Sunday Comic: Starry, Starry Night

©1996, 2010

Kind of fitting for the holiday season although the original commemorated my experience with the Great Comet of 1996, or Comet C/1996 B2 Hyakutake which I got to see that spring in the dark skies of southern New Hampshire. There's a color version below (originally meant for halftone printing so it was done in a very black and white format).

ModMon: Flying them around the room while making engine noises!

     I got my current schedule back from Arisia for next years con (about a month from now), and it appears that modeling as a topic is not in the works. I did get the paper modeling workshop scheduled and that's good. As a result, I've started to edit some kind of a handout for the workshop, mostly to provide links for tips, reference information, and of course, downloads. Still, I couldn't help but worry if anyone will show. I can only hope that the panel discussion didn't work out because there was insufficient panelist interest, i.e. talking heads, to do it. I hope there will be attendee interest anyway given what appears to be a high level of gadget and fashion interest among participants. Still, is it that dress up is ok, but little ships are not?
     As I was writing the handout's introduction I noted something universal. All of us as children at one time or another entered into other worlds through miniatures. It may have been a doll house (or action figure headquarters), or it may have been horses or a truck, or even a vaguely spaceship shaped razor case. These were probably the earliest stories we created on our own. Sure there were books, but at first these are read to you, and often full of pictures. In our miniature worlds, they were our stories and our landscapes. It's true that this wasn't our only imaginative game play. We had our costumed games and our role playing to be sure. Therefore,  grabbing our miniature representations of the world, say a metal die-cast P-47, flying it around the room while making engine noises and strafing the mad scientist's missile base was just part of our childhood repertoire. Inevitably, at some point, like reading quietly to yourself, you realize you shouldn't do it out loud anymore. Play has to be reasoned somehow as sport, or theater, or team building exercises. Imagination becomes more part of reading quietly to ourselves  and we put away childish things.
      Nothing terribly wrong with that I suppose. There were for me at least many worlds to go to in stories. There were strange planets, weird landscapes, bizarre situations and funny moments. There is also theater of the mind in radio and new scenes to be seen on television and movies.  Invariably though, you cannot "go" to these worlds anymore than you could actually sit inside the capsule you saw at the museum (or in a book of a museum). The miniature can then return as a way to somehow be there. I can't touch the real thing, because maybe it is long gone, too far away, too rare or because it was never real to begin with. Maybe it is a way to make real something you have always seen in your mind, but never realized like you saw it.
     Some can write the world they can see inside into some version of reality. Others will paint and sculpt it out or try to live it out in costume. There are also some like me that want the solidity of the miniature, so as to see the curves and corners, the colors and lines. With a model you can try to visualize the inhabitant's point of view, or picture the scale of the real thing (be it the real Saturn V stack or some television starship). You can even somehow re-enact some historical moment, or a story scene like the HMS Thunderchild facing down the Martian tripods. Needless to say it is also nice to be able to grab the thing, and when no one is looking, fly it around the room while making engine noises.

Sunday Comic: Biohazard Bunny

Arisia 2011 created an open invitation for volunteer T-shirt design this year. While I was nicely complimented on my entry, it didn't make it. I have to admit it needed a more helpful caption than mine had. On the other hand I'll always wonder if things would have been different if I had captioned it ...

Biohazard Bunny to the rescue!

©2010

 Well, actually to the rescue of its fellow genetically enhanced lab rabbits regardless of collateral damage. After all, Biohazard Bunny has a heavily armed saucer and does travel.
Perhaps I'm venting some of my issues with our own house bunny (a veritable poop machine and arch enemy of USB cables, garbage bags, and geraniums).

Modeling Monday: Web pages that aren't quite dead yet

     This is something of a self serving post. Over time there have been many web sites that I've visited that had some cool reference photos or drawings that have come in handy for modeling hardware that have subsequently disappeared. This should be no surprise given the ephemeral nature of the web that was pretty self evident since I first discovered it. Fan sites were often being generated by students using their school web space and invariably all these sites would end shortly after graduation and the sys admin started clearing space on the disks. Research was also powered by those frequenting bulletin boards and alt.binaries.models.scale (and sometimes without the ".scale"). These of course were cleared on a regular basis.
     So, you saved a lot of stuff. Of course at the time before memory was cheap, you would bookmark stuff and dump it on floppies (boy, that's really dating me). Then systems crash, software changes, and stuff is eventually lost. Still, some places seemed to continue on and on, even if they weren't being updated. Then one day you take a peek and 404 comes up.  Over the years, many legacy free web space providers have merged, gone out of business, or simply phased out that part of the business and overnight the sites are gone. Thus the beauty of the Internet Archive (www.archive.org) which since about 1996 has been collecting pages off the web on a regular basis. So, if you have the URL of the page you want,  you can plug it into their "Wayback" machine and see if they actually got stuff. Alas, just because it existed doesn't mean they have it. Initially the collection focused on text content, images and other file formats later so sometimes you hit the site to see "close up of hatch" and see nothing. The other problem  may be the "robots.txt" file which directs web collection software to not cache the site. I recall this as being the problem of one excellent Space 1999 site whose author was upset about large scale downloading from his site. Another problem is that you have to know the URL because there is no keyword search on the archives data (not directly, although it is possible to Google it with a site restriction to the archive domain, but I suspect this is rather patchy and dependent on external links to that data).
     So the self serving part of the post is this: How do I keep track of references to archived URLs that show up on the web and discussions groups in addition to just saving it to myself? Well, why not post it. For instance:

• Hangar 18 models used to have good reference shots of Space 1999 and The Black Hole until they stopped. (originally http://www.coldnorth.com/hangar-18-models/resources/)
• Dannysoar's fantasy site and his home page for neat articles about some fantastical flying machines (and also weird free flyers). (originally centered around http://home.att.net/~dannysoar although you have to hunt around off the links a bit as he added accounts as he ran out of space)
• The Modeler's Reference Vault which seems to have disappeared just this year (2010, formerly www.cloudster.com)
• The Idic Page which had tons of Star Trek photos and stories (members.aol.com/idicpage/main.html).
• The Lost Plan-It which was an early web page with reference shots to some of the rarer stuff like Dark Star, Valley Forge, and the Robinson Crusoe on Mars ship (www.execpc.com/~ppavlovi/lostplanit001.htm). The site is somewhat difficult to navigate and varied over time due to space restrictions
• Precision Paper Models which was one of the first places I found cool card models (www76.pair.com/tjohnson/ppsm.html). Not everything was archived. Some versions of the Atlas booster are missing, but can be made up from other Atlas versions that are archived.
• E. te Groen's models for the Philippus Lansbergen Observatory website are here. E. te Groen is still active and they may re-appear here or elsewhere.  (orig. www.lansbergen.net/eng/index.htm)

The other thing to try is just using the internet archive to go backwards in time with any of your old (or existing) links pages, such as www.spacestation42.com for card models or www.starshipmodeler.com, or even Yahoo.

The funny thing is this started fortuitously as a result of the ongoing search for those "easy" paper kits. There was a great beginner site called "Modular Space Toys" which consisted of a series of "module" models that could be combined with others to create a large variety of different models. Well, the site disappeared (it may come back), but for now the bulk of the module's are still available at http://web.archive.org/web/%2A/http://www.geocities.com/codex34/paper/paper1.html. These are great for downloading and re-painting as many of them are "gif" files and easy to edit on almost any picture editing software.

It isn't perfect. The archive is made up donated equipment run by volunteers. It often has retrieval problems and probably suffers from a non-trivial amount of memory loss, but hey, it's not dead yet!

p.s. If anyone knows if any cool archived site, or previous urls for the site (sometimes sites with a domain like "coolsf.com" may have had a previous existance as "www.geocities.com/user4/coolsf.htm") feel free to add the info below

Sunday Comic: Moby DEC

©1995,2010

  Originally from December of '95. The result of a frazzled sketch on a whiteboard drawn sometime in the wee hours of working on final projects and a long series of failures to compile. The following morning complimented by my office mates, I took a picture and then redrew it for the school paper. I realized it was a very common sentiment.

Oh, I know it's not the literal quote, but I nonetheless made a point of crediting Ahab and not Khan.

Modeling Monday: Tor's Stubby

  In my ongoing search for fast easy paper models, I came across a paper model for Tor's retro rocket logo lovingly referred to as Stubby. The designer for this model is Robert Nava who has designed quite a few Disney inspired designs which are available at the Disney experience site.
  The model itself is simple enough, but not an hour build by any stretch. I did it over an afternoon. I wanted to do inside tabs for flush, butt joints, so I cut the shapes without the teeth and then glued the teeth tabs separately on the inside of the parts. I had originally printed this on cardstock (about 60lbs) and the tabs were still rather rigid. I then printed a copy on plain paper off the laser printer. I then glued plain paper tabs on the inside and this worked better. The extra copy also allowed me to use the extra fins as templates for cardstock fillers to stick inside the fins and thicken them up as well as provide a better sticking surface to the fuselage. I also used the extra tubes to line the inside of the rocket tubes and left off the "lit" ends. This allowed for a simple scrap wire stand that I just insert into the top tube.

  As often happens with paper models, the edges are always a problem. Even with some of the flush joining there was still quite a bit of white edge showing. I couldn't quite find the right color pencil to hide them (somewhere between a dark red and terracota). I might try this again reversing the print order, card on laser printer, color on thin paper, and just paper over the assembly with the color. This often works well at hiding seams.
  Well, I'm going to go back to working on my own stuff. I have a Robur's Albatros that I've been working on for a while as well as my Aries 1b which has been in test assembly for over a year.

  This last bit is annoying in that I finally got a version of the nose that I like, only to find some inaccuracies compared to new photos available at Douglas Trumbull's site. Still, I was only considering this a test build, so I'll just move onto the main hull. At least with the current photos I have a better sense of what's actually on it. For those of you who don't want to go crazy doing what I'm doing, there does exist a complete paper version of the Aries 1b by a very skilled and impressive Japanese designer (but I can't tell you who - you have to find it).

"To infinity and so on"(no tm)

Sunday Comic: To those that survived...

I salute you!

             ,,            .           .
      |     /..\           |Los Pavos! |Armados!
     \||//  | \|                 .              
   _\\||/ __/ U/                 | Jamas seran Asados !
     \\\|/  \_ |\                                      
    |----\  |---------|-            
    |  __///---| 8----'          
    |-' ____   |_'
          \ /\ /             Happy Thanksgiving
           \| \|
            -- --

Well, due to technical difficulties I had to hunt stuff down. So deep down in the annals of my ASCII art I found my old holiday sig, which is in Castellano or otherwise Spanish. So for the Spanish speakers who are still working off the turkey triptophans from Thanksgiving here in the US of A, enjoy (particularly the children of the stormy 60's who would know the melody).

Modelin' Monday: My First Paper Trek

Well, its more or less ready for posting. As mentioned earlier, this was a project for a paper model that could be built in under an hour for an Arisia crafting workshop. I got some suggestions from the Starship Modeler Forum's paper section and caveats to limit myself to just simple geometric shapes. This is probably true, but at the same time I would like something more interesting than a simple geometric object like a pyramid or cube (although I do appreciate and plan to use the Borg cube, kindly offered by Marco Scheloske). There were these cool modular paper models that were somewhat simple, but on closer examination, may take a while for some of the more sophisticated iterations. I still hope to work them into the workshop (the website is long gone but survives at the web archive, although there is hope that it will return). I was also reminded of some of the simpler, beginner kits at the Lower Hudson Valley e-gift shop, as well as some gaming models.
Returning to the main topic though, I created this simplified version of a Star Trek - The Motion Picture era shuttle (see previous entry) that is slightly more sophisticated than a box. It benefits from being simple, so instructions are not critical. The parts fit on one page, and there was room for a few more details. I'm currently working on a second page for anyone who wants to elaborate on the details a bit more. Hopefully soon I'll also have a slightly more curvy version that follows the lines of the ship implied by Probert more closely, albeit within reason for paper, meaning that it doesn't need to be folded 4 or 5 times just to round a corner.

           

                       

This last image linked to jpg of model - PhotoBucket links have been removed

It's about 370Kb and for now located here. There really wasn't any room for instructions. As a result, you should probably use the following info. The tabs are listed alphabetically on the body in the order to be glued (letter on tab and near edge that it should match). Not mentioned specifically on the page is the scoring of the folds which makes assembly of the body way easier. On the nose, there is a valley fold that goes from the notch behind the "b" tabs (the green arrow) to the nose fold. Also valley fold the tab that connects the upper nose to the top back piece. All other tabs are mountain folds. Also, score for the mountain fold on the lower part of the rear bulkhead (from the notch in the tab straight across to the other notch). The dock doors are perhaps best glued to a thicker piece of card and cut just shallow of the teeth and then pushed through from the inside to the end of the tunnel tube. The thing can be slapped together in about an hour with some care, and some assembly pipelining such as building the docking tunnel while waiting for the fuselage to get more or less dry. The pictured model used standard card stock.
    Again, this is just a simple "slap in an hour" version with extra bits that can be glued on later such as the anti-grav doo-dads, EM propulsion thingies and GNDN tankage. Share and Enjoy.

Sunday Comic: Solar Power!

The first one - 10/18/1995

My Rejected Solar Car Entry

©1995,2010

Wednesday's Child: The Dead IMacs

Dropping off my daughter at her music lesson, I noticed in the hall an old IMac, the hefty G3 candy drop variety. It was on, but I didn't check the specks for the OS or the hardware so I'm not sure of the age other than by color; a mix of white and ghost gray. It's not long for this world.

We had a couple of these. My wife had bought a steely gray IMac about 10 years ago (next generation after the lollipops came out), and the other a cute flower power mac hand-me down from her niece who upgraded. I liked these machines, but they always had some odd aggravating little quirks that made me really identify with the "crash different" video (If the link dies, just video search for "Mac Crash Different"). Sure, mode confusion on the control panel, erratic mouse behavior at times, useless error messages and interrupts (I think on a mac, "esc" is like the "close door" button on elevators). The apple software doesn't do what I want, and what I want wasn't ready for the OS. And speaking of apple, can't help but get a gnawing feeling that I'm getting the shaft by getting stuff that's not ready for prime time, paying a premium for it, then when the fix comes, they want you to pay for the stuff they should have gotten right in the first place. Ah...but the Unix terminal, at least I could work with the stuff the GUI keeps pretending doesn't exist.

Well, at any rate, I am not a "power" user and with time they did what they did well and quite frankly, it is comforting that it is hard to get a mac sick from the wrong piece of email or some criminal script. But, the machines were so self contained. I have resusitated pc's before and even keep an old P3 of similar performance recovered from the bits and pieces of others, and it wasn't hard to do. The Imac though would be another story.

Eventually the Imac started shutting down by itself. Research said that it was just a $9 battery, but to fix it required opening the whole thing and getting to the motherboard which on this boat anchor wasn't trivial...because SJ doesn't want you poking around in there. Eventually I get the guts to open it and after a bit of effort and dealing with the scary plastic cracking sound required to take the bottom off, I replace the battery. Voila! It works. Then the other mac dies and so I repeat the feat which also works. Alas this works for a little bit and then it starts doing it all over again.

Finally I read up on the problem again and basically it means you should kiss our mac goodbye because the real fault is a $100+ "flyback" transformer used to power the IMacs built in screen. You see Steve Jobs hates fans, they whine and whir and are, I guess, annoying, so the old Macs don't have them. Instead the heat up like a coffee pot and unfortunately over time fry this flyback transformer. Now, on a PC, if your screen burns out, you just replace the monitor, but here it's integral and you can't just replace it with any power supply because they are matched by board revision (not even by mac color). If you thought replacing the battery was tricky, doing anything to the board itself is a whole other level of effort. A substitute monitor requires finding an analog monitor with matching old style cable that you can patch into the video feed from the motherboard. Consider replacing the built in, well opening the other bits of the mac come with that "high voltages can result in injury AND death" warning that tends to turn one off and just throw in the towel.

Oh, great fortune that "Small Dog Electronics" would take the boat anchors off my hand for free. Of course I first wanted to see if there was anything I could take off them that I could use somewhere else, but unlike PC's there really wasn't. I took their memory, the hard drives, the DVD drives which being slot driven I probably can't use anywhere else and those fine speakers. That's it. They worked just fine for what I wanted them for and they died because I couldn't swap a monitor.

So that's today's "Wednesday's Child" even though I couldn't finish typing all this by the end of Wednesday. Fortunately it appears blogger thinks I live in California (How in the hell do I change that...there's always next Wed.). Oh, and by the way, I wrote this using a Mac.

Modeling Monday: Andrew Probert's Old New Shuttle

When Star Trek the Motion Picture was released, Andrew Probert was kept on to redesign the exteriors of the vehicles and environs for the movie "Enterprise" based on the initial designs for the abortive "Phase II" TV project. Of course, all Trek heads pretty much know this already. One of the distinctive ships in the movie was the Vulcan Shuttle that Spock travels on to intercept the Enterprise on its emergency mission. At the time, Probert stated that he also wanted to use this shuttle module design as the basis for a new shuttle design for the Enterprise, albeit in a somewhat more compact form. He included this design in his proposed matte views of the hangar deck and are included in "Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise" which still sits in my bookcase (The book also has a profile of this shuttle). In the end, the producers left the shuttle bay empty in the final matte painting and so this design is not considered canon, in fact considering the dearth of other references, it practically doesn't exist at all (There's a reference to it as an "SW7 class" shuttle, why...beats me).
Enter Arisia 2011, where I've been accepted to talk about sci-fi modeling and run a paper modeling workshop and the problem is how to make a model in 50 minutes. After setting up the proposal on the forum at starship modeler, I get some caveats about glue drying and folding and that it may be hard. Then I remember the Probert ST-TMP shuttle and think - it's really just a box right. So now I've embarked on kitting the shuttle. It's been an interesting process being the first time I've used modeling software (Blender) to do this as opposed to just trigonometry.
The end result has been a shuttle on one page that builds in under an hour. Now just to finalize the details. Maybe somebody can use it to recreate the scene in Andrew Probert's painting.
(Needless to say since this post the model was indeed finished - it's the next post Modelin' Monday: My First Paper Trek)

Sunday Comic

This was originally meant as a "rally sign" submission for John Stewart's "Rally to Restore Sanity"("and or fear") "Sane or Not"contest. Alas, every machine with any kind of art software went on the fritz around that time, and by the time I got Gimp downloaded and installed (and back into its particular idiosyncrasies), well the submission deadline had passed. So, now for your enjoyment...consider this thought to inject a little sanity into your life.

©2010

Well, what do you know....

It's still here. Originally I started this just to practice what it was like to use a blogging service (as opposed to just writing something within available web space...typically at a college server. Well it has changed quite a bit as far as available features since then, but in many ways still limiting the way geocities used to — mainly sticking to existing templates if you want your life to be simple.

On the other hand, I was just able to stick in an "—" without any real trouble, but I still had to stick in the paragraph break myself. Needless to say the CSS control is nice (even if the resulting style sheet is really hard to decipher). Well for now I'll just leave it and live with it.