Long Post-Hiatus Update

Slowly I crawl from under my rock, squinting at the harsh light of day. I am breaking my long silence to recount all the petty details of my existence over these months. I do not intend to do this chronologically. Most of it will be hobby related. Expect details.

My daughter asked me to convert her LEGO royal guard guy into Inuyasha. I did so. She was pleased.

My former coworker Ann Marie got married in February. I painted a wedding present for them.

My wife and children placed some extra ingredients on top of a wild rice blend I had just made. When I lifted the lid to serve, I was appalled to see this:

They had purchased freeze dried meal worms (chili flavored!) at the local candy/novelty shop and sprinkled a few on when I wasn't looking. I was sure the worms had been in dried rice, and the steaming process had simply caused them to float to the top. Nice one, family.

My stupid truck is on its last leg. We ended up buying a used Impala to replace it, but now the van is dead and needs $2k in engine work. So I still drive the truck, hoping the transmission won't give out, and Stef takes the kids to school in the new(er) car. The van will remain parked until we can fix it.

Remember the spinny bar that applications used to use back in the DOS graphic days so you'd know the program was doing something and not just locked up? / - \ | / - \ | / - \ | / - \ | / - \ | / - \ |  Yeah, I guess hour-glasses and pinwheels do that now.

Tristan (of GWpertinent and Merry Mayhem News) cued me in on the "Give Him A Goblin" thingy, wherein people from around the interwebs paint and send a goblin for a Blood Bowl team. I had previously done a Harlequin for Tristan's Necromunda gang, so I figured it would be fun. I painted this fellow up, converted from a fantasy goblin.

Supposed to be a diving catch, but commonly viewed as karate chopping

He won the "best painted" vote, and so I (unexpectedly) won a very cool prize. A Dwarf team from the 1989 Blood Bowl sister game Dungeon Bowl!

Yes, we are all individuals.

They're getting chucked in the Simple Green as soon as I get them. I had already been given a Skaven Blood Bowl team by Jimmy (of Kroot-a-Saurus notoriety) a year ago so I developed a desire to really try this game out. I joined NAF to get some block dice, and made a Skaven themed pitch on which to play, mostly out of styrofoam, balsa, glue and sand that I had at home. It still needs some sort of score board.

I submitted an entry to Wyrd's Iron Painter competition. I was eliminated in round one with my scratch built robot girl. The theme was "Start Your Engines."

In retrospect it's not my strongest work, but it seemed to execute what I had in mind reasonably well.

Recently I experienced some ... difficulties. I was having problems concentrating at work. I was easily forgetting things, to the point where at the grocery store I would repeat the name of an item over and over in my head in the hopes that I would not forget it by the time I had crossed the store to its location. Often I would anyway. For entirely different reasons, my doctor did some blood work on me, and guess what? I'm diabetic! Wooo! To combat this particular malady I am losing a great deal of weight (about 25 lbs so far, another 20-30 to go), taking medication and seriously reducing carbohydrate intake. The result has been a noticeably improved state of mind, and I am now able to sit down for 30 minutes without falling asleep. What keeps me strictly adhering is the thought of sight loss or neuropathy. If I can't reverse the ailment, at least I can stave off the horrid consequences as many years as possible.

After my initial interest in Blood Bowl, Tristan turned me on to fumbbl. You can play Blood Bowl online with other stinking humans by the LRB 6 rules. 

It's huge fun but I take an awful beating at this point. Games take about 45 minutes, which is maybe twice the speed of a table top game.

My subrogation lawsuit has still not been settled. Another hearing is scheduled for June.

My family bought me (well, ordered me) a Hasegawa "Nutcracker" tank kit. I had seen the SF3D video they did in the early 80's which used larger scale versions of their models in a short combat movie. It's a little (as in "a lot") hokey, but still fun. Watch it on youtube (part 1, part 2, part 3). What more could a nerd dad ask for?

This is the studio model, not mine. I don't have mine yet.

Also on the non-gaming modeling front, the fact that anyone would make this out of this ... pleases me.

I have successfully implemented some single sign-on capabilities in Java now. I still hate dealing with SSL certs though.

Crystal Brush came and went this year, and I didn't even really notice. I suspect Golden Demon will do the same.

I attempted the Ludum Dare 23 in April. The point is to, single-handed, create a game over a weekend. I tried to use the Stencyl toolkit, but found myself struggling with the tool more than creating the game. My new mobile development language of choice for Flash/mobile is Haxe/NME.

I don't know what I would do without my phone telling me where to go every waking hour.

. . .

There. That's good for now. Time to start updating more regularly. Maybe I'll even answer my phone if someone calls. After a few months of me not answering, eventually they stopped calling.