The Insanity Begins!

If you thought I was nuts when I put together my 8,000 piece puzzle of The School of Athens, then you're really going to think I've lost it now. This weekend I started working on a 24,000 piece puzzle. It's the largest in the world and has only been completed a hand full of times.

The finished puzzle measures in at 14 feet by 5 feet., which presents a little bit of a challenge in terms of space. Thankfully, we have a couple spare rooms still, one of which is just barely big enough.

Before I started I built a foam board backing that I'm using both to construct the puzzle on and later to mount it on. Since no one sells a 14ftX5ft piece of foam board I had to put it together using several 40X32 pieces. I built two overlapping layers to give it stability and then glued them together using spray adhesive. Moving it was a bit of a challenge but we did manage to get it out of the garage and into the downstairs spare room.

The puzzle comes in four bags of 6,000 pieces each and most people who've put this thing together have done it as four 6,000 piece puzzles. To each their own, but for me I've already done a 6,000 and 8,000 piece puzzle and if I'm going to do a 24,000 piece puzzle then I'm going to do a 24,000 piece puzzle. So I emptied all the bags into the box and shook it to mix them up before I started.

I have no idea how long this will take to finish. There's a ton of variety in the picture but 24,000 pieces is going to be tough no matter how you slice it.

Check out worldslargestpuzzle.com to see what the finished product will look like and to see other people who've finished the puzzle. I'm hoping to become the first person in Minnesota to finish after mixing all 24,000 pieces

Ellie helps to model just how big this puzzle is,
even while still in the bags!

Ellie in the puzzle box

After mixing and dumping all 24,000 pieces onto
my foam board monstrosity

New On My Office Walls

It turns out that gluing and mounting a gigantic puzzle isn't nearly as tough as you'd think it would be. Up until a week ago I'd never glued any puzzle, gigantic or otherwise, so before I risked ruining my 8,000 piece School of Athens I decided to try gluing and mounting a smaller one.

I settled on a 1,500 piece map of Middle Earth that I'd done once before. I chose it because it's both a pretty cool picture that would look good on my wall if the gluing worked out and because I didn't care that much about ruining it. For some reason I don't really like doing puzzles of maps so while I wasn't going to be too broken up if the project went down in flames. It took a couple days to put together and then came the moment of truth. I opened up the first jar of puzzle glue and started to spread it on. It was so thick and white that I could barely see the picture after I was done. I was thinking, "This should dry clear, right?"

Thankfully it did. I did another coat, used craft glue to put it on foam board, trimmed the edges of the foam board, and the result was fantastic!


Next up was the big one. I had to order more glue since I'd only bought two bottles, the map took over one bottle, and the other puzzle is five times bigger. The glue I used this time I worked even better. It took only one coat for most of the puzzle and then a second around the edges. I mounted it on two 60x40 sheets of foam board, trimmed the edges and used a heck of a lot of 3M mounting tape to get it on the wall.

I don't think I really appreciated just how HUGE this thing was till I got it on the wall. It looks great in the office and I'm really happy I decided to glue it.




I did one more puzzle once all that was done. This one is 2,000 pieces. I'd done it once before and thought it would look good in my office. Unlike The School of Athens, it's by no means great artwork but it's still a fun picture.


My new sword also arrived in the mail this week. It's a replica of the William Wallace sword from Braveheart. It was being sold at Boot Camp and it has Wild at Heart inscribed on the blade. I mounted it using a magnetic sword mount which makes the sword look like it's floating on the wall. Very cool.


Next up I'm doing a 2,000 piece puzzle of Monet's Starry Night. Annie thought it would look good in our bedroom. Then, in a few months I'm hoping to start on this one. It's 14 feet by 5 feet and 24,000 pieces.

8,000 Pieces Later...

After two months (and far more hours than I'd care to admit) spent working on my 8,000 piece jigsaw puzzle I'm finally done. Actually, I shouldn't use the word finally since my original prediction was that this would take me until the end of the year.

This was the largest puzzle I've ever done but it really wasn't that much tougher than the 4,000 and 6,000 piece puzzles I've done. It could be that I'm getting used to doing bigger puzzles but I also think it's because with this many pieces the minute detail actually worked in my favor. For example, if there's a guy in the picture wearing a blue cloak that blue cloak is going to stand out and when there are 8,000 pieces that makes for a lot of blue cloak pieces that can be easily found. This picture also lent itself to being able to group pieces easily. The orange and black arch pieces were easy to find and set apart. Then when I thought I had most of them set aside, I just put the arch together. The same thing for the corners, which were much darker than anything else in the puzzle and were easy to pick out.

I'm going to try and glue this one together but since I've never glued a puzzle before I think I'm going to practice on a couple of smaller puzzles first. If anyone has any ideas on mounting something this size (76X54) by all means let me know.

Unfortunately the pictures are not the greatest. Photographing an 8,000 pieces puzzle is easier said than done. Hopefully I'll be able to take some better ones once it's glued and mounted.

The Dark Knight

Last night Annie and I caught the The Dark Knight at the Imax theater near our house (For the record we were not among those crazy people paying $150 for a ticket. We bought ours well in advance at the normal price.) I can't remember the last time I was this excited for a movie. I've been a Batman fan my whole life but was not all that impressed by the original four movies. The first two had their moments, Batman Returns is a good Tim Burton movie, but they completely missed the character. The third, Batman Forever, was alright but forgettable. Don't even start on the putrid, unwatchable Batman and Robin. (It features The Governator as Mr. Freeze who at one point conducts choir practice for his henchmen yelling, "SING LOUDER!" Yes, the movie was that bad.)

Batman and Robin effectively killed the franchise for nearly a decade. There was off and on talk of reviving it but quite frankly the fact that Warner Bros., the same studio that churned out B&R, still held the rights didn't inspire a whole lot of confidence.

That is, until they hired Christopher Nolan. I've been a huge Christoper Nolan fan since Memento came out. It's still one of my favorite movies and is one of the most rewatchable movies ever made. I'm not sure what they saw in him that made them think he was the guy for Batman but were they ever right on the money with their choice.

Nolan's first entry in the series, Batman Begins, was incredible. If you haven't seen it, it's required viewing before you check out The Dark Knight. It goes back to the origins of Batman and treats the character and the story with complete seriousness. It asks the question, what would it be like if someone actually decided to put on a bat suit and fight criminals? The movie is incredible, brilliantly acted and directed. It was the Batman movie that geeks like me had been waiting for. It was way more than any of us had hoped for.

But it doesn't hold a candle to The Dark Knight.

This one takes off from where Begins left off and never looks back. The most talked about aspect of this performance is the much hyped performance of the late Heath Ledger as The Joker and for once the hype is justified. Apart from Daniel Day Lewis, I have never seen an actor so completely disappear into a character. When Ledger was first announced as The Joker, the Internet went abuzz with angry fans and Brokeback Batman jokes. He seemed so wrong for the role. But whatever Christopher Nolan saw that the rest of us missed, he was dead right. It's the best villain performance I've ever seen, including Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter.

Speaking of Hannibal, The Joker has him beat hands down as far as villains go. Hannibal was terrifying but there was also a refined elegance about him. He was a perfect gentleman who also happened to eat people. He was certainly evil and sadistic but not in the way The Joker is in this movie. The Joker has no agenda. He's not after money or power. It's not even correct to say he just wants to kill people. What he wants is to destroy as much as he can. He is an anarchist in the purest sense of the word. He believes in nothing but pain and chaos. And it's terrifying.

A lot is going to be made about the violence in this movie. It's very rough and very shocking. But the amazing thing is that it accomplishes that without being gory or graphic. There's almost no blood in the entire movie but despite that, the violence is more intense than most gore filled movies. Christopher Nolan proves that less is more. In this case almost too much more.

The Joker is the highlight of the movie but it would be a shame for Batman to get lost in the hype. Christian Bale continues to be one of the best actors working today. His performance here is great. The character's transformation through this movie is incredible. There's a scene where he is interrogating The Joker that is just brutal to watch. He's been pushed to his emotional and physical limits by this guy and he completely loses control. But the harder he hits, the more The Joker just laughs and one of the films many philosophical questions is raised: how do you stop a man who thrives on pain and doesn't care if he dies? It's a fascinating question with big time implications for today's war on terror.

The philosophy in the movie is fantastic but never preachy. I don't want to give the impression of this being an Ayn Rand style movie. It's not. But at the same time, the actions and choices of the characters raise big time ethical, philosophical and moral questions. I won't spoil them here but it's a deep film that will leave you thinking.

When I left Batman Begins I couldn't wait to see the sequel. Leaving The Dark Knight I'm almost afraid to. I'd rather have no sequel than a bad sequel. I don't have any idea how you come anywhere close to equaling this, let alone topping it. This is The Empire Strikes Back to Batman Begins' Star Wars. This is The Godfather Part 2. Both of those trilogies (and the Spider-Man series) had disappointing finishes (though I still love Return of the Jedi) and I do not want to see Batman's third entry join that dubious club. Here's hoping Christopher Nolan proves me wrong yet again and makes the third the best one yet.


Side note: The Dark Knight had one of the coolest marketing campaigns of all time. One of the best aspects was the vandalized posters. They released the normal posters and then a few months later put up ones that had been defaced by The Joker. Check out some of the better ones below.

Satire Time!

I found this online this morning. If you love political satire or just need a break from following the real world exploits of this year's campaign you'll get a big kick out of this.

The Office Webisodes

Rejoice Office fans! We may be in between seasons and looking at another potential strike but in the meantime we have new webisodes to look forward to every week. The Accountants, the first batch of webisodes from a couple years ago, was hysterical. The new series is called Kevin's Loan. Based on the first installment it looks even funnier than The Accountants. Enjoy!

One A Lighter Note

For Father's Day, Ellie got me the complete DVD box set of Monty Python's Flying Circus (isn't she thoughtful? Especially for still being three months away from birth!) I've been laughing pretty much non stop since I started watching it. The self defense class skit particularly had me in stitches. It's even somewhat relevant given yesterday's Supreme Court ruling. (ok, that's a big stretch). Enjoy!

(note: Unlike some of MP's stuff this one is fairly PG)

HULK! SMASH!

Fear not comic book movie fans, The Incredible Hulk is nothing like the putrid, snore inducing, far too long Ang Lee's 2003 version was. Don't get me wrong, we're not talking Shakespeare here but the new movie does have a coherent plot, great action and mostly good acting.

The first half of the movie is great as Bruce Banner does his best to avoid being captured and occasionally turns very big and very green. There are some great chase scenes here (at times you'll think you're watching The Bourne Hulkamtum). It's suspenseful and a lot of fun.

The second half is way more conventional, culminating in a giant CGI Hulk vs. CGI Abomination battle that would be cool if we hadn't already seen the same thing in virtually every other comic book movie ever made. It's not bad but it's not that good either. Thankfully everything that comes before is more than good enough to make up for any failings here.

This should be a very good movie year for us geeks. We've already had Iron Man and next month we get The Dark Knight, Hellboy 2, and X-Files. This one will probably be the weakest of the bunch but it's still a lot of fun. If you're a fellow geek or just like big green monsters you'll enjoy it a lot

Books Recap

I'm back! Not in town yet (we've got one more week, this one in Myrtle Beach) but I should be online and able to post a little more regularly this week. Finding a wi-fi signal on Ocracoke Island is no small challenge and proved not worth the effort as the week went on, hence the lack of blogging. Besides, isn't part of vacation being able to disconnect for a while?

Anyway, Annie and I had a great time on Ocracoke. We spent most mornings at the beach (see previous post) and spent the very hot (at least by Minnesota standards) afternoons doing puzzles or laying around reading books. We'll probably post some vacation highlights and pictures on the family blog at some point but in the meantime here are a few highlights from my reading this week.

By far the best book I read last week was The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning. This is the best presentation of grace I've ever read. Manning again and again hammers home that it's not what we do but what He did. It's powerful, deeply moving, and definitely one I'm going to need to revisit often.

As expected Philip K Dick's, The Man in the High Castle was a mind trip but a great read. The book takes place in an alternate post World War 2 America where the Axis powers won. The Nazis control the eastern part of the country and the Japanese the Pacific Coast. Slavery is legal and the holocaust is in full swing in America. All that sounds straightforward enough but the story is told through several loosely connected tales that range from somewhat straightforward to very bizarre. There's also an alternate history novel within this novel where the US won the war but not as it happened in actual history. This only gets more weird as two of the characters begin to suspect that their world is really fiction and the novel is real. Confused yet? Me too! I love books like that!

I'll avoid anymore history talk for now but tonight I finally finished John Adams by David McCullough. It's simply brilliant. One of the best books I've ever read and worth reading no matter how boring you find history.

I finished G.K. Chesterton's Heretics at the beginning of the week but I'll hold my fire on that one for the moment. It's a great book and sometime in the next day or two I'm hoping to discuss some of what it talks about more in depth.

On the docket for this week: Eye in the Sky, A Canticle for Leobowitz, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, and rereading some C.S. Lewis.

Seeing the Small Blessings Part 2

This is something of a follow up to my post a few days ago about seeing small blessings. I've been trying to put that into practice during this week. Last year on vacation I learned that kite flying is a lot of fun and I knew I wanted to do more of it this year. This morning I found myself standing waist deep in the ocean flying my kite. It was so peaceful, monotonous and wonderful. There's nothing quite like just standing there feeling the waves break over you and enjoying the morning.

To me that's the perfect example of a small blessing. There's nothing hugely complicated about kite flying (at least not for the simple kites I have) and there's nothing really to "do" once you get it up in the air. Nothing except relax and be. Those are the moments where God really speaks to me and it's an awesome experience.