This was originally supposed to go up back in May…but…you know.

The few people who actually visit my site intentionally, and those non-bots who stumble upon it by accident, have probably been wondering where the hell I’ve been and what manner of hell I’ve been up to for the past five months year.  Well, I wish I could say I had a lot to show for my time…but it would be a damned dirty lie.  Then again, I’m occasionally told that I’m overly-critical of myself…so I guess you’ll just have to read the highlights and decide for yourself if I’ve wasted half a year of my life!

Probably the biggest thing is that I bought an embroidery machine, a small and inexpensive home model that can do up to 4×4 inch patterns. And then I acquired digitizing software… Wilcom Hatch Embroidery… Which costs $1200—yes, twelve-hundred god damn dollars —if you want the version that you can actually make art in.  Luckily they offer flex-pay and I’ve been paying $99.99 a month since.

So, I’ve been making embroidered patches.  Why? Because like damn-near everything I pursue, I wanted a thing; then, having decided I was too poor to have somebody else make it for me, I proceeded to somehow spend obscene amounts of money—seemingly beyond my means —to give myself the capability to make the thing that I wanted. This is where I’d normally say something about doing a more in-depth post on this later, but by now we all know that is also a damned dirty lie.

This was not without tangible benefits beyond, you know, the literally tangible ones —as it forced me to finally open an Etsy store which has so far generated 10 sales, averaging a sale a week— and a dollar of profit a day —for 73 days.  Not bad considering I’m only selling two items and at the moment not doing anything to really put my shop out there to get noticed.

Other notable things that I may or may not elaborate on later:

• I was one of the lucky(?) backers who actually received their Tiko3D… (Spoilers: It’s kinda rubbish.)
• I made some upgrades to my 3D printer. (For better or worse? I think the whole thing needs to be taken to bits and reassembled.)
• I’ve been doing a lot of experiments with using 3D printing to improve the workflow of other processes. (Like printing templates for things.)
• My giant-ass monitor bit it, I know what’s wrong but not why nor how to fix it, and that’s had me flummoxed for quite a while.
• I’ve made inroads toward having my mill and lathe usable.
• I designed several very complex 3D printing projects.
• I’ve begun work on a rebranding of MAKE COOL THINGS for 2018, with a new logo and a bunch of matching icons and things.

H***y H***days! (Don’t ask. You’ll follow my example if you don’t want to be hounded by C*****mas-themed spambots until the heat-death of the universe.)

Okay, so here we are. The end of the year.  I guess first and foremost, the responsible thing would be to list the things I still haven’t managed to do this year, as a reminder to myself…

I have a few nearly-finished posts in draft form that haven’t made it up yet:

• A review of the game Shenzhen I/O
• A post about 3D printer upgrades
• A post about live-streaming

That’s actually a lot less than I expected! …of course then there’s the ones I never got around to even starting… Foremost among these is probably the one about 3D printing-related crowdfunding campaigns I’ve backed… And it’s probably just as well that I haven’t done it yet, because the biggest one of all hasn’t arrived yet! (But it’s sitting on a boat in customs at the port of Long Beach!)

There’s also the progress I’ve been meaning to write about regarding my HOTAS modifications, which will eventually turn into a complete custom stick and throttle project… For now, I’ll give you a sample… Since I just finished it the other day!

Anyway, next weekend I’ll talk about what I hope to do in the coming year! (Ironically, New Years Day is still technically the last day of the 52nd week of 2016… #JustISOThings )

So I’ve had a lot on my plate these last couple of months, a lot of irons in the fire, a lot of balls in the air, [insert additional metaphors here]…  And of course, my finances being what they are, it’s slow-going acquiring the tools and materials that I need…but things are starting to come together.  I’ve got a series of blog posts that I’m putting the finishing touches on, about undertakings that are finally coming to fruition, or projects that can finally begin, all of which are very exciting.

For now, I’ll give you the quick hits:

• A feature on prop making, which will involve the 3D printing, post-processing, painting, and weathering, of a Fallout 4 prop.
• Tutorials on cleaning up and post-processing 3D prints, and possibly on tuning printers for the best output. (The former is easiest to explain and can overcome pretty much anything, whereas the latter is very dependent on individual printers and slicing engine/software…so I might just scratch the latter entirely except to mention some resources to check out.)
• A beginner’s guide to airbrushes, by a beginner…less of a tutorial and more of a ‘here’s what I’ve learned from my mistakes, so you don’t have to make them’.
• Finally some electronics stuff, because the ESP8266 is the coolest chip ever made, and you can have a wifi-enabled microcontroller that’ll probably run off a potato-battery, for less than the cost of a cup of coffee!
• Some talks about how 3D printing can be used to improve basically anything.
• A couple cool projects I’ve been working on.

Now, all I have to do…is actually write about any of that shit. ┐(シ)┌

Well, I’m shooting a lot of video, so unless I want all that HDD space to be used up in vain, I’ve gotta do something.