work in progress...

Here's a crappy cell phone shot of what's about one or two more sittings worth of work away from finished -- a SteamPunked Guitar Hero controller. Goofy, yes. Also, fun, and a really good test piece for that fake wood action that I'm wanting to use later for something else. Anyway, I just wanted to have something up here related to what I've been spending so much time on lately. This weekend or so I'm planning on doing a bunch of photography of other recently completed 1:1 scale projects.

FroliCon 2009

We spent our Easter weekend in Atlanta with the fine partiers of FroliCon! We've been eye-balling this con for years, but never mustered up the courage to go. Well hot damn, am I glad we finally ponied up! This was not the camera-fest that I usually partake in at cons. Not that there wasn't anything worth taking a picture of, I just had other things to do with my hands, and the vibe is different. Everything was more personal, less over the top and showy. But I got a few shots I can share. The caption for this first pic is a quote from the individual depicted: "Moderation in all things."

We didn't get a room at the con hotel itself -- no surprise there, as we didn't decide to go until about 2 weeks before the event. But we had a fine little room just a few blocks away. Out in the quiet airport neighborhood the quick little car hops were just fine for the two days we were there (We got in Friday, partied that night and all day Saturday, then had to bug out ass-early Sunday morning.) but it did convince me that it's worth the extra cash to not have to fuck around with cars at all for DragonCon.

So, what to say about FroliCon? Obviously, its not as big as a Dragon or anything like that. It was even smaller than ImagiCon, but it was all in one wing of a smaller hotel, rather than spread all over the damn BJCC, so it didn't have that ghost-town feeling. And there were NO tourists -- hell, in this crowd a straight guy in a fully articulated Doc. Octopus costume would still just be vanilla. I don't mean that to make the party sound elietist, just hard core. Every body there was hard core. There were pleanty of other FroliCon virgins, but everybody there knew what was going on and was there on purpose. It was a really fun, accepting, sociable crowd. Sure, you could see some cliques, but that's just human nature. Everyone was just hanging out, kicking back, and chatting it up. Seriously good times.

Speaking of Doc Oc, there was a serious absense of named character costumes, which was a very refreshing change. People were dressed up and dressed out, but it had a more self-expressive vibe, instead of the normal character reproduction you typically see. It was a really cool way to roll, and probably sprang from folks doing some very personal things at this party, and dressing to reflect it. Even the obvious character costumes were generally of characters created by the costume's wearer. Freaks flying in their natural colors, amplified.



I wish I'd gotten a good picture of him, maybe we did on one of the other cameras, but there was a guy there in a psudo-German uniform, and his method was brilliant. It was an SS uniform, but he'd replaced all the icons and badges and stuff with things he liked better. They were still in the right style, just not actual Nazi shit. He told me that he'd gathered all the stuff he wanted to use in a pile, dumped it out in front of a bunch of girls, and had them pick out anything frightening or offensive. Bits he really wanted to use, like the belt buckle, had the offensive details hammered off. Brilliant!

There were, of course, a decently broad range of representatives of Her Majesty's favorite new genre, SteamPunk, with all the high-detail hand-made goodness we love.


These folks were the first of several people around the con to mention Harbor Freight when talking about where they got parts for their experiments. I'll have to dig through that site later.



Some folks take their steam with an extra dose of weird.

Apparently, this guy does this for a living, make props and costumes for a local haunted house.


The SteamPunk part of the show was rounded out by the Extraordinary Contraptions, an Atlanta-local SteamPunk -styled power pop band. Very cutely costumed, and wonderful folks to hang out with. I had great fun swapping maker tips with their chief engineer (who also mentioned Harbor Freight). Not really my sound, but still, great people.

They played a real set, but I only got pics of them messing about in the convention space.

I also fell in love with her stockings a little bit. The lines aren't woven, they are painted or marked in some way, and I think I've got an idea how to replicate the effect with an airbrush on a pair of normal hoes. So I'll find out at some point and give it a try.

Gotta give a shout out to Big Momma, too! One night we took in the show by Big Momma's Productions, and it was an absolute hoot. Bama burlesque girls, take note: you could learn a thing or two from these folks. Take everything I said about the dance at ImagiCon, and take the reverse. Their show was great -- engaging and funny hosts, beautiful girls, skill on display in thought-out, coreographed routines, and the great solo bit from Big Momma herself at the end of the show. This is was burlesque is supposed to be like!

Pinky and the boys from the Sadistic Scenic City SideShow also put on a good act. As we watched the show, Mrs. Utini would comment on each act comment on each act with an "allowed" or "not allowed." Ya gotta love clarity in communication and expectations.

As always, Mrs. Utini and I found our doom in the dealer's room. We always talk so much about being good this time....sure, right. At least this time we didn't load up on small little chochky shit. We got a few particular items of significant quality. The market was small but focused, not a lot of space but not a lot of off-topic bullshit, either. Lots of sex toys, some very out there, like the medical equipment. Most of what we saw we were more interested in for ideas that we can use in our own stuff, and the things we bought were just beyond our skills/time to replicate. Mostly, we spent our money at Delicious Boutique. I came out of it with this pimp shoulder holster:


and Celeste got the most Celeste-like skirt ever made (for a very reasonable price, that's what I keep telling myself) which I can't seem to find on their website.

We chatted some with Jennie Breeden, the artist behind The Devil's Panties. She's a certain kind of devilishly adorable, and if you are into the con thing and don't read her stuff you suck. We had us a good laugh about how everybody from my wife to my mom thinks this is a picture of me:

This was my first event with an open dungeon play space. Wow. Damn. No, like seriously, holy shit! What happens in the dungeon stays in the dungeon. But holy shit, what happened in the dungeon...

Saturday night we hit a few of the room parties, particularly Master Andre's ConTorage party. Kick ass party, man (you too, BamaSpider!) and what the hell kind of girlly-attracting magnet did you have in the back room? I think we were in and out of the party about 4 or 5 times and every damn time when I peeked in the back... :-) So ya, I'm totally looking forward to hooking up with you guys again at DragonCon, if not some thing sooner. Despite the fabulous parties being thrown (ya know how at big events you have to hunt to find the good parties? At FroliCon, the good parties are looking for you!) We never really did the party-all-night thing at this con. Somehow, the atmosphere at this event inspired us towards our own festivities.



So, if it's not obvious, we had a great time. We're already talking about next year. I think this might have been the con that finally won me over to the "small cons are actually better" way of thinking. And there were some things from this con that I could happily see spilling over a bit more often into every day life. We had a great time, an awesome weekend, and I got a nice fresh mental reboot, which is exactly what I was hoping for.

HeroScape with a buddy and son

Got in a game of HeroScape Thursday with a buddy and his son. It was fun, one of those classic passing of the torch to the next generation of geeks kind of evenings. Good times.

ImagiCon -- where the hell was everybody?

So, ya... ImagiCon was this past weekend. It was technically a first time con, though it pretty much grew up from the ashes of OmegaCon. And, like... no one came. Seriously, I'm having a hard time giving any actual opinion on how well prepaired the con was, or how much fun they had lined up for anybody, because no one showed up. Like, at all. I mean, OK, a few people did. I forgot my real camera at home, and was reduced to just phonecam pics. In the end I didn't even really care.


She was the coolest girl at the con, because when the fuckaweful redneck shitmetal band wouldn't stop at the end of their set (they'd already run off 2/3 of the remaining people) she went and got security on them. I don't think she'd have done that if they hadn't told her to fuck herself when she asked nicely.



But it was like all night and day there were enough folks for a kick-ass block party, wandering around the BJCC wondering where everyone else was. If they'd all been in one room it would have been a party, but all spread out like that it just felt like a ghost town.



They did have one really cool thing going on that I've not seen before. They had little sets placed around the con, little back drops for picture taking. This is one of them:


They had folks in costume scheduled to be at each station most of the day, sort of like getting your picture made with Micky Mouse at Disneyland. Or you could use the backdrops for pics of anyone in costume. Either way, they'd have made for much better pictures than the wall of some hotel. If there had been anyone there to use them. They had about 4 of the set up: this one, a mad scientist space station sort of thing; and also a castle/dungeon, and a small jungle full of Face Huggers. Cool, cool idea that I hope to see again at a more generally interesting convention.

These are the last of my pics.
Now, I'm not going to identify these girls, because I don't want to single them out for another critical comment.


I've seen a good few of these new-school burlesque acts that have been popping up of late. I'm all on board with how its not just stripping. That said, if you're gonna take out the nipple factor, the skill level MUST come up to fill the gap, and in most cases, that's just not happening.

Girls, you can't just wear your bra, slap on some fake blood, wiggle a bit on stage, and call it burlesque. There really needs to be some practice and shit, ya know?



All that said, their teacher did have some moves and actually knew how to belly dance.


OK, this is the point where I want to insert a rant about how lame the scene is in Birmingham, how ever scene in this town (geek, punk, goth, hippy, raver, gamer, you name it) is self-defeating by assuming all things will be as lame as the last thing everyone assumed would suck, and about how the only way these scenes linger in their comatose halfdead state is by eating their young. But ImagiCon, I shit you not, wasn't even good enough to bitch about. I'd feel like I was getting all worked up calling a dead man lazy.

Snow Day!

Somehow, this never got posted, and just sat at "Edit." Oh well. Here it is.

About a month ago, we got an unseasonal snow. Actually, just about any snow is unseasonable for Alabama, so when you get it you play with it. This snow lasted all of like 8 or 10 hours, so there wasn't much time to plan or get anything really put together -- just grab some toys and a camera and get out to play before it all melts!

Checking the action on the new rifle:


Looks good!

Here you see Artemiss, taking advantage of the unexpected freeze and the opportunities it offers the modern zombie hunter. The undead freeze up solid, you konw.

...and the hunter stalks her prey, trusty rifle in hand.

Custom optics make hunting the undead a more practicable endeavour. Finding her target frozen in the snow, Artemiss takes aim....

...and celebrates another successful hunt.

I also wanted to get all barbarian and play with a sword in the snow. How very Conan. I claim a family heritage exemption on all this stupidity.

By the Power of Grey Skull!

Junk Shoppin'!

So we've been hitting pretty much every Thrift store, garage sale, junk shop, and scrap pile we can find lately. For the most part, there's not much to blog about in the "we went antiquing again," category, at least not for a Red Blooded American Man like myself. But there have been a few little gems. For one, I can tell you now that Huntsville is an undiscovered SteamPunk gold mine. Makes sense, all those old NASA sub-contractors, staffed by retiring former rocket scientists who never could throw away a box of old vaccuum tubes... But enough of that! I don't want our secret stash getting out just yet.

No, mostly I'm making this post just as an excuse to post these two old phone cam pics. I found these at an antique store -- seriously, not making this up -- two doors down from my local game shop. They are never open when I'm over there, so I never went in. Well, turns out its about the manlyiest antique shop I've ever seen. Like, old coppies of PlayBoy stuck in between old rusty syths and old steel Coka Cola vending machines, good condition 1950's cap guns right next to giant gold clocks. Fancy stuff. These two sort of sum up the best, at least in my eyes. The picture above is a 1940's battery tester, held over what I think is some kind of circuit tester, also 1940s vintage. The battery tester feels like a piece of farming equipment, with that heavy old wooden handle and big steel teeth. It feels like it still works.... daddy want!

Here's the other noteworthy item:


Its about 250 pounds of beautiful, functional, polished brass manufactured in 1904 by the National Cash Register company, later to be known as NCR. This is the company who made my first computers in the 1980s, where my father worked as a tech and salesman after he got out of the Navy, where my grandfather was a MainFrame tech back when he got out of the Navy. I grew up going to company picnics in the company's sprawling private park in down town Dayton, Ohio as a kid.

And these folks, right next to my FLGS, have a working 1904 Nation register. If I had $350 burning a hole in my pocket... (well, OK, I'd probably buy a gun, but still!)

Ultimate Utility Belt

OK, here's one that you lot should have some good ideas on. I'm putting together an Ultimate Utility Belt. Think less Bat Man, and more Bug Out Kit for day-to-day action. Items must be real and functional, so no comics nonsense or anti-vampire bullshit. I'm also more interested in minor day-to-day micro-catastrophies than the end of the world. Sure, all this shit would be useful if the undead rise from their graves, but I'm more likely to get a flat tire.

From a design standpoint, I'm looking at multiple small sub-kits that could be swapped out for expected conditions -- no reason to carry a soldering kit on a kyack trip, and the snake bit kit would be less useful on a day at work than a day on the river.

So far, here's what I've got (I'm listing subkits and major components, not every little widget):

1. Fire - lighter, flint/steel, magnezium, tinder
2. First Aid - bandages, disenfectant, superglue
3. Medication - asprin, asthma medicine for Celeste, antihistimine
4. Snake-bit kit
5. Sewing kit with nail files and stain remover
6. Tire repair kit - fix-a-flat, vinly repairs
7. Rope, wire, ducktape, WD-40, vasaleen, grappeling hook
8. Environmental -- sun screen, poison ivy, water purification
9. Navigation and Signals -- compass, mirror, flair, LED flasher, throwys
10. Safe Sex kit - male and female condoms, dental dam, lube packets, rubber gloves
11. Emergency spare batteries -- AA, AAA, C, 9v, watch
12. Plastic sheet, bags, poncho
13. Tobacco and pipe, waterproof
14. Condiments -- salt, pepper, soy sauce, non-dairy creamer, instant coffee, sugar
15. Note taking kit - paper, pencil, pen, waterproofed
16. MultiTool, can opener, hammer, razor blades, fishing hooks, saw
17. Food -- jerkey, MRE stuff, etc.
18. Portable soldering and welding kit
19. Small binocular or telescope, lense cleaner
20. Mosquitto netting, mylar thermal sheet
21. Survival handbook
22. Disposable camera
23. Eye glass repair kit
24. Blade Care kit - wet stone, oil, ToughCloth, rag
25. sling and shot
26. Nuts, bolts, screws, nails, etc.
27. Bathroom kit -- hand sanitizer, TP, mouth wash, tooth paste, tooth brush, tampoons (I'm told this one could make me a hero with the right woman at the right time)
28. Marking Kit - sharpie marker, chalk, flourescent spray paint
29. locksmith kit
30. Fire extinguisher/baking soda

So far, that's what I've got. Any suggestions?

Like this Pocket Grappeling Hook