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Birthday Aquisitions #5: The Rest

Friday, March 17th, 2017

A few months ago KLS and I found this in a local arcade:

I was dazzled, not just by the fact it was the worlds largest Pac-Man, but by the fact it used a giant bank of LEDs for the display:

So imagine my surprise when Florence sent me this for my birthday:

It’s a Pac-Man clock using LEDs for the display! And it animates!

The animations are of Pac-Man being chased by or chasing the ghosts, and are perfect recreations of the arcade sprites and colours. All using just LEDs:

I love it and it’s proudly displayed in my study! Thanks Florence!

Now I know we’ve been doing the birthday thing for days now and it’s obscene how much stuff I got but this next item – speaking two weeks down the road from my actual birthday – has turned out to be the thing I have used the most:

Yep, a ‘gherkin fork’! I have taken to occasionally buying gherkins and they’re just not the same unless eaten with a quality long fork. Yes I know it’s metal and yes I’m a weirdo that doesn’t like metal in his mouth but for this fork and a delicious gherkin I’m making an exception!

Mum and Dad: maybe I’ll bring one to Oz next time to replace the one that ‘got lost’ 🙂

There’s a few other gifts I was going to list today (a sterling engine, the new Zelda, some tools…) but they will likely get their own posts eventually. I’ll end with one last item, very recently received in the mail from none other than Bernard:

A 3D Rilakkuma model! As with the Pac-Man clock had I known this existed I would have bought it for myself already!

So there you have it: a mostly comprehensive series of posts documenting much of what I got for my birthday. Too much to be true, and – since I bought much of it myself – tailor made for me.

I’ll end with a request: Of all the items I listed this week, what item(s) would you most – or least – like to own yourselves?

You never know. If it’s a Guy N Smith novel maybe I can make your wish come true 😉

Posted in Blog, Crafts, Games, Miscellaneous, Models, Otaku, Puzzles, Tech | 2 Comments »

Cardboard Tuatara

Sunday, February 5th, 2017

I got this for Xmas from someone who had recently been to NZ:

It’s a craft kit of a tuatara!

All cardboard, with minimal instructions and included glue:

It took me about 10 minutes to assemble:

I should have taken an in-progress shot. I’ll remember that when I make the other kit 🙂

Posted in Crafts | 2 Comments »

More Crafting

Saturday, December 10th, 2016

It’s time for a craft update. While KLS was in Ireland I occupied myself with a bit of making. Three different miniature kits to be precise, and all turned out quite well.

The first was a tiny cardboard dinosaur skeleton that I had picked up in CA earlier this year. I bough a kit by the same maker in Japan years ago but ruined it during assembly so I was very careful this time and it went together without issue.

As you can see it’s very detailed for its size (about 1.5 inches high) if a little flimsy. A tiny bit of glue would perfect this, but I’m too nervous to do it so it shall sit on the shelf forever!

The next kit was a gift from Florence, who has since admitted she chose it because it looked difficult. She wasn’t wrong!

I’d made one like this before and that was hard enough, but look at the micro-folds required here! The level of precision is incredible, and this one also requires glue to assemble. Im not sure I had the correct tools for this, but then I don’t know even what the correct tools would be!

Almost all the pieces in the first photo go into making the tiny three-windowed piece in the lower right of the second!

Anyway I was careful and meticulous and patient and believe I ended up doing quite a good job:

It came with a little display case (which also needed assembly) but I like it better out.

Lastly it was time for (yet!) another Metal Earth kits, this time from their new Doctor Who license.

This was another trial of my patience to be honest, and definitely amongst their more difficult kits. But once made, it’s amazing:

Next on my list: a Gundam. Whether or not that happens before Oz remains to be seen…

Posted in Blog, Crafts, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Puzzles | 1 Comment »

Air Powered

Sunday, November 6th, 2016

It was time to assemble the Lego kit I’d gotten for my birthday. It’s a Mercedes Benz ‘Arocs’ truck with a pneumatic crane. Even by technic standards this is a complex kit. The manual alone is over 400 pages!

The kit is made in five broad parts: the chassis with gears, the pneumatic crane, the cab and the bed. The gearing mechanism is dazzlingly complex and requires careful assembly.

It’s also quite large. Here is the complete chassis (sans wheels) shown next to a rather large house at for scale:

The pneumatic system is even more complicated, and we’re not trivial to assemble! Many times I thought I’d attached the wrong hose to the wrong nozzle, or feared that once I’d finished it wouldn’t work and I’d have to take it apart. For this kit, that’d be a nightmare!

This is a real pneumatic system, which means the kit includes an electric pump that pushes air through these tubes to power pistons. It’s amazing just how much functionality they’ve worked in (four pistons and dozens of tubes) and how the kit is designed to fit all this in the crane itself. Here’s the truck 75% finished, only needing the cosmetic parts added (the cab and bed). Until this point, I’d been working for maybe 6 or 7 hours.

The remaining sections were easy by comparison, but that’s not to say they were simple. The mechanism to tilt the can forward was particularly nice. Here’s the finished kit in ‘road ready’ mode:

And here it is with the supports out, bed up and crane functioning:

All the functions you see above are controlled by the motor and switching system (via the astonishing gearing). I was very relieved it all worked first go 🙂

It’s a beautiful, massive, complex (and yes expensive) kit and was enormously fun to put together. Highly recommended 🙂

Posted in Crafts, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Tech, Toys | 3 Comments »

Boldly Gone

Saturday, September 3rd, 2016

Whilst in Bath, we swaggered into a weird hobby/toy/educational store (like National Geographic shops, for the Ozians reading) in which I found, for the princely sum of £3, this:

It’s appropriate the Olympics were on at the time, because I think I set a world record with the speed at which I purchased it!

It’s a guidebook to the (original series) Enterprise that also includes a cardboard punch-out model! The difficulty rating was the highest they used, but this didn’t sway me. I skimmed past the technical pages (with sections on space navigation or how the transporters work) and moved straight to the seemingly-endless instructions (over 150 steps!) and starting punching out the pieces:

Notice nothing is labeled by number, only coloured dots. This could have been designed a bit better…

Folding began! It wasn’t particularly difficult at first; certainly easier than the few ‘build a castle’ books I’d purchased in the past (for which you’d need to be a Cardboardmancer to successfully complete). Very quickly I had a piece of the saucer section complete:

Looks a bit iffy doesn’t it? I won’t take the time here to criticise the ensign who had come up with the idea of requiring the card to gently bend inwards with no actual support method and instead fast forward to the completed saucer:

It’s not bad! Everything more or less lines up, and incredibly stayed together without any tape or glue. What this picture doesn’t show though was the tension! Even at this point – only half built – it felt like a big compressed cardboard spring wanting to go off. I handled it with care, at least partially, because I didn’t hate it yet. I continued.

The engineering of this kit was, shall we say, ambitious. Take this photo showing the not-quite-semispherical Bussard Collector (and yes, they are referred as such in the instructions) on the front of a warp nacelle:

I swear I did the best I could there, but it still looks like it was assembled by a Gorn. You can ignore – or at least politely not refer to – the fact that the nacelle behind it is visibly not cylindrical as well.

I forged on, and after maybe 3 hours in total was complete. Here it is in drydock:

Beautiful! It resembles the actual ship quite a bit, and more or less holds together seamlessly. It was still a ball of tension though, and I had many pairs of kid gloves on as I delicately transported it. I confess two pieces of tape were required (one on each nacelle) and the dish on the lower front was a bit of a hack job since I had torn one of the tabs during assembly.

On it’s maiden voyage, as it often did, the Enterprise encountered a strange new life form:

Those of you that know the titanic size of Yossie can appreciate just how big this model is.

Then tragedy struck! Almost immediately after the above photo was taken, as the Enterprise took off for a further voyage, this happened:

Some say it was space debris! Some say the warp field collapsed! Yossie was heard whispering to Emi that she saw me violently tear it to pieces!

All I can say is the model that cost only 3 pounds and gave me 3 hours of entertainment was ruined utterly in only 3 seconds 🙂

Posted in Crafts, Tech | 1 Comment »