My most ambitious woodworking project to date has been a kitchen/game table. I made removable panels using oak flooring to cover a recessed play surface for games and puzzles. This allows us to start a big puzzle or long game and then cover it up and come back to it later. I’m happy with how it turned out and also learned a lot in the process and have lots of little things I will change if I make another one in the future.

As my workshop is expanding and I am gaining access to more woodworking tools, I have been attempting some more ambitious projects. One of the first things I made is a crokinole board. My first board was pretty simple, apart from the curved rail around the outside. The second board I made integrated some nicer quality materials and now lives at my parents house in Florida. Its been a great vacation activity when we get the whole family together.

One of the things I’ve been doing with my 3D printer is making miniatures for tabletop gaming. It’s something I’m starting to get back into as a result of my oldest son showing an interest. The ability to model and print virtually any object that will fit on the build plate is still pretty mind blowing.

Of course getting the resin model printed is only half the battle. I’ve never actually attempted to paint miniatures before. As with all things these days, the abundance of information available on the internet makes it fairly easy to learn on your own. On the whole, I’m very pleased with my first efforts. More importantly I’ve gotten the kid seal of approval. My son loves playing with our new pieces.

I recently acquired an SLA 3D printer and I have been putting it through its paces. I’m getting the settings dialed in and learning how to best place supports. I’ve also started learning Fusion 360 since Autodesk makes it free to hobbyists. It’s a bit quirky, but there’s enough crossover with AutoCad and Revit that it’s not too difficult.

I’ve also been trying my hand at painting miniatures since I can print out whatever I want to work on. I will post some pictures of the results soon.

This photo I took while in Destin this summer inspired me to revisit my pixel sorting script.

Over a year ago I started the slow but more or less steady process of writing a book for my son. Back in December I foolishly believed that I was in the home stretch, just weeks away from publishing. Now, after months of editing and revising, I really am less than a week from the publication of my first book. This has been a labor of love, and I’m sure the expenses accrued over the past year will ultimately overshadow any profit I may make. It has always been about producing just one copy, the one I hand to my son with his name on the dedication page. That copy is currently in production and I can’t wait to finally deliver it to my target audience. To my “ideal reader” as Stephen King puts it.

Now, perhaps you may be interested in getting a copy of my book for yourself. Well, you are certainly welcome to do so. The book is currently available to preorder on Amazon, and the Digital version is available on all major platforms. If you enjoy the book, I would very much appreciate a review. Goodreads would be a great place to do so. Finally, I have to give particular thanks to my wife Heather for her editorial contributions. Without her help, this process would have taken even longer, and likely, would still have resulted in a mess of a book.

Snapped a few pictures of the lunar eclipse last night. They were taken with my D3600 using a 200mm lens.

After mocking up a book cover with one of my previous sketches, the feedback I got was that is was “too creepy”. I’m told that parents might not want to buy a book for their kids with a scary ominous face on the cover. So, even though my son said it looked “pretty cool”, I am exploring a more abstract concept for the cover.

Thanks to the prodding of a friend, I finally tackled a project that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time, building my own arcade stick. I used a Sanwa joystick and Sanwa buttons with a Zero Delay PCB. I purchased the top panel which I used as a template and built the rest of the enclosure out of wood. The artwork is from a great game called Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime. I thought it looked at home in an old-school arcade.

Over the past year, I have spent some of my free time working on a book for my son to read. He is 8 years old, so it is a middle-grade chapter book, the rough draft being about 28,000 words at the moment. I’m having the first round of editing done, and in the meantime, I’ve been looking into self-publishing. I don’t anticipate I would sell many copies of my first book, I don’t have much time to devote to marketing my hobbies. However, I still think it would be worthwhile. So this week I’ve been thinking through some cover ideas while editing is ongoing. Here are some sketches I did yesterday testing out an idea for it.