bradgrier.com

Category: Doing

  • Instructable: Arduino Keyboard Joystick Extender Box and Sound Controller Thing Using Deej

    Instructable: Arduino Keyboard Joystick Extender Box and Sound Controller Thing Using Deej

    Update Jan. 23, 2021: Looks like the Joystick circuit has failed as it no longer toggles the Mute function. Well, I wasn’t too happy with the initial wiring job so this may be an opportunity to update that. A while ago I developed an interest in Ardu­ino micro­con­trol­lers, and this is my first ‘actu­al’ project. […]

  • For 3d Printing, Levelling the Bed is Finicky

    So a week or so ago I tweaked some­thing on my print­er. Maybe it was ini­tial lay­er height. Maybe I adjus­ted a bed screw. Not sure, but all of a sud­den my prints would­n’t stick to the bed properly. Using the ‘paper drag’ meth­od of bed lev­el­ling ‘sort of’ worked. But it really was tri­al […]

  • 3d printing small board game accessories

    I’m really happy when I can com­bine two of my hob­bies. This time it’s Boardgam­ing and 3d Printing. Often, many games have tokens or chits that are pooled for play­ers to take at dif­fer­ent times dur­ing play.  Usu­ally, these sit in piles around the main game area. On Thingi­verse, swholmstead shared this neat design — which I […]

  • 3d Printing Terrain for tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons

    Pretty cool what a little time, 3d Print­ing tech­no­logy, some cre­at­ive design work, and a spool of PLA will get you. I’ve been test­ing vari­ous dun­geon com­pon­ents to see how well they’ll work with our play style. And how good they’ll look once painted and finished. The crates above have yet to be fin­ished. Usu­ally, I […]

  • 3d Printing some feet to display photos on my desktop

    We had these ugly plate-stand style photo stands for some alu­min­um photo prints. Had that ‘wrought-iron’ look. Totally not suit­able for a very white shot of our dogs. 3d Print­ing to the rescue. Then I found these simple ‘feet’ on Thingi­verse — a per­fect solution. I prin­ted off one batch, but had a bit of a flash­ing […]

  • More progress on painting Alien Frontiers Field Generators

    Work in progress, painting Alien Frontiers game components.

  • Alien Frontiers — Colony paint complete

    Well, I fin­ished paint­ing the colony com­pon­ents. Look­ing at the pho­tos, they kinda look messy. Note to self, don’t rush, even if you have 40 of the little bug­gers to paint. Ah well, on the game board at nor­mal view­ing dis­tances they look ok. I did­n’t want to paint the ori­gin­als that came with the game so […]

  • Painting the components of Alien Frontiers

    Recently I’ve become aware of a trend to paint the often gar­ishly-col­oured mini­atures and game com­pon­ents you find in mod­ern board games. My first attempt was with Mice and Mys­tics, and now I’m work­ing on Ali­en Frontiers. This time, I decided to pro­to­type my  col­our schemes digit­ally. To do this, pho­to­graphed the com­pon­ents just after prim­ing, so […]

  • Painting Mice and Mystics Miniatures — Part 2

    Well, I’ve finally fin­ished them. I’ve learned a lot, and quite a bit has changed since I last painted minis (about 20 yrs). I think they turned out fine, and I’m look­ing for­ward to my next set… not sure what that will be yet. Maybe some­thing Star Wars. Here’s a gal­lery of the fin­ished Mice and Mys­tics set. […]

  • Painting Mice and Mystics Miniatures — Part 1

    It’s been about 20 years since I last painted any­thing remotely sim­il­ar to these mini­ature game fig­ures for Mice and Mys­tics. I have a lot of re-learn­ing to do. Paint is now mostly acryl­ic, not enamel. New tech­niques like Dip­ping make the work easi­er. And the dif­fer­ing plastics used on dif­fer­ent minis makes each attempt interesting. […]

  • The Long Dark: Story Mode — Wow!

    I’ve been a fan (and Kick­starter sup­port­er) of The Long Dark for a while now, and have played it in sand­box mode off and on. As such, it’s cool and fun! But this trail­er for Story Mode gave me shivers. And not because we’re in the middle of a Cana­dian winter…    

  • How I’m preparing for the new Star Wars movie.

    I’m set. We have even­ing tick­ets in the swanky-wide-butt seats at the loc­al omniplex. But, I want to revis­it the story line pri­or to the event. So, off to watch the six pre­vi­ous movies I go. Or do I? This post in a loc­al fan group on Face­book has me think­ing… do I need to see them […]