HIGH END CUSTOMIZABLE SAUNA EXPERIENCE

A friend of mine pointed me to this browser based cyberpunk game tonight.

There's not much to it, though it's hilarious. I love cyberpunk, and I love how fucking stupid cyberpunk is. I chose to play through as a cyborg hacker with blood red eyes and thought I'd document my first playthrough. Here are some screenshots:

So far this seems to have way more replay value than the new Shadowrun game. Haven't found many FAQs for it though.

Brickworld Indy 2014

So I made it to Brickworld Indy today. I've been meaning to go for the last few years, but I'm lazy and have never gotten around to it. 

Upon buying my ticket, I was given this aftermarket gun by Brick Forge:

I'm not the biggest fan of non-Lego bricks, but this is pretty neat. 

I started looking around and made a beeline for a giant mech display near the entrance, and spent about15 minutes talking to the guy who built it. This was my favorite from the display. He gave me a lot of good advice for building a skeleton, and his designs were incredibly detailed and sturdy. I like sturdiness for a mech.

Oh, this? Just some wizards using magic powers to breach a wall. No big deal!

Unsurprisingly, there was a lot of Lego Movie stuff. I especially liked this upscale version of Princess Unikitty.

I was a huge fan of this t-rex and army of reptilians, just going to town on some pathetic humans.

I'm not super into mosaic stuff, but this Legend of Zelda thing was cool. Plus look at Link's adorable pink cheeks! KAWAII DESU (*^▽^*)

Pretty cool Dark Tower sculpture, including a field of roses.

I like the water technique around this little island, and the cool squid with glowing eyes.

Grumpy Cat was there too.

That lava flow technique though.

There was a big display with the Simpsons house, and the builder had expanded it with the power plant, an irradiated spill and a sweet tire fire behind Moe's tavern. I like the official Simpsons house a lot, but this customized part was a lot more fun. Kind of hard to imagine Lego officially sanctioning a nuclear meltdown set.

I didn't see many robotics displays, but this little guy was busy solving a Rubik's cube. Pretty rad!

This M-Tron display was the last thing I looked at before I left, and easily my favorite. The guy in the back is the lead builder, and he'd convinced his building club to help put everything together. The display itself was massive, and had a ton of awesome little details which I will show you now.

Like these dudes leading a conga line.

Or these dudes summoning a genie.

Or this guy who pissed off a bunch of radioactive spiders.

A lot of the displays were technically really neat, but lacked fun little details like these from the M-Tron display, or the dinosaur attack set from earlier in this post. 

Here's the gun I got for attending, being wielded by one of the classic Space guys my friend Merry sent me a couple weeks ago. He's laughing about shooting a heavy weapons specialist with it, but probably not for long.

I didn't actually end up buying anything, because most of the vendors were selling customized minifigs (not super interesting to me) or parts in baggies (hard to sort through, super disorganized) or actual sets (I'd rather spend money on something I couldn't easily pick up at Target or Amazon) or aftermarket minifig stuff (I'm not much of a purist, but I still don't have much interest in a Lego scale version of a Desert Eagle.)

Still, I had a ton of fun and I'm glad I wasn't too lazy to go this year. FUCK YEAH LEGO

Photografiend

Here's a little backstory:

I got really into photography in college. I'm talking spending all my extra money on lenses and film, spending hours in the darkroom, forgetting to eat because I was editing photos late into the night.

I've never been so obsessed with anything before or since, but shortly after college all my inspiration and drive just kind of fizzled out of me like some kind of gross fluid. Part of it was working full time didn't leave as much room for photography. Part of it was camera phones were getting better and better, and it was harder to justify taking the time to dig out my heavy DSLR to shoot photos, when I had a brand new, generation 1 jailbroken iPhone in my pocket.

And another part of my demotivation was the loss of my beloved Canon 50mm f1.4 lens. Note: I say "loss" here to mean "I dropped it and the focus ring stopped working," not some more accurate meaning for loss. I could get it fixed, but it's been 5 years, I'm lazy and it would be nearly as cost effective to buy a new lens. It's still sitting on my shelf, next to some other long-neglected cameras.

I've always had a thing for prime lenses (they're smaller, faster, lighter, sharper and cheaper than zoom lenses). Primes also lock you into a fixed focal length, which tends to force you to get closer to your subject rather than adjusting the zoom rate. I don't give much of a shit about the body itself (even a full frame DSLR is only comparable to a 35mm film camera, and the only upgrade I'd consider would be a multi-thousand dollar medium-format equivalent, so forget it!) I'll deal with the shitty crop. I only ever publish to the web, anyway. But GODDAMN a medium format DSLR would be tasty.

But yeah, I'm into lenses. So last week I bought a Canon 50mm f1.8 (the baby brother of the lens I mentioned above, nearly identical in terms of function, but with a plastic housing instead of metal and a much less solid design) and it came in the mail today.

I went with the f1.8 rather than the f1.4 because it's roughly a quarter of the price, and I'm notorious for abandoning personal projects shortly after starting them. Do you guys want to know how my Lego spider mech is doing? IN PIECES ALL OVER MY DESK IS HOW IT'S DOING

I shot a few test photos in the shitty lightbox I built a while back, and this is the one I like best:

I don't think it's a great photo, but I like it for a few reasons. It's the first photo I've taken with a real camera in years. It features several elements I like to use in photography (texture, heavy negative space, square format) and it's an amethyst I keep on my shelf, stolen from my main squeeze, Jessica. It's something I look at every day.

Plus it felt good to dust off Photoshop again. For me, it was like a return to ze womb.

I've really just used this as a test subject, but I would like to get back into a longer term project, and things I see / use every day sounds like an acceptable place to start.

It's kind of funny, because my friend Brian messaged me on Facebook the other day, asking for camera recommendations. I offered to simply send him one of my old cameras and some other things I have lying around, and he could just pay for shipping. Shortly after I sent that message, I got the urge to finally get around to buying a replacement lens.

And here we are.

On reading horror in the second grade

My mom was a reader, so I was a reader too.

I learned to read at the same age as the rest of my classmates, but I was better. I liked reading, and I was good at it, so I read a lot. I read all the fucking time: on the way to school, in class when I finished my math work, after school, during dinner, before bed and so on and so forth.

I was really proud whenever my aunts or grandma would tell anyone who would listen that I "read at a college level." When I was eight years old, I thought it was some hot shit. It probably was!

The point is: I was into reading, and I wanted to read the stuff my mom was reading. This book in particular:

My mom wasn't into it. For some reason, she didn't want me reading IT when I was in second grade. But I was persistent, and eventually she said "Fine, read it," thinking I would get bored or move on to other books.

I didn't move on to other books. I read the whole thing, cover to cover, the same way I read my daily reader in school, and the newspaper comics, and anything else I could get my hands on: on the way to school, in class when I finished my math work, after school, during dinner, and so on and so forth.

My teacher (Mrs. Stoner) and my mom both knew I was reading this book, and didn't say anything. They knew it wouldn't do any good. I didn't start reading the book until I got my mom's permission, but I wouldn't leave her alone until she gave me that permission. 

I learned a few life lessons from reading IT in second grade: I learned the word "whore," (though I pronounced it more like "war" because I didn't actually know what it meant.) I also learned I found villains far more interesting than heroes, and I learned that I could be a writer some day. This was a fact that had somehow escaped me until this point. I loved books and spent most of my free time reading, but it didn't occur to me that someone had to write these things. It's not like I thought they just fell out of the sky, fully formed, or burst forth from the forehead of Gentle Zeus.

I just didn't think about it.

I've had this desire to write ever since. Twenty-four years, a degree in journalism, who knows how many half-started stories, novels and essays and a handful of blogs later, and I still have this weird itch to write, and sometimes I just have to sit down and bang out some words until it goes away.

Or at least becomes less irritating. 

I wish I still had my mom's copy of IT. I have one, but I got it at a yardsale when I was a teenager, and it's one of a handful of Stephen King books I've bothered to hang on to. I don't really keep many sentimental things (I've got a good memory, so mostly hanging on to things just seems like a waste of space, and clutter drives me nuts) but I'd like to have her copy of IT.

It was a cheap, paperback copy on her bookshelf in the house I grew up in, and something about that shitty 1980s cover art got inside my head when I was 8 years old.

Jerry the Engineer

I've had this guy sitting on my desk for a while now:

I've been planning on making him the star of a larger set, picturing him as a tech on a space station. I've already started thinking of him as Jerry, and assigning personality traits to him.

In this nightmare scenario, he's been assigned to replace a part in a distant part of the space station, when he runs into something horrifying and unexpected. Look how horrified he is! Holy shit, Classic Space dudes were never this horrified. Or pink.

I love Classic Space, and the Neo-Classic Space movement. I'd like to pick up some more of these guys on BrickLink some time, but Classic Space minifigs aren't cheap, especially if they come with their gear (helmet and oxygen tank) and their logo is in good shape.

On a side note, I definitely had more Classic Space guys when I was younger, but this is the lone survivor. That nightmare scenario I mentioned above is even creepier if you think of him as the last of his kind!

Still, I might pick up some friends for Jerry, the next time I make a BrickLink order.

Progress on my spider mech

Here's an update about the spider mech I've been working on.

Basically I've spent most of the time working on the cockpit. The idea being that I'll start with a good cockpit design, then build out legs and armaments around it.

Ignore the legs and mismatched pieces. I assure you I know some things about color palettes!

Here's some more shots of the cockpit.

I like this design a lot better than the simple dome windshield I took from the Galaxy Squad set I got for Christmas. I'm picturing this as a heavily armed mech, and a big glass windshield didn't really work for me.

Still, I'm new to building these things, so baby steps!

I'm planning on placing a couple more BrickLink orders to get some better joint connections. I'm having a hard time getting the ones I picked up the other day to stabilize, but after some research I've found there are some other pieces that are better for that thing.

Did you think I was lying when I said I don't really like Technic pieces? Haha, fool! It was the truth!

Lego mechs

One of the things that rekindled my interest in Lego is seeing pictures of huge, crazy mechs people have built with Lego. You guys want to see some inspirato?

I'm talking about mechs like this one, built by flickr user zane_houston:

Or this guy by flickr user kwi-chang:

Or this guy by flickr user legoloverman:

This guy also has a tone of awesome retro classic Space stuff on his stream (but that's a Lego post for another day!) Side note: this build is going to be an official Lego set, thanks to Cuusoo. I have mixed feelings about Cuusoo, but I think it's really awesome for pushing offical Lego sets forward. This also sounds like a Lego post for another day.

 I've always wanted to start building mechs of my own, but have held off partly because I don't really consider myself a great builder, and I've been intimidated by awesome designs like these. I've also held off because most of the mech designs use Technic pieces for their underlying structure and GODDAMN, do I ever hate Technic pieces.

You can build mechs without using ball joints, and people certainly do this thing, but I am not clever enough to repurpose hinge pieces to achieve a similar effect.

Long story short: Technic pieces don't feel like Lego pieces to me, and I don't like their design. Still, official Lego sets (especially larger ships and vehicles) often use Technic pieces for underlying structure, so that's what I'm doing.

I picked up a couple small Ninjago sets today because the sets had some useful-looking ball joint pieces and started working on this thing when I got home:

I'm imagining it will be a heavily armored spider mech thing. I've lifted the cockpit entirely from one of the Galaxy Squad sets I got for Christmas, and it's just a placeholder for now. I plan to build a vertical cockpit, so you can see the minifig pilot more easily.

I spent most of my time working on the gun, and while I'm not super happy with it, it's a pretty good first draft:

The ammo drum feels overengineered, but I like the idea so far.

The ball joints I got from the Ninjago sets (you can see them making up most of the legs here) were a good start, but still not quite what I want. They're too long for my purposes, too inflexible and too hard to build around, so I put in a couple of Bricklink orders for some ball joints that typically come with the Hero Factory sets.

I've never been a fan of Hero Factory, since it's the new Bionicle and I hate Bionicle (for many of the same reasons I don't like Technic pieces in general) but those BALL JOINTS, man.

Pretty exciting! I've been wanting to start working on crazy mech designs for a while, and this has been a lot of fun.