Blackmoor Vituperative

I am supposed to be playing in a Morrow Project game this evening, using GURPS. I have been reading the rules for GURPS (GURPS Lite, which is free to download).

I am debating whether to play or not. I said that I would, so I feel that I should, but I have been reading the GURPS rules, and there are so many things that I dislike (bad mechanics, like bell curve rolls; inconsistent mechanics, like sometimes needing to roll low, and sometimes needing to roll high; overcomplicated mechanics, like literally a dozen different weapon skills; etc.). I do not want to be the guy who comes to a game and complains about the rules the whole time. That’s no fun for anyone.

I am still a little behind on my classwork, so I should be working on that anyway.

Once I chose the color scheme (with the help of my modest Photoshop skills), I started the task of modifying the real thing. Here we go, step by step.

This is how it always starts.

First, we take it apart. I used masking tape to keep the screws together. After I had more than a few pieces to keep track of, I started labeling them and putting them into ziploc bags.

Everything has been disassembled and lightly sanded.

Everything has been washed and is drying.

The bits and pieces have been labeled and placed into ziploc bags. Note the bag labeled “unknown spring”. Yes, I have already lost track of where something goes. Sigh.

These are the ornamental bits I bought at Michael’s. The curlicue flourishes were something like $5 a pair, while the bag of little oval things was about $5 for a dozen.

And now those are lightly sanded and washed, as well.

The decorative bits are glued on (with cyanoacrylate), things have been washed again, and are drying.

Everything has been given a couple of coats of satin black.

I assembled most of the large parts (without screws), and took a photo to use as the basis of my color tests. There is probably a word for assembling something without using the screws, but I do not know what it is.

I thought the cylinder deserved its own photo.

This is the first coat of “antique brass”. I will go over this lightly with “brass”.

Masking off the cylinder was the single most time-consuming part. There are at least 50 individual pieces of masking tape on this thing.

This should be the last thing I need to mask off: the upper receiver, under the slide.

I painted the upper receiver black, and then gave it a mist of silver. I think that this gives it a nice retro “steel” look.

And naturally, the black paint seeped past the masking tape, and the masking tape stuck to the silver and pulled it off. I tried using some acetone to take the black off, and that did nothing, nothing, nothing… and then went through all of the layers of paint down to the yellow plastic. Son of a…

Okay. So I re-masked and then re-painted it (just in the damaged areas, to the best of my ability), and it looks okay. In retrospect, I should have sanded the edges of the damaged areas, because you can see those edges if you look carefully. But screw it: the whole point of steampunk is that things are hand-made, not mass-produced in a factory, so some minor flaws are acceptable.

Here we are. All the pieces have been painted, and are ready for assembly. You may not be able to tell in this photo, but I used a brush to paint some black in the creases and edges, to give the parts a “used” and slightly dirty look.

As I assembled the pieces, I used a kind of dry teflon-based lubricant on the moving parts. I think that this was a huge improvement over the silicone gel I used to lubricate the prototype.

Assembly has begun! And wouldn’t you know, I still do not know where that mystery spring goes. Not only that, but I have a mystery screw, now, too. I stared at it for a good long while, but eventually I had to give up and go disassemble my unmodified Nerf Maverick for comparison.

I immediately saw where the mystery spring was, but it took a long time for me to spot the mystery screw. It’s inside of the indexing mechanism.

And here we are: all done!

The best thing — well, maybe not the best, but a great thing — is that it works! My prototype fails to fire about 85% of the time. I think that is partly because it has so many layers of paint, and also because I used silicone gel for lubrication. Rev 6A has, at most, half the layers of paint that the prototype has, and I used a dry teflon-based waxed lubricant on the moving parts.

All in all, I am very pleased.

I have one thing left to do, but it will need to wait a while, because work and school are keeping me busy: I want to put black leather on the grip, where it is currently painted black.

Today has been a very good day. I have hardly coughed at all, and my ribs are not hurting anywhere near as much as they did yesterday. I put the last coat of clear lacquer on my steampunk nerf gun (photos of that are forthcoming, once I assemble it). I had lunch with a friend (Greek food, yum!), and we chatted about our respective IT projects. The client that bounced a $2000 check to me has promised to pay that and everything else they owe (knock on wood). Best of all, I put in a full day working on a project for a new client (not the one that bounced the check), doing work I enjoy a great deal.

Everything’s going so well!

I got my start in computers by writing small applications in Basic, and then Visual Basic. In the late 1980s, I wrote a program that backed up selected directories by copying them, zipping them up, and writing them to floppy disks. In the early 1990s, I wrote macros to integrate PGP and Microsoft Word. I also wrote a reasonably popular dice-rolling program (I was one of the first few thousand people to do so). However, I got my start working in IT by doing web design. My friend Nathan told me about NCSA Mosaic in early 1993, and within two months of the release of Mosaic, I was creating web pages. (It still amazes me that the web took off like it did — I just thought it was a neat toy.)

I eventually migrated from what I call “front end” work (the part of a web site people can see), to “back end” work (the stuff behind the scenes that actually makes a web site work — setting up databases, writing scripts, managing servers, and so on). One reason for this is that I am not a graphic designer — I am simply not an artist. Another reason is that as more people learned how to do “web design”, I could maintain my value by doing something more difficult (difficult for other people; not necessarily difficult for me).

However, the number one reason I moved away from web design and toward back end work is because I had too many web clients who made my job difficult. Not all of them. Perhaps not even most of them. But a lot of them. What do I mean by “difficult”? I mean this.

I have been unemployed for a full year, subsisting on freelance and consulting work. As of this moment, all of my job leads have led nowhere.

Time to redouble my efforts and find some new job leads!

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward!

Meeting with a client this afternoon. Hopefully, it will have positive results.

It will be a while before I know anything about the job with the company that helps nonprofits organize fund-raising events. That’s not the only job lead I have, so I am pretty optimistic, in general.

I am still coughing, but far less often than I was, and more often than not it’s more of a vigorous throat-clearing than an actual cough. I will be glad when the cough abates entirely: my ribs and chest muscles are so sore.

Class officially started yesterday. I think this semester is going to be great. I am actually interested in both classes.

This is my second attempt to modify a Nerf Maverick for steampunk costuming purposes. (My first attempt was in March 2010.)

I will eventually post all of the photos of this process online, but this blog post is specifically to address the color scheme. Rather than paint over and over until I like the colors, as I did with the prototype, I have decided to use Photoshop to try and apply different color schemes to see how I like them.

This is a photo of the gun with most of the parts placed where they are supposed to go, with the base coat of satin black.

This is what it would look like painted solid gold.

This is what it would look like painted solid brass.

This is what it would look like painted solid caramel metallic.

This is what it would look like painted solid copper. A friend of mine says this makes it look like it’s made of chocolate. Chocopunk!

This is what it would look like painted solid steel.

Color scheme 01. I don’t like the gold on the decorations. I thought that I would.

Color scheme 02. Base color is gold. I think it looks garish.

Color scheme 03. Brass with a lot of copper highlights. I like this one.

Color scheme 04. Brass with a bit less copper. I like this one better.

Color scheme 05. Black highlights on the slide and frame. Not too bad.

Color scheme 06. There are things I like about this color scheme, but I think it has too many colors. I do like the black on the grip.

Color scheme 07. I kept the black on the grip, and simplified the color scheme a bit. Still not quite right.

Color scheme 08. Black on the grip, simpler color scheme, and the flourishes are not highlighted at all. I think that this is the scheme I will use, but I will sleep on it.

Color scheme 09. Copper slide, and the decorations on the slide and frame are highlighted. I think I like scheme 08 better.

Color scheme 10. Black grip, black highlights, some more color on the cylinder.

Color scheme 11. Same as 10, but with caramel frame and slide decorations.

Color scheme 12. Something different: black frame, brass and copper highlights.

Color scheme 13. Same as 10, but with copper frame and slide decorations.

I am watching the American Godzilla movie, arguably the most widely reviled monster movie ever made. It has some serious problems. For example, they continue calling Godzilla “he” after they discover that it is pregnant. That’s just stupid. Additionally, the female romantic lead, played by Maria Pitillo, is both monumentally dim-witted and morally reprehensible, yet we are supposed to sympathize with her. I think not. The pacing is sluggish — the entire middle third of the movie should have been left on the cutting room floor, in my opinion. I also did not like the way they killed Godzilla at the end. The real Godzilla would not have gone down that way (it reminded me of the pathetic way that Mace Windu died — “like a punk”, in the words of Sam Jackson). And, most damning of all, the design of the monster’s head is just ludicrous.

However, it does have a lot going for it. The early scenes in which ships are destroyed without actually showing Godzilla are really effective. Even the design of the monster itself, aside from the head, is pretty nifty, and the shots of it moving — running, swimming, and so on — are really well done. The cast also has its strong points. Jean Reno is brilliant, and Hank Azaria, Vicki Lewis, and Doug Savant give solid supporting performances.

So, is American Godzilla a great movie? No. It’s not even a great Godzilla movie. But it’s not as bad as people say.

So many interesting things are happening. My new classes start on June 1: CCJS 105, Introduction to Criminology, and CMSC 230 Computer Science II. After I finish these two classes, the rest will all be upper-level (300 and 400). I am currently 36 credits away from my Computer Science degree. I have been debating whether to get a minor in Criminology, but that would add six credits to what I still need. I am not certain that it is worth it.

I had a great job interview today, with a small marketing company that helps nonprofit organizations (and, less often, for-profit organizations) organize fund-raising events. They say that I am one of the “lead candidates”; I have a second interview scheduled for next week. I have high hopes for this. Working for a small business, helping make the world a little bit better, and still working in IT is pretty much the trifecta of what I would like to do for a living.

In other news, I picked up all five (yes, five — I was surprised there are this many) Return Of The Living Dead movies on Ebay for $21 including shipping. Not a bad deal! I think that is how I will be spending my Memorial Day weekend. I have seen the first one (which is great), and I think I have seen the third one, but the rest are unknown to me.

And I am still coughing, but much less frequently, and less forcefully, then I was.

I had a little bit of free time today, so I whipped up a couple of dynamic affiliate links for DriveThruRPG, a very cool source of gaming PDFs.

The script can be called one of three ways. One way creates an affiliate link to one of the five newest items added to DriveThruRPG, the second creates an affiliate link to one of the five best-selling items, and the third creates a random link to an item on either list. I considered animating the affiliate links, so that a different item would appear every few seconds, but to be frank, animated advertisements annoy me. Actually, I do not care for advertisements at all — I hide them, as a matter of fact.

Does this make me a hypocrite? Maybe. However, these are not just advertisements — they are also news. For that reason, I think they are useful, even to people like me who routinely hide ads.

It’s my intention to add these to this blog and to RPG Library, the gaming community site I maintain, but I do not really expect to see much revenue from these. I mainly created them as a service to the gaming community. For that reason, I added a variable so that other people can replace my affiliate ID with their own, if they would like to use these on their own web site.

So check it out. If you have any questions, let me know, and I will try to answer them.

Update 2010-05-25: I added some error-checking in case the description field in DriveThruRPG’s RSS feed contains some bad tags. It doesn’t actually do anything with the errors, but it keeps the script from failing.

Update 2010-05-25, part 2: I expanded the script to be able to handle any of OneBookShelf’s sites.