Today, construction began on a vacuform table. My buddy Steve and I are using xRobots’ method to build it. We’re making a 1ft x 1ft frame and a 2ft x 2ft frame. It’s made of pine 2x4 beams, medium density fiber board (MDF), screws, nails, L brackets, and silicone sealant. Also, we’re using a $50 quartz heating element. Here are some initial pics:
Well, I’ll eventually post the rest of my builds for Dragon*Con, but there are simply too many photos that help explain Dragon*Con available right now to not post them.
So, here are a few my friends have taken that sum up Dragon*Con:
Btw, that IS Omega Red and Iron man fighting Godzilla as Darth Vader doesn’t care.
That’s Andrew C. from Beat Down Boogie in a robot suit that is literally a mobile dance party. Lights and music wherever he went. The elevators are not free from partying.
Helmet swaps.
Hip Hop Storm Trooper. Mobile party.
Added lights to the armor. Had to modify the lights a bit to fit in the washers. Yay for dremels.
Did some acrylic baking tests to figure out the optimal temperature and time for shaping the orange acrylic. Seems that 300°F for 10-12 minutes is ideal. No bubblin’.
Here is the Alliance armor and folded M-300 shotty with lights and damage.
Here i am testing it.
Tons of progress since the last update. Everything is painted, almost everything is strapped. I have to paint the Blue Suns designs (white) on, add lights, do some battle damage and these things will pretty much be ready to go.
So, that Black Widow sniper rifle went from this before sanding:
To this after sanding:
Everything is now painted.
The guest room is an armory.
Thigh pieces and torso pieces pretty much strapped and ready to go except for lighting and battle damage.
So much hot glue. So much.
Dragon*Con is a little more than a month away. Progress on the armors has been made.
Back of the shin pieces are complete. I ended up gluing the 1/4in foam pieces onto 6mm foam and then adding velcro to the back of the 1/4in foam pieces and the shin pieces. This way, I only have to have one set between both armors.
I couldn’t resist going ahead and adding the yellow stripes to the upper pauldrons. I had the paint and I wanted to see what this distinguishing characteristic of the Alliance Marine armor looked like. It got me excited!
I purchased a tabletop power sander ($70) from Harbor Freight so I could sand from home. It came with 80 grit sandpaper which has an effectiveness essentially the same as rubbing the foam over concrete. So, I made sure I purchased the 120 grit replacement paper before I left the store. Love this tool.
Here is the first attempt at the folded Black Widow sniper rifle.
I tried cutting out the indentations with a band saw and quickly learned it was not going to work. Also, the wings were too big. So I went back to the drawing board. Here are the pieces of the Mark II before sanding/shaping:
I will post the sanded product in the next update.
“Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest “guy” in space.” -Military instructor in the video game Mass Effect 2 (on why firing weapons in space is not to be taken lightly)
Projectiles kill people because of physics. Physics can be deadly. Anyone with a basic knowledge of physics can do extreme harm to others if they so choose. Combine knowledge of physics with knowledge of chemistry and anyone with malice or insanity can really become a threat to many people. Simply looking at history proves this is true (i.e. the Unabomber, mail bombers, arsonists, etc).
The recent heinous acts of one man in Aurora, CO has recently sparked a debate about gun ownership in the U.S. and many voices are crying out loudly from both sides of the argument. In response to the senseless killings, Jason Alexander of Seinfeld fame was one of many who wrote blog posts about how assault rifles should be banned, which is the main reason this blog is being written. I don’t totally disagree with all of Alexander’s sentiments, however, the gross over-generalizations, stereotypes and inaccurate assumptions made in his blog post (and in many others), not to mention lack of a single statistic to back up his conclusions, compels me to respond. I will use his blog entry as a representative for the view I disagree with.
Let me begin by saying I actually own an AR-15 assault rifle. I have owned this firearm for over a year and it has never taken the life from anything. Not even a plant. I am not part of a militia, nor do I plan to become a part of one. I am not insane, I am not violent (in fact I’m actually turned off by extreme violence/gore/aggression), and I am not some ultra conservative nut job. I am an intelligent, tax paying, politically moderate, loving, family man. I hope to never ever ever ever have to point my AR-15 at an actual human being. EVER.
Now, the truth about gun violence in America is NOT “100,000 Americans die every year due to domestic gun violence,” as Alexander said. Not even close. According to the National Institute of Justice, only 11,346 persons were killed by firearm violence in 2005. Homicides committed with firearms peaked in 1993 at 17,075.* Alexander also singles out assault rifles because they “fire farther and more accurately” and “accommodate[s] a more lethal payload” than hunting rifles. This is inaccurate and is clearly the view of someone who is not familiar with firearms. Hunting rifles can fire much further and more accurately than assault rifles and almost all hunting rifles fire a much larger round than an assault rifle. See the image below to see how different the hunting rounds on the right side are compared the assault rifle round on the left:
Alexander also writes off the assertion that people with legally concealed weapons in that Aurora theater could have stopped that maniac, by saying that a “crowd of people firing away in a chaotic arena without training or planning…could produce even more victims.” Perhaps it’s just me, but I seriously doubt there has EVER been a movie theater where the majority of people inside were carrying concealed weapons ( which would be needed to have an entire crowd firing away) and I don’t know a single person who conceal carries that hasn’t trained vigorously with their firearm. He basically writes off the idea with a ridiculous, unrealistic scenario.
Alexander then writes off the cliche expression “Guns don’t kill people. People do.” by positing that any other weapon such as bats, knives or machetes can be curtailed by a mob. Has he forgotten physics? Physics kills people. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out ways to kill lots of people without using bullets. Ted Kazinsky certainly didn’t lack the creativity to do so. A crazed person in a dump truck could do it with ease. The truth is, that people bent on doing evil, if they are smart enough, will almost certainly find ways of doing it. Regardless of the means available to them. This isn’t a gun issue, it’s a human condition issue.
Gun ownership in America is increasing. We’re approaching nearly 300 million privately owned guns in the hands of about 70-80 millions Americans.** Out of millions of people who own guns, a handful of foolish people choose to commit atrocities like the Aurora shooting. These statistics are similar to ones involving video games or sports cars. If a kid commits a violent act and blames his aggression on video games, do we then go and ban all violent video games? Of course not. If a driver going over 75mph in a sports car causes an accident and kills other people on the road, do we then put governors on all vehicles to prevent them from going over 75mph? No. Millions of people enjoy violent video games every single day and never hurt anyone. Millions of people enjoy their sports cars every day without driving over the speed limit and never hurt anyone. In the same way, millions of people enjoy firearms, including assault rifles, and never hurt anyone.
Yet Alexander says “I’ll say it plainly - if someone wants these weapons, they intend to use them. And if they are willing to force others to “pry it from my cold, dead hand”, then they are probably planning on using them on people.” So, does this make me a murderer? I love my AR-15. I love firing it and I would not want someone/government to take it from me. Am I a psychopath? Do I automatically plan on using it on people because I think this way? Preposterous.
Now I agree that we need to do all we can to prevent monsters from killing people. However, there really is only so much we can do, because at the end of the day, Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest guy in space.
*Source: http://www.nij.gov/topics/crime/gun-violence/welcome.htm
**Source: http://www.nraila.org/news-issues/fact-sheets/2012/nra-ila-firearms-fact-card-2012.aspx?s=&st=&ps
Here is the progress:
Painting
Power pack hole making using a portion cup lid, coconut oil, a sticker and spray paint
Mess
M-300 Claymore Shotgun (Folded) about 1/2 done. Made it so far by gluing pieces of foam together and then sanding it with a large belt sander.
Progress has been made after taking a week off for a trip to Texas and Oklahoma. We ate at Macaroni Grill for lunch one day and I was able to draw every armor piece on the paper on the table. I visualize this thing too much.
I sanded the edges of all the pieces using a large belt sander at work. Not quite done, but got the bulk of it done. Really improves the look of the pieces.
Used hot glue and Gorilla Glue to strap the shin pieces with 2” elastic strapping. The bottoms will have to have velcro though, since they wil be fitting over boots. 
Got the front shin pieces painted and battle weathered. Looks good. Bracer pieces fitted to each other.
Top part of the pauldrons shaped and fitted together. Very pleased with how these are looking.
Very early stages of the the M-300 Claymore folded rifle for my back.
Dragon*Con is but 2 months away. I am in a marathon race to make 2 sets of Mass Effect armor to wear at the con this year. They are essentially the same armor with different paint jobs. They are the Blue Suns mercenary armor and the Systems Alliance Marine armor.
Seeing as EVERYONE is doing the N7 armor that Commander Shepard wears in the game, I wanted to do an armor that no one has done. I want to be unique.
So, I started by using Photoshop to create each piece’s template for use as a reference. They look something like this:
I then made cardboard and posterboard templates for each piece, making sure each piece fit my body perfectly (and was symetrical).
It was a lot of pieces, much of it ended up being layered pieces.
I then took the templates and traced them onto EVA closed cell foam mats and cut them out with a hot knife. I have 2 different types/brands of the mats and I used the smooth and textured sides of both.
I ended up with a lot of pieces (this isn’t even all of them):
I have also begun work on an omniblade, which will be made of flourescent orange acrylic. I used the exact same process as I did for the armor pieces, but used a large bandsaw to cut the pieces out of the acrylic.
Much more work to do, and I will update periodically.
Learning from my last armor is drastically going to improve this year’s.
First of all:
SPOILERS AHEAD
Do not read this post if you have not beaten Mass Effect 3.
Seriously. Don’t read this.
Okay. Still here? Well here we go.
There has been an uproar lately about Mass Effect 3. If you don’t know what Mass Effect 3 is, it’s a video game. It’s the 3rd installment in what is arguably the greatest single player experience in video game history. It’s a sci-fi epic in which the player makes choices throughout the game that actually effect the storyline, characters, conversations and overall direction of the experience. That is, until the very end, in which your decisions play virtually no role in the final moments of the trilogy.
Mass Effect is a journey. It’s one of the most well thought out sci-fi ideas since Star Wars. In fact it may be better than Star Wars. Nay, it IS better than Star Wars. Seeing as this is possibly the best sci-fi property going, the developer, Bioware, has created quite a fan base around the game and has given those fans three quality games over the last 5 years.
Bioware is not perfect however.
Mass Effect 3 has issues. I’m not talking about the moderately weak cover mechanics or the fact that you have to switch discs (on Xbox360) throughout the game. I’m not even talking about the moment when Kaiden (your comrade and fellow soldier) makes a pass at you, which regardless of your moral position, is completely out of place. It really does not fit the character at all and seems shoehorned in by a secular humanist intent on shoving their square morality block into a round hole. Can I not offer my injured war buddy some comfort in the hospital without worrying about him taking it the wrong way? Sigh. Even this is not the issue I speak of.
Mass Effect 3’s main issue (which has many fans in a panty-wad) is the ending. The last hour of the 75+ hour trilogy.
To be sure, Mass Effect 3 is a work of art. However, it is not the same medium as a book or a movie. Mass Effect 3 is a game. It’s a medium in which the player….assumes control (see what I did there) of the main character and shapes the experience as he or she deems fit. The game plays out differently depending on the choices you make throughout the game. Even the appearance of Shepard, the main character, can change depending on your choices. Yet, at the bitter end when all hope seems lost, the fate of the Milky Way galaxy plays out the same regardless of your choices.
Spoilers ahead.
Mass Effect 3 ends basically 3 different ways:
-You destroy all the Reapers and all synthetic beings in a red fireball and the Mass Relays are destroyed
-You control all the Reapers in a blue fireball and the Mass Relays are destroyed
-You merge organic and synthetic life (supposedly) in a green fireball and the Mass Relays are destroyed
If you’ve played as a Paragon (positive, good choices) throughout the game, the natural choice would be to “Destroy the Reapers” in order to preserve life in the galaxy and end the Reapers’ murderous wave to wipe it out. Yet, this option is considered the “Renegade” option, as its fireball is red colored which is associated with the Renegade choices throughout the series. This is puzzling.
If you are fighting tooth and nail for years to protect the people and aliens you know and love, fighting to preserve the infinitely valuable sentient life covering many of the galaxy’s star systems, why would you think all of a sudden that some holographic Reaper overlord kid predicting the future (which is impossible by the way) and spouting nonsensical B.S. makes more sense than what you KNOW is the right thing to do?
This Reaper overlord kid is introduced in the last 15 minutes of the game. He tells you they have established a cycle in which they wipe out the sentient life in the galaxy and process them in order to “store the old life in Reaper form.” The kid says this helps those sentient species “ascend.” Here the philosophy of Mass Effect take a nose dive off an ExoGeni skyscraper.
What the hell are the sentient species ascending to? Murder? Oppression? Sitting outside the galaxy for 50,000 years at a time? Rubbish. Am I supposed to think that the Reapers and their cycle stand for something greater than what exists in the galaxy currently? I wanted to put a “shave off the block” into that Reaper hologram idiot right then and there, but Bioware didn’t give me the choice. They forced me to listen to this lunatic for 5 more minutes. The hologram kid then tells you that “synthetics would destroy all organics” if this cycle wasn’t in place. Seriously? How do you KNOW that? Has it happened before? Obviously not, since organics are still around. I mean, if what the foolish hologram saying is true, then how are organics around AFTER the first synthetics were built and there were NO Reapers about to “protect” organics? And even if synthetics got close to actually doing destroying organics, can the Reapers’ cycle truly be a better option? It’s the SAME thing! REAPERS KILL ORGANICS GUYS. THEY KILL ORGANICS.
Reapers process sentient beings in order to harvest their DNA to preserve sentient life. Who actually thinks that life is simply DNA? This is scientific reductionism ad nauseum. It’s RIDICULOUS and it’s not true. The Reaper cycle is just plain murder. The “chaos” that the Reapers say they want to stop is LIFE as we know it.
So, let’s think about life and the galaxy as we know it. It’s amazing. It’s messy. It’s diverse. It’s dirty. It’s connected. It’s wonderful. It isn’t perfect, but it’s beautiful. You’d fight to protect it wouldn’t you? You might even give your life for it. Yet THIS is exactly the “chaos” that the Reapers want to destroy. Yet Bioware thinks that 2 outta 3 options you may want to choose in the game are to let the Reapers live and control them (TO DO WHAT!!?? WHAT purpose could this achieve?) or blend them with the beautiful messy people throughout the galaxy (again, to achieve what? How will this be better? The holo-kid failed to mention that). I’m sorry. Are we just supposed to trust the murdering Reapers when they say that this “final evolution” or “synthesis” of synthetic and organic life is supposed to be good? Evolution does not simply equal good. The Reapers consider themselves more highly evolved than us and boy aren’t they everything you ever wanted to be.
Though the philosophy behind Bioware’s three choices are poor, what really left a pit in my stomach at the end of the game was the unrequited love of Shepard and (in my game) Liara. The destruction of the Mass Relays only compounded this problem as every sentient being on a starship in the Sol system was instantly cut off from their home worlds and everyone they love in other star systems. They are stranded around earth, a wrecked world no longer capable of sustaining that many beings. You may say “But they could rebuild earth, think about the technology they have.” Really? Here is earth after the Reapers begin attacking it:
Oh. M’yeah. You’re right. Looks like a great place to grow Quarian crops.
Technology is not magic. There is no robot Madam Pomfrey to wave around a medi-gel wand to make all the boo boos better.
The Mass Relays being destroyed shattered the galaxy perhaps as much as the Reapers themselves. By choosing ANY of the three options Bioware gave, you end up hurting billions of beings. You may say “But most of the ships have FTL (Faster than Light) drives!” Well, keep in mind The Milky Way Galaxy is 100,000 light years across. That means if you can travel at the speed of light, it will take you 100,000 years to get across it. So, lets say that FTL can take you 10x faster than light. In this case FTL capable ships could get you across the galaxy in 10,000 years. Even if FTL capable ships could go 100x the speed of light, getting Tali from the Sol System to Rannoch would take around 800-1000 years, as they are on opposite sides of the galaxy. Not feasible. Also, FTL drive cores require fuel, and NO ship has the fuel to do this type of travel. The Mass Relays being destroyed literally ended galactic civilization as we know it. The Reapers built the Relays, and correct me if I’m wrong, but no one fully understands how to rebuild them. Nor does any data fully explain how to build one, let alone build two to be linked together. Perhaps if there were, and QEC (Quantum Entaglement Communication) could transmit the data, then galactic civilization could rebuild, but who knows. Well, Bioware I guess. But they’re not telling…yet (hopefully DLC is on the way that will ease the misgivings).
*UPDATE*
is a well-made video regarding the “Indoctrination Theory” which basically says that from the moment (or around the moment) when Shepard get’s knocked out by the Reaper laser in front of the elevator beam on earth, he is either:
A) Dreaming/undergoing indoctrination and never actually goes to the Crucible via the elevator beam
or
B) Fighting against indoctrination all the way to the bowels of the Crucible where the Catalyst/Holo-kid tries to trick him into making a decision to spare the Reapers (which is why the “destroy the Reapers” option is colored red for Renegade).
If “A” happens to be true, then Bioware is guilty of the cliche “It was aaaaaaall just a dream” story arc, and has apparently constructed the end of the game to get people to buy DLC. This theory could potentially put the blame on EA though.
If “B” happens to be true, the easter egg on the best possible ending of Shepard taking a breath (regaining consciousness) whilst laying in the rubble of Earth makes no sense. Shepard has already re-entered a planet’s atmosphere from space without a ship before and died in the process. He would certainly die re-entering Earth’s atmosphere once the Citadel was destroyed/seperated. He’d burn up just like a meteor.
If either of these is true, more story will be needed to fill in the gaps and apparently the DLC is touted to do just this. But this seems cheap in that NOT ONE SINGLE player has actually beaten Mass Effect 3.
The ending of Mass Effect 3 did not go over anyone’s head artistically. It went under everyone’s head because it makes no sense or intentionally leaves holes to be filled in later.
