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Hey Vogonians, what are your other hobbies?

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Reply 40 of 76, by chris2021

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I left out other interests of mine. I'm enamored with the idea of building a metal working lathe from scratch, or mostly so. I have an old bed from a Unimat 3, bought some aluminum blocks, and figured with care I could file the inverse v and flat notch into the bottom using files. Why not, it's how it was done in the 1600's. As an exercise. I'm sure that's gibberish to most people though. From there I could use pillow block bearings to improvise a boring bar, all set up on the bed ways itself, and bore out the headstock and tailstock. If I ever get around to it. Currently I am unable to do anything, as this neck problem hasn't gotten any better, arguably worse, in almost 4 years. I really can't bend over a desk or workbench for anytime at all. I just have to sit strait and hope this problem heals eventually.

Reply 41 of 76, by BitWrangler

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THe trick with Michaels is coupons... might have to sign up to mailing list though, but they are hefty discounts, lots of buy one get one free, $5 off if you spend over $10 etc.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 42 of 76, by chris2021

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Yes that's true. But, amd I don't know if it's the economy in general or aspects of it are changing, but both Michael's and Slob Lobby used to have 40% coupons like almost constantly. Omce in a while a 50 percenter. Up until a year or so ago I think. You don't see that anymore. Still 30% is still pretty good.

But nowhere near as good as certain deals you can find on ebay once in a while. Sometimes you have to buy bulk lots though.

Reply 43 of 76, by appiah4

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chris2021 wrote on 2022-08-06, 06:38:

For highlights? Used strait, or mixed ever?

I tend to turn up my nose at "fake" colors. Oftentimes you can achieve the desired results with careful application of lighter colors, yellows and white say. I realize though that some really wild effects could only be achieved with flourescents or whatever. There's just so many freaking alternative paints out there. I tend to stick with metallics and that's it.

Maybe I should just try and use some and shut up.

They do nothing you can't do with normal colors. They make it easier though. Think of them like metallic paints vs NMM.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 44 of 76, by chris2021

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I think you must be right. Therefore I may sell them.

Flourescent green or blue would be interesting though I reckon.

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Reply 45 of 76, by chris2021

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And 1 color in their standard fluid acrylivs line that is astoundingly useful is iredescent pearl. In reality it's a pale silver. You can mix it with any number of colors to achieve wild metallic effects. I originally bought about 10 mixed color bottles, and really didn't want pearl. It sounded girlish. But it"s utility shocked.the schnitzel out of me when I started playing with it.

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Their stadard fluid acrylics are cheaper considerably. But many dry to a glossy finish, depending on the pigment. Crazy wild stuff though. I should habe 29 more bottles sittimg on my porch. Now the question is do I sell my duplicates. Or hoard them until they dry up 🤣. I had 3 tubes of Daler and winsor acrylics from 8-10 years ago. Took them out one day and ick they were useless. Acrylics and oil paints are not the same. After 25 years my oils have hardened a bit. But they're still totally useful and can be refreshed with linseed oil or thinner.

Reply 46 of 76, by BitWrangler

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On the flip side of that, when I was repainting diecast cars, I tried to make a metallic blue by mixing a silver and light blue, and that turned out wild and crazy pearlescent.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 47 of 76, by chris2021

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When I start painting the space Marines that pearly stuff.will come in pretty handy.

I'm not sure if Itried mixing with silver. Something tells me it wasn't as insane. The gold mixed with other colors didn't have as dramatic an effect either. I lucked out and at this point have all or most of the metallic at this point. Their tube paints have irony colors. Not sure if they come in fluids. It occurred to me I haben't seen space marines painted in silver or steel. A flat or satin cast iron effect might look real good.

Reply 48 of 76, by chris2021

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davidrg wrote on 2022-08-02, 00:16:

I dabble a bit in astrophotography though I've been a bit too busy with other things this year. Here is a picture of Saturn I took a few years back (details):
saturn.png

This is mildly amazing to me. Could you describe the equipment needed.to produce a picture like that.

Reply 49 of 76, by chris2021

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🤣 I'm still buying minis. I sent an offer for Celtic nobles and Pictish axe-mensch. The seller bit! These are 28mm sized. Lord bless their bountiful little hearts. It took 30 years to make the jump from 25 to 28.mm. Whatever committee made that decision didn't consist of 55 year olds. They should have just gone to 38mm.

Reply 50 of 76, by creepingnet

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I have too darned many.

- Guitar player, I also build, modify, and repair guitars and pedals, and am moving toward amps
- I write and compose my own music https://www.bandlab.com/creepingnet
- I code my own website - https://creepingnet.neocities.org - yep, in cold HTML like its 1996
- I bike, I hike, I also off-road my truck, and work on my truck
- I putz around with old lawn mowers for fun
- I also am into vintage consoles, vintage televisions, anything electronic I will mess with
- I also make youtube videos around all this misc stuff and other things I get into

~The Creeping Network~
My Youtube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/creepingnet
Creepingnet's World - https://creepingnet.neocities.org/
The Creeping Network Repo - https://www.geocities.ws/creepingnet2019/

Reply 51 of 76, by ptr1ck

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I enjoy white water kayaking and fishing. I also do some minor game modding for myself that I occasionally share on Steam that somehow gets thousands of subs.

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KT133A-NV28-V2 SLI-DOS/WinME

Reply 52 of 76, by davidrg

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chris2021 wrote on 2022-08-07, 22:47:
davidrg wrote on 2022-08-02, 00:16:

I dabble a bit in astrophotography though I've been a bit too busy with other things this year. Here is a picture of Saturn I took a few years back (details):
saturn.png

This is mildly amazing to me. Could you describe the equipment needed.to produce a picture like that.

I used a "cheap" SkyWatcher Skymax-127 maksutov-cassegrain telescope which has a 127mm aperture, and a 1.5m focal length (the light travels the length of the tube three times) to produce a narrower more zoomed-in field of view. I also used a cheap 2x barlow lens which kind of has the effect of doubling the focal length to 3m but doesn't increase the resolution at all (need a bigger aperture for that) - it just makes the image bigger on the camera chip.

The camera was a ZWO ASI224MC USB3 camera which is capable of quite a high frame rate if you turn the resolution way down. So the image was made by recording a 320x240 video at some fairly high frame rate (probably 60-100fps), then using some software to align all the frames with each other and combine them together to produce an image with a low signal to noise ratio.

The telescope mount was a SkyWatcher AZ-EQ6 in its equatorial configuration. Normally I'd be using this mount with an 80mm refractor and an old DSLR for deep-space stuff but its much more stable (telescope doesn't shake whenever I adjust it or move nearby) than the little portable mount (a battery powered Mini AZ-GTi) I originally got with the SkyMax-127. The cheap mount is usable for this, it just takes more effort. Both mounts I have support full computer control but for this image I was probably controlling it manually with the keypad as the computer can't really do automatic star alignment with that telescope and camera combination (field of view too small for it to see enough stars to figure out where its looking).

This telescope works quite well for the planets and the moon but due to its focal length to aperture ratio its not too good for deep-space stuff (which is why I got the 80mm refractor). Back in 2020 I also used this same equipment (without the barlow lens) to also make a mosiac of the moon which I thought turned out pretty well though next time I need to turn the gain down on the camera a bit more so the bright areas are less washed out.

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This was done under full computer control - I pointed it at the moon and from there a piece of software handed positioning the telescope for each tile and taking a 1304x967 62fps video for later processing. I think up there was around 200GB of data produced all up that got processed down to the one image. You can see the full image here of which the above picture is one tile.

Reply 53 of 76, by chris2021

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Most of which is incomprehensible. Which is my fault and no one else's of course. Truly psychotic. I'm amazed at the detail.

I once had a huge heavy box of astronomy magazines I got for free. I wound up tossing it in a dumpster, to my eternal shame and disgust. I really wanted to delve a bit into the subject. And as a consequence of tossing them, in part, I tore a hole in my leg. Granted I did a lot of lifting that day. But those magazines were heavy. The best diagnosis to date was it's a femoral hernia. It sucks and inhibiys me. But if I don't exert myself, and don't sit on the wrong chairs, there's no pain.

Reply 56 of 76, by pentiumspeed

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Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote on 2022-08-01, 16:32:
Something like this? […]
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rmay635703 wrote on 2022-08-01, 01:29:

Antique electric car

Something like this?

vintage-electric-cars.jpg

And another one from 1920 Owen electric transmission car. Basically generator spun by inline 6 and dc motor. MPG is amazing for the time, 30mpg. Control switchgear design is exactly like DC locomation locomotive.

Cheers,

Great Northern aka Canada.

Reply 57 of 76, by BloodyCactus

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been painting up my elder scrolls Call To Arms game miniatures (Im not so great at it 🤣), the primer I used turned out to be crappy (an armypainter primer).

xbOCMQyl.jpg

--/\-[ Stu : Bloody Cactus :: [ https://bloodycactus.com :: http://kråketær.com ]-/\--

Reply 58 of 76, by chris2021

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I've seen loads worse. Some of it looks pretty glossy though.

I was dying to paint something. The other day I pulled some boxes out of storage and found maybe a dozen Comic Book Champions 75-100mm pewter figurines from the mid 90s. The 1 that was on top was Batman, with a broken batterang or whatever it's called. I know I have it in a jar of small parts somewhere, but like I said I was itching to paint something. So I primed it twice with this tub of stuff I found at Michael's. Then proceeded to paint the HUGE flowing cape (how on earth was that thing cast) with a bottle of Decoart Americana something blue. No art paints, no army paints. Turns out the coverage was surprisingly good. Both the primer and that paint worked out really well. I ran to Michael's earlier and got 4 more bottles of Americana to see if it was all that good. At 1.49 USD per 2oz. bottle they'd better be 🤣 🤣. I got into a fight with an ebay seller because he ommitted some colors in a batch of art paints I bought. I feel kind of stupid after seeing the bottle of dioxazine purple coats 28$ at Michaels!!! I didn't pay a 1/4 of that per bottle for the batch. I kind of feel like a heel now 🙁

I came to the conclusion I really do enjoy painting, although all I did thus far was block in some color. I came to the other conclusion that much of the 25mm/28mm stuff will have to be sold off. To work just on the Batmensch face I'll need my lighted visor.

This stuff is all about having fun. Not grading yourself on how good a job you did. Practice makes better.

Last edited by chris2021 on 2022-08-14, 03:49. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 59 of 76, by chris2021

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The paint looks much darker w/o the flash. And that's just the first coat. In the fairly bright flourescent lights under which I painted it, it appeared almost complete coverage but for a few spots. Ok whatever the first I've painted in 30+ years. The base I slathered with another brand of yellow to see how it would go. Not especially fancy. And looking at the photo, the yellow looks better there then in real life!

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