Costume ideas for a future costume party, part 2

In my search to find a great costume for an upcoming costume party, I made some progress. With the new masks that I got yesterday from Greyland Film, I have more character options due to having more faces that would look good with different costumes.

Now I have an option to go as Mr. Spock (Star Trek) if I can at least get a proper Star Trek shirt or similar to the costume. Another choice is Ironman without the helmet and the head of Tony Stark. Another option are two different medieval dresses with some extra padding and a choice of a few different female masks and wigs. I could be boring and be yet again in a superhero costume like so many years before. I could also be the nun again, but this time with a different face, the alternative option to that would be the French maid. There are other ideas, but I am not so keen on them right now.

Watching someone trying on a foam latex mask

During the last weekend I had a lot of people coming who were looking for costumes. One party had a requirement for having the face covered. One lady rented a witch costume from me and was trying on different masks to see which one fits the costume and is the most comfortable to wear. Amongst my witch masks is also a foam latex based mask which is very soft. She did try that as well but took it off fairly fast due to heat apparently. foam latex masks generally do not get anywhere near as hot as normal latex masks. I have worn that particular mask briefly before and found it was spacious inside and because of its size, my eyesight was limited. It is not very common for female masks to be requested. Often men want masks with their costumes. Women sometimes want extra eyemasks, but rarely full masks.

It was qutie amazing to see how different she looked with the mask on when she moved around a bit. Unfortunately the mouth of the mask hardly moved when she spoke. Other people were watching as well and gave comments and advice.

Windows 7 partition issues with reboot loop

This last weekend I had some Windows 7 installation issues when I got myself a new HDD. The plan was to do dual booting like I had on my previous drive which was busy failing.

The initial Windows 7 installatino took long as usual with long waiting for the wallpaper with the mouse pointer. Why there is not anything more informative at that stage is a mystery to me. Some people might think that their PC has frozen. Once the Windows 7 installation was completed, I installed the latest LTS version of Ubuntu. Once that was done, I booted into Windows 7 and formatted the new drive. For some strange reason, the disk management tool was insisting that I had to make the partition dynamic. I might have read wrong and it was for the whole disk. Since I already had the other primary partitions and just needed a data partition, I thought it might just be another "user friendly" term for extended or logical partition.

This process ended up causing a reboot loop because all existing primary partitions suddenly ended up also being dynamic. This was a bulk change and I was really impressed by the reboot loop.

The next step was to start fresh with a new Windows 7 installation, just to find that I had to wait much longer than before and that the partition editor that came on the Windows 7 DVD was useless and could not even delete the partitions. I ended up having to clean up the mess running Ubuntu from the DVD which has a desktop and various tools that can be used while installating Ubuntu Linux onto the drive. Any owner of only Windows 7 would be helpless if that dynamic disk thing hits.

Heavy Cape Town traffic due to railway strike

The nationwide railway strike this week has been causing some heavy traffic in the morning and evening here in Cape Town. All of the train commuters had to find alternative modes of transport. I came with my car this week and it turns out to be rather expensive what petrol concerns. Sitting in traffic double the time than it should take is also no fun. I am at this point in time considering getting a bicycle and ride to work while getting some much needed cardio done. In the evenings the trains are also sometimes unreliable by not always showing up. In the evenings it would probably be a little bit faster to get home by bicycle than train due to the 25 minute walk in the evening if I do not manage to catch the 18:15 train leaving Cape Town.

Costume ideas for a future costume party

1. Power Rangers
2. Superheroes
2.1. Batman and Robin
2.2. Batman and Superman
2.3. The Flash and Superman
3. Star Wars
3.1. Darth Vader and the emperor
3.2. Darth Vader and a Clonetrooper/Stormtrooper
3.3. Jedi Knight and Queen Amidala
3.4. Jedi Knight and Padme Amidala
3.5. Anakin Skywalker and Jedi Knight
3.6. Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala
4. Dinosaurs