Or, you know, CG

 If we do a CG version of the police cruiser, it'll just look something like this? Maybe?

Ringu

I did this tutorial. Note that Shapeways adds a step specific to rings that isn't needed as one can change the size of the material in Fusion 360's sheet metal environment.

I'm getting this ring (ID 14.5mm) made at Shapeways. For such a simple design you might be surprised to learn it took me days to do.

Microphone tests with acoustic guitar

I test an Aurycle kit microphone (a u47 clone, all stock), the Austin ribbon kit (with Cinemag transformer), a Rode NT1-A, and an AKG C12-A.

Left to right: AKG C12-A (with the "Utopia" logo), Rode NT-1A, Austin Ribbon kit (Cinemag transformer), Aurycle U-47 multipattern clone kit.

They all go through the preamps on a Focusrite 18i20. I lined them up with a bit of distance from the guitar just so they shouldn't sound terribly different from one another just due to the positioning.
It's virtually impossible to do a real blind A/B comparison, so I generally don't even try. But there are some clear differences betwixt each of these mics.

Art Rock

I've had the very pretentious idea of "art song on the top, rock song on the bottom" for, well, since I was a teenager.
I've never quite been able to pull it off.

A baritone guitar would probably help.

The idea being to have a groove underneath, but to continue to vary the melody and harmony on top like classical Western music.

I dunno. Maybe I can pull it off eventually. I'll start with a concerto for electric guitar. That sounds appropriately pretentious. No?

Level your bed

Some Cura settings for the Monoprice IIIP.
Vector wing drawings.

Studio HDR lighting setups for Blender. Very cool actually.
This sea serpent printable model looks pretty cool.
Prop shop Themendous in Union City.
Bed leveling the Monoprice IIIP. Something I, er, have not actually done.

Freestyle

In passing I'd wondered what the "freestyle" option under rendering in Blender was all about.
Well it turns out that I needed to render some blueprints of the police cruiser for The Cassandra Protocol. And to do that, you use "freestyle."

Fear of Prime

I'm kinda terrified at the direction the whole movie business is going in.

Amazon Prime, you know, because they can, slashed rates to pay out to small filmmakers. Six cents an hour.

The Crealty 3D CR10-S printer is six hundred bucks. Might want one to make interior spaceship panels -- as one does.
Themendous is a prop-house nearby in Union City.

Stuff

Assigning a material in Blender.

Spacemouse for Blender.

The Soviet Militsiya.

 Principled BSDF shader.

XR-3 hybrid reverse trike.

Cheap various trikes.

And then what

Master no louder than -9 LUFS short-term at the loudest moments
(with True Peaks no higher than -1)

That's what Ian Shepherd says at least. 

SimulAnalog guitar suite has a pretty decent Univibe free VST plugin.

Experiments.A

A bit of a paint effect.

Also, Blender has really fixed some things. Firstwise they've gone ahead and created the "shadow catcher" as a kind of object. Thanks be to the Dutch rendergods. 

I've gone ahead and joined the $10/month Blender Cloud services thing.

The original right out of Blender.

Desaturated somewhat in Photoshop. Boy, the effect seemed more extreme in Photoshop.

Hippos of the New Year

Suzi is a robot cop.

Stuff done in 2017

Published the novel Earthkiller.

Recorded and released "The Last Voyage of the No Ship" from Pleasure for the Empire.
Recorded and released the album "La Gata de la Luna" from Night Gods of the Sleeping Earth.
Sold Carbon Copy in Japan
Had a job very briefly at the JCFabLab.
Learned how to sew with a machine.
Released Dragon Girl on Amazon Prime.

Built a baritone guitar.
Built a Telecaster-type guitar.
Built a wide-necked thinline (Five) hollow-body guitar.
Made mezuzas.
Made dragon boxes.
Lost 20lbs

You know what's frustrating? Amazon affiliate links not appearing in Blogger. I guess that feature is just dead.

Robot Christmas

This is the video for the new Tyrannosaurus Mouse song, "Robot Christmas."
A joyful little ditty with a message for the youth of today.

Medina Happy Chassis Agent Puppet

The amazing Medina Senghore in SyFy's Happy. Dig it.
For six thousand dollars you can get a chassis for a 3-wheeled car.

Finding an agent for your book.
Luna's puppets.