OK, after we get the boffers done, we can get into more child-friendly swordsmanship with these instructions for how to build a lightsabre with common plumbing parts for about US$33. It looks pretty cool, too. Then we can use these rotoscoping instructions and the Crimson application (designed just for rotoscoping lightsaber effects) to film the kids having a nice healthy duel. Crimson is OS X only, and has trouble running under Tiger, but it’s open source, so I’ll try to get in and fix it. Some of the Windows lightsabre rotoscoping tools (yes, it’s a whole category of applications now) also add neato features like sound effects and flashes (from the blades touching), which would be fun to add as well.  Read →

Boffers are foam swords for safer swordfighting. Here’s how to build boffers easily. Make Simple boffers  Read →

I noticed that jwz is trying to take a screenshot in Cocoa and having trouble. I’m happy to see that he’s porting his awesome collection of screensavers to OS X, that’s great news. As for taking screen shots, I’m amazed it is as hard as it seems to be–heck even the new Nokia Series 60 give you the ability to take screeenshots from Python now. In any case, here is a method that works for me under PyObjC. It assumes it is part of a Cocoa object and that you’ve done a from AppKit import * already. Since I can’t comment on jwz’s blog (whether it’s because I don’t use LiveJournal or because I do use Safari, I don’t know), I’ll post it here instead.  Read →