Still Not Dead Checkin

06.22.2020

I saw the above somewhere on the Facebook and thought it appropriate for me.

Since it's been over a month since I last posted anything I thought I'd check in with the internet. Hobby-wise I've completed nothing. At best I've painted parts of some minis and made most of a 2nd floor mall store. I'm not in a real hurry to finish any of this, so we'll see how long it takes to get something post-worthy on the hobby front.

The highlight of my free time has been playing GTA with Jer. I've been playing GTA5 Online, according to my stats, for 3 years. All of those 3 years were me running around on a private server so as to avoid 13 year-olds sniping me. Now I'm enjoying the mix of showing Jer neat things about the game while discovering what missions can be played with more than 1 player. It's like a whole new game!

I've been concentrating on studying for the Salesforce Platform Developer exam over the last month. 3 months, really, but this last month I finally got a good groove into how elder-me can study and retain.

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Last of the Foundry Minis / Monkey Time Zoom

04.15.2020

That last of the batch of 10 Foundry Hitmen (and either Professionals or Detectives) primed in December now have a coat of paint. I've complained before about the quality of these sculpts. They're most likely not as bad as I make them out to be, they just don't jibe well with my level of painting skill. My new technique (for me) to try out this time was to finally switch brushes while painting a color/area based on need. Using a detail brush to swath the back of a coat wasn't doing the detail brush any favors toward longevity. I also tried to remember to work from the inside of the mini and out, instead of hitting everywhere the color on the brush was needed. This gave some better lines between skin tones and whatever they abutted to. For once, I did the heads last - and I'm not sure if it made a difference.

It's been long enough since the painting spreadsheet was updated it's hard to tell what's changed. Foundry, Buildings, and 6" tiles have all had progress marked since the last shown update of the spreadsheet.

Next up on the hobby table: I don't know. Mall stores need furniture. I liked having primed minis to paint for when the painting mood hit, so I may go ahead and prime another batch. There's some 3D-printing associated things I need to do (mostly mall related).

Tangentially, in today's pandemic world, I've been working from home and staying sequestered like everyone else, or at least everyone else has been encouraged. As homelife is just me, my social interactions have been a Friday trip to the chiropractor (he's not just my chiropractor, he's my buddy!), avoiding people when I go to Publix, and a couple of Zoom meetings for work. Repeat this weekly for a month. I'm ok with the day-to-day living (or maybe isolation?) as I've geared myself to live mostly this way over the past couple of years. Within that, Jer pointed out that once our pandemic is less pandemicy, I need to make sure I force myself to get out and socialize.

This made me think of when he, I, and Keith worked together at whichever job it was at the time (I alternate riding their coat tails, so it's hard for me to keep up with when things happen). We developed a tradition of taking a break at 3:00 to grab a Coke. Thanks to Google, 3:00 is also The Hour of the Monkey, even though it's 2 hours long. 3:00 became Monkey Time not long after, and calls for Monkey Time would have us grab change and head to the vending machine. Keith also referred to this as Jingle Time, as a past job had a coworker who would walk by and jingle the change in his pocket as the sign for taking a break and grabbing a beverage.

Last week, thanks to Zoom, the 3 of us had a virtual Monkey/Jingle time.

That's now a recurring meeting on our calendars. Even if you're stuck at home, take some time to virtually socialize with your friends.

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...And A Month Goes By

02.21.2020

After the printing frenzy from last month, I would have thought I would have been productive and have something to show on here. But nope, nada. That's not to say I've been doing nothing, it's just for the things I've been doing I've nothing to show. Hence, it was time for a traditional "not dead" post.

My big hobby projects have large "I need to do stuff on the computer" components. For the 4Ground Mall, I've got to scrounge, resize, and print graphics. More importantly, I've got and idea for switchable store-front signs that involves not just the 3D printer, but making the model for the 3D printer. Even with my years and years of playing around with Poser and some intro training to 3D Max when I started working at Westar, I still don't know how to make a 3D/Printable model. Thanks to a recent sale, I found a starting from scratch tutorial series that I thought I would give a try - and so far I'm enjoying it. There are plenty of free tutorials out there, but I like the way Vladimir teaches. Halfway through the course and I'm not lost yet.

I'm taking the Old Man approach to these lessons, which is something I found worked well for me when I was trying to learn Unity programming. Although it would be fairly easy to binge and run through all the lessons, that only teaches me to parrot what I see and not understand why I'm doing things - and more importantly why NOT to do some things. With the Unity tutorials, I would watch a video - not follow along and write code, not skip the parts I thought I already knew - and then after watching I would replay the video and follow along writing code (or whatever I needed to do), trying to use the video more as a reference to see how well things soaked in. It worked well - in later videos the instructor might make a mistake and I would pick up on it before he corrected it better than half the time. And here's the important part of my approach - I only watch/attempt 1 lesson/day. At some point I read about trying to learn too much at once, and how the brain and subconscious needs time to sort and absorb what you take in. It sounded like New Age hullabaloo, but I've found since then that I retain better using this approach. It takes a little longer, but I'm in no real hurry.

Slow tutorial learning - that's been the crux of the past month. Add in cold weather is still keeping me from doing anything with the printer in the garage, and the big things I had lined up to do just have nothing to show. While I've still got a batch of minis primed, I've not thought about painting anything. Not sure if that's good or bad. Maybe I'll pull out the paint this weekend and see how my skills have dulled?

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Can I Support Those Digital Copies?

11.01.2019

I've been buying movies for a long time. The first movie I bought, on VHS, was 1989's Batman. In 1997 I started getting DVDs (Starship Trooopers was the disc I bought). Being elderly, I like having a physical copy of a movie. It's come in handy those times when, living in the boonies, my internet decides to take a vacation. Over the past year, I've been purchasing fewer physical movies. The prices don't drop as fast as they used to, and the prices are going up a little bit (about $3 from what the average new release week prices were a few years ago). Stores are carrying fewer and fewer discs. I went into Target this past week and found the DVD section was now 1 aisle. 2 years ago, it was 4 aisles.

I've been watching more streaming video, like everyone else. Amazon Prime and Netflix have become the "stations" that I watch. Movies that I'm traditionally on the fence about purchasing, or waiting for a good sale, often end up streaming on one of these. For the past few years I've had a "wait for a $10 sale" movie list. Amazon's streaming service has managed to put a lot of those movies on my wait list on sale for $10. At that point, why not spend $10 for the digital version and not worry about storing the physical disc?

I've got a lot of dedicated space for those discs. With the living room remodel, an impressively rough estimate of 9'x13' of wall space is now covered in Ikea shelves just to hold those discs. In my quirky way of keeping track of things, with the latest purchases of XMen and Spiderman I now have 2256 DVD titles. That number doesn't include all the extra discs of TV shows. Running a quick query, I've got 506 seasons of shows. Conservatively, if a season fits on 1 disc (and not 7, like season of Star Trek: TNG takes 7 discs) when add on 506 discs to 2256 titles. Granted, that 2256 includes 1 entry per TV show, but I think there are more multi-disc seasons than not so it's still a conservative average. 2756 discs. That definitely takes some room.

As such, I'm trying to embrace purchasing digital/streaming copies and ignore the voice in my head that says "what if the place hosing the movie goes under?" I almost exclusively buy from Amazon which means that shouldn't be a problem. But the voice with the question is still there.

Movie formats change. DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, 4K/UHD. I'm not sure if today's streaming format will be supported in 5 years. I still pop in that 20+ year old Starship Troopers disc on occasion, so it's something I actually worry about. I've gotten screwed twice with apps I enjoyed that were no longer supported due to my device being too old to support the upgrades (stupid 1st gen iPad) or whatever place was hosting the server, and a server was required because it was an app, shut down.

All of that is out of my control. I hardly ever rent a movie because I'm traditionally more apt to watch something I like more than once. It's a $10 purchase vs $3 rental that I gamble on and most likely lose money on in the long run. Maybe this is the time to convince myself to switch to renting more streaming movies instead of purchasing everything outright. Can I make a New Years resolution in November? That sounds like a good one.

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I Am A: Chaotic Evil Human Wizard (7th Level)

10.25.2019

I was cleaning up bookmarks while moving to a new everyday-laptop and came across a still-active link with 100+ questions that would tell me what D&D character I am.

I Am A: Chaotic Evil Human Wizard (7th Level)

Ability Scores:
Strength-12
Dexterity-13
Constitution-13
Intelligence-14
Wisdom-16
Charisma-11

Alignment:
Chaotic Evil A chaotic evil character does whatever his greed, hatred, and lust for destruction drive him to do. He is hot-tempered, vicious, arbitrarily violent, and unpredictable. If he is simply out for whatever he can get, he is ruthless and brutal. If he is committed to the spread of evil and chaos, he is even worse. Thankfully, his plans are haphazard, and any groups he joins or forms are poorly organized. Typically, chaotic evil people can be made to work together only by force, and their leader lasts only as long as he can thwart attempts to topple or assassinate him. Chaotic evil is sometimes called demonic because demons are the epitome of chaotic evil. Chaotic evil is the best alignment you can be because combines self-interest and pure freedom. However, chaotic evil can be a dangerous alignment because it represents the destruction not only of beauty and life but also of the order on which beauty and life depend.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Class:
Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard's strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus.

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Detailed Results:

Alignment:
Lawful Good ----- XXXXX (5)
Neutral Good ---- XXXXXXXXXX (10)
Chaotic Good ---- XXXXXXXXXXXXX (13)
Lawful Neutral -- XXXXXXXXXXX (11)
True Neutral ---- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (16)
Chaotic Neutral - XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (19)
Lawful Evil ----- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (22)
Neutral Evil ---- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (27)
Chaotic Evil ---- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (30)

Law & Chaos:
Law ----- XXX (3)
Neutral - XXXXXXXX (8)
Chaos --- XXXXXXXXXXX (11)

Good & Evil:
Good ---- XX (2)
Neutral - XXXXXXXX (8)
Evil ---- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (19)

Race:
Human ---- XXXXXXXXXXXXX (13)
Dwarf ---- XXXXXXXXXX (10)
Elf ------ XXXXXX (6)
Gnome ---- XXXXXXXX (8)
Halfling - XXXX (4)
Half-Elf - XXXXXXXX (8)
Half-Orc - XXXXXX (6)

Class:
Barbarian - XXXXXX (6)
Bard ------ XXXXXXXXXXXX (12)
Cleric ---- XXXX (4)
Druid ----- XXXXXXXXXXXXXX (14)
Fighter --- XXXXXXXXXXXX (12)
Monk ------ XXXXXXXXXXXX (12)
Paladin --- XXXXXXXXXX (10)
Ranger ---- XXXXXXXXXXXX (12)
Rogue ----- XXXXXXXXXX (10)
Sorcerer -- XXXXXXXXXXXX (12)
Warlock --- XXXXXXXXXXXX (12)
Wizard ---- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (16)

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