Projects

Thanks very much, I appreciate that. :blush:

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I’ve been away too long, but this was a fun thread to catch up on.

@peter The bed looks like it’s turned out wonderfully, your kid must be psyched! I remember my dad building me some things growing up and it always made me feel so special and important.

@BMO That PC looks awesome, I love Fractal’s case designs and the one you chose is a beauty!

@anon13834866 I know nothing about cars except how to drive them, very impressed that you’re fixing one up!

@JoeyPajamas Congratulations on your book deal, that’s amazing! Writing is a painstaking process for me, it’s inspiring to hear your progress!

@8BitHero Dreamcast is my favorite console, I love seeing how people make it their own! I have one in the closet with video issues I keep meaning to refurbish one of these days.

@8BitHero @JoeyPajamas Lovely artwork!

Some stuff I wanted to share…

I finished another month of drawing with pen and ink on paper every day of October. You can see all 31 drawings here. This one’s my personal favorite of the month:

I’ve made a bunch of updates to my personal site, including a new home page and project listing, and I’ve been blogging there more often. Of potential interest is a post about my favorite games of all time, featuring some pseudo-3D game boxes I’m proud of.

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Like those pseudo-3D game boxes! (And some great choices for those favorite games too.)

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Thanks Tyler! Your artwork is amazing! Welcome back!

I’m having a lot of fun with my Dreamcast project. I won $75 worth of Amazon gift cards from work for participating in Walk-tober. I used those for a Dreamcast GDEMU which will probably take a month to show up but that’s ok.

This morning I researched a HDMI box for the Dreamcast:

Seems like a cheaper and easier alternative than a HDMI output mod (required complicated soldering and removal of tiny components). I like to avoid intricate soldering or reduce it. The battery mod requires soldering but I can easily do that. It’s just removing legs of the old battery holder, swapping it out for another holder, then adding a replaceable and rechargeable battery for the BIOS.

I never owned a Dreamcast but my friends did and I always thought it was cool. My friend also had a Saturn which we played a lot. I have a soft spot for consoles that did not perform well but have some niche or otherwise good games.

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If you can find one, get a light gun so you can play House of the Dead. The endless hours my brother and I used to play that! Ah, memories.

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A lightgun for House of the Dead, a fishing rod for Sega Bass Fishing, and maraca controllers for Samba de Amigo…

Oh, and most importantly, a keyboard for Typing of the Dead. =P These have all long been ā€œpie in the skyā€ gaming dreams for me, lol.

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I have a decent GD-ROM collection from childhood (teen-hood?), but I always tell others to go with an ODE if repairing the disc drive is any more complicated than re-lubricating it.

Perhaps I’m a hypocrite, though, as I’ve yet to use one myself! I’ve lucked out with my disc drives and none of my GD-ROMs have disc rot yet. :person_shrugging:

I did the same thing. I’m using a Kaico adapter and it works fine. I also have an mClassic I route it through sometimes, I know that makes a lot of hardcore retro gamers throw up but I think it does a great job.

I successfully completed this mod earlier in the year. It was easier than I thought it would be, but I still went slow just to be safe.

I’ve never had a light gun (and I don’t have a CRT it would work on anyway) or the maracas, but I do have a fishing rod and the Seaman microphone. I used to have the keyboard, but I never had a copy of Typing of the Dead so I sold it.

For years I’ve toyed with picking up the Saturn Virtual-On twin sticks and an adapter (since the Dreamcast iteration is usually a lot more expensive), but then I remember I should probably at least try playing that game with the Brook Wingman SD converter first (the game has a joystick+face-buttons mode that coincidentally maps to the PS dual shock analog sticks in the intended way).

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Mate, you have my full respect! As much as I love old consoles I don’t have the knowledge or patience to get them running with modern TVs, especially when they start giving up the ghost. I tried for a while, but just could me we get it to where I was happy.

This is where emulation comes in for me. I know some purists are against it, and I guess that’s fair enough, but it lets me enjoy those games I loved/ missed with a minimum of fuss. Also, it doesn’t cost a fortune. :sweat_smile:

Having said that though, I dream of having a little SEGA shrine with each of their consoles on display. They wouldn’t even have to work, just be in good nick. I’d set it up with blue LEDs and everything. I’ve both version of the MD, a GG and a DC, so only a few to go. Maybe one day (sigh :relieved:)

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Hi folks; was wondering if you could ask you all for some advice? With this book coming, I’d like to have my online portfolio site up to snuff. While I’ve built other sites - mostly though WordPress - before, I’m not what I’d consider anymore than ā€œcobble togetherā€ skill level.

I was wondering if folks could take a look at the site and let me know what it might need to look a bit more professional?

Thanks in advance.

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I like it a lot. My only critique would be either commit to gray scale or commit to color. The first half of the page I was thinking, oh cool its gray scale. Then I saw further down some color. I would prefer color but also appreciate gray scale. But I feel it should be one or the other. Maybe a dark mode page with white font? I’m just brainstorming.

What would you prefer? Is it too time consuming to go color or gray scale only?

I like the bio section a lot. Nice work and accomplishments!

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I got one of the Dreamcast disc drives to work! I found a good reddit post that had an approximate resistance for the laser.

Hooked up my multimeter and adjusted the potentiometer until I was in the range.

The other disc drive is being finicky with readings. Its a slightly different model so I’ll keep researching.

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I was gonna go greyscale only bit found it hard to make anything stand out. I use colour to get around this, which is why only ā€œimportantā€ stuff is on colour. I’m not sure if there is a way to have post header images appear grey scale (apart from manually changing them before upload) but I’ll look into it.

Thanks for the comments :smile:

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I’m considering getting a 1TB external SSD for my Rpi retro machine. Currently I’m running games off a 64GB, outdated thumb drive. Saving and loading is pretty slow.

I have some 500GB HDDs laying around I could use…that would be the frugal thing to do.

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Glad the battery mod was easy! Also I’m happy for your functioning DC and nice disc collection! It’s an awesome console.

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Coloring book update. I editted and played around with some photos of my art. Some are pretty rough. I just wanted to get an idea of how it could look but I need better high res pics and for some reason a lot of them look washed out on my computer.

What are your thoughts? I’ll accept all critiques. Genres are surreal and abstract.

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These are rad, I love them.

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Thank you BMO! They’re coming out well, so far so good!

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I’ve not been able to sneak this in to work to take a proper scan of it, so here’s a somewhat dodgy photo I took on my phone. :sweat_smile: I’m mostly happy with it, although I feel the face in the bottom right could have been better. It’s ink wash and pen.

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Oh wow awesome! It came out great!!

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