The Archives

Angry Art, Life, Sketchup
Two-Dee-tools
02.28.10 | Permalink | 1 Comment

Here’s some more models I’ve been making for James. First a disc sander that was relatively easy. I’m pretty proud of it. I won’t claim it’s perfect, but there is no denying that it looks like a disc sander. I figure I can model a shield for the disc and it will also pass for an angle grinder (not that I require an angle grinder, but what the hell?).

Next is a belt sander I sort of copped out on. I wasn’t really into modeling this one, but I had to. I’m not really that excited about this one, but it’ll do. It’s also clearly a belt sander, and that’s what matters. One of the best features won’t even be visible in the end – it has a sweet dust collector bag, but it’s only visible from the opposite side.

Finally, I have a router I spent about 4 hours in total working on yesterday. I wanted to add more details, but again, it’s clearly a router, and that’s what matters.

I planned this one out a lot in advance, in my head. I’ve noticed now that if we’re driving in the car, or I’m listening to someone boring talk, my mind begins to wander and picture trying new things in Sketchup. That leads to me trying things, and learning more about the program.

I just talked to James today for quite a while, and worked out some things that should help my financial nonexistence hopefully. Tomorrow I am expecting a fax with new drawings of his residence, and I have to prepare an email regarding me being put on the ISBA payroll.

First thing though, is finish my online application for Home Depot, then I need to finish a few more appendix drawings.

Tomorrow should be a good day.
Photos, Roanisms
Compact Cobra contract killers
02.26.10 | Permalink | Comment?

This is a picture I took of the boys a few weeks ago, just before a Nerf gun war. I believe it was on Valentine’s Day, just after they opened their gifts which came with laser scopes (not real lasers, they’re just focused leds).

Gage immediately modified his by adding the drum magazine from his Raider, and Roan immediately complained about his jamming constantly.

I don’t really have much else to say, I basically wanted to post the image. I think it’s cool.
Health, Photos, Random, Roanisms
Cobra-bbit
02.26.10 | Permalink | Comment?

Last night was Holly and my first night of busting our asses at the YMCA. The night before, we went and registered after bailing on Cub Car prelims. I was the only one who had to get their photo taken because the boys and Holly were just reactivating their memberships, where as I was a new member. Roan and I had been goofing around, so he felt it necessary to give me bunny ears in my membership photo.

Now I have to wear prosthetic fingers on my head whenever I go workout.
Angry Art, Sketchup
Rockin’ raygun renderin’s
02.26.10 | Permalink | Comment?

It’s taken close to 40 hours so far, but here’s what the latest version of my Skindigo manipulated raygun looks like. It’s still rendering, and I’ll probably stop it sometime today or perhaps this weekend – although I am sort of curious how long it will take to render anything completely, so I may leave it.

I assume certain materials are going to take longer to render than others, and I figure maybe glass wasn’t the best choice for an experiment, but I set the image size so small I thought it would render much faster. Next attempt will have no lights, and no glass. Then I’ll see if there is any difference.

Here’s another image of a rendering I stopped a couple days ago. I thought it was going to turn out awesome, but the anodized aluminum texture I used (SU default material) looked like shit so I stopped it.

I also noticed a few changes I wanted to make. Although the glass trigger looks cool in my opinion, it’s impractical. The glass iron sight let too much light through and almost disappears against a white background. I switched the trigger material to look like shiny plastic, but thought changing the camera angle would suffice for the iron sight – it didn’t (as you can see above).

I don’t think it should take me 40+ hours to render a 480×320 image. I need a super machine and lots of money if I’m ever going to make something super cool. I’d love to try rendering all kinds of my models with sweet material properties, but a) my computer would die, and b) what’s the point?
Angry Art, Random, Sketchup
Cobra Com-Planer
02.26.10 | Permalink | Comment?

Here’s a couple images of a 12″ planer I modeled yesterday. They will be for the appendix of the book, and I forgot about them. I thought I had all the appendix drawings done, with the exception of one large model with two frames put together, to form one awesome pain in the ass. wood mansion.

I have a half modeled belt sander I plan to finish in a few minutes (after I update), then I need to do a couple more small hand tools, before moving on to the huge house.

I’m going to attempt to work mostly off my laptop today (as my raygun is rendering away on the desktop), so we’ll see how she holds up. I rarely use it these days at all, and when I do it’s for nothing more than blog updates, Gimp, or browsing from bed.

I miss using tools. Although modeling them is fun, and makes me proud that I taught myself enough to do things I thought were way beyond my potential a year ago, I want to master all these tools I’m creating, and not just play with virtual representations.
Animals, Life, Sketchup, Video
Asshole cats, compassionate cobras
02.24.10 | Permalink | Comment?

Yesterday my brother came and got me around noon and took me to his house to do more of his homework. When we got there we saw a dog wandering around without an owner, on his front lawn. There was an elderly woman walking up the street a bit, and we thought perhaps the dog was hers, so we waited a minute to see if she needed help getting the dog. The dog took off, and clearly wasn’t hers. She asked me if I knew how to get to the TD bank. I told her it was in St Catharines, and that walking there would take her hours. She seemed really confused, and upset that she probably wasn’t going to make it to the bank. My brother and I discussed it, and agreed that if our Nan was in the same position, we’d want some nice person to offer her a ride.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t find any nice people so Chris gave her a ride.

While he was gone, I began working on a CNC machine and it took me the better part of a couple hours to finish it. I think it’s the last machine we needed to add, and now it’s all about adjusting their layout. Once the layout is finalized we need to run bus bars, and conduits, and add breaker panels, and all that jazz.

I must say it was a lot harder to make that machine than I originally thought it would be. Although the finished product was decent and resembled the machine it was based on enough to pass, it was out of proportion. If I had to make it again, I’d spend more time and get it perfect, but since it’s not of major importance it will do.

Below is the video my brother made of what we’ve built so far.
Angry Art, Sketchup
Shiny pew pew pews
02.22.10 | Permalink | Comment?

Tonight I’m going to bed looking forward to waking up in a few hours and checking on the above image, which is currently killing rendering on my other computer.

I took an hour or so today to read about Indigo (and more importantly Skindigo), and then messed around for a few minutes. I made some errors in editing the materials, and caught them about 2 hours into rendering, so I canceled, and decided to start over just before bed (which I just did) and let it run all night.

When it’s all done it should have green glowing parts all over, and the body should look like it’s composed of shiny metal and glossy plastic. That is of course if my machine makes it through the whole ordeal.

My fingers are crossed and with any luck there will be a hi-res, possibly semi-realistic raygun waiting on my monitor when I wake up later.
Photos, Random
0 for 2 ma’am
02.22.10 | Permalink | Comment?

This is ROAN’s invitation envelope, and ‘grab bag’ from his friend’s birthday party on the weekend. Some kid’s mom sucks pretty bad.
Random, Sketchup
He’s a machine, and you don’t keep a deadly machine around when it kills your people and threatens your future!
02.22.10 | Permalink | Comment?

I had intended to post the video my brother made of the model I’m helping him with, but since he failed to get the message that I wanted him to share it so I could embed it here, I’ll settle with posting the above image of a Darbert saw I modeled for him today. We couldn’t find one in the 3d warehouse, so I made one from a shitty photo he had. This is sort of a bad angle because it appears to be floating above the stand, but I promise you the motor housing connects to the blade housing.

Perhaps tomorrow I will get a chance to post the walkthrough video, provided he gets a chance to do it first.
Life, Photos
Papa Cobra grows even… wiser
02.21.10 | Permalink | Comment?

Tonight was my dad’s birthday party. His actual birthday was on Friday (the 19th), but we decided to get together for perogie dinner tonight. Above is a picture of his cake, which was delicious, and appropriately decorated.

After dinner we played Scategories, and it was hilarious. Gage joined in part way through and had some of the best answers.

CATEGORY= bad habits/ LETTER=P/ ANSWER= “Pissing the bed”

CATEGORY=things in the sky/ LETTER=S/ ANSWER=”Shit-hawks”

I’m sure there was more but I left the answers downstairs, and it’s too late to go check now. I would however, like to point out that ‘pissing’ and ‘peeing’ both start with “P”, and ’shit-hawk’ and ’seagul’ both start with “S”. I think someone was having more fun being obscene than trying to win.