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Nick suggested I post these here for you all to see. And since I am too embarrassed to link you to the place they are officially published, I am just going to post Dropbox links for now. If that is totally unacceptable I suppose I could upload them again to imgur or something for you.

Real fast Engineer sketch
https://www.dropbox.com/s/psmnees0tg92c6g/Engineer%20Quick%20Sketch.JPG

Slightly better but not that great Sniper sketch
https://www.dropbox.com/s/13yfa2xgxkvipgn/Scout%20Meet%20Sniper.JPG

Let me know what you think. And if there is anything in particular I should try. I usually don't have great ideas.

So it's been about a week since you guys said I should try and learn JavaScript. A week that, excluding the screaming at my monitor bits, has been pretty fun. I've done all the free tutorials on Code Avengers and most of the ones on Codeacademy. After I finish those I'm not quite sure what I should do next though. And this seemed like a good place to ask. Or at the very least inform you of my new interest in programming.

So I have been reluctant to post anything about this...
If you are my friend on Steam (and you are ever online...Court) you have probably seen me using a program called RPG Maker VX Ace. A very awesome program that lets you make your own Secret of Mana/Chrono Trigger style RPG games.

I've been working on something for about a week now...and it is slow going but it is actually finally becoming something more than just a map or two you can wander around on. If it ever becomes anything more, and anyone has any sort of interest, I might put up a download for people to try.

So, I have always been a lover of lathes and working with wood. If you can combine the two then all the better! Perhaps it is something about the ease of making something potentially beautiful and perfectly symmetrical that makes it so appealing.

Anyway! Since I am broke and can't afford a lathe, I had the genius idea of trying to turn my drill press into one! Apparently this isn't such an original idea since you can actually buy bits that are meant for that.... Well, I don't want to pay for one of those either so I guess I will try and make my own.

Pictures to follow!!..if it works and/or doesn't fly apart and take out my eye.

The never ending project wheel spins on....

Has anyone heard of or been reading about the game Starbound? I keep forgetting about it and finding it again. It is apparently the game that the makers of Terraria are working on now. Seems like a mix between Terraria and FTL where you get to explore solar systems and their worlds. Sounds pretty awesome to me.

I admit I am not a fan of blu-ray movies as I don't see enough of a difference to warrant the extra cost of the movie and player... However, I do have some things on my computer I would like to have backed up on discs. Mostly Steam games and, of course, pictures! Four gigabyte DVDs are just impractical. Has anyone had any experience with burning blu-ray discs? Is it worth the absurd cost for backup purposes?

Just for the sake of making a new post.

I am currently working on making a bridge hopefully capable of supporting a substantial amount of weight. It is going to be made completely out of those craft 'popsicle' sticks and gorilla wood glue. I haven't exactly decided how long it will be...I suppose that depends on how much I have to spend on the craft sticks. Two or three feet is what I was thinking. We will see how it turns out.

Triangles! That is all I have to say.

I have been wanting to try and do some time-lapse photography lately. We are growing pole beans and they seem to grow as much as half an inch an hour. This seemed to be the perfect candidate for such a thing....

Unfortunately, Canon saw fit to not include the time-lapse feature of my PowerShot S5IS. Obviously the camera is more than capable of doing this, so that was rather irritating to find out I couldn't do it. And so to Google I went and found an awesome 'hack' called CHDK. Apparently this program stores itself in the temporary memory or something and allows you to perform a bunch of things the camera otherwise doesn't let you do. One of which is obviously time-lapse. You turn the camera off and away the program goes. It's actually pretty neat.

On the down side, I need a power adapter to plug into my camera.... Running for hours and taking pictures isn't going to happen on batteries! I am hoping I can find one and test this out.

Cool stuff.

Yes! Why? Because I can! Pictures are sure to follow in a few days if I don't get horribly distracted!

Well that pretty much says it all. I figure I can make one for free or nearly free with all the scrap wood and stuff we have lying around. Not that I have any grand plans on what to do with it, but I am sure I will come up with something.

For all of you that know what a vacuum forming table is, should it ever be complete you are welcome to use it. If you don't know what it is...well you should because they are awesome.

I am sure that nobody is terribly interested, but after buying and playing Portal 2 I decided it would be cool to make my own maps for it. I've spent about the last 4 days trying to figure out how to do everything but I have a pretty good understanding of the way things work now. So now I have started making my own maps for it. If anyone else is at all interested let me know. Maybe I can write a tutorial and/or post them somewhere for download so someone else can take a look at them and give me some feedback.

So, with the purchase (finally after some emailing) and shipping of my sword, I thought it would be a good idea to buy a quality sharpening stone. Odds are I will never have the heart or need to use it on the sword being as it is supposedly a limited edition collectible. But! I was thinking...I own quite a few bladed objects as do most of the people I know. It seemed like a good idea to take a gander at the ol' Amazon and see what they had. I managed to find a Japanese water stone for about $30. From what I read those things are supposed to be pretty awesome if you know how to use them.

Getting to that point...I have very little experience with sharpening stones, but I guess that takes practice. Should anyone else have the urge to sharpen their knives to a hair splitting precision edge feel free to come over and try it. When it gets here of course.

So I got inspired the other day while watching lightsaber movies on YouTube. I decided it would be cool if I could make a movie of myself with a real looking lightsaber. Well...after about a day of looking at stuff and downloading a trial version of Adobe After Effects (which is a really cool program by the way) I did manage to get a couple decent looking videos. I figured this could make a good Randomland article thing. I have no idea how to make them...again...though. So yeah, if there is a place to post these or something let me know.

So I had this ancient Sony CRT that worked perfectly except the wiring on the plug end got all screwy and it no longer worked. So I decided that there must be a way to fix this....Cut the cord and rewire the plug on the end? Nonsense! Replace the whole bloody cable. And so I did successfully today. I took one of those old cables with the VGA plug on both ends, cut one end off, and hardwired it into the old CRT. Problem was that the wiring in the one that was originally attached to the monitor and the one I replaced it with were totally different colors. So I got creative and stuff...and it works! Does this deserve a Randomland page? I was completely unable to find anything like it on the internet amazingly enough.

I am personally rather fond of music that is done by an orchestra. Maybe I am just weird but I find it far more...moving than all that stuff that is so unfortunately so popular these days. You know what I am talking about. Anyways, during some random Youtube surfing a couple months ago I ran across this band which is, in my opinion, phenomenal. Or at least great. So yeah Court said I had to write a topic about it so here I am doing just that.

The music production company is called Two Steps from Hell. I guess they make music for movie trailers and whatnot. But it's good stuff. Go listen to them!...if you want.

So, for some odd reason, I decided it would be great fun to take apart our old riding lawn mower and see if I couldn't get it running again. As I remember it the transmission broke and the thing wouldn't move so we bought a new one. Well after a couple days of taking every possible piece off the thing I got to the transmission. On taking it apart it appears that there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. Everything inside functions perfectly. There was the issue with the shifter bar thingy being oddly rusted in place and absolutely immovable...but once I broke that loose it all seems happy. Of course I am sure it won't turn out so easy to get running again. On a more electrical note, I may need the help of one or two smart peoples to see if I can't hook up the ignition system thing and get it working again. All my attempts have failed miserably.

Let's just ignore the terrible joke there in the topic title...

I don't think there is really a great spot for this but here seems as logical as anywhere to me. Nick came over not terribly long ago and pointed out some sad little maple trees growing in the gravel. Because of this, I have been going around the property picking out happy looking baby maple trees and some other mystery tree starts and putting them into little pots. Now, logic states that when one gets to a certain number of little trees in pots they should stop...but logic is no fun. I currently have about 21 of the things sitting around. I'm not sure how many will survive or what exactly it is I will do if they all actually decide to grow. In any case it seemed like something to make a topic about on the Randomland forums!

It has just occurred to me that I am seriously lacking in the picture takingness. I looked on my little pocket camera and there are still pictures on there from when I went to the beach for Christmas. I'm guessing part of the problem is that I have done pretty much nothing worth taking pictures of in the last two and a half months. As you can imagine, this is really hurting my overall picture count. Excluding the pictures on my cameras, I am only at 21,529 pictures. How pathetic I know. I best get to work, eh?

So yeah, my lovely cheap corner desk for my computer looked really crappy....I admit it. It was particle board and just painted on top with some lame pattern. Over the years that coat of paint had rubbed off and yeah, if you've seen it you remember how bad it was. So anyway, the other day I got this brilliant idea! put Formica on top! Yeah! I went down to the local redneck flooring store and found a remnant piece that was black  with a nice white speckle pattern. Somehow I managed to get it all cut, glued, and got my desk reassembled in one day. It looks great too! If anyone cares enough I could probably write a short page about it or something. Great learning experience and everything. Now I know how to lay laminate.

So you really need a something better than arts and crafts to put this in...but I couldn't find one so I am putting it here. I spent a few too many hours in front of the computer messing around and managed to come up with this surprisingly accurate nalgene bottle replica. So yep, here it is.

http://randomland.net/sites/default/files/imagecache/1024px_wide/Jacsveus/images/NalgeneBottle.jpg

So undoubtedly you internet browsing people have run across this game before...if not oh well I will talk about it anyway. Yeah, it's that new supposed to be awesome game that came out like 2 weeks ago. Anna and I both thought it looked awesome in the commercials (who knew such a thing was possible?) and in the stuff we were reading about it online. So on the way home from the airport last week I bought it. Turns out it is really awesome! Not that anyone really cares or wants to spend the money to buy it, but if you do then you should because it's cool.

Comments? Questions? Don't ask me because I haven't played it enough to answer any of them but you can ask anyway and I can always at least pretend to know what I'm talking about.