Long time, no posts. To paraphrase Ian Malcolm; “Life finds a way… to interrupt the best laid plans”.
Since the last update I’ve been working on a few little projects, planning some bigger projects and started on massive project that comes under the heading of “life goal”. The little projects involve putting up shelves and rewiring my home cinema rig and not really worthy of a post. The bigger projects and Big Project of Doom are as follows;
As I’ve mentioned in my about page I work at Microsoft in the Developer Support team, SQL data access specifically. The day job keeps me busy but the biggest benefit of the job is the other stuff I can get involved with, lots of beta testing (that I will not be discussing so don’t ask!) and another little project called the .NET Gadgeteer. I was lucky enough to attend a training day prior to release last year at MSR in Cambridge and another later on in Reading. They wanted volunteers to help out with a few things and I jumped at the chance! Expect more on that topic in the near future.
One of the other projects I’m starting is a costume for a friends birthday in March, the theme is “comic book characters” and is very specific in that the character must have originated in a comic rather than another media. Easy for me, who better to go as than one of the Ultimate makers but Tony Stark! Yes, the pun was intended. 😉
To that end, an arc reactor chest piece and a few other props will be built. Hopefully a fair example of the repulsor glove he tests in the first film too, depends if I can build one that looks good. Electronics I can handle, aesthetics may be tricky as I’ve not done prop work before. Another prop is top secret at the minute, the components I’ll blog about but the finished product will be unveiled on the night. If it works and doesn’t just self destruct that is…
Regarding the projects previously mentioned this site, the 3d printer still needs finishing but the folding desk project has been scrapped for now. The wood is still in the garage, I just can’t figure out a good way to do the hinge properly at the minute and I want to do it properly rather than quickly.
Regarding the Big Project of Doom, I’ve bought a 1990 Rover Mini Thirty which I plan to strip down and rebuild with a 1.6l Honda VTEC strapped to the front. The suffix “of Doom” is entirely appropriate as the engine will have about 180BHP to put down and the car weighs little to nothing! This is one I’ve wanted to tackle since I was about 15 and when the brother of a friend of a friend had a Mini Thirty for a sale and another friend had a scrapped Civic with the perfect engine it seemed too good not to take advantage of. The interior of the Mini is stripped, just need to suss out what body work needs doing and take it from there. I’ve a build log over on the 16v Mini Club forums and will cross post some stuff as I go.
Something else I’ve decided on is to expand my writing into other topics of interest rather than just stuff I’ve created. It’ll be a combination of stuff I’ve found on other sites with my own commentary. Hopefully it’ll be of interest to anyone who follows this site, it’ll mostly be a chance to write about a topic I enjoy.
Stay tuned for more, I’m aiming for an update a week. Either of projects of my own or stuff I find interesting.
Keegan
