Bloggage Catchup

Dear Readers,

It's been a good, long while since I've taken the time to sit down and write up a blog post.  I hate to say it, but with the lack of comments my posts tend to get and the seeming shortage of traffic that's going on, it's hard to stay motivated to generate content.

Still, I figure I'll give it all another go now that the shelter-in-place quarantine is going on.  It seems likely that y'all have a bit of free time and might need something or other to read to help pass the time while this global COVID-19 pandemic has us all staying home and slowing things down a bit.

Some of my nearly complete project write-ups include building replicas of the Morita Assault Rifle from Starship Troopers, Samus Aran's helmet from the classic Metroid video games, the beginning of Armorsmith's costume from the hit Disney Plus series the Mandalorian, and lifesize Mouser bots from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I've also been thinking about diversifying my writing a bit.  I worry that my last few posts have become somewhat rote with a string of "I started with this and then did this, and then this, and then this, and then it was done."  I suppose it's not as entertaining as it used to be.  I've also not taken any time to write about anything else going on in my life such as my retirement from the Naval Reserve last year, the Lady Shawnon moving back home from Nevada, our growing collection of saltwater aquariums, the new cat(s) hanging out in the workshop, and more.

With that in mind, what would you like to see more of?  How-to's and tutorials?  Gross descriptions of boat maintenance projects?  Sea stories from my time in the Navy and the Merchant Marine?  Dog, cat, chicken, and fish pictures?  Scantily-clad young women with science fiction weapons?  I figure there are parts of my unusual life experience that might be interesting for at least a few people, but since they're normal for me it doesn't occur to me that it might be worth writing about.  Let me know in the comments.

Thanks for reading,
-Shawn

Time to Catch Up

It's been a while since I've had substantial time available for bloggage.  For that, I apologize.

That said, I'm going to be doing a lot of writing in the coming months and I've decided to use the blog as a tool to help me shake out the cobwebs and overcome writer's block.  So you can expect all sorts of articles in the coming weeks and months and I flesh out a few things and catch up on a variety of little things I've written over the past few seasons.

Specifically...

I just finished unpacking from my fifth consecutive appearance at the Bay Area Maker Faire.  I pulled out all of the boxes and set up quite a display of finished works:


So I need to go over the story of the mad rush involved in getting all of that stuff spruced up, packed, loaded, transported, installed, and hauled home after the fact.  It was a good time.

Going back a bit further, my crew and I went to Star Wars Celebration Anaheim last month, so in addition to writing about that experience, I've got to go over the details involved in making our platoon of Mandalorian costumes:


There's also the Shae Vizla costume I made in cooperation with DW Design Studios for the Lady Shawnon:


There was also a handful of Sith Acolyte outfits I made to accessorize her.  Here's one:


Going back even further, I've still got to finish up a couple of articles about the building of my Mark III Ironman suit:

It's been finished for well over a year now, but I never finished writing up the steps involved in the paintjob as well as wiring up the lights.

On that subject, I've got a couple of other variants of the helmet that I need to write about:


Hopefully I'm over my Ironman helmet building phase at this point.

There's a few other projects I'll be writing about as well, but these are the first that come to mind.

I should point out that these are all hobby projects.  My professional projects are even cooler, but it'll take a bit longer to write about them while I await permission to release images.

So in other words, stand by for more.  It's coming...


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Forgive Me Readers, For I Have Sinned...

It has been six weeks since my last blog entry.

While the months of June and July were very slow and I didn't have all that much going on in the way of projects, progress, or travel, August came along and completely wiped me out.

There's a lot of things to catch you up on, but it's going to take a long time to sort out all of the details and add all of the photos.  For now I'll just show you a few of the new things since my last post.

First and foremost, after nearly two years of thinking it was lost, I was finally reunited with my war pen:

Odd things are important to me.

I stubbed a toe hard enough to give me a week-long limp:


I made a lot of progress on my M729 Squad Automatic Weapon (aka "SAW") from Halo 4:


I've been helping my friend Matt with his first costume for the upcoming Star Wars Celebration next April in Anaheim:


Somewhere along the way I made a handful of these little guys for Fundemonium, a local toy and hobby store:


There was no shortage of randomness outside the workshop:


I got to see the SSS Compass Rose off as they left for their annual summer cruise up into the Sacramento Delta:


While they were underway my father found a deal on a set of tires he's been needing, so I borrowed his rat rod and ran out to Napa to pick them up:


When the scout ship moored in Rio Vista, California, my friend Matt and I drove out there to deliver the unit's ski boat.  We had fun with it:


I think some of the scouts did too:


I also decided to take a very rare day off to visit with my college classmate Andreas who was visiting from London.  We hadn't seen each other in ten years, so it seemed like as good a time as any to do some wine tasting:


Sometime shortly after that, the Lady Shawnon finished up her 4th semester at vet school and flew back home.  I went to meet her at the airport in style:

If I look utterly exhausted in that pic, it's because I was.

At this point in the month, I had five big projects pop up all at once.  All with very short deadlines that a sane person might have referred to as "NOT F#**%ING POSSIBLE."

Undaunted, I dove in on all five simultaneously and somehow, with the help of my amazing crew in the workshop and a significant shortage of sleep, I managed to deliver.  Four of them were all for the same client.  If you were at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle last week, you may have seen these props I built to promote the upcoming video game called "EVOLVE."  They were available at their display booth so folks could pose for pictures with them thusly:


About the same time as I was handing the four of them off to the rest of the crew for final paintwork, Shawnon and I flew off to Tokyo for on-set support for the final big project of the month.  It's still under wraps, so I can't actually tell you what we were working on, but I'm pretty sure I can tell you where we were working on it:

When I pause long enough to catch my breath, I'll be writing more detailed posts about the Tokyo trip, the EVOLVE weapons, the SAW build, and so much more.  There will be oodles of photos as well.

Stay tuned...

Forgive me, Readers, for I Have Sinned...

...It's been nearly a month since I wrote anything about my goofy projects in the workshop. 


The problem is: everything's just "in progress" and I prefer to write up projects from start to finish.  Still, just to keep your interest, here's some of the irons I've got in the fire right now...


First off, I've been painting my Warhammer 40K Space Marine chaplain helmet:



I'm also building some UNSC Marine costumes from Halo 3. For now I've made a helmet prototype:



It's halfway through moldmaking right now:


I'm also making tiny progress on my M90A Shotgun from Halo 3:


As long as I happen to be building damned near everything the Humans ever used in HALO, I'm also working on a pair of ODST costumes.  The other day I finished assembling the backpack for one of them:



In other video game costuming news, I've started sculpting the helmet for Isaac Clarke's engineering suit from Dead Space 2:


I'm also making progress on my Caboose helmet, doing prep work on a batch of Kneeling Rifleman Garden Gnomes, painting up a raw cast of a clonetrooper helmet from Star Wars Episode III, making a few new products for my Etsy Shop, occasionally checking in on my father's Frankenbarn project, doing preliminary design work on my display for the Maker Faire, and hopefully next week I'll have drive sprockets on my tank.

It's all sorts of interesting stuff, but for now none of it is done enough to write about.  Stay tuned...

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Word of the Day: "Neathage"

Earlier I posted an entry with a link to an article that states that staring at boobs is good for your health.  While searching for a work-safe image to go along with it, I stumbled across a term that has somehow eluded me for all these years: neathage.


"Neathage" is defined as the curvature of the breasts visible hanging out of the bottom of a crop top or other shirt that doesn't hang low enough to cover their entirety.  Here's a prime example:




It is also occasionally referred to as "undercleavage" or "Aussie cleavage," because it comes from down under.

So now you know.

Overdue for Updates Again.

It's been a busy pile of everything since my last update, so please stand by while I try to sort it all out, process all of the pictures, and figure out who's underwear I'm wearing.
Once I've done all that, I'll be posting like a madman.

Greatest Hits: a Listing of My Favorite Posts Thus Far

Every once in a while I go through my old posts and can't help but chuckle here and there. I figured it might be worth posting a list of links to some of my favorites to make them easy to find.

Enjoy:

Thorsson's Patent Method of Gopher Elimination

On Your Bookshelf, Evil Cthulhu Waits Thinking

My Series of Possible Demises

Afghanistan in Retrospect: a List of Quotes

A Series of Lessons Learned from Yesterday's Conference

Save the Whales of Afghanistan*

The World is Filled with Wicked Vending Machines

A Helpful Dating Tool for Men

A Fashion Update for Style-Conscious Sailors

A Question of Precedence

A Letter I Once Wrote to US Airways

The Solution to World Hunger

The Tale of Trid

There are too many people in the world.

I Know Where the Missing Sock From the Dryer Goes

Movie Theater Cheese

I Have Always Been an Exceptional Child

The Life and Times of a Ten-Pound Bag of Pennies

Lots of Catching Up to Do

It's been quite a while since I posted.

In that time I've been all over the place, doing all sorts of things, with all sorts of people, and ended up a year older.

I'll try to explain in detail in the next couple of days.

Overdue for Updates

Dear Readers,

I'm terribly sorry for the shortage of bloggage lately.

I've been unable to get off the ship as planned while bouncing around East Asia, and I've had no access to the web while coming back across the Pacific.

I will catch you up on all the latest as soon as practicable. Right now I'm still trying to break the pages and pages of rambling sea stories into nice, bite-sized packets of reading that can each be comfortably enjoyed during the time it takes to make a reasonably relaxed visit to the toilet.

Thank you for your patience,

-Shawn

Overdue for an Update

Howdy all,

I apologize for not updating the blog while I was on the West Coast. I'll just say I was overtaken by events and leave it at that. I'm in Korea now and having a hard time formatting my latest entry using a computer that only speaks Korean. Since I can't read the little snowman drawings they call an alphabet here, you'll just have to go on waiting.

In the meantime, you can check out my flickr account to at least get a glance at all of the pictures I've been uploading. It can be found by clicking HERE. Some of the pics are interesting, some are pretty, and some of them are downright odd:


Thank you for reading. I'll be catching it all up in a couple of weeks.

-Shawn

Forgive Me Readers for I Have Sinned...

...it's been ten days since my last blog entry.

In that time Ana and I have been homebased at the hotel here in Washington DC. In the meantime we've also been to Virginia a few times, caught up with some old classmates, old shipmates, old friends, new friends, and my sister-in-law-in-law, dropped off the little dogs down in Georgia, dined out for an average of almost two meals per day, seen about a dozen movies in a variety of theatres (including Star Trek in IMAX and "UP" in 3-D) and had more than a little bit to drink.

On the less frivolous side, Ana's built and launched the first official service blog of the United States Coast Guard. You can check it out at: http://coastguard.dodlive.mil/.

On the more frivolous side, I've been tinkering with a few projects during my down time in the hotel room. At some point I'll write up some of those as well.

Unfortunately, in the midst of all that I haven't been taking a hell of a lot of pictures and I've been doing even less writing. I promise I'll catch up on my report of all of the ridiculousity going on in life lately. I've also got a bunch of pretty pictures in and around our nation's capitol (I'll get more) and so on.

So again, I apologize for the shortage of updates, but I'll be getting all caught up in the next few days.

Stay tuned.