Dusting off the cobwebs

[Tom B.]

Great news Mac

Good to hear that you should be back in the shop just in time to start pouring molten metal.
Just this morning I noted that it is probably almost time for you to shift gears again.

[Jeremy.G]

Thanks Mac- Pleased to hear you're feeling better as well!

The selfish part of me is glad you took it easy the past few days, as it gave you time to chime in about my own project.

[Gryndar]

Bump

[Tom B.]

Bump

I wouldn't expect any activity on this armour for a few more months.
I am certain that Mac is busy being a pewterer, generating stock for Pennsic.

Facebook Page: Billy and Charlie's Highest Quality Pewter Goods

Webpage: Billy and Charlie's Highest Quality Pewter Goods

[Gryndar]

I wasnt pestering for more....much.... l just didnt want this super informative thread to get buried too far.

[Mac]

It is as Tom says. I'm spending a lot of time preparing pewter stuff for Pennsic. We've poured about 70 pounds of metal to bring up our stock, and now we are working on molds for new items.

Mac

[Gregoire de Lyon]

It is as Tom says. I'm spending a lot of time preparing pewter stuff for Pennsic. We've poured about 70 pounds of metal to bring up our stock, and now we are working on molds for new items.

Mac

At one point there was talk of a photoblog of the pewtering process as well...

#prettyplease

[Arrakis]

It is as Tom says. I'm spending a lot of time preparing pewter stuff for Pennsic. We've poured about 70 pounds of metal to bring up our stock, and now we are working on molds for new items.

Mac

At one point there was talk of a photoblog of the pewtering process as well...

#prettyplease

Sounds like someone needs to hire an intern! Anyone know any photojournalism, documentary, process engineering, etc. students living in Mac's neck of the woods looking to be paid in character-building experience and enhancements to their portfolio?

[Mac]

It is as Tom says. I'm spending a lot of time preparing pewter stuff for Pennsic. We've poured about 70 pounds of metal to bring up our stock, and now we are working on molds for new items.

Mac

At one point there was talk of a photoblog of the pewtering process as well...

#prettyplease

Blogging takes a surprising amount of time, and I always feel pressed during the "pewter season". I promise I'll do some after the armor is done. Keep reminding me. For now, check us out on the Facebook page for updates. https://www.facebook.com/BillyAndCharlie We frequently put in some technical info and mold pics for new items.

Mac

[Tom B.]

Blogging takes a surprising amount of time, and I always feel pressed during the "pewter season". I promise I'll do some after the armor is done. Keep reminding me. For now, check us out on the Facebook page for updates. https://www.facebook.com/BillyAndCharlie We frequently put in some technical info and mold pics for new items.

Mac

Lots of new neat posts on their Facebook page
Billy & Charlie's Facebook Page

I found the series of photos and explanations about this new item to be particularly noteworthy:

[Leonardus]

[Mac]

I am currently in post-Pennsic-decompression. That zombie-like phase usually lasts about two weeks no matter how much I thought I would "get right back to it".

Mac

[Mac]

I think I have a problem here.

I have been using Picasa to host the images in this thread, but as far as I can tell, that's not going to work anymore. Google is no longer supporting Picasa. I have read what they have to say, but somehow none of really makes sense to me. Can someone who understands these things explain to me what I have to do, moving forward?

Mac

[Kristoffer]

https://picasa.google.com

For me it says that all you need to do is log in to google photos and all your images will be there..

[Tom B.]

It's been a full week since my surgery, and I am feeling a lot more chipper today. I need to see my surgeon in a week to get his OK to lift heavy objects etc, but I think it's time I got back into the shop in a meaningful way.

Mac

I have had to deal with this as well.
There maybe better ways but here is what I have figured out.

All of your photos are still there they are just in Google Photos now.
Creating Albums and uploading photos seems pretty straightforward so I will skip that.
Feel free to ask about these if needed.

Linking / embedding is the troublesome bit.
Still possible but changing the resolution is more manual.

For example here is an album I have
https://goo.gl/photos/8Ltbgifu1mynsUbw9
If I want to link a photo here in this post here is what I do.
I open the album and click on the first photo to open it.
Then I right click on the image and select Copy Image URL
This is a direct link to a high resolution version of the image the first one in my album looks like this:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/XDfEv ... 86-h941-no

Note the last bit with the "=w1486-h941-no" this sets the image resolution
if I change the those to "=w800-no" I have reset the size
like below
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/XDfEv ... mQ=w800-no

I can now use this to put it in this thread:

[Mac]

I feel frustrated and disempowered.

The part that pisses me off is that they have taken away something that I understood and could work with, and replaced it with something confusing and foreign. All this while smiling and saying how much better it will be.

Mac

[Arrakis]

I feel frustrated and disempowered.

The part that pisses me off is that they have taken away something that I understood and could work with, and replaced it with something confusing and foreign. All this while smiling and saying how much better it will be.

Mac

You've just described Google's entire software design philosophy.

The latest update to Chrome removed the shortcut Backspace = Go Back One Page. This has been a standard shortcut in web browsers for something like 10 years. They did away with it. No flag or option to get it back unless you're willing to modify your startup Shortcut string with an unsupported flag or install a new extension (slowing your program down and providing access to your browsing to the extension's author).

Google doesn't care what people like or are using and their "everything is always in beta all the time" attitude makes them think they can get away with disrupting user workflows.

[Sean M]

I feel frustrated and disempowered.

The part that pisses me off is that they have taken away something that I understood and could work with, and replaced it with something confusing and foreign. All this while smiling and saying how much better it will be.

Mac

You've just described Google's entire software design philosophy.

The latest update to Chrome removed the shortcut Backspace = Go Back One Page. This has been a standard shortcut in web browsers for something like 10 years. They did away with it. No flag or option to get it back unless you're willing to modify your startup Shortcut string with an unsupported flag or install a new extension (slowing your program down and providing access to your browsing to the extension's author).

Google doesn't care what people like or are using and their "everything is always in beta all the time" attitude makes them think they can get away with disrupting user workflows.

Unfortunately, the culture of software development in the US right now is very disrespectful to users, their time, and their property. I see it in modern operating systems as well as web things. (The latest LTS of Ubuntu moved the "shut this window" x-box from the upper right to the upper left, and there are so many websites which just don't load until you enable half a dozen javascript libraries and download a mass of cruft just to see some images and text).

But that is why I have my own website, and put my photos there, and if necessary I will ditch Wordpress and just code the HTML and CSS myself. I have learned that I just can't trust a giant American corporation to make things which will work for 10 years let alone my lifetime.

[Leonardus]

I feel frustrated and disempowered.

Welcome to "The Cloud". It's going to get worse before people figure out what a bad idea giving a giant, unresponsive, and uncaring corporation total control of your data is.

The only chance you have for stability and control is rolling your own web server, as onerous as that is.

Tom B., did you find that resize documented somewhere or did you just puzzle it out?

FYI, Photobucket, as bloated as it has become, still works for me after 12 years. For now.

[Keegan Ingrassia]

I'm still a Flickr user. It's not great, but it's not bloated with ads and bad UX, either. And it's relatively easy to get an image size that will display here.

[Arrakis]

I'm still a Flickr user. It's not great, but it's not bloated with ads and bad UX, either. And it's relatively easy to get an image size that will display here.

I just use imgur.com, personally, these days.

[wcallen]

Since we have digressed into ranting about apps/servers...

All of my stuff is hanging off of a base web server that serves up real pages. HTML, and JPG. Straightforward, honest, basic web the way it was originally intended.

And I paid for 10 years all at once, so mine will work for 10 years.

When you use someone else's service, you get to deal with their ideas of the "right thing to do." When you own it....

Wade

[Leonardus]

All of my stuff is hanging off of a base web server that serves up real pages. HTML, and JPG. Straightforward, honest, basic web the way it was originally intended.
Wade

At the risk of derailing this thread further, I thank you for that. It's really the only way you have any control. I appreciate your photos of real armor from useful perspectives and that I can rely on them to be there in the future when I'm ready to understand them.

I also pray that Mac wins through his difficulties with the Corporate and continues to provide us access to his unrivalled knowledge.
Post some F-ing pictures already!

[Mac]

I've just tried to use the new Google photo thing but ran into a snag. When I pressed the button for "share" and then "get link", it produced a URL (I guess) but when I pasted that into set of IMG brackets here the board was unable to determine the size of the image.

What have I done wrong?

Mac

[Arrakis]

I've just tried to use the new Google photo thing but ran into a snag. When I pressed the button for "share" and then "get link", it produced a URL (I guess) but when I pasted that into set of IMG brackets here the board was unable to determine the size of the image.

What have I done wrong?

Mac

That's a URL linking to a Google Photos album webpage/gallery page pointed at that image. I just checked and I don't see an easy way to embed images that are on Google Photos anywhere.

Yup, confirmed: Google Photos has no way to embed your photos on the web.

My favorite image host for the past few years has been http://www.imgur.com. It's trivial to use and generates links for you for BBCode.

[Tableau]

the archive has been giving me problems like that too trying to post pictures from imgur. The whole can't determine size of image thing, or image is too large, although it is not. So some of that might be the archive acting up too.

[Mac]

The Post-Pennsic torpor was significantly prolonged this year by yet another injury. I must have pulled something in my neck while doing the unaccustomed heavy work of disassembling Oakewood Hall this year. By the time I got everything unpacked at home I had pain from the middle of my back all the way down to my wrist. I've done this sort of thing before, and it takes a few weeks or a couple of months to work its self out. When there was no improvement at all in three weeks, I took myself to the doctor, and got a prescription for steroidal anti-inflamitories and muscle relaxants. That seems to have gotten the ball rolling, and now I'm not in any pain and only have a bit of residual numbness in my hand when I "sit up straight" like my mother told me.

So... it time to get back to this armor.

I've been reviewing the last few pages of this thread to try to figure out where I am and what I have to do next. It seems like one of the things I need to do pretty soon is to get in contact with the firm that did the black oxide on Toby C's armor and begin negations. I also need to settle on how, where and when the gold plating will happen. This and the black oxide are interrelated, and it will effect the order of assembly or some of the armor as well as the more general plan. For example, if the staples for the greave/knee straps are to be black, I can rivet them on at any time. If they are to be gold, I need to know more so that I can plan.... and so on with the borders and the hems.

Mac

[Keegan Ingrassia]

I don't envy you. That sounds like a very meticulous project, to ensure that all the hundreds of pieces and elements go together in the right order.

[Tom B.]

That does sound tedious but I am glad to hear that there will be gold plating.

[Mac]

Today, I pulled the cuirasse and arm harness off of the torso/turntable, and moved the torso back to the main armor stand.



Then, I put everything but the helmet and gauntlets on to see where I stand. The blue painter's tape is there to keep the demigreaves from scratching the greaves.

Overall, things look alright, but there is a glaring problem......





.....which I shall call the "tasset situation". The tassets looked OK before the letting out of the cuirasse that I did in the spring. Now, there is a a bit of a shortfall.



The front tassets are the ones that look most like they need to be wider, so that is where I shall start.

Mac

ps. This is my first attempt to work with the Google photo thing. Please tell me if these pics are invisible to others, or anything like that. I hope to get the hang of this new system soon.

[Keegan Ingrassia]

Photos came through just fine on my end! I hope that means everyone else can see them, too.

[Chris Gilman]

Never mind, I missed the text in between the pictures

[Mac]

I went and found the template for the front tassets and compared it to what I had to make sure it was the right thing. The lines marked "trim" represent material I had cut from the the steel, but apparently not from the template.



The shape of the new template was established by starting with the old one and looking at the pics to see where I needed more material. This involved trying to view the armor from the same vantage point as each of the photos of the statue. It's an interesting exercise, and the sort of thing I like to do, but it did consume about an hour and a half. (During that time, my telescope was cooling down to ambient temperature out in the backyard.... I had it in mind to try to locate Uranus this evening )



Most of the change is to the lateral edge, but I also moved the crest line and point out a little. The new template is tucked in behind the tasset to show where the changes are.



This will be the third pair of front tassets I have made for this armor. I can't even remember what the problem was with the first pair....

I will cut them out and shape them up tomorrow. With luck, I can have the flutes in by evening.

(oh.. the post-templating amateur astronomy went well until my finder scope dewed up around 10:45. Uranus was observed and vulgar jokes were made about it )

Mac

[Aussie Yeoman]

Very glad to see this armour being worked on again.

Great stuff, Mac!

[Christian Wiedner]

Maybe you thought the first ones have been to wide better check before you make the third pair - if you still have them...