November is time to do things...

So, as per the past few months I have been quite slow to update and quite lazy to produce things. But I'm going to try to switch that up for November. Just by writing this giant post I'm off to a good start. (Halloween costume pictures at the bottom)

One of the things I want to do includes actually finally making the arcade controller. I've invited friends over on the 20th specifically to play games on this thing, so it will be done. As a matter of fact, about a week ago I bought wood and material to put it together and tonight I finally decided on the button layout. I wanted to drill holes as well but I need a second opinion on spacing before I commit to drilling. So that's set aside for tomorrow instead.

Another thing I'll be doing this month is writing (what will hopefully become) my next Christmas book. But right now I'm aiming for one long novel, rather than itty bitty short stories. And to motivate myself I've joined the ranks of NaNoWriMo. An effort to get wannabe writers to take the month of November to write a 50,000 word novel. Seeing as how my last Christmas book was only 6500 words of new content(though only written in about 4 or 5 days), I'm not holding myself to 50K but we'll see how far it goes.

Also I showed my untouched violin project to a musician friend of mine over the weekend and he seemed to feel like it wasn't the worst thing ever. At least for what I had. A few months ago I was extremely disheartened when I attempted to put the chin rest on it and the very heavy weight of it kept making the chin rest come off. His not completely negative comments about the violin have renewed my interest so I'm going to start working on this again after the controller is done.

As proof that I should be able to get these things done, with a little help and some significant deadlines the whole week leading up to Halloween I spent working on my costume. During the process, I sewed a green cape, a brown satchel, and a pair of sword holsters.

With a bit of help to make a mask, I crumpled tinfoil, plastered, glued tissue paper, and painted.

And I grommeted and laced a shirt. I think it all came together very nicely.

Time to do more things!

I've got two pictures to share.

First, I got my shipment of joysticks and buttons! This is to round out the rest of my 4player arcade controller. Red and Blue will be first and second players with six buttons each. Green and Yellow will be 3rd and 4th players with four buttons each. Then each player gets a #player button and a coin button. The things on the right side of the picture are switches and fasteners.

Just need to swing down to home depot to get wood and screws and this thing should go together pretty quickly!

Second, is the pair of Thai fisherman pants that I mentioned in my last post. I swear they are comfy and look much better while worn.

Not very punctual at all

So then a month and a half passed without a single post. I've been quite unproductive but that isn't to say I've done nothing.

About three weeks ago I saw some interesting looking pants called Thai fisherman pants. They looked pretty comfy and relatively easy to make. So I looked online to find some patterns, went down to the fabric store and got to work.

Pair of pants #1 was a failure. The idea behind the fisherman pants is that they are one size fits all. So my small girlfriend Oz and I each planned to make a pair. She finished her pants the day after we started and they fit her great. That should have been my first impression something was wrong with mine. After an hour or so my pants were nearly done and they didn't come anywhere close to fitting properly. I abandoned them to Oz and she finished up the hems and waist tie. It also fit her quite well.

A day later with more fabric and armed with a new pattern, I started work on another pair of pants. Made the pattern, cut the fabric, sewed it together and rejoiced! It fit much nicer. Hemmed the pants all the way up to the knee and my fisherman pants became fisherman shorts.

(pictures of both to be posted later today)

Hopefully this weekend I'll get back to work on that violin...

This is a Zombie Blog

Cause I'm back from the dead. Seemingly I have had a very UNproductive month. No posts for nearly four weeks... whoops. Anyway... Check this out!

I made an arcade control panel! This is just a preliminary design. I was inspired a week or two ago to play some old arcade games emulated on my computer. And what's the point of playing old arcade games without old arcade controls?

This was just step one. I plan on having a party with a bunch of friends and the goal for it is to have a setup that four people can play at once. This was made just to order some parts to make sure they were good quality and assure myself I could handle it.

If you're interested here's a picture of the inside. You can see my lazy unorganized wiring but again this was just to make sure it works. In the bottom portion of the box you can see a white and green circuit board which makes the whole thing possible and very simple to boot. Also the lovely wooden box used to be an endoscope box; it probably likes its new job better.

Flat Land

Went down for a weekend trip to Long Beach Island this weekend and brought along my violin and some tools. I decided it'd be a good time to try out the hand planer. The setting seemed right since the island only has an elevation change of 12 feet over the course of 18 miles.

The first two pictures are of the backside. If I was going to mess up, it should be on the side people won't necessarily see. You can plainly see where the different sections were glued together. Also you can see the shaping I did two weeks ago, the side pieces were hand filed down to get the curve I wanted.

Before planing:




Then after some trial and error, some blood and blisters, and about 4 hours later. The top and back of the body were nicely planed down, as well as the top of the neck and the top of the headstock.

After planing shots:




Here's the look of the whole thing so far, couldn't crop this picture down while at work. There's still plenty more work to be done on it. I need to file down the curves more and take off a lot more wood.

2 Steps and 1 Week Later

After the main body was glued together, I went away for the weekend and let it set thoroughly(the glue only needs 24 hours to properly set). Once I got home, I removed all of the clamps and it was definitely solid.

Since then I've done more to the violin but forgot to take photos of the progress. Last Monday I cut out a few small blocks to add to the main body for aesthetics and some level of functionality. They were glued into position and left alone for a day. Following that I cut out a larger portion of the neck using the jigsaw. Between the hardness of the wood and the irregularities of my previous cuts the difficulty of using the jigsaw has made me give up on it.

The most recent thing I've done has been to rasp down the curves of the body. The curves are nowhere near finished but at least I've shown myself that I can continue refining the violin's shape without power tools. After I spend a little more time on the curves I'm going to see how the planer handles leveling the top and bottom. And may test out how a drill and chisel can help me on the project.

A robot could hold this better

So a few hours pass and TA-DA!

I cut up the third piece and got to work gluing and clamping. With a little forethought it wasn't ridiculously difficult to get this set up. Now it needs to be left alone for 24 hours to properly cure. I may try to add the side pieces to the body tomorrow but we'll see about that later.