Timasomo Notification: Week 2 conversation is up. We're about halfway through the event!
I have been super busy and haven't had time to respond adequately to everything from last week, but I am seriously impressed with the progress so far. Y'all are doing some amazingly cool stuff! Keep it up!
I think I managed to knock out the most annoying parts of the modding process, which is "creating UI elements that don't look totally like crap" (despite taking probably far too long to get it to that state), and getting a few sample buffs and debuffs done. I still have a ridiculous amount to go through and brainstorm (at least 60ish, by idealized standards, very likely to be more) and then implement on top of that, but it feels like I got the main pain out of the way at the moment. Now I just need the brain to do the thinky for what other buffs and debuffs to add.
Side note: I've tried looking into a bunch of other mods in the past week as well, to see what they do. There is a LOT of info about different mods and tweaks and what they do, and what's extremely frustrating is that they all assume that you know all about all the other mods and refuse to elaborate on it any further, which means that tracing down which mods came before/after which others, and what they implement/rely on, is a huge pain. There was a reference to one mod framework that seemed to have a lot of good changes, but I honestly can't tell what it is because it's part of another bigger mod only, and the bigger mod doesn't elaborate on it anywhere at all or what it does or how it changes development. I'm pretty sure that a shitton of knowledge is passed down orally or in discord communities, but frankly, fuck that, not touching it, just gonna flip 'em the bird and continue on.
Minor progress from the last update, partly due to birthday weekend, partly due to the remnants of Hurricane Isaias blowing through and altering plans.
I decided I wanted to make it look a little less like dimensional lumber. So I pulled out the plunge router, and 3/8" round-over bit. I rounded out the edges that won't be flush against the walls. My depth was just slightly off, so there's a tiny lip, but that'll be easy to sand out.
This week I'll plan to pull out the belt sander, and maybe the orbital sander, and work on cleaning up the boards before staining and sealing. For the weight of the boards, I'm split between putting them on the wall with 3" wood screws, or some 3" lag screws. If lag screws, I'll need to counter sink some holes for the heads, but I'd first need to find the studs I'm going to mount to so I can counter sink accurately.
Universal Serial Box update: I think I'll table this project for now. I still want to do it, but this month is full of other work, especially contract work. So, lords of Timasomo, I hope I can ask for your grace just this once - but I would like to still show something, so I'll put together a little showcase for the big software launch I've been working on for weeks now (including one aspect that has been so far constrained to October, to appease the Timasomo clerics).
The book's coming along! I spent the first week working on the text and narrative u/ocean-hai has been really helpful refining the of the book with me (thanks again!).
I spent the this week finishing up the prints and got the first drafts all finished up last night. There are a few changes to make and a couple additional pieces but otherwise I'm feeling good! I'll upload some shots tomorrow. It's funny how some of the original ones now feel like they could be redone... but if I'm going to finish it this month I'm moving on! I've ordered the paper for the final edition and walked through the process with on how to figure out paper grain direction, how much extra room to leave around the prints, and how to rip the sheets.
This week I'm going to be working on the font, making the marbled paper for the internal sheets of the cover (front/back), and probably the most complex part: how I'm actually going to print the font onto the sheets. Because it's a physical book I'm trying to figure out how to print the text on and the prospect of drawing out and cutting each of the nearly 2000 letters is... unappealing. I'm going to to try to either make large cutouts of each letter, upload them online and size them for consistency, figure out kerning, so that I can either 3D print them, order a professional set, or (most likely) print them as a template to create my own set.
So far I'm like 8 letters in and feeling good! My also friend has a marbling paper making set and we'll try it out next monday! So it's moving slowly but progressing!!!
If anyone has any thoughts on anything that would be great!
Since I had those drum n' bass samples downloaded already, I decided to keep going with it. I have two 4-bar loops (drums, bass, and atmosphere) that sound fine, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to extend to 8 bars without becoming boring and repetitive.
I wanted to vary the bassline in the second half, and I've tried rhythm changes, pitch changes, changing the response in the call and response, but nothing stuck for either, so I'm very much lost right now.
I'm thinking that I should change genres and try something else, but what? I mentioned initially that an electronic rock direction would be fun, but I'm also enjoying a bunch of melodic techno and four-on-the-floor genres too.
Tonight I want to focus on one of these, pick out 2-3 reference tracks that I can dissect and maybe start this way instead of blindly hitting notes on my keyboard. We'll see what happens.
The good: I finished the ring mandrel that I started, although it put me in a conundrum for a bit. I spent half an hour or so filing it down to the right size for my finger, but somehow it stopped shrinking and started growing again. I don't know how it happened, but the thickness increased after a while - and yes, I zero'd and calibrated my calipers multiple times. I eventually pulled out the noisy belt sander that I typically avoid using so I don't disturb my neighbors, and that got the trick done.
The bad: I don't know if having the mandrel will matter. I tried multiple attempts at making simple loops and coils with the wire I ordered, and none came out well. I don't foresee myself making a wire ring that I find satisfactory within the month. I also made a prototype of a forged ring using some mild steel stock, but while I liked the design (and just need to refine the execution) I don't think that a carbon steel ring will work for long-term wear. My naturally oily skin should help protect it, but I'd have to take it off much more frequently than I remove my current ring and I'd like to avoid having something I need to protect that much.
This leaves me with two choices: forge (ha!) onward and just try to make the best result by the end of the month, which only gives me two forge sessions to accomplish it; or drop the ring-making as a TiMaSoMo goal and pivot to a different project that I also started this month. I did some rough forging on some shears last weekend, so the project is very attainable within a month while still being a challenge to complete in that time. I'll still try ring-making on the side, I just won't pressure myself to make something good in a single month.
So to sum up: I made enough progress to know that I don't think I'll have a good result in a month, so I'm probably switching projects.
My Minecraft mod is now pretty much feature complete. You can grab the jar file from one of the build zips at the bottom of this GitHub Actions run, depending on which mod loader you're using. There's still more to do, but at least this is close to a version I can publish if the rest of the month falls out from under me.
My main focus last weekend was on textures. I spent an evening plus most of a day just doing textures. When I wasn't doing textures, I was redoing the UV mappings to make drawing the textures easier. But, I have textures. Blockbench allows you to have reference images behind the model that you can use to pick colours, so I added the textures for anvils (the shade I wanted the frames to be) and iron bars (a thin metallic thing whose style I could imitate). What I found worked best was using only 3 colours, as any more made it feel too contrast and noisy. There are actually 4 colours, as any inward-facing faces use a slightly darker 3 colour palette.
I'm still keeping my limit of only working on this mod over the weekends, but where's the limit on that? Does launching the game with the mod installed so I can build structures to take screenshots for the mod's listing page count? I think not, so I've been doing that as well. So far I have made a little cosy kitchen, and a sort of linked or wrought fence for a garden. The latter came about from just placing some of the frames and noticing it looked cool.
You'll notice that both of those screenshots have windows frames that are unfilled. I have one final decision to make with this mod; do I make the glass:
2px thick (so it's flush with the frame),
1px thick so it's slightly inset, has thickness, but is not aligned to the pixel grid (breaks the guidelines of Minecraft graphics), or
0px thick so it's inset, is pixel grid aligned, but has no thickness (like iron bars).
I still have not decided on this, and I need to make the decision before I take the actual screenshots and make the mod's icon.
Today's bonus image is a Creeper. Plain and simple.
To remind you, I'm building Hotel Ritz bird-feeder house. Thebonly thing I did was to measure and calculate some stuff so know how long the next pieces of wood need to be. I will likely do some work this weekend. I just need to cut/saw the wood, screw it together and then cut/saw again and put some paint on. Then only roof remains.
Ugh not good at my end. Long weekend: was Thanksgiving in Canada. Family time, busy. Work has been crazy with Q3 reporting and 2027 budget work. FML I hate this part of my job. Left me drained at the end of each work day and it’s not over. I have the next 2 days off tho for a short local trip over the weekend. I may find some down time to make progress on editing the short story.
I’ll finally be home late tomorrow night. I don’t think I’ll have time to do the wood project I had wanted to do for this, so I’m changing my project. I’m going to make a picture frame for a touristy painting I bought on my vacation. I’ve helped make a frame before but never made one myself, and I think it might be something I can get done before this is over.
Not great but not terrible progress from me. I got the blacks and metals all painted. Now I need to fix up a couple of mistakes by covering up with off white and then repainting a few orange areas. Then onto doing orange mid tones and highlights.
Nail polish mixing: I made some time to mix. I've been focusing on one color requested by a friend, but I think I've come to the conclusion that it's not possible to proto it at the size I'm working with (5ml) due to the tiny amounts of colorants having basically zero wiggle room in such a small quantity. The next practical size to proto is 15ml. I'm interested in trying it at that size, but also this is not going to be a permanent color, so I'm trying to figure out how close I want to try to get to the vision before I pivot.
I have decided I'm going to probably take a break from that particular color and start working on some new ones when I get back from vacation hopefully. Today is actually my one year anniversary of being into nail polish (painting, not mixing) as a whole! I want to make some creative progress and take a break from bogging down on this one idea that isn't mine. Once I get that one right, it's going to get twisted a different direction back into the creative process so I'm satisfied with it for sale, so spending a huge chunk of energy perfecting it right now is something I need to let myself let go of. It can wait. It can percolate. I need this to still be fun when I'm done!
[OP] kfwyre | 23 hours ago
Timasomo Notification: Week 2 conversation is up. We're about halfway through the event!
I have been super busy and haven't had time to respond adequately to everything from last week, but I am seriously impressed with the progress so far. Y'all are doing some amazingly cool stuff! Keep it up!
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smoontjes | 8 hours ago
Suddenly getting a new apartment soon, safe to say I have different priorities now - you can remove me sadly!
Liru | 23 hours ago
Roguelike Game Mod
Previously: [1]
I think I managed to knock out the most annoying parts of the modding process, which is "creating UI elements that don't look totally like crap" (despite taking probably far too long to get it to that state), and getting a few sample buffs and debuffs done. I still have a ridiculous amount to go through and brainstorm (at least 60ish, by idealized standards, very likely to be more) and then implement on top of that, but it feels like I got the main pain out of the way at the moment. Now I just need the brain to do the thinky for what other buffs and debuffs to add.
Side note: I've tried looking into a bunch of other mods in the past week as well, to see what they do. There is a LOT of info about different mods and tweaks and what they do, and what's extremely frustrating is that they all assume that you know all about all the other mods and refuse to elaborate on it any further, which means that tracing down which mods came before/after which others, and what they implement/rely on, is a huge pain. There was a reference to one mod framework that seemed to have a lot of good changes, but I honestly can't tell what it is because it's part of another bigger mod only, and the bigger mod doesn't elaborate on it anywhere at all or what it does or how it changes development. I'm pretty sure that a shitton of knowledge is passed down orally or in discord communities, but frankly, fuck that, not touching it, just gonna flip 'em the bird and continue on.
goose | 23 hours ago
Minor progress from the last update, partly due to birthday weekend, partly due to the remnants of Hurricane Isaias blowing through and altering plans.
I decided I wanted to make it look a little less like dimensional lumber. So I pulled out the plunge router, and 3/8" round-over bit. I rounded out the edges that won't be flush against the walls. My depth was just slightly off, so there's a tiny lip, but that'll be easy to sand out.
This week I'll plan to pull out the belt sander, and maybe the orbital sander, and work on cleaning up the boards before staining and sealing. For the weight of the boards, I'm split between putting them on the wall with 3" wood screws, or some 3" lag screws. If lag screws, I'll need to counter sink some holes for the heads, but I'd first need to find the studs I'm going to mount to so I can counter sink accurately.
delphi | 22 hours ago
Universal Serial Box update: I think I'll table this project for now. I still want to do it, but this month is full of other work, especially contract work. So, lords of Timasomo, I hope I can ask for your grace just this once - but I would like to still show something, so I'll put together a little showcase for the big software launch I've been working on for weeks now (including one aspect that has been so far constrained to October, to appease the Timasomo clerics).
rosco | 19 hours ago
The book's coming along! I spent the first week working on the text and narrative u/ocean-hai has been really helpful refining the of the book with me (thanks again!).
I spent the this week finishing up the prints and got the first drafts all finished up last night. There are a few changes to make and a couple additional pieces but otherwise I'm feeling good! I'll upload some shots tomorrow. It's funny how some of the original ones now feel like they could be redone... but if I'm going to finish it this month I'm moving on! I've ordered the paper for the final edition and walked through the process with on how to figure out paper grain direction, how much extra room to leave around the prints, and how to rip the sheets.
This week I'm going to be working on the font, making the marbled paper for the internal sheets of the cover (front/back), and probably the most complex part: how I'm actually going to print the font onto the sheets. Because it's a physical book I'm trying to figure out how to print the text on and the prospect of drawing out and cutting each of the nearly 2000 letters is... unappealing. I'm going to to try to either make large cutouts of each letter, upload them online and size them for consistency, figure out kerning, so that I can either 3D print them, order a professional set, or (most likely) print them as a template to create my own set.
So far I'm like 8 letters in and feeling good! My also friend has a marbling paper making set and we'll try it out next monday! So it's moving slowly but progressing!!!
If anyone has any thoughts on anything that would be great!
arqalite | 8 hours ago
Making music is so hard ðŸ˜
Since I had those drum n' bass samples downloaded already, I decided to keep going with it. I have two 4-bar loops (drums, bass, and atmosphere) that sound fine, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to extend to 8 bars without becoming boring and repetitive.
I wanted to vary the bassline in the second half, and I've tried rhythm changes, pitch changes, changing the response in the call and response, but nothing stuck for either, so I'm very much lost right now.
I'm thinking that I should change genres and try something else, but what? I mentioned initially that an electronic rock direction would be fun, but I'm also enjoying a bunch of melodic techno and four-on-the-floor genres too.
Tonight I want to focus on one of these, pick out 2-3 reference tracks that I can dissect and maybe start this way instead of blindly hitting notes on my keyboard. We'll see what happens.
dhcrazy333 | 21 hours ago
Been traveling so no updates on my music from last week, hope to get back into it once I return!
Banazir | 20 hours ago
It's been a mix of good and bad so far.
The good: I finished the ring mandrel that I started, although it put me in a conundrum for a bit. I spent half an hour or so filing it down to the right size for my finger, but somehow it stopped shrinking and started growing again. I don't know how it happened, but the thickness increased after a while - and yes, I zero'd and calibrated my calipers multiple times. I eventually pulled out the noisy belt sander that I typically avoid using so I don't disturb my neighbors, and that got the trick done.
The bad: I don't know if having the mandrel will matter. I tried multiple attempts at making simple loops and coils with the wire I ordered, and none came out well. I don't foresee myself making a wire ring that I find satisfactory within the month. I also made a prototype of a forged ring using some mild steel stock, but while I liked the design (and just need to refine the execution) I don't think that a carbon steel ring will work for long-term wear. My naturally oily skin should help protect it, but I'd have to take it off much more frequently than I remove my current ring and I'd like to avoid having something I need to protect that much.
This leaves me with two choices: forge (ha!) onward and just try to make the best result by the end of the month, which only gives me two forge sessions to accomplish it; or drop the ring-making as a TiMaSoMo goal and pivot to a different project that I also started this month. I did some rough forging on some shears last weekend, so the project is very attainable within a month while still being a challenge to complete in that time. I'll still try ring-making on the side, I just won't pressure myself to make something good in a single month.
So to sum up: I made enough progress to know that I don't think I'll have a good result in a month, so I'm probably switching projects.
secret_online | 16 hours ago
My Minecraft mod is now pretty much feature complete. You can grab the jar file from one of the build zips at the bottom of this GitHub Actions run, depending on which mod loader you're using. There's still more to do, but at least this is close to a version I can publish if the rest of the month falls out from under me.
My main focus last weekend was on textures. I spent an evening plus most of a day just doing textures. When I wasn't doing textures, I was redoing the UV mappings to make drawing the textures easier. But, I have textures. Blockbench allows you to have reference images behind the model that you can use to pick colours, so I added the textures for anvils (the shade I wanted the frames to be) and iron bars (a thin metallic thing whose style I could imitate). What I found worked best was using only 3 colours, as any more made it feel too contrast and noisy. There are actually 4 colours, as any inward-facing faces use a slightly darker 3 colour palette.
I'm still keeping my limit of only working on this mod over the weekends, but where's the limit on that? Does launching the game with the mod installed so I can build structures to take screenshots for the mod's listing page count? I think not, so I've been doing that as well. So far I have made a little cosy kitchen, and a sort of linked or wrought fence for a garden. The latter came about from just placing some of the frames and noticing it looked cool.
You'll notice that both of those screenshots have windows frames that are unfilled. I have one final decision to make with this mod; do I make the glass:
I still have not decided on this, and I need to make the decision before I take the actual screenshots and make the mod's icon.
Today's bonus image is a Creeper. Plain and simple.
Pavouk106 | 15 hours ago
I did nothing in the past week.
To remind you, I'm building Hotel Ritz bird-feeder house. Thebonly thing I did was to measure and calculate some stuff so know how long the next pieces of wood need to be. I will likely do some work this weekend. I just need to cut/saw the wood, screw it together and then cut/saw again and put some paint on. Then only roof remains.
chocobean | 9 hours ago
Sashiko Craft Kits for holiday market
I've got two sets of patterns done, and a sample embroidery completed as well. Aiming to do one more before next weekend and that'll be it!
Paul85 | 21 hours ago
Ugh not good at my end. Long weekend: was Thanksgiving in Canada. Family time, busy. Work has been crazy with Q3 reporting and 2027 budget work. FML I hate this part of my job. Left me drained at the end of each work day and it’s not over. I have the next 2 days off tho for a short local trip over the weekend. I may find some down time to make progress on editing the short story.
monarda | 21 hours ago
I’ll finally be home late tomorrow night. I don’t think I’ll have time to do the wood project I had wanted to do for this, so I’m changing my project. I’m going to make a picture frame for a touristy painting I bought on my vacation. I’ve helped make a frame before but never made one myself, and I think it might be something I can get done before this is over.
streblo | 19 hours ago
Not great but not terrible progress from me. I got the blacks and metals all painted. Now I need to fix up a couple of mistakes by covering up with off white and then repainting a few orange areas. Then onto doing orange mid tones and highlights.
crialpaca | 5 hours ago
Nail polish mixing: I made some time to mix. I've been focusing on one color requested by a friend, but I think I've come to the conclusion that it's not possible to proto it at the size I'm working with (5ml) due to the tiny amounts of colorants having basically zero wiggle room in such a small quantity. The next practical size to proto is 15ml. I'm interested in trying it at that size, but also this is not going to be a permanent color, so I'm trying to figure out how close I want to try to get to the vision before I pivot.
I have decided I'm going to probably take a break from that particular color and start working on some new ones when I get back from vacation hopefully. Today is actually my one year anniversary of being into nail polish (painting, not mixing) as a whole! I want to make some creative progress and take a break from bogging down on this one idea that isn't mine. Once I get that one right, it's going to get twisted a different direction back into the creative process so I'm satisfied with it for sale, so spending a huge chunk of energy perfecting it right now is something I need to let myself let go of. It can wait. It can percolate. I need this to still be fun when I'm done!
Areldyb | 9 hours ago
Not much to report right now, but I'll be racking and clearing tomorrow!