All This and World War II

I finally got around to seeing Miyazaki's "The Wind Rises." Been watching an anime oriented around pre-war to World War II tanks. The past couple of days, I've been assembling models of Lewis Gun magazines. So of course this morning when I turn the radio to a random station, I get Big Band, Glenn Miller stuff. All of a sudden I'm swimming in period military nostalgia.

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This week was also my CAD-CAM class. Which turned out less useful than I thought, but it is one of those things that is a lot harder to know going in. Basically, it covered a couple of entry-level commercial packages that create G-code from a file (2d or 3d).

The packages themselves are simple and nearly intuitive. The usefulness of the class was finding out that is how it is done, plus which parts of the process you need to know now and which parts you can safely skim over for the nonce.

So I didn't learn a lot, but I am now in a position where I can translate a computer-made design into something the ShopBot or the Tormach CNC mill can utilize. Which will be the next class. And my last free class; after that, I start paying real money.



A lad over at Instructables has been asking me to build a Holocron for him. I hate to disappoint anyone, but I have way too many obligations already due or past due. I very carefully am not taking any money for "Aliens" M40 grenades until I officially re-open that run (waiting on my new radius bit from McMaster-Carr now). But I did take money to revamp a sound system, and there's work I should be doing over there. Oh, plus two upcoming shows with elaborate sound designs, and I'm weeks late for my first one-on-one with the director of one.

Plus I need to fit in gym time, and find time to hassle the VA about my health care options with them, and Makers Fair is just around the corner...