This will be my blog

[B1g_crunch]

So I had a weird/cool dream last night that I can only vaguely remember, and I wanted to post details here because I might want to remember it or make something of it.


The setting was in a very big modern city, and it must have been by a harbor as well (or had an airport nearby) because I can remember something like that too. At one point the subway collapses and the area is quarantined due to a large underground system of caverns being revealed, and some sort of hazards and dangerous gas leak. Deep in the caves though there was some ancient forest and a giant sentient/talking tree.

A couple characters that showed up were a small exploration team made of people who snuck in out of curiosity and turned back because of the hazards down in the caves. There was an adventurer who wanted to profit off of whatever could be found down there, a young explorer who went in on his own to see what was down there (I don't think he talked much), and some tribal dude who I think died after he, the adventurer, and the young explorer made it to the tree together (but not before some sort of exposition on who he was and stuff about where he was from). The adventurer sent the tribal guy's corpse somewhere, and the tree got pissed at him and told him to get the body back and bring it to the tree.  

[B1g_crunch]

So I found a cool site called HabitRPG that lets you turn your life and goals into an RPG. I'm using it to get rid of my nailbiting habit, work in some daily routines, and finish up some of my projects. It's kinda fun actually. Before I'd make a bunch of plans and get intimidated by the workload, but now with this it feels like there's more incentive to break down a lot of prior goals (you can even add checklists to break down larger efforts into small tasks).

I've looked at gaming journalism, and from what I've seen it looks kinda blah. The pay for starting out is between 25-30 thousand per year, and there's a lot of downsides to look out for. A friend of mine named Peter is part of a gaming blog, and Kevin said he and his friend were going to make a blog to review beer. Apparently you can make good money off ad revenue if your site is good enough, so after clearing up some of my media, I think I'll look into starting a gaming blog. Who knows?  

[B1g_crunch]

Okay, so now I'm almost done with Digimon World Dawn. Soon I'll need to beat my 3 DS titles (Megaman ZX, Cave Story, and Last Window) if I want a clear system for Bravely Default.

I want to get Bioshock Infinite soon, but I'll need to beat SotC, Asura's Wrath, and Vanquish before I can even think about that (FF IX and Fallout 3 are on hold due to being way long).

Steam won't be a problem until this summer, when I think Transistor comes out and I'll want to scramble to get it. I have 3-4 incomplete games on there, and I think it'd take 30 hours to put a big enough dent in it to be satisfied.


In the meantime I'm reading for an hour a day. I canceled one of my resolutions to draw something each day, since I don't know what to draw to practice anything. I'll probably wait until everything is cleared up before I check out a few art books to start practicing.

Working out is going alright, but I'm still not doing too much with it. I'll probably change that soon and start adding in more stuff daily to go at a better pace.

I'll listen to more of Kaki King tonight and write down what songs I want from the last albums of hers I haven't listened to, then start on El Ten Eleven, Ratatat, and Bosstones stuff until I clear those.  

[B1g_crunch]

Links to read on starting a blog:

http://business.tutsplus.com/articles/earn-a-living-from-blog-ads--fsw-36916

http://www.howtostartablog.org/

http://startbloggingonline.com/  

[B1g_crunch]

So Bravely Default comes out next week. I'm going to try and beat Asura's Wrath this weekend and start Vanquish/beat Vanquish by the middle of this next week. If I can get those 2 games out of the way, I can maybe buy Bioshock Infinite at the same time as BD and beat them both.

I need to finish Cave Story as well, but I restarted on easy mode (I don't know if I was on it before, but I sure am now). If easy mode is too hard on the last level, I'll probably do classic mode, since the changed perspective might make it easier to get past final level traps.

Once I beat Bravely Default, I need to write a practice review. I've also decided to try my hand at making an outline for the story I have at the top of this page. If I can make the characters and setting fleshed out, I might try to make a story of it.

This next week/this weekend I need to also call Nintendo's customer support about the DS settings on my 3DS, and also call local tabletop groups about going in and count out my old Yugioh cards.

Boxes/sleeves will be $10 altogether,
Rare cards will be $20 combined,
Japanese cards are $5,
Binder is $10,
Play mat will be $15-20,
Hidden Arsenal cards will be $10 for the whole box.

If I do the above listing/calling on Saturday night and Sunday, I can start aerobics on Monday and list my Yugioh cards on eBay as well. I also want to make a smoothie if we have frozen fruit then. Then on Friday I get the games after work burning_eyes


...Also, sometime in all that I want to make some ice cream. A batch of chocolate-coffee ice cream with 1/2 cup cocoa powder and 3 tablespoons of coffee mix.  

[B1g_crunch]

I got Bravely Default and was astounded by the boss difficulty until I realized that I had been avoiding random encounters for most of the game. Now I'm trying to grind enough to make it another few bosses without encounters razz

Kevin is making me eat tilapia tonight, since he backed out of his promise to talk to Susana about how it gives me stomach pain for hours after even a few small bites. I was going to be good all week so I could treat myself on Friday, but I think now I'll eat lunch at the movie theater tomorrow during the 11:45 showing.

I need to get the stuff I'm going to sell listed this week, so maybe I can get rid of the bulk of it by the time I go to New Mexico next month. I also need to finish some books I've got (not too much reading), and work on beating at least half of Vanquish so I can do the other half maybe Saturday night.

If I can work through my books, as well as Bravely Default and Vanquish by the end of this week, next week will be a nice fresh start to find some local hobby groups and tackle the next few items on my lists.  

[B1g_crunch]

It's a snow day today, so no work and no play. Catkid (not using her real name in case someone reads this. I don't know how comfortable she is with people online knowing her real name) and I are officially "out" as a couple to the guild, so that's nice.

Monday will be when I do all the mall stuff, and I really need to step it up in Bravely Default. I could probably make a lot more progress if I weren't caught up in trying to complete the vampire subquest (blue mage job is my favorite, though). BD is keeping me from thinking about other games, but once I finish I'll try and rush through either Bioshock or Vanquish while maybe taking out Valdis Story on the side.

I also found OFF on my computer. I thought it was gone from the great Firefox purge of '13, but lo' and behold I found my most favorite RPG maker RPG. I'll have to make a note to get back into it after the other 4 games are over, but in the meantime I've put in on my desktop so I don't lose it again.

I don't know if I'll still have the house to myself tomorrow night. The snow on my street goes unplowed all the way down to the grocery store, so that's a problem. If it isn't cleared up (either through melting or plowing) by Sunday, there could be problems in going to the concert as well. Thankfully the rest of the blizzard passed over us and it's expected to get warmer tomorrow and Sunday, and the concert isn't until that night.  

[B1g_crunch]

Need to post this so I remember to read it.

http://www.batoto.net/read/_/224913/kuro_by_boon-scanlation  

[B1g_crunch]

Jojolion theory:

The second half of Josuke is Johnny Joestar or something to do with him. The second half of his plunder ability is linked to Jesus' corpse, the ability to take something and put it somewhere else. This ability will save the Higashikata family from the disease they inherited, which is the same one that Rina contracted.

When the children of the Higashikata family come down with the illness, the older generation sacrifices themselves in a similar manner to how Johnny Joestar did for Rina, using some power to transfer it to themselves.  

[B1g_crunch]

Hiddochi wolf

1. Have an appreciation for badassery.
2. Be capable of at least a basic expression of creativity.
3. Try s**t, fail twice at it, get better, practice, and eventually become epic.

razz

In all seriousness, though, I would look for either a local class at any recreational center near you or find some good tutorial videos online; I haven't watched them all the way through, but this video series looks like it'd be a good place to start. 3nodding

As for tools/materials you'll need, just start with the bare essentials in the beginning:
*Jeweler's saw (Used to cut out the shape of your actual workpiece)
*Aviation snips (Used to cut out the rough square of metal you're using from the stock sheet)
*Hand drill or drill press (To drill any feature holes, or to drill out the starting points to feed your saw blade through to cut out internal geometries on a workpiece. Model/brand/power don't really matter on this unless you're planning on using some insanely thick stock metal, which I wouldn't recommend.)
*Table clamp (To hold your workpiece in place while drilling or filing.)
*V-slot block (This is the surface you'll be cutting your metal on -- keep the portion you're cutting/shaping over the open V-slot, moving the saw blade vertically up and down through the material via the open space.)
*Set of files (Used to file down the rough edges of the final product)
*Sheet metal of your choice. I recommend starting with aluminum, either 16 gauge (approximately .065") or 14 gauge (approximately .083") in thickness. I prefer aluminum because it's super easy to cut compared to harder metals, has a tighter "turning radius" capability while trying to shape curves into your piece, and is hypoallergenic for like 98% of all people (tons of people have allergies to nickel-based alloys, but an aluminum allergy is exceedingly rare and almost unheard of). Aluminum is a good metal for beginners. From what I recall, copper was pretty soft, too, so you could use copper instead if you'd prefer a more reddish metal. 3nodding Once you get more experienced, play around with different metals and find what you like best!

General tips:

-> Start with something really simple. Heck, if you want to go as simple as possible, make your first project be cutting out a capital letter like "T" or "Y." The first few projects you make are only for you to get practice and figure out how to make things work; they will suck, and you might feel a bit discouraged at first. But that's perfectly normal! My very first project was an arrowhead pendant that ended up uber crooked and nothing like what I'd envisioned, but just over a year later now and I'm making some pretty badass windchimes. It just takes practice.

->When cutting curves, turn the metal, NOT the saw. The sawblade should always remain in the same vertical position it started at, and when you turn the saw while in mid-cut, the blade's teeth get caught in the metal and cause the blade to twist and warp (or sometimes shatter). By turning the metal while cutting, you're simply redirecting the blade's path as it removes material.

->SAWBLADES WILL BREAK. In copious quantities. They're really fragile, thin little blades; if you apply too much cutting pressure, or turn too drastically, or move too quickly, they will shatter. On my very first project, I broke 9 blades before my teacher finally came over and watched my technique, only to tell me I was "cutting too hard." xd And while I've certainly reduced the amount of blades I kill per project with more practice, I still managed to shatter 3 of them in the process of making that windchime. So buy replacements in bulk -- I got a set of 120 of them for like $5 on Amazon, and I've still got a crapton leftover despite how many I've killed already.

->Don't eyeball your designs; paste them directly onto the metal! Sketch out the piece you want to cut on some plain white paper, cut out a small box around the paper design, then adhere the paper design to the sheet metal using some rubber cement. Rubber cement will hold the paper in place during the cutting process, and is easy to remove and leaves no residue afterward. Just cut the metal by following the outlines of the paper design with the sawblade. smile

That's pretty much the gist of it... Once you get experienced with the basic cutting & piercing techniques, you can start trying more advanced things like buffing and polishing, soldering, doming, etc. But master the basics first and foremost.

Of course I'm always willing to answer any specific questions you may have, too. 3nodding

Saving this here for future reference.