Horse-y!

I think it’s time for a “big” kit project… I was thinking of finishing up the Lilith , but got stuck on coming up with an idea for a base. The other alternative is to do the Sorayama Amazon (link contains nudity) with the wet tricks I did with Ayanami, that’d also kick butt. Or Griffith on Horse from Berserk, which I have been very tempted to start on lately. The last option wins out for now, since it’s work-safe and I needed something in my office

On such a large kit surface preparation is almost exclusively done with a rotatary tool, I’m just starting to get a hang of it. The horse is probably going to be a lot of trouble, because it’s wrapped in a cape of sorts, and so there’ll be a lot of masking and puttying when I install the cape pieces after painting the horse’s body. The cliff base is cast in polystone, and I didn’t realize it, but the core is empty. So little horse can’t really stand securely Therefore I’m filling it with plaster of paris.

Back :(

The hosting company took the site off yesteday and today, as they claimed that I was using too much cpu. I think there were spiders going through the gallery that I was still working on optimizing. Unfortunately the hosting people use some bizarro math as criteria for reinstatatement that will put me out for at least a day. Then today I got no response from them for most of the day which made me quite angry.
Anyway I’m glad that this sucky experience is over for now.

Forum

All the old blogs and threads can now be found in the new forum.

Good thing I converted the phpBB forum and all the data to use the SMF software before I moved hosting. For some reasons the phpBB forum didn’t want to be recovered But SMF is better in many ways (which is why I switched). Originally I planned to migrate all data to WordPress, but the SQL tables behind the two softwares are very different, so it looks like it’ll be a lot of work that I’d rather not do at this point.

New article on my photo rig

I'm beginning to document my photography setup . I'm still trying to experiment with my flash setup, so may be someone experienced can point out the obvious mistakes I'm making

Gallery2 Integration & H kits

I guess I haven’t done any leisure hacking for so long that I found working on my site really appealing

I’ve gotten much further along with embedding Gallery2. A week ago I couldn’t decide whether I wanna go with Coppermine or Gallery2. The main objection to Gallery2 was the lack of an open comment system; but then I thought may be I can integrate the WordPress comment system into Gallery2! What a messy concept… but I decided to go with it.

The idea is I’d associate an album to a WP page. I doubt I really want a per-image commenting ability of coppermine, in particular I want all the comments to be grouped in one place (ok so I don’t really get a whole lot of comments, but I am not one to be deterred by such details ) . I chose Gallery2 over Coppermine mainly because it has an extremely nice array of methods to upload & construct galleries. I can even create the galleries on my PC and then upload them in the right hierarchy to my server with the Gallery Remote application! This beats uploading via ftp and then use the web interface to create new albums ala Coppermine.

Anyway, it went ok with the WPG2 plugin integration, which was a breeze. But the main stumbling block was the commenting system – I simply have no way of associating a WP page ID with an album. The Gallery2 API didn’t expose the details of an album, so I can’t associate a WP ID to it. Anyway after a few hours of crash and burn I found a way using mod rewrite to do its job… phew. So may be now I’ll start reconstructing my gallery – this time with a real interface

The first kit I’ll upload however is a 3-figure H diorama that I finished before I went on hacking. I haven’t done any H kits for so long, I’m fixing that with a full dosage For that, I also implemented some sort of adult check thingy. Coming soon!

Robots replacing robots

I was test driving the neat “Google RelatedLinks” box at the bottom of this page, and saw this article about Gundam Wing past being its prime. It strangly echoes what I briefly thought about recently, that SEED is so much a better as a story than Wing was. Of course, being a more recent series, you have better animations and stuff in SEED, but my memory of Wing is mostly people switching sides all the time – often for no good reasons – just for the sake of the plot. That’s not to say SEED’s characters don’t do that, and SEED Destiny’s “sides” are even more blurred, but at least we have a smaller set of core characters that have believable motivations, and the story flows better. I mainly remember Wing by its final Endless Waltz OVA, which has very cool designs and a simple story.

Tubing cutter?

I’m embarrassed to say that I don’t know how to use one of these K&S tubing cutter. I put a 1/16″ brass tube in the groove and turned the screw, but I don’t see cutting happening!

I got one because I thought I can cut the tubes that I use for pinning more conveniently. Aluminum is easy to cut, but I often don’t like cutting brass because it’s a hassle to saw them off (yes I have low tolerance for work ). But sometimes you don’t get to choose because brass is just a better alternative for pinning high stress areas.