No more chickens
Restic to the flame
I bought a copy of Dreadball earlier this year mostly to have a sports boardgame that Henry and I could play. (Owen is happy playing non-sports oriented games.) The material used for the Dreadball figures is, what has come to be called, "restic" -- some combination of resin and plastic. It has a reputation of being difficult to prepare for painting. (For a counter experience read How to clean restic.) One piece of advice I read in the comments section of Seeking advice on preparing the minis for play was to flash the flashing with a cigarette lighter's flame. After too many hours of trimming with a knife I decided the give the flame a go. The basic approach is to warm the material enough so that you can smooth out the heavier flashing with your thumb and for the lighter flashing to burn off. And, after a little trial and error, it does work. However, for detailed, thinly molded elements of the figure you still need to just use a knife. Using the flame often ends with stumpy ears and hands. Even with the few errors the figures look fine after priming.
Walter Dean Myers and Henry
Skype and development teams
- Use a fixed format font for sender and receiver because we still manually align tabular data and draw ASCII diagrams.
- Don't interpret any of the message text as emoticons, links, telephone numbers, etc. Most of the time the interpretation is inappropriate.
- Identify every message in a conversation so they can be referenced. We use specific identifiers -- file paths, line numbers, revision numbers, etc -- because specific referencing means that all parties in the conversation are using the same data. Use a simple initials ＋ sequence number identifier for ease of typing. (No UUIDs, please.)
- Includes images in conversations. Images are only slightly less important than text to a successful conversation.
- Show more messages on the screen. Do this not by making the font smaller, but by reorienting the message presentation to take advantage of monitors having more width than height.
Update: I would add tabular data to images as another first class data type. For example, I like how I can copy a SQL select result from DBeaver or SQuirreLSQL and paste it into Jira.
Wanted: Portable worktop and toolbox
Leo and I were talking about our first-world troubles of 1) not having a permanent miniatures painting station and 2) the that the temporary one we do have takes us away from the family at night. I have tried multiple solutions but so far nothing has stuck as working. In general, what I think I want is a portable worktop and toolbox. This way I can quickly retrieve it & open it up for working and later close it & store it away. The following have been inspiring and all within my skill level and with tools I have available
http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-a-Portable-Workstation/
I really like how this has a proper place for each item and that the work surface is quite wide.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Portable-Work-Station/
This one reminds me of the old portable writing desks. I like that it has draw for storage but that this is under the work surface is going to be inconvenient too often.
http://www.instructables.com/id/BH-1-Mobile-Work-Station/
While not strictly as portable a worktop as the others, it is f'n awesome! and has many great ideas.
I did make the following as an experiment of a least complex solution -- a wide box with lid that acts as copyholder and support for built-in lighting.
But, in the end, I did not like it. I mostly did not like that when the lid is open it blocks my view of the room and family. I have not put any time into designing an alternative yet -- but I will.
Using standard open dialog box in NetBeans
You can have NetBeans use OS X's standard open dialog instead of the poor Swing alternative. To do this, update your "netbeans.conf", mine is at /Applications/NetBeans/NetBeans\ 7.3.1.app/Contents/Resources/NetBeans/etc/netbeans.conf, to include the flag "-J-Dnb.native.filechooser=true" in the "netbeans_default_options" property.
iPhones and camera lens lint
My iPhone 5 has lint between the camera lens and the external housing. I had the same problem with my iPhone 3G. Is this a common problem for folks who do not put their iPhone in a case and keep the phone inside their pants front pocket?
Using greenstuff
I am about to convert a female fantasy figure into a dark age warrior. I have clipped off the fantasy weapon, modified a hand to hold a sword, and the other hand to hold a shield. Now I have to reduce the exposed cleavage and so will be using some "greenstuff" to cloth her. Since I have never done this before I looked on YouTube.com for tutorials. While there are many, I thought this one on making a cape was especially helpful
Dip 'n Spin
I have been playing with "dip" again to quickly apply shading to my minis. The Army Painter Dark Tone is, essentially, a black stain. The results are too black for my liking: everyone looks like they just emerged from a coal mine. Not wanting to spend another $30 on the Strong Tone I picked up a small can of Minwax Polyshade Antique Walnut. This I like much better. It might also be that for dark age Welsh it is just seems more appropriate. That is, the minis look grubby. There are many tutorials on how to apply these products so I won't go into that here. Instead, I just want to put another plug in for using soda bottle caps and necks.
When using stains you have to remove the excess. Most folks don't actually dip the mini in the stain but instead dab the stain on with a sacrificial brush. Then, as the stain pools, using the same brush to remove the excess. Well, I wanted to try dipping and so I needed a means of removing the excessive excess stain this leaves on the mini. Flicking was not in the cards. Instead, I hot glued a soda bottle neck to a stick, attached the stick to a drill, screwed the bottle cap attached mini on, and gave it a spin!
It does work. However, either my drill does not spin fast enough or I need a more random motion as too much stain remains. And so you need to go back to the mini with a brush and remove the remaining excess. All in all, the dabbing method is the most effective.
For related postings see wargames.
English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
I am clearly the last person to ask about English language usage, but I am very interested in its edge cases. I subscribe to the http://english.stackexchange.com/ weekly newsletter and find it fascinating. My guess is, you would too.
Want a simple, synchronized shared scrapbook
I have all these local, really high tech hardware, software, & networks on my desk and the only easy way for me to copy a URL from iPhone to Mac and vis versa is via a text message (I use Skype to SMS). All I want is a simple, synchronized shared scrapbook for text and images between all my devices. Can someone please make this happen?
Update: A friend suggested Pushbullet. It looks to be a useful service, but I really don't want another account just for this small need. From reading between the lines, Pushbullet looks to do nothing more than coordinate a Google Drive document (or folder of documents). Which I can also do with a URL bookmark. Which I did. This seems to work well.
SAGA Links
The "Wednesday Gamers" will be playing SAGA starting next week. (Even if our minis are only primed!). To help prepare the gamers I collected this list of SAGA links.
- Rules
- http://www.grippingbeast.com/shop.php?CatID=2396
- Meeples & Miniatures's Review
- http://meeples.wordpress.com/reviews/rules-reviews/dark-age-medieval/saga/
- SAGA First Look
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tPtJP2VnVY
- The Tapestry (dedicated to SAGA)
- http://www.sagatapestry.com/
- Battle Boards for Dummies
- http://www.sagatapestry.com/2012/06/battle-boards-for-dummies.html
- Board Game Geek's SAGA page
- http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/101865/saga
- How to play SAGA
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oo1XBwZ4Zb4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I7h9z21gbA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hlb3ARoReLI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX9bQVXllDs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I7h9z21gbA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BoBAah7Wak
- SAGA Dark Age Skirmish Game Tournament Report
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I77pc4m4XpY
If you have any good links please do add them in the comments.
Podcasts I listen to on a regular basis
Long Now Foundation's Seminars
Really great set of 1-1:30 hour lectures on many topics but mostly about long term thinking and experiences.
http://longnow.org/seminars/podcast/
Science for the People
Topical science interviews
http://www.scienceforthepeople.ca/
The British History Podcast
Great presentation of UK history from the beginning
http://thebritishhistorypodcast.com/
The D6 Generation
Boardgames and more.
http://www.thed6generation.com/
Meeples & Miniatures
Military, fantasy, and science fiction miniature wargames
http://meeples.wordpress.com/
The Memory Palace
Forgotten people doing big and small things
http://thememorypalace.us/
Sawbones
History of medicine
http://www.maximumfun.org/shows/sawbones
You are not so smart
The qualities of thinking and our flaws
http://youarenotsosmart.com/
Futility Closet
Trivia and oddities from the past
http://www.futilitycloset.com/
"There are, too, elves in Mirkwood!"
When walking Milo yesterday he and I passed several boys (16 ish) playing tennis. They were your usual generic white suburban kids talking tough to one up each other. We continued our walk. On the way back we pass them again and overheard one retelling a recent conversation:
Him: There are, too, elves in Mirkwood!
Other: No there arn't. Only Rivendale has elves.
Him: Well, of course Rivendale has Elves you dumb ass. We are discussing Mirkwood!
Luckily, they did not see me and Milo grinning.
Bruce Sterling at Webstock '13
We live in the time of "dark euphoria." "The Web had users. The Stacks have livestock." Other deep insights. And, if you are at all concerned about where LOLcats are taking us then keep listening after the 25 min mark.
Webstock '13: Bruce Sterling - What a feeling! from Webstock on Vimeo.
Update: A old friend says that what is being said are less deep insights and more genre's tropes. His presentation of these ideas was new to me, however.
A system for mounting my miniatures
I finally have a comfortable system for mounting my miniatures while painting them. I have tried mounting with sticky gums, but this leave a residue and/or can be a bugger to get off. I have tried glueing with PVA, but adhesion is too weak and ended with models flying off into the grass as I spray primed them. I have tried using hot glue, but adhesion is too strong and ended with several broken legs while detaching the models.
In the end I settled on using 3M's 1/2" Double Sided Mounting Tape Squares and soda bottle caps. The squares are right sized, precut, many (90 per pack), cheap, and hold the model firmly.
Here are my current steps to mounting and priming.
Awesome worktable
This portable worktable and instructions on building it are awesome. I don't need it, but want to build it anyway.
Installing Java 6 on OS X Mavericks, again.
Download and install Java 1.6 from http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1572 and install.
Set Java 1.6 as your default using
/usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.6
I need to use NetBeans 7.3.1 (newer versions require Java 1.7) which is downloaded from https://netbeans.org/downloads/7.3.1.
To ensure that NetBeans runs using Java 1.6 edit the configuration file
/Applications/NetBeans/NetBeans 7.3.1.app/Contents/Resources/NetBeans/etc/netbeans.conf
-- which is actually a bash script! -- and define the netbeans_jdkhome environment variable
netbeans_jdkhome=$(/usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.6)
And that is it. You now have Java 6 and Java 7 on your Mac. If you want Java 1.6 to be the default for you always then add the following to your rc script
export JAVA_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.6)
15,000 unorganized photos
I have some 15,000 photos that are unorganized. In part, this is because of the rapid changes in both camera and computers used. Thankfully, they are backed up. So, a second step is organizing them is to group them by year and month. I don't think I need day, but that might change. Most of the photos have encoded within them the date and time they were taken. To organize them I just need this data and a means to associate them. The following Perl script does this by using the Image::MetaData::JPEG module, dated directories, and symbolic links.
Usage:
find ~/Dropbox -type f \( -iname '*.jpeg' -o -iname '*.jpg' \) \ | perl organize.pl ./PICTURES 2>/dev/null >./PICTURES.sh
Once the PICTURES.sh script has been made it can be run using
bash -xe PICTURES.sh 2>&1 >PICTURES.log
The Perl script organize.pl is
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Image::MetaData::JPEG;
my $root = shift @ARGV;
die "root is not a directory" unless defined $root && -d $root;
my $count = 10000;
my %mkdirs = ();
while ( my $file = <> ) {
chomp $file;
my $dir = "unusable";
my $image = new Image::MetaData::JPEG($file);
if ( defined $image ) {
my $metadata = $image->get_Exif_data('IMAGE_DATA', 'TEXTUAL');
if ( exists $metadata->{DateTimeOriginal} && $metadata->{DateTimeOriginal}->[0] =~ /^(\d\d\d\d):(\d\d)/ ) {
$dir = "$1/$2";
}
else {
$dir = "undated";
}
}
unless ( exists $mkdirs{$dir} ) {
print "mkdir -p $root/$dir\n";
$mkdirs{$dir} = 1;
}
my $efile = $file; $efile =~ s/([^a-zA-Z0-9_\.\/])/\\$1/g;
print "ln -s $efile $root/$dir/$count.jpg\n";
$count += 1;
}
And why is this the second step? Because removing duplicates is the first.
Update: I did use this to organize my photographs held in DropBox. I replaced the symbolic link command with a move command. DropBox just moved the files and not, as I was worried about, re-upload the whole collection. Thank you DropBox engineering.