It's a teenager now

The thirteenth mumbleful anniversary

When I started drafting this post I thought I hadn't completed practically anything during the last 12 months. But when I started checking what I had posted about, I had almost a handful of completed things, at least on the modeling side.

V/22: SL-17 Shilone

Shilone, an additional extra bonus in the Clan Box was almost entering the AeroSpace forces of the space Swedes, but at the last moment I decided to relocate it to the service of the mighty Dragon. My dirtiness effects may have gone a bit further than needed, or not too far, but at least the kite didn't look like it had rolled off the assembly line fifteen minutes ago.

Maybe I could've tried to do something more interesting with the cockpit canopy glasses, and with the laser lenses too. I only dared to try to create some sort of a glow effect in the easier and safer choice, the engine, and that gave me some excitement and maybe even some courage to try the effect on something more visible. Or that's what I thought at this point in life.

VI/22: Time Machine

Of course I had drooled at the Lego Time Machine for ages, so when I finally got it delivered home, I was completely beside myself but in a good way. Sadly we didn't have that much shelf space in order for the customized DeLorean getting a fantastic place to be displayed.

VII/22: Galaxy Explorer

The little ISD would've been almost as excited about this set as the middle-aged ISD. Somehow I was the only one in the household who loved the ship, even though the Project Assistants were happy to play with it when allowed. And if there was no good show-off space for the car above, there was less space for this one.

VIII/22: Jagdpanzer IV

The Tank Destroyer was a peculiar project, the model was ridiculously simpler than the really detailed Königstiger from the previous year, but still I burned almost as much time on it. The years were of course very different from each other, and I did try lots of new stuff on this model.

Again, I was really happy that I finally tried out the oil paints and I also lamented because I had been dragging my feet and even discarded the whole thought for years. "Live and learn", they say, and they also say "better late than never". They do say a lot, I've noticed.

On a side note, I managed to get much nicer wrap-up photos now that I relearned some basic image editing.

I/23: Very incomplete OmniMechs

Then we had this supposedly quick and simple snack project – painting and weathering fie miniatures – completely in the middle of itself. Camo patterns themselves were progressing nicely but they were just the primary shapes now and would require more work to look decent and presentable. Could I be halfway done now, with all five being painted grey-green and I was only missing the details?

Greetings from about two weeks ago

And the rest

My Python3 Doom story generator hadn't progressed anywhere in the last months. Any of my Pygame things had also not found their way to the top of my work queues in a long while, I guess I just hadn't had the excitement to do coding after workdays.

The Steam Deck has, on the other hand, activated me on the gaming front with something new (the remake of System Shock; Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries with two handfuls of mods), which has been fun. Nothing too keyboard-intensive should be played with that device as is, based on my gaming minutes so far, as not every function in the BattleMech cockpit has a direct button and I didn't manage to figure out how to call in air strikes against my foes, for example, until I just randomly poked the d-pad in a random mission.

On the Nintendo side the randomly played Breath of the Wild had reached the point where I had just the final boss left, and before that I should've bought my pockets full of arrows and cook all the best meals just to make the most likely supertedious multistage multitrick boss fight even survivable for my nerves. Oh why, oh why hadn't I felt like playing it that much then? On the other hand Tears of the Kingdom was in the most fun exploratory phase where every corner and rock hid something new and interesting, so I've been playing that one instead.