Robot Claw – Page 529 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

Work Hard

June 25, 2012

For the first time, I accepted a summer teaching position. It was bound to happen eventually, since they ask me every year!

So instead of lazing around playing video games for the next month with a cat in my lap, I’ll be teaching every weekday for 2 hours and 20 minutes. I expect the workload to be fairly high.

Emi is particularly unhappy, since she’s the one that will miss out on her favourite lap to sleep in 🙂

Right now, on the very eve (first lecture is in an hour), I wonder what came over me when I accepted this position 🙂

The Black Pearl

June 24, 2012

Here’s my latest craft project: a laser-cut metal miniature pirate ship!

The entire kit is cut from two sheets of strong-but-flexible metal, and is hand assembled using minimal tools (pliers & tweezers) and the patience of a saint! Here’s a close up of some of the pieces before removal from their sheet:

And here’s the first piece – the rigging – to give an idea of scale:

The masts were completed by slotting in three other pieces perpendicular to the first, and ‘locking’ them using little crows nest pieces at the top. The locking tabs were about (and I’m not exaggerating) 0.5 square mm in area, and almost impossible to grab with my tweezers. Furthermore the mast pieces often did not slit correctly or did not line up well without force that bent them and had to be corrected. It was frustrating, and I almost gave up!

If only I had, since the worst was yet to come!

The above shot shows the instructions. Observe the command to curve the hull piece, whilst simultaneously maintaining a straight edge at the top to meet the deck. How exactly is that done? Who knows, but I was able to – with considerable patience – get it working well enough to finish the solid structure of the ship:

And then came the sails. You can see them in their pre-curved state in the shot above of the pieces before removal. Adding them one at a time required very specific, not always circular bend radii (deduced via trial and error) coupled with occasional rigging deformation just to get them in place. The process was…

Remember that video from years ago where I made a Millennium Falcon model only to destroy it immediately upon completion? Well I certainly do, because adding the sails to this guy kept the frustration of that build foremost in my mind!

Let’s just say that a few hours of rage coupled with my usual dogged stubbornness led me to eventual success:

And another shot of the finished product for scale:

Yes, it looks great. Even better in person! And it was also quite inexpensive (about $12). And I’m glad I got it together so well.

But I have to say this was one of – if not the – most frustrating builds of any model I’ve ever done. For that reason alone, I wouldn’t recommend one of these to anyone but the most patient 🙂

Magical Device

June 20, 2012

Well now this is interesting. The latest iteration of Wizards annual Magic The Gathering (computer games) Duel Of The Planeswalkers was recently released and in addition to the old formats (PC, PS3, XBOX) it also came out for the iPad. I’d bought and enjoyed the previous versions on the PS3, but couldn’t resist going for the iPad version this time around. And, after playing for a couple of hours, I’m glad I did!

The game follows the same format as previous iterations: you use premade decks to defeat a variety of opponents in various game modes (including, new to this version, Planechase). As you win you unlock additional cards you can add to the various decks, so some deck building is included. There are a lot of decks and opponents, and it would take a very long time to unlock all the available cards.

Gameplay is intuitive, smooth and faster than it used to be on the PS3. This is a significant upside, since it was the one issue that used to bug me. Importantly, the ability to control the game using touch and swipes is natural and makes me feel more like I’m actually playing with the cards. In other words this is the best version of Duel of the Planeswalkers yet, but playing it on an iPad makes the experience even better.

The graphics are very, very nice! The screenshots in this blog have been scaled down from the actual resolution, but everything is in high resolution with nifty effects and great looking art. The game includes cards from all legal sets up to 2013, which means you’ll be using cards that haven’t been released yet (like the guy in the shot above).

Buying the game – which costs US$9.99 – also gives you a code that can be redeemed at a game store for a promotional booster pack that apparently contains a mythic rare. This is nice 🙂

Suffice to say I’m very pleased with the game so far. $10 may seem like a lot to pay for an iPad game, but for me this is a no brainer if you like magic. If you’re not sure, the download is actually free and you can demo the game before having to shell out for the full unlock.