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Read more about the article A simple, yet fairly elegant display base

A simple, yet fairly elegant display base

A few days ago, I was reading through some threads on reddit/r/gunpla and came across a thread asking about where to buy a specific type of display base. One of the users responded with a few links on how to build your own, and from this link in particular, I was inspired to search out some local suppliers and do my own version. The basic premise to the base are a few sheets of acrylic and some metal standoffs. The plastic pieces are easy, I’ve been grabbing scrap acrylic from local shops for a while and I dropped by one near my work and they sell the scrap by the pound. I picked up about 4 pounds of scrap plastic; gloss black, clear, and white and in different thicknesses. The next item was a little harder to find, the metal standoffs. There are plenty of sources online (amazon, eBay, online retailers, etc) But I wanted to see these in person before I picked some out; so I found a local sign shop supplier that was a wholesaler. The guy there hooked me up for a small sale since I wasn’t a sign shop (they only sell to sign shops)

So I picked up some metal standoffs seen in the above picture. Metallic black, chrome, and satin aluminum in the 13mm x 13mm size. They didn’t have the red and blue metallic ones in that size so I ended up with 13mm x 19mm, they’re a little taller. They sell individually for about 1.50 – $2 a piece, so I ended up spending about $42 or so for the 5 sets of 4.

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Read more about the article Wiring the 1/144 Heat Hawk

Wiring the 1/144 Heat Hawk

A few days ago, I posted about making clear resin heat hawk by making a mold of the existing heat hawk, then throwing in a string of LEDs in the mold when I poured the clear resin. The resin has had some time to cure and I’ve had some time to ponder the next great question. “How the hell am I going to power this damn thing up?” One of the TGG folks not so innocently asked the question. For which I honestly answered that I had no idea and that I would solve that problem eventually. I already had a few ideas, I could replace the upper handle of the axe and run some wires through there and then through the hands, through the body, and have the battery and switch assembly somewhere on the base of the project. That seemed a little too much work. Laziness is the mother of invention. I decided to completely self contain the power source as well as the switching assembly. Here’s a video of that through process and how it all works out:

After the jump, I go through the pictorial and more wordy version of what I did in the shot 6 minute long video.

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An entitled bag of dicks pulls the race card….

I occasionally travel for work. Well, I more than occasionally travel for work. I get to see the fun side of some poor decisions made by folks under the duress of a “bad” travel day. That said, today’s flight home was awesome!

The setup:

An American Airline’s flight from Phoenix AZ to Ontario CA, 3:35 PM take off time operated by American Eagle on a Bombardier CRJ900. Translation: a small commuter jet. I get on fairly early because of my “elite” status, and get to my seat 8A, a window seat in a 4 seat per row one aisle in between configuration. The plane loads up, and it is looking like a full flight. In my sleepy haze, I overhear the lady behind me chatting up her new single serving friend; the conversation topic is English as a second language. The Asian male next to her says his English language skills are lacking; she responds with an accent that she too has poor English skills and is from Africa. Then asks the gentleman where he is from, and he says Laos. She impresses upon him the need to improve one’s English in the new western world they are now part of; and the conversation wanes as the Laotian’s English is quite clearly, not on par with Lady Khama. The plane continued to fill. My hopes of getting my half of the plane’s 8th row to myself were quickly dashed by one of the last few travelers; a bald guy with salt and pepper beard and completely glued to his phone’s messaging service. He was probably traveling for Valentine’s day weekend and smooches are given in a video message. Slightly nauseated, I just wished I had the ability to shut off hearing as I could my sight.

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