Tag Archives: fun

Of Goals and Other Squiggly Things

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Other than having strep I’ve been working on web pages. I have a large update ready for the Pulp website…but they’re changing the document now…so it’s best if I just wait. I need to get that new porfolio up and working too.

WH is coming along. I’m finishing up the last chapter. I’ve started a new program where I get up early, do the 5 Tibetans, meditate, and then write until shower time. Then I walk the spawn to school. So far so good. Today was the first full day of doing all four…I’ve been working up to it.

I would like to have a set of miniatures to bring with me to conventions for Serenity and maybe other games I run. This involves me getting more pulp miniatures, and some sci fi ones. Painting continues. This brings me to the Cynwall Dragon.

cynwall

The Cynwall Dragon is a “mini” from the Confrontation line. I don’t play mini games…though I wouldn’t mind this one…if I knew a group that played. This mini is huge. J. gave it to me for Christmas last year. I finally started cleaning up and putting it together. This is my second dragon. My first was an old Ralpartha. I had to glue the tail and the head and the wings on. It’s a very pretty amytheist…but this was before I knew about sculpting. So it has a lot of gaps. I could fix it I guess. But it’s fine for what it is.

I was at Valhalla’s last week and found a Reaper limited edition Dragon vignette on sale. The base is the dragon hord with cliff The dragon is one piece just needing wings and horns glued on. The dwarven thief is pre attached to the cliff and just needs to be glued on the base.

Back to the Cynwall. Confrontation minis come in pieces. Even their tiny 1 inch minis come in many pieces. Now imaging a huge dragon. The body comes in not one but three parts that form a hollow shell. The head is separate. Not only are each wing separate but the folded wing? Two pieces. That’s if you don’t count the five claws that need to be attached to feet and wings. Bestly (that’s my new word for today) the tail part that needs to be glued on is the middle part…since the tail curls and all.

So this posed a problem. I needed a hobby vice. No screaming…I hadn’t needed on yet…some kind of gap filler and more glue. I already have a hefty glue and putty stash: Elmers, Aileen (clear, wood and regular tacky), wood glue, spakle, Insta-Cure thin, GW Green Stuff and probably stuff I can’t remember. The Insta-Cure is the best for putting together metal minis. I took one look at this heavy beast and decided I needed better glue. I debated picking up more of the Insta-Cure stuff…but it’s expensive and tends to dry out in the bottle IME. The thin seems to last the longest.

I headed to hobby lobby and my local train hobby story. I got some gorilla glue and some gap filler (I forget the company…but it’s called, predictably, White Stuff. So First I gorilla glued the two halves of the main body together. That took a day to dry. Next I gap filled the body and stuck the neck on. It came off. (Stop with the pinning. There will be no pinning) But the filler had sunk as it dried. So I refilled and stuck the neck on again. This worked and I cleaned off the bleed.

For the head I used Insta-Cure. Success!

This morning I tried to connect the tail middle. Stupid thing was not at the right angle to fit between the tail end and the tail base. I used my new vice to squish the piece into the right angle. Again I’ve used Insta-Cure.

The damn folded wing was back to Gorilla Glue.

This figure is going to take a lot of green stuff to fill the gaps. I have to attach the wings and the claws. In the meantime…I wish pulp, sci fi and western minis were cheaper.

Things I Hear at Work

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Make it Pretty (Good, sure okay. I hope you like honey on ochre cause that’s what I think pretty is)

Can we just add this? (Oh ya, as long as I cut this. What? Sorry, I’m not God enough to make space infinite)

Make it bolder with more colors (While I don’t think you’re trying push the gay pride thing, I support your choice….let me just mark this site off my resume because trying to tell folks this isn’t a gay pride website is going to give me a lot of headaches)

Those People aren’t (insert ethnicity here) enough. (Oh I’m sorry, can you get the club police down here so I can make sure that all ethnicity inclusion rules are followed?)

It’s not webpagey enough (What, in your professional opinion, makes something webpagey? Last I checked the definition was “on the internet”)

Can we make this fun? (I can make it fun, but I’ll need some rum first)

Let’s make this less religious (If a woman holding a sword is a religious experience for you, where can I sign up?)

Can’t we just copy their website (You betcha, just let me give you this resignation letter first)

He’s afraid of you and thinks you don’t like him. (I like him a lot, he’s just not that important)

Why can’t it blink? (Because I’m not two)

We can’t have racy footage on the website! (Then why did you ask me to do a clip piece based on our production of the Rocky Horror Picture Show?)

I liked how it used to be (That’s great! Why did you have me spend the last 48 hours to change it?)

Why can’t you just print out the website for me to look at? (It might be because you have a computer…or because I’d rather be eaten by llamas)

Don’t you have any young senior citizens? (Sure. I keep them in my pocket with the old children.)

Vue 7 Pioneer – Open Beta

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I can’t afford to upgrade my copy of Vue 6 Infinite for the moment.  I’m not really worried about it…eventually I’ll upgrade.   But I couldn’t resist participating in the new Vue 7 Pioneer open beta.  Pioneer is the new entry user level version of Vue as in below d’Esprit.  So it’s pretty simple.  It works fine on Mac and Windows.  It doesn’t have Ecosystems, which I’ve come to rely on…but it comes with the basic level of stuff, just like all Vue versions do.  The render options are not as wide as in Infinite…but I’m seariously thinking of getting this for my daughter.  She likes Bryce, but her copy is my old copy, and I’m not interested in installing DAZ’s version which is pretty much just a plugin for their software line.  The results, with little effort, are high above what Bryce can do.  As for what it can to with effort…well have you seen the latest Indiana Jones or the last two Pirates of the Carribean.

Num.

Pioneer doesn’t have anything but the very basic Vue, so none of those plant apps, wind, or various shader apps that make it a lot of fun in the more advanced areas (I’m a shader whore, it’s Bryce’s fault, Poser and Infinite just feed my addiction….I hate math, why do function editors make sense to me when adding doesn’t?).

This is what I did yesterday.  Pioneer renders the objects first and then the sky.  Because it’s a beta, watermarks.  It took about 10 minutes to put together, with some simple terrain edits and some tweaks to a pre-set sky.

mountain

Mostly I’m now just tired of it.

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So apparently I still have the kidney stone…but it’s sitting in my bladder. Two more weeks of waiting right now…but so far no pain.

We went shooting on Saturday. J bought Aia a Red Rider BB gun. So many jokes aside she really loved it and wore her glasses and ear protection.

Then we had a game of Merc 2000 with some friends. That was great and we spent more time telling stories than playing but that was fine because that was just as much fun.

Sunday Aia and her cousin spent the day at the grandparent’s association picnic. They had a Scooby Doo bouncing castle and the kids spent nearly the whole day in it. That kind of made us the defacto folks in charge.

Then tarot group.

I’ve had Monday and today off too. Yesterday I got my flat tire replaced…that sucked. But then we saw KungFu Panda…it was actually very cute.

So that’s my weekend and I’m tired. I managed to weed today and start the next flower bed. I’m going to write for a while then maybe knit. I’m really liking aluminum needles.