’t use "sorry" as license to do whatever you want without repercussions.  Actually make an effort to alter your behavior in the future.  Even if you have relapses of your apology-worthy behavior, people will continue to forgive you if they see you making an effort to change.

Do you find it difficult to apologize when you’ve wronged someone?

NOTE: The "sorry" image above was created using the "Emoticons: Sad Face" image by nicubunu which is available from OpenClipArt.org.

Five Years of Blogging

Blogging

DTRave_Cartoon_Computer_and_Desktop_smallFive years ago tomorrow, I began my blogging adventure.  At the time, I didn’t know what to expect.  All I knew was that I felt I had a lot to say.  B had been blogging for about a year and a half and I decided to do the same.  I set up a WordPress blog and made my first post.  Then, five days later, and after some website work, I wrote a second post and then, a third a day after that.  I was on my way.

Blogging certainly wasn’t what I was expecting when I began.  I remember being very upset that I had no comments on my blog when all these other blogs I read would have dozens.  I began to think I must be doing something wrong or at least nobody cared about what I wrote.  More than once, I came close to giving up blogging.

Then, I realized that I wasn’t blogging for some nebulous audience.  I was writing for myself.  It suddenly didn’t matter to me whether I had one reader or one hundred,  (Though one hundred readers would be nice.)

Over the years, I’ve written on many subjects from the geeky to the serious.  I’ve gone from being the father of a five year old and a one year old to the dad of a child in Grade 5 and a child in Grade 1.  (The math geek in me likes that for some reason.)  I’ve published 1,194 blog posts here, 34 posts over at Dad Revolution, and 4 guest posts in a few other places.  I don’t have a total word count, but that’s a LOT of writing.

I’ve met many wonderful people (some in person, many more online only) and have learnt things that I never would have learned had I never began to blog.  I wonder what I’ll learn during the next five years.

Disclaimer: The computer graphic above was created by DTRave and is available from OpenClipArt.com.

Doctor Who Actors vs Moon Walkers

Doctor Who, Geeky Pursuits

Being a geek can often mean wondering weird things.  Like, for example: How do the number of actors who have played the Doctor compare to the number of people who have walked on the Moon?  And how do the surviving members of each stack up over the years?

Well, wonder no more:

Doctor-Actors-vs-Moon-Walkers

(Click to see a larger version.)

Some notes: There are 13 people listed as playing the Doctor.  This is because: 1) Even though Peter Capaldi hasn’t made his Doctor Who debut, I’ve included him and 2) According to Wikipedia, the first Doctor was both played by both William Hartnell and, for The Five Doctors, Richard Hurndall.  I’m not counting "alternate" Doctors such as the classic series’ Valeyard or the new series’ Doctor-who-wasn’t-worthy-of-being-called-Doctor (played by John Hurt).  The dates for who landed on the Moon when and who played the Doctor when all came from Wikipedia.

As you can see, when Peter Capaldi takes over the role later this year, the number of Doctor actors will top the number of Moon walkers for the first time since 1968.  Furthermore, unless one of the former Doctor actors passes away before the end of the year, the number of surviving Doctors will surpass the number of surviving Moon walkers.

Here’s hoping that we can increase the Moon walkers total soon – though I won’t be holding my breath.

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