Sunday, May 30, 2010
Step one complete!
The Stargate is almost finished! Just need the outer ring and the Chevrons!
Without constellations.
With constellations
Board games I played last night
Last night my bud Chris and I went to Timegate , a smallish convention based around the T.V. series Stargate and Dr. Who. I went to a few lectures but I spent most of my time in the gaming area and made some great friends in the process. I love games and game theory and I always try to learn new games whenever possible. So without any further ado.....
The first game I played was Robo Rally
. This game was created by Richard Garfield and presented it to gaming super-giant Wizards of the Coast the same time he proposed Magic: The Gathering. The premise of the game is pretty simple. You control a robot by "programming" it with movement and action cards. You lay the program cards out in any order and let the game run for a turn. The game basically works like a very basic robotic programming language: move here, rotate X degrees, etc.. The goal of the game is to run around the board and be the first to the finish flag. Players can also attack each other using lasers, bombs, rams, or what have you. I had a pretty fun time playing it even though I went through three robots, one thanks exclusively to Chris. The game is rather challenging and requires a great deal of forethought and would probably be enjoyed most by people who know how to program or who have a good grasp of physical orientation, there is a great deal of turning in this game and direction is VERY important.
The next game I played was Dominion
by Rio Grande Games. I absolutely loved this game! The game plays out with each player trying to build a deck of action cards, treasure, and victory points. Each player can use treasure to buy from a store to add to their deck and increase their chances of winning. The object of the game is to be the player with the most victory points when one of the victory points store runs out of cards. I picked up the rules to this game very quickly because of my 5+ years of experience of playing Magic: The Gathering. The theories of card advantage and the necessity of card draw can be applied both to Dominion and Magic. But for those who have not played Magic, you are basically building a city in a deck that rewards you for getting efficient cards. I really recommend this game for anyone who played or plays magic as it is quick to set up and games will never go over 40 min, if you played Magic competitively (FNMs and the such) a game could last only 15 min. This game would also probably be a blast for anyone who has not played Magic but would take a little longer to get the hang of and set up.
I have played Settlers of Catan
before but this was Chris's first time playing and my first time playing on the 3D 10th Anniversary Edition
. Settlers of Catan is considered one of the best board games out now and it is the "Killer App" of board games. These claims are not without merit, it is one of the best-selling board games across the world and has a fanbase nearly everywhere. The premise of the game is that you control a group of Colonists/settlers/whatever and you try to build roads and cities by collecting resources from the bank and from bartering with other players. The first person to 10 victory points wins the game. The game is takes probably an hour to play on average but it could be less or more by a great margin depending on who you play with and what the dice roll. If you have not played this game, you should, it will change the way you think about board games and you will probably never want to play Monopoly again. The 3D version is amazing, the detail is so rich for every hex and it makes you feel like you are playing a video game with amazing renders. All of the materials for the 3D edition are made of high-quality products and come in a Catan-Branded treasure chest, which adds even more to the game's flavor.
After crossing the 1 am threshold, the group of gamers at the Con felt a bit burned out by playing rules-heavy games all day and broke out Time's Up!
. This game is a team party game that feels like Scattigories and Cranium. Each player gets to choose famous people from the game's pool of cards and puts them into a deck to play with for one game. One game is split up into three rounds with each round lasting 30 seconds each. In the first game players take turns to try to describe a person on a card using everything but their name to their partner. This goes on until all of the cards have been passed around to each player and correctly guessed. The second round uses the same cards in the first round but players can use pantomime actions and only one word to describe the person on the card. The third round plays like the first two but you can only describe the person by pantomime and meaningless grunts. I had a blast playing this game, its a little more involved than Apples to Apples but takes less time than Cranium. The entire room had a blast playing this game and was extremely entertaining. I am going to buy this game and pretty much playing through it at parties until the cards fall apart.
The first game I played was Robo Rally
. This game was created by Richard Garfield and presented it to gaming super-giant Wizards of the Coast the same time he proposed Magic: The Gathering. The premise of the game is pretty simple. You control a robot by "programming" it with movement and action cards. You lay the program cards out in any order and let the game run for a turn. The game basically works like a very basic robotic programming language: move here, rotate X degrees, etc.. The goal of the game is to run around the board and be the first to the finish flag. Players can also attack each other using lasers, bombs, rams, or what have you. I had a pretty fun time playing it even though I went through three robots, one thanks exclusively to Chris. The game is rather challenging and requires a great deal of forethought and would probably be enjoyed most by people who know how to program or who have a good grasp of physical orientation, there is a great deal of turning in this game and direction is VERY important.The next game I played was Dominion
by Rio Grande Games. I absolutely loved this game! The game plays out with each player trying to build a deck of action cards, treasure, and victory points. Each player can use treasure to buy from a store to add to their deck and increase their chances of winning. The object of the game is to be the player with the most victory points when one of the victory points store runs out of cards. I picked up the rules to this game very quickly because of my 5+ years of experience of playing Magic: The Gathering. The theories of card advantage and the necessity of card draw can be applied both to Dominion and Magic. But for those who have not played Magic, you are basically building a city in a deck that rewards you for getting efficient cards. I really recommend this game for anyone who played or plays magic as it is quick to set up and games will never go over 40 min, if you played Magic competitively (FNMs and the such) a game could last only 15 min. This game would also probably be a blast for anyone who has not played Magic but would take a little longer to get the hang of and set up.I have played Settlers of Catan
before but this was Chris's first time playing and my first time playing on the 3D 10th Anniversary Edition. Settlers of Catan is considered one of the best board games out now and it is the "Killer App" of board games. These claims are not without merit, it is one of the best-selling board games across the world and has a fanbase nearly everywhere. The premise of the game is that you control a group of Colonists/settlers/whatever and you try to build roads and cities by collecting resources from the bank and from bartering with other players. The first person to 10 victory points wins the game. The game is takes probably an hour to play on average but it could be less or more by a great margin depending on who you play with and what the dice roll. If you have not played this game, you should, it will change the way you think about board games and you will probably never want to play Monopoly again. The 3D version is amazing, the detail is so rich for every hex and it makes you feel like you are playing a video game with amazing renders. All of the materials for the 3D edition are made of high-quality products and come in a Catan-Branded treasure chest, which adds even more to the game's flavor.After crossing the 1 am threshold, the group of gamers at the Con felt a bit burned out by playing rules-heavy games all day and broke out Time's Up!
. This game is a team party game that feels like Scattigories and Cranium. Each player gets to choose famous people from the game's pool of cards and puts them into a deck to play with for one game. One game is split up into three rounds with each round lasting 30 seconds each. In the first game players take turns to try to describe a person on a card using everything but their name to their partner. This goes on until all of the cards have been passed around to each player and correctly guessed. The second round uses the same cards in the first round but players can use pantomime actions and only one word to describe the person on the card. The third round plays like the first two but you can only describe the person by pantomime and meaningless grunts. I had a blast playing this game, its a little more involved than Apples to Apples but takes less time than Cranium. The entire room had a blast playing this game and was extremely entertaining. I am going to buy this game and pretty much playing through it at parties until the cards fall apart.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Random projects
I have been keeping my self busy this summer with things other than Inventor, and now I have time to post what else I have been up to.
I have been reading the sci-fi space opera The Mote in God's Eye
for the past week and a half. I have to say for a book from the 70's, it shares very similar ideas as to what we presently believe to be coming in the future. It is also possible that a great deal of other books that have come out recently use some of the same ideas that The Mote in God's Eye uses. There are special jumping points within systems that allow people to travel instantaneously using a special jump drive (other sci-fi that uses this is EVE online, Stargate, and the Halo Universe). The book also uses the classic force-field, laser cannons etc.. However, their communications and computing technology come straight out of the 70's. Ships utilize telescopes to find objects outside of their normal range of vision, a lot different and more realistic than the classic "Enlarge it and put it on the viewscreen." The humans in the novel also have a more realistic approach to communicating than most other sci-fi by using a pulsed laser to send information between planets and ships, however this communication is limited by line of sight and time lag at great distances, a problem that most works of science fiction choose to ignore. The one thing that I found the most shocking in terms of their computing technology was that they still used magnetic tape to store information. The book takes place 1000 years into the future and apparently the best way to keep track of data is to haul it around in gigantic magnetic reels. At least the aliens in the book are not humans with some modification to their foreheads. I have to say The Mote in God's Eye has been an interesting read so far, albeit a little slow-going, the climax took me roughly 350 pages to get to with 200 pages remaining, and I would highly recommend it for anyone who is a fan of the classic first contact with an alien race storyline.
I have also been working on trying to improve my soldering and circuitry skills. So far I have had one failure and one success. I'll show the failure first to keep the success fresh in your mind.
The beginning of the Enterprise NX-01 
that Sandy got me for Christmas. A nifty little model that I put together in about half an hour. Unfortunately I did not realize that you need to apply the decals before assembly because you have to soak the whole thing in water so that they will stick. It still turned out great though!
The completed model.
And finally, my display of another skill I decided to try this summer, knitting.
I have been reading the sci-fi space opera The Mote in God's Eye
for the past week and a half. I have to say for a book from the 70's, it shares very similar ideas as to what we presently believe to be coming in the future. It is also possible that a great deal of other books that have come out recently use some of the same ideas that The Mote in God's Eye uses. There are special jumping points within systems that allow people to travel instantaneously using a special jump drive (other sci-fi that uses this is EVE online, Stargate, and the Halo Universe). The book also uses the classic force-field, laser cannons etc.. However, their communications and computing technology come straight out of the 70's. Ships utilize telescopes to find objects outside of their normal range of vision, a lot different and more realistic than the classic "Enlarge it and put it on the viewscreen." The humans in the novel also have a more realistic approach to communicating than most other sci-fi by using a pulsed laser to send information between planets and ships, however this communication is limited by line of sight and time lag at great distances, a problem that most works of science fiction choose to ignore. The one thing that I found the most shocking in terms of their computing technology was that they still used magnetic tape to store information. The book takes place 1000 years into the future and apparently the best way to keep track of data is to haul it around in gigantic magnetic reels. At least the aliens in the book are not humans with some modification to their foreheads. I have to say The Mote in God's Eye has been an interesting read so far, albeit a little slow-going, the climax took me roughly 350 pages to get to with 200 pages remaining, and I would highly recommend it for anyone who is a fan of the classic first contact with an alien race storyline.I have also been working on trying to improve my soldering and circuitry skills. So far I have had one failure and one success. I'll show the failure first to keep the success fresh in your mind.
This is a very simple circuit I tried to make using a playing card as a board. I think I may have put the anode in the wrong orientation and that is whats holding this from working, but I tested it with a voltmeter and found that the button I used does not transmit any current through it while its depressed. Either way, the whole thing was very "prof-of-concept" to see if I could solder directly onto a playing card, and as it turns out, you can.
So on to my success with soldering. This is the first real circuit I have ever put together using a soldering iron. The circuit takes sound in as an input and modulates a signal/voltage to the LED cluster to make them glow depending on the volume of the voice. I made it from a Dual White LED Stroboscope # MK147 (kit requires soldering assembly)
(not this one but a similar one, could not find the link for it) that I bought at Fry's. I made a few mistakes here and there while making it like my first two components I soldered on it are not level with the card, but I feel like it was a great learning experience and I highly recommend it for anyone who has never soldered before.
(not this one but a similar one, could not find the link for it) that I bought at Fry's. I made a few mistakes here and there while making it like my first two components I soldered on it are not level with the card, but I feel like it was a great learning experience and I highly recommend it for anyone who has never soldered before. 
that Sandy got me for Christmas. A nifty little model that I put together in about half an hour. Unfortunately I did not realize that you need to apply the decals before assembly because you have to soak the whole thing in water so that they will stick. It still turned out great though!
And finally, my display of another skill I decided to try this summer, knitting.
Not a whole lot to say about this besides that I have great difficulty doing it. The one on the left started with 20 stitches and somehow grew to 40 something along the way. The one on the right ended up a lot nicer but I messed up near the end and was unable to finish it correctly.
And for Joey... A furry visconti grip.
I don't know why he requested it, but I did it.....
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Final Epee Parts
Due to popular demand, I created a visconti pistol grip. I originally tried doing this by extruding a bunch of times from the origin but found it to be much easier to make a block and cut away at it. 
I also made some presentation files of the socket and point assemblies with exploded views. I think they look really cool they way they turned out,
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
School projects
I was not able to put these up last week because I did not have access to the files (misplaced my flash drive) but I do now! I hope you enjoy!
All of these pictures are from my ME 1770 class at Georgia Tech, both my individual project and my contribution to my group project.
My pride and joy of the project. It is the main laser battery off of a X-wing fighter from the Star Wars series. This guy was pretty tough to design and took me upwards of 3 hours just to make sure that the thicker part near the bottom looked perfect.
This is a comparison photo of what one looks like that was rendered by someone with a little more expertise than what I have. There are a few differences, the slits in the bottom part, the tube assembly is not on mine, and I do not have stripe running up the middle. Not a big issue for me, a lot of the renders for Star Wars vehicles are substantially different from one another. It really depends on the artist and what kind of project they were working on.
This is a Proton Torpedo from the Star Wars series. After spending a great deal of time working on the laser cannon, I took an easier route for the torpedo by copying the design I already had from my 2D version and pasted it into Inventor. From there it was just a few more edits and color splashes to a finished product.
And finally, this is the mug I designed on my own for my individual project. The assignment told us to make a creative mug design that was practical. To be "creative" I made the body of the mug a prism so they could be shipped without waisting much room in the shipping container. The text on the front of the mug reads "SPORTS & ENERGY!"a homage to the POWERTHIRST YouTube video. 
The Powerthirst video for those who have not seen it or would like to enjoy seeing it again. A little caution, make sure the volume on your computer is low. Also, they use some crude language in the video.
Full Epee
I finally finished my full epee! Here is a view of the entire guard assembly complete with a modified socket and French grip.
This is the completed point assembly attached to the blade.
And here is the whole assembly!
Let me know if you would like to see any more views or individual parts!
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Epee part 1
To start things off, these are a few of my designs from my first project outside of school. I modeled each part off an existing part in real life and designed them so they would be functional as well.
This is an epee point modeled off a FWF barrel and tip. Ill throw an exploded view in at a later date.
This is an epee electrical socket that connects the fencer to their weapon. I modeled it based on a German Socket.
Another view of the socket.
The blade of the epee. This was modeled off a Viniti, the concave area near the tang, and a STM blade, the underside of the blade (not visible).
A close-up of the blade's tang.
I have also modeled the grip and I am going to make exploded views of all of the compound parts. Those will go up along with my ME 1770 group project at a later date.
This is an epee point modeled off a FWF barrel and tip. Ill throw an exploded view in at a later date.
This is an epee electrical socket that connects the fencer to their weapon. I modeled it based on a German Socket.
Another view of the socket.
The blade of the epee. This was modeled off a Viniti, the concave area near the tang, and a STM blade, the underside of the blade (not visible).
A close-up of the blade's tang.
I have also modeled the grip and I am going to make exploded views of all of the compound parts. Those will go up along with my ME 1770 group project at a later date.
First!!11!one
For a while now I have really wanted to make a website to both store and showcase anything I design or create. I figured that a blog using google would probably be the easiest and cheapest way to do so. My goal for this blog is to put up pictures of things I have created in CAD or pictures of projects I am working on. So if anyone out there (and I doubt very many people will read this) who wants more information on something I made, just let me know. For any employers out there who like what they see, please feel free to contact me via email.
Thanks for visiting!
Thanks for visiting!
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