Raithe

AutoCad's Fusion 360 is free for personal (hobby) use, but won't let you choose where to install it and has a bunch of annoying things to it. One of these days I do mean to go back to re-learn it properly. But eh, I'm doing mostly well with Blender. I just need to figure out how to do accurate hinges and such like.

I used Blender to create all my armour pieces that I printed out for the Mando. Been tooling around with it creating a variety of blasters and such as well as general gidgets and greeblies.

My Ender 5 Plus is an FDM printer. It uses a variety of plastics (mostly PLA variants) that are fed into a hot-end and the high temperature melts it as it basically draws an object layer by layer, building upwards. You get bigger build plates and can generally create larger items using that sort of FDM 3D printer (unless you're talking incredibly expensive equipment that straddles the line of uber-hobby / industrial). Which does give you the more traditional 3D printed thing (and the requisite print lines from the layer by layer heat, melt, draw, cool process). Aka: Resin 3D printers work with a liquid resin that gets stored in a vat under the buildplate, and use UV light and lasers to cure the resin, and do it upside down (compared to FDM printers). The build plate is drawn upwards, UV light is applied to cure the resin in the correct pattern for that layer, then it repeats until the object is finished. Note: Technically, this is the oldest form of 3D printing. But it was the FDM printers that really saw it developed as a craft-hobby that you could do at home. Because the resin printer can work in incredibly high definition, you can do a lot more really fine detail work that you don't have to worry about clean-up in the same way you do with FDM printers. You just have to go through additional steps of washing the printed object off of resin, and then set it to cure further under UV (either direct sun or basically a mini Tanning bed). While with the FDM printing, you tend to have a pause for sanding and filling in to smooth out the print lines. FDM is still somewhat cheaper as a hobby, but Resin printers and materials are beginning to match them price-wise. If you want something larger, and aren't too stressed on really fine details? FDM printer tends to be the thing. Smaller and incredibly detailed? That's where you go Resin printer. My plan is to use a combination of both to get what I want. I can slice something up so the bulk is FDM printer, and the detail parts are resin printed, then put it all together.

Juggling some work stuff, setting up plans in motion for some hectic times. Trying to balance a few things out for the San Diego trip following Christmas, and just let myself ease into some retail therapy by taking advantage of the opening black friday sales to pick up a resin 3d Printer... Also, lots of supporting crafting stuff on my Mando. Coming up with some designs for leatherwork on the belts and such, besides painting some of the printed armour pieces.

Just to get that earworm back...

The Weird Al Biopic. It was entertaining in that bizarre Weird Al parody manner to the max. Radcliffe hammered home the performance of Weird Al's decent into drink, drugs and ego. I think when the fact that you can match the Weird Al biopic to the Funny or Die Weird Al biopic, it goes into a whole 'nother meta-parody of a parody of a parody...

I think there's likely a more disturbing story behind training for that sort of flexibility at an early age...

Also from view from the cheap seats, a re-post of something from the other year:

Well, maybe not political per se, but that interesting mix of economics and.. dare I say it, funny?

Kevin Conroy, Voice of Batman, Dead at 66 (gizmodo.com)