Buddy's Blog

Buddy’s household tips:

Every morning I clean our glass cook top from the day before. If you have a glass cook top, you know how hard it is to clean it well. I use Barkeeper’s Friend and that works pretty good. And I use a razor blade. But a lot of that fine stuff that you can’t get up so easily is mineral deposits from when you spill and it gets hot. You know, those shiny spots, and those little lines after you scrub it. I tried this and it works: I poured a little vinegar, enough to cover the surface, and I let it sit. Actually, I probably let it sit too long because when I remembered, it had all dried. I wiped it up with a paper towel, and it came out good and clean, cleaner than I had ever gotten it before.

Need to transpose music?  A while back I made this chart:

Suppose you’re in the key of G and you want to be in the key of C. Go down the first column to C. Then go down the row till you get to the G in column 8. All your transposed chords will be in that column. For example, if you have an E minor, go down the E row, and in column 8 you will see B. So your E minor becomes a B minor. I realize that experienced musicians don’t need this chart, but for dummies like U-No-Hoo it makes it easy.

This from Phillip B:

Ain’t it the truth

Another Oops. This should have been yesterday’s strip…

Speaking of pi*z*z*a, Chris M can spell banana:

And here is a little info from Gary E:

Regarding the black dots image: You can usually see two dots at once if you look at the intersection between the dots where there is not one present. Tilting your head does the same with the diagonal lines. Isn’t stereo vision amazing?

And this just now came in from Chris:

What’s really strange is that at 6 inches with the image about 12 inches wide, I see all twelve. The center two are in and out. I have macular degeneration seriously affecting the center of my field of vision on both eyes.

Reading machine text is difficult. Drawn characters such as in the strips are highly challenging. Sometimes I have to guess at the words from context.

This condition sucks.

I’m very sorry to learn that, Chris. I sincerely hope your condition stabilizes.

As for cartoon lettering, one can get sloppy. I tried very hard to be legible, even Photoshopping when it was really bad. For me the hardest part of drawing a strip was the lettering. I would pencil it first just like I did the drawing. I could fit 21 letters or spaces in a panel. The I’s took half a space. Sometimes it was tricky. Back around 2000-2001 I created a font suitcase using my drawn letters. Actually I made six suitcases and wrote a little program to alternate the font set as I was typing. Look at the E’s. You’ll notice that they are just a little different from one another. If you don’t know, a font suitcase is kind of like a file folder. Switching between different suitcases made the kerning difficult.

Very neat, isn’t it? I used it for about two and a half years then went back to drawing my fonts.

One of my high school classmates sent me this:

I find it possible to see two at once when I tilt my head to the side and sort of stare into space, also when I put my face up close to the screen.

Another story I did about Osama got me kicked out of the
Toronto Star. 

In case you missed it, Robert R is smarter than he looks. Either that or he’s not just a pretty face. To wit:

For a pizza with radius z and thickness a, the volume is:
Pi * z * z * a

Last night I was reading Wodehouse’s Indiscretions of Archie, and he mentioned Jojo the Dog Boy.

Somebody put this on my Facebook page. I like it.

Reminds one of the old joke. The kid comes home from school, and his father asks him “What did you learn today?” The boy says “pi r square.” The father says “No, son, pi are round. Cornbread are square.”

Yesterday I made a pecan pie. Mighty tasty!

Another Oops. So what’s new? This is the first strip in the story: