If, like me and seemingly 99% of the internet connected population, you are finding the new facebook UI/UX changes to be royally fucking irritating then here's some more fuel to add to your burgeoning sense of rage and irritation. Mark Z's "Frictionless Sharing". Have a quick read, then count to 10 and let the overwhelming desire to beat seven shades of shit out of Marky Z subside a little.

What can be done? Well adblock+ has some handy features here. I've personally set up a custom filter list that blocks everything from every social network (except on said networks own site of course). Now I don't have to worry about rogue js files from facebook tracking me wherever I go online and I sure as hell don't want to see anything with the string 'twitter' in its url.

I'm beginning to wonder if Google+ isn't such a bad alternative, the only problem being that it's still something of a barren wasteland in terms of userbase. Ah well, we shall see how that progresses over the next year or so.

In other news I'm getting a cane today, I just need to pick it up from the post office and I'm going shopping in Camden on Saturday to pick up a few more accoutrements. By Saturday evening I might even have a full steampunk outfit although I've given up on making the gun holster and simply ordered one as I can't find decent materials in Cambridge anywhere :/

I'd hoped to start posting details on making the holster for the NERF pistol by now but apparently there aren't any shops in Cambridge that sell plain sheet leather and the only material I have at home is too thin. On the up-side the clothes I'd ordered for the outfit have arrived and as far as I can see I just need to adjust the trousers slightly and it should be a reasonably good fit. My friend Leigh, who has been doing some artwork on my trenchcoat, has nearly finished (it looks awesome, pics will be posted when he's done) and all I need to do next is finish doing a leather overlay and paint job onto my old raver gasmask. I'll be popping down to Camden early in October to look at getting a nice top hat and a cane and I think I'll be getting some goggles online as I don't have the materials to make them.

That's all for now, hopefully I'll have more pics and news soon :)

So here's the first installment of my Steampunking up a Maverick Rev-6 NERF pistol. First we begin with the NERF Maverick Rev-6, a gorgeous little piece of kit that uses a simple spring based cocking mechanism to deliver the airpower for the darts:

Fig 1: Our unsuspecting victim...

Now before I dismantled the gun I sanded off the NERF logo on the cocking mechanism and then removed the outer parts themselves as we can see here in fig 2:

Fig 2: Cocking mechanism gone and I'm getting some ideas for my colour scheme already...

Here we can see the internal mechanism before we take any pieces out, it's worth making careful notes about which bits go where. The general gist of things is this: The long dark screws are for the main body of the gun, the short dark screws are for the cocking mechanism and the small chrome ones are used to hold together the firing mechanism. I found it also helps to keep each relevant section of the mechanism near it's component parts when you remove them from the gun itself:

Fig 3: Make a note of where everything goes, you'll need it later...

Now we have all the pieces laid out, I actually left a couple of them in the gun as they weren't going to get in my way and later simplified the re-assembly process:

Fig 4: Did you make sure to make notes?...

Now we undercoat! I'm using Games Workshops Citadel paints as that's what I'm used to. Clearly this is a black undercoat, for the colours themselves I used Dwarf Bronze, Boltgun Metal and Scorched Brown. I also got the Badab Black ink wash for later detail work:

Fig 5: Only undercoat parts that you're going to paint, most of the mechanism can be left to one side for this...

Let the fun begin! Spend some time working out your colour scheme before you put brush to surface or you might not be pleased with the results. I've gone for a stock wood body with a brass and metal cocking mechanism, barrel and barrel release button. The details will get more pronounced over the next few pics:

Fig 6: Don't rush into this stage, make sure you're happy with your planned colour scheme before you start painting...

Now we can see things coming together and it starts to become more apparent as to why I've done this particular colour scheme, clearly there's still a lot of work to be done but it's starting to look really nice:

Fig 7: Looking good, eh?

Lastly for today we can start re-assembling the mechanism in prep for putting the main body of the gun back together. Note that there's still a lot of work to be done at this point. I'm not going to put the barrel and chambers back in until I'm completely satisfied with the paintwork and detail on it. Once that's ready I'll put the body of the gun back together and finish off the fine detail work, do the ink washes and any dry brushing detail that needs doing:

Fig 9: Still much to be done...

So here we've got all the base colours done, I then spent some time going over the detail on the chamber section to make sure I wouldn't have to go back and do too much later:

Fig 10: Next we get to start putting stuff back together :D

After reassembling the main body of the gun I got out a fine brush and tidied up the detail before getting a black ink wash out for giving the metallic sections a grubby, tarnished look:

Fig 11: I may have over done the ink was in a few places but that's nothing that can't be fixed with an airbrush.

After applying some ink was to the detail on the grilling on the sides of the cocking mechanism I reattached that too. There's still a load of work to do in brushing up the detail on the wooden sections and I intend to put my logo on it too but that'll have to wait for another day:

Fig 12: Everything's reassembled, and yes it does still fire :)

Here I've done some more detail and started working on the wood sections, I've also repainted the back of the cocking mechanism in boltgun metal as it gives a better sense of continuity in the colour scheme.

Fig 13: Next we'll be adding more detail and logo's

Right here we are with some more bits and pieces done (but by no means finished). Firstly I added a couple of leather wraps on the gun body and the pistol grip and used a hefty amount of dry brushing with Chaos Black to give the metal a much better finish. If you look carefully you can also see that I added a couple of spikes for good measure.

Fig 14: Still more to be done but the look is really coming together now

And here we can see the logo on the side of the cocking mechanism, I've added an extension to the front of the gun (it's actually a working torch) and a few clockworky bits an pieces. By no means is this the finished item but I can safely say I think we're nearly done :)

Fig 15: The finish line is in sight... Next up, making the holster!

spb: evilerik: it's worth doing if you can get on the finishing line
spb: the norfolk stage being, well, norfolk, it's an almost guaranteed sprint finish
slackthumbz: sprinting with webbed toes...
spb: the riders aren't from norfolk you mong
slackthumbz: fairy muff
evilerik: do they put paddles on the wheels to get through the swamps?
spb: no
spb: they have this marvellous invention called "roads"
slackthumbz: sounds fancy
spb: they even managed to get them in the fens
evilerik: do they fuck all the young women in the towns to make sure there's genetic diversity?
spb: i don't imagine there'd be much resistance if they wanted to
evilerik: that can be taken a couple of ways
evilerik: and so can that...
evilerik: Anyone got a spare Gutter-Mind-Removal[tm] unit?
spb: it was meant to be taken both ways
slackthumbz: That's what she said
evilerik: I herby declare this conversation over.
slackthumbz: I fucking loved that car
evilerik: what in blazes are you blathering about man?
slackthumbz: Herby

So operation "Make Today My Sniveling Bitch" is going fairly well so far, I've been into town and bought a load of paints. I still need to get some sandpaper for logo removal and while I was out I had an irrational urge to push someone down some stairs so I bought a slinky (fuck yeah it's rainbow coloured, I think that meets todays quota of 'Everyone's a little gay').

Other than that I'm not sure what else needs to be done. I should probably head home soonish and do some fire staff practice. I need to get my skills on and get back into it. It'll help with my current weight loss regime which mainly consists of drinking a lot of good coffee and not eating a great deal. Throwing some excercise into the mix would give me the chance to tone up a bit while I'm at it.

I've also been thinking about my webcomic idea a bit today but I'll probably need a scanner so I can just hand draw things. I've come to the firm conclusion that my photoshop skills are simply not adequate for what I want to do and whilst my drawing is atrocious too it's probably a more apt medium for the comic.

All I have to do now is motivate myself ;), the only problem is that I seem to have been suffering from some kind of rapidly fluctuating bi-polar disorder for the last couple of weeks. I've been up and down like a kangaroo in the mating season. I'm just hoping at the moment that I can keep this up going for as long as possible.

Also potentially up and coming is a user account system, I'm thinking of porting over a load of code I wrote for work and tailoring it for the site. Once that's implemented I can tie it in to the server side code I've written for Hneftafl and finally look at doing a jQuery frontend. I may also write a QML app for it so it ports well to mobile devices but that's just a possibility at the moment.

Last but not least I'm looking at designing a tattoo for my back. I'm taking a stylised version of the full crest of Hyrule and I'm going to steampunk it up a bit in a similar vein to the work I did on my right leg, it'll probably be a few months before I'm happy with it but it should make for an interesting project.

And that I think is all for now. Here's to the sunshine and making the day your bitch!

To be perfectly honest the last few weeks haven't exactly gone my way, I've drunk too much, hedged my hopes on too many potential relationships and generally completely let myself get fucked up over a stupid amount of meaningless shit. If I weren't me I'd have told my self to man up and grow a pair of cast iron cojones by now. Unfortunately it would appear that I'm much better at giving advice than taking it. But then again, aren't we all? On the upside my NERF gun arrived yesterday and in a few minutes I'll be off to Games Workshop to grab some paints so hopefully I can straighten my head whilst getting twisted on paint fumes while I paint up my steampunk monster hunter pistol.

With any luck the rest of the outfit will arrive in the next couple of weeks so I can put the ensemble together. If it comes out right I should be swimming in bitches this MCM ;), pics and updates of the painting process to come later.

Although to be honest I'm not entirely pleased with it. Unfortunately I'm a developer, not a designer and photoshop/gimp wizardry isn't one of my strong points.

In other news I've been playing a bit of Deus Ex:Human Revolution and it's an awesome game. My advice to anyone just starting is this: Get a tranquilizer gun as early on as you can and only carry a 10mm pistol for backup. You get a lot more XP for non-lethal takedowns.