Dont_Tell_Taco_Tyrant

The Ross Train has no brakes

My phobia is car crashes. I often have these over the top, kafka nightmares about how a horrible chain reaction of death and tragedy all links directly back to me and a fender-bender, thus putting all that moral responsibility on my shoulders. And then I have to fend off an army of lawyers in traffic court. Or, the car just gets tapped and I explode into hamburger, like something out of the original Half-Life.

Whats the dollar/krone app all about? Do you trade currency?

Here is a patrol boat I was helping design at my old job. I keep it there as a reminder of the good old days. The festival of icons cluttering the desktop are leftover installations from when I was trying to establish an alternate modeling pipeline for custom SFM models and environments. I hated XSI that much.

Good luck, Ross, work well. *Cue Eye of the Tiger*

*Later that night, a conspicuously plain, unmarked taco truck followed BTGBullseye home, which he only eluded thanks to a convenient alleyway and a timely red light. He was heaving for air as he burst into his apartment, yanking the blinds shut and huddling against the door. All night long, he stole wild eyed glances outside, heart jumping at every sound and imagination plagued by the thought of his pursuers. And the moments in between, he pored over the disturbing revelations that guy in the internet had shared, questions forming in his head before he could pin them down with words. Why, oh why, he lamented, didn't he walk away when he had the chance? Only one thing was certain: The Taco Conspiracy went straight to the top...* Or something. I hate spy novels. I am honored to be Taco Naw, I think so long as I don't name names or share specific data, it should be fine. Just be warned that as much as I enjoy the work, it might not be very glamorous sounding: At the aircraft assembly level, I've done a lot of locator jigs, which are frames that help fasten a part in its proper place on the bird. You don't need a locator jig for everything, but for critical components a locator jig is nice because its guaranteed to work--you just load the part into the frame, then put the frame on the aircraft, attach the part, and then remove the frame. So long as you've followed the instructions, the part is guaranteed to be located within tolerance because the designer took that into account. Its also much quicker than locating a part by hand and then inspecting it with a 3D positioner. On the fabrication side, I've done a lot of drilling and cutting fixtures. The hardest are probably the gearbox machining fixtures, because you have to hold a very expensive gearbox part, which may have had a quarter million dollars worth of work invested into it so far, and hold it in a very precise spot while they drill a very tiny whole very accurately....with a black and decker hand drill. The largest machining fixture I ever worked on was the size of an old growth tree stump, and it had to inflate so it could grab onto the inside of a giant, donut shaped part while a 5-axis mill surfaces the outside. Other than that, I mostly do protective gear. Aircraft have to be extremely clean, as even tiny contaminants or defects in the wrong place can eventually cause a catastrophic failure. We also want to make sure that Hank, Mitch, and Norm can work on these planes for years and not get a finger guillotined off or fall and break an ankle--their jobs are hard enough as it is! So, we want railings and plastic covers everywhere. So, its not lasers or friction stir welding, but I still think its cool.

I saw "Once Upon a Time in Shanghai" the other day on Youtube, a latter-day wushu film. I'm going to spoil pretty much everything to make my points: I'd say it was a pretty standard urban-cowboy wushu story; Ma Yongzhen is a country bumpkin who immigrates to Japanese-occupied Shanghai, bringing with him nothing but his homespun values and superhuman strength. He settles into a worker's hospice and quickly learns about all the injustices and suffering caused there by the local crime syndicate. A year of fighting for the little man but showing kindness to his enemies turns Yongzhen into a folk hero and wins him a colorful cast of allies...who are promptly lost in a massacre while he isn't looking. Driven over the edge with grief, he throws his burdensome notions of mercy to the wind and unleashes his full lethality on the remaining antagonists in a final showdown. It even uses that same "Town Square" set that you've seen in every other wushu period piece--Ip Man, Invincible, and so on. There were some nuances that I appreciated. For one, the movie doesn't hesitate to poke fun at Yongzhen for his naivety or put undeserved shine on his actions--there is one point where the corrupt Shanghai justice system lets a bunch of Japanese opium smugglers walk free, so he does his vigilante thing and after handing out beatings like its Fistmas Eve, he attempts to burn the truckload of contraband...only to be answered with a torrent of laughter, because opium doesn't burn (...'obviously'? That's really weird). Also at the end, the movie still keeps Yonzhen's victory in perspective by having him walk into a wall of police and paramedics, who are none too thrilled by his afternoon of binge-murdering. My personal opinion is that movies are a different form of escapism than books, and should be judged differently. To me, the biggest distinction is that books communicate thoughts, while movies communicate feelings. Movies are more efficient with your time, but reading books are more valuable experiences. All that is to say, I'm not necessarily put off by a movie with a shallow story because it can still do its job well and communicate emotions; there's no point in dismissing everyone's hard work just because the screen-writer got strongarmed into a conservative plot. For example, I will never forget Avatar because I had a disabling injury at the time and seeing a guy "escape" from the confines of his ruined body and excel was a welcome pick-me-up--for all of Avatar's faults, the movie was very eloquent when it was conveying inspiration (not so much romance or humor). In light of that, Once Upon a Time in Shanghai is a pretty flat movie. I think the best acting was from Long Qi, who did a good job of conveying his character's charm and ruthlessness--the fact that he never shouted or got abusive actually made him seem more scary as a kingpin. Great anti-villain. Other than that, I think the best feeling that came across was from the extras, who did a good job at being speechless with terror at the appearance of ___________ dangerous guy. Other than that, though, I didn't feel much. The movie is very pretty, though, and the lighting guys did a great job establishing what mood there is. The choreography was generally down to earth, with limited wire-fu and no high-fantasy shenanigans. Yongzhen does have this magic jade-bracelet thing that wigs out when he's about to giga-punch a fool, but its done in a tasteful, Bagger Vance sort of way. I liked their emphasis on tearing up the set and making a mess as they fought, particularly the sequences between Yongzhen and Long Qi. The fights without Long Qu him aren't as good. All in all, 6/10

I would have to identify myself as a dudebro.

Hi all, glad to be here. I design tooling and manufacturing aids for a living, mostly for the aerospace industry--I'm a bit of a workaholic, but this is my dream job and I figure that if you have to spend 2/3 of your waking hours on something for 40 years, you might as well spend that time feeling inspired. At any rate, I take immense pride in my contributions to our projects and I've gotten to see shit up close that can normally only be seen on NOVA or the History channel. And to top it all off, the management here "gets it". Everyone should be so lucky. I don't have much free time, but whenever I'm not putting the house and everyone inside it back together, I'm a sucker for crazy learning projects and inventions--for example, I'm currently laying out a circuit schematic for my own homemade QUMARION. The weird thing about me is that I know this goal is pretty much hypothetical, and would not be possible without an unacceptable commitment of time and money (I already have a job, thanks), and yet I can still be excited about it. I've learned to use this to my advantage by tricking myself into learning new skills and software on the wayside. One of my mottos is, "Stay fooled", a comment on how useful self-deceit can be at times. Lastly, I have a dire secret that the dreaded Taco Tyrant must never know, and I require you're utmost confidence. Pinky swear me.

Something about Joey makes me think that he became a Starcraft Siege Tank driver after the band broke up.

Screencap from an animated short I'm making in Source Filmmaker. The short features the minecraft avatars of Achievement Hunter in a martial arts sequence. I picked them in particular because of the simplicity of minecraft people, which I felt would be a good starting point in my efforts to learn artistic modeling and animation. The models are made up of 8x cubic primitives scaled up to size and then moved into place, merged, enveloped to the Valve Biped Rig, and then manually UV mapped to mincraft textures. I have learned that I am not a gifted texturer. (As an aside: Please tell me there's a better way to texture than UV mapping each polygon! Anyone?) I'm an engineer by profesion, so most of my modeling experience has been in a CAD applications like Solidworks: Created in Solidworks 2014 as a refresher project. The rosebud itself was made with a vase-shaped revolve feature. The outer petals were made by offsetting the skin and then thickening it, with a transverse "V" shaped cut to make them wrap around. Jagged, teeth shaped sketches were extrude-cut from the side to make the ruffle-ends of the petals. The green leaves are a bell-shaped NURBS surface with a star shape cut from the top, like a cookie cutter. The stem was created by extruding two wavy NURBS at right angles, and then taking an intersection curve to generate a long, meandering line. This line was then used to guide a loft operation, rather than sweep, so that the stem can taper nicely. Good times had by all while making this.

One of these might be worth checking out 1. Bolo (not the bodybuilder)--like chess with tanks 2. Escape Velocity--like Asteroids, with a plot 3. One Must Fall: 2097--this game even has a soundtrack that was remixed and then used in Freeman's Mind, oddly enough 4. --if OMF doesn't count as obscure, consider this other Epic Megagames offering 5. Treasure MathStorm!--providing a foray into the oft-overlooked world of educational games 6. MechCommander--the Battletech universe's attempt to jump on the late 90's RTS craze

I enjoyed it! Props to the voice actor. He sounds a little bit like Jim Carrey, and does a good job building a likeable character--the snappiness in his voice is just enough to make him seem quick-witted while still being easy to listen to. I wasn't quite sold on the shouting portions, though; the guy sounded like he wanted to keep his voice down and I feel like this forced him to break character a couple times. If that was to protect the mike, I'd recommend watching the audio waveform while he records (if you guys don't already) and doing the "lean back" trick when its time to shout. If the problem is not bothering the neighbors, you might build a cheap recording booth where he can cut loose and really Fus-Ro-Da those lines. . You might even be able to get by with just a PVC pipe frame and soundproofing curtains (I would layer them with moving blankets and line the inside with mattress foam toppers, personally. Don't forget a ceiling!) The character control was great, especially when the guy is deciding whether or not to leave his cell. Having that sense of body language really added to the voice acting. I felt like some sound effects might have helped in the very beginning when he's ramming into the padded wall, and you'd be surprised what you can pull off just by recording household materials and messing with equalizer settings. Other than that, Episode 2 looked like it had a couple of framerate drops and in general, it seems just the tiniest bit too dark--but that may just be my personal tastes, I'm a high-gamma kind of guy. But all the same, I really enjoyed it! I'll be watching for new episodes.