[unofficial weekender] He did what?

[sundancer 42900xp 2]

Anybody seen the XLBS? 😉

[danlee 22433xp 0]

@sundancer yes I have. I thought you would have been referring to Warren’s impression of you from earlier in the show.

[sundancer 42900xp 0]

Na, that I covered in my show notes 😉

 

[blinky465 17027xp 2]

@limburger – that video is absolutely spot on! About ten years ago (maybe more) we accidentally set up one of the first hackspaces in he UK, here in Brighton. It came about because one of the local girls wanted to make cool stuff. She tried approaching engineers and programmers, but they were all “gatekeepers of information”. When asked what she wanted to make, and – to them, more importantly – why, she was told there was “no need to invest time and effort in nonsense”.

She set up a robot group to make silly, pointless robots and from there, we evolved into a “make any sort of crazy shit” kind of group (going on to set up a community workshop with laser cutters, cnc machines, welding gear and all kinds of stuff). It came about because someone wanted to make something, not for a commercial purpose, not even for art, but just for the hell of it. And along the way, accidentally created a community of over a hundred geeks and nerds who all learned a lot from it.

I kept my tabletop minis hobby to myself for a while – even among geeks and nerds, it felt like it was something even they could look down on. But slowly, as I turned up at “nerd night” with ever more miniatures-based pointless junk – albeit in the guise of “tiny little electronics projects” we tabletop nerds (there were more of us than we realised – like the “specials” in the TV show Heroes, who live their lives thinking they’re alone in the world!) stopped hiding our little plastic men and produced some of the coolest projects in the club!

Joy is the opposite of cool. Cool relies on looking down on something, to become “elitist” and exclusive. If everyone were cool, nobody is cool. It’s not cool to be one of many. Joy is the opposite – to love what you’re doing, irrespective of what anyone else thinks about it. One of the things I love about Brighton is that, although there are plenty of trendy young cool types, the city is filled with some of the most joyful people I’ve met. Together we make joyful things.

 

When I joined this online community, I felt the same. A bunch of people, making amazing things for no reason other than the joy of doing it. And that’s pretty cool 😉

 

[sundancer 42900xp 3]

When I joined this online community, I felt the same. A bunch of people, making amazing things for no reason other than the joy of doing it. And that’s pretty cool

So you’re saying we’re not cool? How dare you! 😉 But yes, this weird online family here is nice… some cunts and weirdos but hell, that’s what I’m here for *g*

[blinky465 17027xp 2]

I got a poke in the back this afternoon, from one of Mrs Blinky’s crutches. Despite having my own workshop at the end of the garden, I’d been honoured to be given a little deskspace in the backroom that she has turned into an art studio. It’s little more than a shelf, but I was happy to share the studio, rather than us both be in separate rooms all the time while hobbying.

But I had to admit that I’d been spilling over and taking advantage of her generosity. I tried to blame the paintstands I’d made a few years ago

While they look nice (I have three in total) and make finding paints really easy, they actually take up quite a bit of room. They’re not only quite wide, but also quite deep.

So this afternoon, I popped on the XLBS, threw some drawings together in Inkscape, and made myself some new, vertically oriented, paint holders from some scrap 3mm mdf. They’re not as pretty – but look how much desk space I’ve recovered!

So there’ll be no painting this weekend, no messing about with LEDs (I guess I’m getting my excuses for missing this weeks pledges in early) but a much tidier painting area – and a much happier Mrs Blinky.

[blinky465 17027xp 1]

So you’re saying we’re not cool?

Quite the opposite. There’s nothing cooler than someone throwing aside convention and doing a task with complete joy.

[sundancer 42900xp 0]

I know there was a manufacturer of vertical paint racks before… but I can’t remember which one… With the dropper bottles I’d always be afraid that the paint would clog up the nozzle…

[blinky465 17027xp 2]

We’ll have to see how it goes. One of the issues with Army Painter paints is that when they separate, they take a *lot* of shaking to get the pigment and the binder to mix nicely again – lots of people, early on, complained that they were very thin with poor coverage – they simply hadn’t mixed them.

It’s not obvious from the photo, but I deliberately made the rack so the bottles are slightly “nose down” when standing – so the pigment is nearer to the nozzle if/when it settles. I hadn’t actually thought about it clogging the nozzle – I just thought it’d make it easier to get to the usable paint!

[limburger 21668xp 2]

@blinky465 it always amazes me how many people feel the need to tell others that they are having ‘wrong fun’. Videogame communities tend to have that too, especially if the game is considered ‘hard’ and you dare to suggest an ‘easy’ mode …

I’m glad that this community is friendly to everyone regardless of skill.

[blinky465 17027xp 0]

So I had a few hours painting this weekend. Nothing clever or fancy. Just putting paint on some models. I posted them into the WAYPN forum but for some reason, it embiggened the pictures far too much and made the .jpg artifacts look really nasty. So here’s a group shot.

[sundancer 42900xp 0]

Will Jabba get his little pipe with smoke and all? 😉

[blinky465 17027xp 1]

Nothing clever or fancy. No electronics. Jeez. I’m already making traffic lights and KITT with audio (possibly motor-driven movement) 😉

Although I haven’t yet made a throne for Jabba, and it’s really, really temping to put it on a rack and pinion so it can expose and cover the trapdoor to the Rancor monster….

[blinky465 17027xp 0]

Another Thingiverse find painted up. I’m quite liking the way this is going….

(it’s actually a mash-up of a couple of Max Rebo models, and I learned to use Blender’s Rigify to repose existing .stl files)

[sundancer 42900xp 0]

Max Rebo not playing his tune? What a shame XD

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