StripeyType! Evidence-based Bubblegum-chewing.

So I’ve ditched Lagom.

Okay, I’m pretty happy with Jekyll and how it works so far. I’ve been able to import old Wordpress posts that I cared to save, and get them correctly displaying images. But there was more work to be done. Specifically, while the default settings were not exactly ugly neither was there the sort of look I had in mind. I didn’t need anything particularly fancy. A quick search found a few websites devoted to Jekyll themes, and of the ones which were simple that I liked, Lagom seemed easiest to integrate into the Jekyll work I had already done.

I got really sick of keeping up with Wordpress security, and given that I wasn’t writing at all, there wasn’t much value in a full-fledged CMS. So this weekend I’ve bit the bullet and migrated the posts I care at all about from Wordpress over to Jekyll which is a static site generator written in Ruby. What I really wanted was something that would be simple for me to use and update, but that if I were to ignore for a couple of years, would not become a hive of Viagra ads. A static site would provide that level of security, but updating one leads to something that looks like straight-up Angelfire unless you’re willing to spend lots of time building artisinal, hand-written HTML.

Over the extended Winter break, playing with a tiny toy quadcopter, my lifelong chronic fascination with things that fly has been rekindled. As a result, I've undertaken to put together an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle based on currently-available hobby components. This just strikes me as an awful lot of fun, but folks keep asking me "why?" Frankly, if you know me at all, you know that my answer to this is, "Why not?"

I wear a bowtie now.

Bowties are cool.

It was tasty and filling. I have a lot to be thankful for, in the form of three of my Marines whose worst complaint post-blast is a lack of sleep and constant headaches. I dont mean to minimize their problems, but it could have been much worse. We haad some company at our table. General Amos is the current Commandant of the Marine Corps.

So here I am in no-bullshit Afghanistan.

I'm at a place called Camp Dwyer - this is really enough information, OpSec-wise. Despite the fact that I am a no-bullshit school-trained 0311, I almost never actually leave the wire on patrols. I am in the very worst sense of the word, a Fobbit. I regularly have access to two military networks, both of which block LiveJournal and my own 'blog even during morale hours. There is an Internet 'cafe' (no coffee is served and in fact no drinks are permitted, so why they call it a cafe is beyond me) run by contractors at the behest of the Morale, Welfare and Recreation folks. It is two miles away from my end of the base, and usually I can't be bothered.
There is WiFi up in my neck of the woods, which I am using right now. It's for-pay, which strikes me as ridiculous as the signal they're asking me to pay for is already being paid for by the US Taxpayer, and anyway the rates they charge are OUTRAGEOUS. But here I am, using it.
I generally cannot read LJ. Or post to it. I spent last night getting a bit caught up, but I do not anticipate paying the monthly fee for the WiFi around here, and so LJ reading and updates are likely to be thin on the ground. Strangely, I have better luck with G+.
More personally, I'm doing well. I'm very busy, and somehow keep making more work for myself by speaking up about things that are messed up. I met the Commandant and the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps, which was pretty alright.
I know that the PMRP Halloween Big Broadcast is coming together, and I really look forward to hearing about it when the thing goes down, and hope you'll all break many legs.

We've flown and flown and flown, and now we're at Manas Forward Air Base in Kyrgyzstan for a little while before heading further forward.

These days, we all carry electronics with us lots of the time. Many of us use a smartphone, as an ultraportable way to stay connected.
This is no different for Marines.
For myself, I take no fewer than three electronic devices with me out into the field:

1. A first-generation Motorola Droid ("Sholes")
2. An old Sony PRS-300 book reader
3. A ContourGPS HD digital video camera

These are all small, rugged and well-loved. Another commonality that they share is that they need to be charged periodically (the ereader can go weeks, while the other two need almost daily charging) and take USB for charging.

I first turned to a home-brewed solar charging solution, using an SLA battery, a solar panel and some bits and pieces purchased at SwapFest last year. This actually worked really really well, but that battery is heavy and the solar panel is both bulky and fragile - it broke at the end of my first field op, the glass shattered. This was still useful though, as it meant I had a handful of car-to-USB gizmos handy, and a couple of USB cables for charging things. When I could, I'd hook my geegaws up to whatever vehicle I could - note that HMMWV's don't have accessory outlets, so I had to connect to the utility van we've got, discreetly. I'm going to try and get some wiring harnesses to add accessory outlets to our HMMWV's for exactly this purpose, again discreetly. I don't need the motor pool coming down on me.

After this attempt, I went commercial, and picked up a Kiwi Solar Gizmo at the base PX. At first, this seemed pretty idea, being small and fairly well-designed. The trouble is that it simply didn't seem to work. I charged it from mains power first, and that worked beautifully exactly once for charging my phone. After that, it simply couldn't get enough sun to even charge its own battery fully. I've literally had the thing in the window of my barracks for a week, and it still shows only half a charge. It's probably not worth your time if you're looking to charge your phone with solar power.

Just yesterday, I received another, more expensive and better-reviewed solar charger, so on this next field op, I should be able to give that a shot. We'll see how it holds up.

I finally succeeded, after four different molding attempts, and easily two dozen casting attempts, at making a translucent green shardmind figure!

I play a shardmind in my friend Andy's 4e D&D campaign - and while the stock figure (there's only one Shardmind figure available right now) is a nice enough one, it's entirely the wrong color.
The option to paint it is there, of course, but part of the charm of the figure is that it's translucent. I figured that casting a single copy in green-tinted transparent plastic (while of dubious legality) would elegantly solve my problem.
I went with Smooth-Cast 325 which cures transparent, figuring that I'd then tint the surface with a green Sharpie, and then paint the rest of the mini as normal. Unfortunately, the tiny and very jagged mini was very difficult to mold using Composimold, and worse than that, while Smooth-Cast 300 will release (with difficulty) from such a mold, Smooth-Cast 325 absolutely will not. There's some reaction between the Composimold and the SC-325 which makes the SC-325 foam up slightly, convoluting the figure, making it appear white, and inextricably gluing the hard SmoothCast to the rubbery mold.
I feel a little defeated by this, which only makes me more determined to get it right, so I'll probably make a no-bullshit silicone mold which I'll only ever use once in order to make my Nameless Shardmind miniature.

After hearing about Composimold, I decided to give it a try. It took a little getting used to, but this reusable thermoplastic urethane turns out to be just what the doctor ordered for ease-of-use. I didn't want to try anything really tricky for the experimental mold-making batch, so I gave it a shot with a pair of safety goggles I had lying around.