All posts by Technomancer_Ral

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Blue Screen Blues

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So, lately I’ve been getting a Blue Screen of Death intermittently while playing my VR games… which is more disconcerting than usual because suddenly your vision gets weird, and then you go blind.  Well, the screen in the headset turns off, anyway.

I’m not sure what the specifics of it are, though I’m wondering if it’s related to the SSD that I installed a while back and moved my VR games to.  Most of my non-VR applications on my computer aren’t installed on that drive, and I only seem to get the blue screen when when in VR.  I also recall seeing some waning about memory errors recently.

Hopefully I can figure out what’s going on and adjust.  I don’t wanna have to get a new computer anytime soon.  In the meantime, I’m running whatever diagnostics I can find that seem related to system maintenance.

3D Printing

Broken Belt Retainer

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I tried to tighten the y-axis belt a few weeks ago, then found out in my first test print after maintenance that something wasn’t quite right, because it failed before the first layer was finished, and slammed back into the y-axis stop.

I was busy for a bit, then finally got around to trying to fix it today, and maybe complete some other maintenance on my printer that I’ve been needing to do for a while, but had never done.  I found out that one of the screws wouldn’t tighten on the belt retainer, and thought I had somehow stripped the screw/hole.  It was at a weird angle and I was tired of bending so much to get to it, so I took the whole assembly off the printer and started looking at it. Just so I had a better idea of what was going on, I tried to back out the other screw on that retainer so i could maybe look at it from the other side, and then I saw that the retainer rotated in a way I hadn’t expected.  I flipped it back over, and saw what you see in the picture above.  That’s a different problem than I had expected.

I’ve contacted CoLiDo, and I’m hoping they can ship me a replacement part and instructions on how to install it.

Tabletop

Red Dragon Inn Expansions: Tavern Crew and Munchkin

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Two of the Kickstarters I funded came in recently.  I’m a huge fan of the Red Dragon Inn series of games.  The most recent kickstarters were for adding the crew of the tavern, and a crossover with the Munchkin universe.  Red Dragon Inn 7 adds the wench, the barkeep, the bouncer, and the stablemaster to join in the fun of the evening.

cd977019e801d334b9badb4a92efa555_original.pngThe Munchkin expansion adds Spyke and Flower, the characters from Munchkin.  They’re here to fight monsters, get treasure, and drink everyone under the table.

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It’s looking like I’ll be able to have one of my game days this weekend, and I’ll get to try them out!

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Tap Strap

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I came across this device the other day when browsing technology for potential use.

TAP

From what I’ve read, it’s a wearable keyboard and mouse that you wear while tapping your fingers or dragging your thumb across a surface to type or move a cursor.  For most of the applications they demonstrate it for, I think I’d rather use a real keyboard or use an on-screen keyboard.  I could see this being useful for people using an augmented reality display, though, which was the use case I was looking at.

However, they really need to make videos of people who are more proficient with it.  Typing looks painfully slow for normal use, and I think part of that is that the people in the videos don’t appear to be very proficient with it.

Tabletop

Dungeon Crawl Classics

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I played my first game of Dungeon Crawl Classics today.  Fun times… and a lot of dead PCs.  I went through 5 level 0 characters today.

Dungeon Crawl Classics

DCC has a very old-school feel.  You roll all your stats randomly.  In order.  Including your character’s occupation.  Non-human races are the classes.  Dwarves are dwarves, elves are elves, halflings are halflings, and humans are the other classes.

You start with multiple level 0 characters… because most of them are going to die.  The character is a 0 level commoner, coming from all manner of various peasant backgrounds.  My first fatality occurred before the character even got to take a single action!  Once you have a character get to 10 xp, and you finish and adventure and return to town, THEN they get a level and train up in a class they qualify for.

So far I have one character still alive and with enough XP… mostly by virtue of staying in the middle/rear of the party.  I’ll have to finish the adventure with their life intact for them to ever get to first level.  I’m excited to see where this game goes, my schedule permitting.

Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality

VR/AR

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So, I kept getting spammed with this item on Facebook (it apparently knows me well).

Spatial

I’ve also been watching videos similar to this one (I’m having trouble locating the original).

It made me wonder:

Could we combine these tech (and a lot of coding) to make an augmented reality collaborative workbench that splices AR and VR?

 

Steps in the process as I see it:

Rig a portion of a workbench to create realtime 3D tracking of the contents of a given area.

Show the 3D representation of that area in a collaborative VR workspace (example: VR Chat)

Avatars in VR chat point at various details on the items on the workbench.

The Spatial screen system renders their avatar’s hands on the workbench in their relative positions/orientations.

Based on the video above, you may also allow them to demonstrate assembly procedures with renderings of other parts.

 

A standardized version of this would allow you to get useful help from other makers at other locations while working on your projects.

3D Printing

Snapmaker

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The Snapmaker is a 3D printer that recently came out of a Kickstarter, and is now available for purchase off-the-shelf.  I’ve had my on it for a while… but it appears I haven’t posted about it on here yet.  So here goes!

Snapmaker

It’s a 3D printer, laser engraver, and CNC miller all in one machine!  You can snap in and snap out the interchangeable manufacturing heads, depending on which one you want to use.  It’s a bundle of 3 different machining systems commonly found in Makerspaces, and should be great for those of us who don’t have the space and money to get all of those.  It’s got a full metal frame, and the modular design allows for it to be reconfigured and upgraded with parts that they will be adding later.

The featured image shows the current iteration, but they’ve got a few others they have shown that they are planning for down the road.  Personally, I’m waiting for what I believe is called the Snapmaker Pro (I got the name from a page that I’ve had trouble tracking down again, but it’s not listed as such on the main site).  It has a two vertical column design, which I think should be more precise and stable, and a larger production area.  I don’t feel like downsizing from my current print area available on the Colido DIY.

snapmakerpro

I contacted the manufacturer to see when this would be available, and they said it would be towards the end of this year, so this might be a Christmas present to myself!

Not sure how I’m going to handle ventilation with it yet (particularly with the CNC aspect), but I’ve already got a couple project ideas.  Hopefully I won’t meet with a terrible fate in the process…

200px-MM3D_Happy_Mask_Salesman_Artwork.png

I think it’d be fun to do a cosplay of the Happy Mask Salesman… with actual wooden masks.

3D Printing

Loose Printer Belt

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My 3D printer errored out about a week ago, but I haven’t gotten around to fixing it yet.

It’s an error I’ve had before, while printing, usually in prints that are over about an inch tall, where the print head rams into the y-stop, turns off the heater, and tries to continue printing… with an incorrect reference frame (it forgets where the center is).

I’ve talked to Colido about how to fix this before… and apparently it’s a loose belt.  That’s a really weird glitch given the symptoms, but the fix worked.  Shows that I have more to learn about the interactions between the hardware and software.

Now I’ve just gotta make time for the fix.  The instructions they directed me to are below.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krq1KdBPzFw

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Rules

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For those of you who like lawful characters in RPGs, here are some of my favorite lists of rules from fiction.

Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenary:

These are a set of rules created for the webcomic Schlock Mercenary.  Originally the were the Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates early on in the webcomic… but the writer was served a cease and desist order, so he had to change the name of the list.  However, this is the one time I’ve heard of one of these orders being GOOD for creativity, as he changed it to the Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenary.  The much larger number allowed him to keep making up rules for the mercenaries to quote in the series as he came up with them.  I liked them so much that I’ve got a hardcopy of them.

Some of my favorite samples:

Maxim 2:  A Sergeant in motion outranks a Lieutenant who doesn’t know what’s going on.

Maxim 3:  An ordnance technician at a dead run outranks everybody.

Maxim 34:  If you’re leaving scorch-marks, you need a bigger gun.

 

Image result for seventy maxims cover

Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries

Rules of Acquisition:

These were written for the show Star Trek: Deep Space Nine to add depth to the Ferengi race.  They are a collection of rules governing the corrupt, cutthroat world of Ferengi commerce.  I wouldn’t recommend actually living by these rules, but they are highly amusing, and a few are pretty good.  I’ve got a copy of this set of rules too, but they were never completed on the show, and thus the book that contains them is also incomplete, and billed as being “Quark’s favorite selection” of the rules.  The one I have is written by Ira Steven Behr, one of the writers and producers who came up with them in the first place.  There is another book purporting to be the complete rules, but as far as I can tell they are out of print, hugely expensive, and the author does not appear to be connected to the show whatsoever.

Some of my favorite samples:

17.  A contract is a contract is a contract… but only between Ferengi.

48.  The bigger the smile, the sharper the knife.

76.  Every once in a while, declare peace.  It confuses the hell out of your enemies.

Ferengi Rules of Acquisition, False profits

Rules of Acquisition

 

Gibb’s Rules:

These are the rules of Leroy Jethro Gibbs from the television series NCIS.  Mostly related to investigations in NCIS, but several are good for life in general.

Some of my favorite samples:

Rule 9:  Never go anywhere without a knife.

Rule 23:  Never mess with a Marine’s coffee if you want to live.

Rule 40:  If it seems like someone’s out to get you, they are.

Gibbs’ Rules

 

 

 

Virtual Reality

Ghostbusters VR

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A Ghostbusters VR game is coming to PC!  I’ve been a Ghostbuster fan for many years.  The cartoons were some of my favorites growing up, I loved the movies (when I was old enough to not run away from the librarian), and I even have a couple proton packs on the wall (to be fair, they are storebought, not handmade screen-accurate).  It’s also one of the franchises I’ve most wanted to play in VR.

I just found out about this this week because they released it for PSVR first, which I don’t monitor.  I had been doing searches periodically for Ghostbusters VR content, and hadn’t seen anything.

Anyway, IT’S COMING TO PC on July 27th.  Not much longer to go!

It’s based on the new Ghostbusters movie, but it is based out of the firehouse (which they moved into at the end of the movie).  I’m looking forward to having a new Ghostbusters game!  From what I’ve seen of it, you start out as a new hire at the firehouse, and they are releasing episodes of content over time.

I’ll definitely be posting more on this once I have a copy of it.

Ghostbusters Is Hiring