Hey guys....again......

Hello.

Me again, on again, off again BG user from long ago......the crazy guy who lives in the castle tower he built in MT....who is also a firefighter and EMT.

Anyway.....Long story short.....I've had a rough couple of years. I've lost almost all my friends to due to....differences which I probably don't have to explain...during this time period.

It turned out that the kind of people I hung out with because they shared my interests, fell into two groups.....one group couldn't stand the BS and evaporated from the internet, never to be seen again....the other simply descended further into that BS. The forums I frequented became hollow places, empty of ideas, useless except for arguing.

I was more or less in the first group....I retreated to my fortress of solitude both physically and metaphysically and have made it through this times unscathed...physically.

But increasingly over the last few months....I have felt drained of inspiration....of a reason to go out to the shop and pick up the tools....or do much of anything else.

Last week I managed to get myself sucked into playing Frostpunk....I'm sure you gentlemen are aware of what it was....and I remembered just how excited steampunk used to make me feel....how it combined all the things that fascinated me, history, society, engineering...imagination.

Like my the city I eventually built in Frostpunk...my own home is filled with supplies, heat, defenses...everything I need to weather the storm. I could literally close the door and not come out again for a year at least.

And yet still.......it is not....enough....

I find myself wanting more than just survival....I want to build, create....I want to live IN that kind of world, one not so different in ways from the one I am in already...

And this reminded me off how once upon a time, back in the glory days of Brass Goggles, I used to learn new skills, new ideas, almost every day there.

I remember it was where I first learned of the Snow Cruiser, of Nernst lamps, of so many things...among them....laser printer resist etching....I never forgot any of it....

This is not steampunk, this is a medieval Rondel dagger....a project I started forging a decade ago and somehow lost track of. But this week I'm finally finishing it up...and I remembered....Laser printer resist etching.... Which tonight I tried for the first time and am extremely excited by how well it worked.

I went looking for BG, for old times sake, and found it sadly gone into the ether.

So here I am....hoping perhaps to find inspiration once again. Or at least someone to chat with....


Google translate latin of a Halo meme....(memes where very popular in period, as where bad translations, and words simply used as decoration)

"I'm Ready, how about you"

That's an impressive piece of work, Tower. Welcome back.

I've missed seeing your Piter De Vries - like signature in forum threads. Welcome back.

mwbaaailey wrote:I've missed seeing your Piter De Vries - like signature in forum threads. Welcome back.

Actually that's my Piter De Vries - like signature.

von Corax wrote:

mwbaaailey wrote:I've missed seeing your Piter De Vries - like signature in forum threads. Welcome back.

Actually that's my Piter De Vries - like signature.

Is it? My apologies...

That was a VERY odd mistake on my part. I had to do patch therapy right after that, as my eyes were wobbling out of place again (the reason why I wear an eyepatch occasionally), so perhaps that was what happened.

Finished it up yesterday: