Blender

Blender Website

If you've never heard of blender before it's basically free 3D Animation and Modelling software available for Windows, Linux and Mac. I have been forever interested in this program however it can be a little difficult to learn. A few days ago I stumbled across a tutorial on modeling a coffee cup. I'd never attempted modeling before and I really wanted to learn, besides the tutorial didn't look too long. So I watched the tutorial and then tried it out for myself.

If you'd like to give this a try for yourself why not check out the tutorial here: http://youtu.be/y__uzGKmxt8

And feel free to get a copy of blender from the official blender site: http://www.blender.org

New Video Editing PC

I am proud to say I am happy with my new computer. Most powerful PC I have ever built! All set for more video editing. Its running but not very stylish at the moment. It gets hot in that tiny case. Custom case for this one is this in design stage. Can't wait to get it water cooled!

Staring:

Samsung 840 EVO 120GB SSD

3x WD Blue 250GB 2.5" HDD (in RAID0)

ASUS M5-A99X EVO R2.0 motherboard.

AMD FX-8320 CPU (8 core, 3.5GHz with boost 4Ghz)

2x Kingston 8GB 1600MHz RAM (Total of 16GB Memory)

GIGABYTE nVidea GTX 560 (1GB graphics)

Antec power supply 620W

Pinball

Hello readers. One hobby of mine is Pinball, as in the Pinball Machines that were once found in bars, pubs, fast-food stores and arcades but have now mostly disappeared from the view of the public.

Photo of personal collector's collection (August 2009)

Most machines have been moved into personal collections (may contain 1-3 machines) or collectors (who usually have more than 3) such as this one:

Photo of personal collector's collection (August 2009)

These machines were once part of my dad's collection, some have been sold and others he still has. He collected them and could repair them with his understanding of electronics and many, many hours.

Over the years my interests increased, I learnt more and more about how these machines worked and how to fix them just like my dad. I eventually learnt about Photoshop to try and restore artwork on the machines.

Playfield art for Wild Fyre 1978 restored in Photoshop by Mildflame

Scanning the damaged artwork.

It was always an interesting adventure!

I eventually got to the point where I wanted to test my skills and knowledge. I had learnt all this information and I wanted to see what I could do with that I knew. My dad gave me his worst machine for my birthday. I asked for a challenge and I sure got one! For my 14th birthday I got a 1979 Williams Flash and to this day I still haven't seen a Pinball Machine in worse condition, at-least not in person.

I had to learn how to airbrush in order to touch up all the paint that had flaked off the playfield and paint any areas I could get or make decals for. Luckily I could buy a decal for the worst part and stencils for the cabinet. If you are interested in how I did these stages in detail I have it all posted on a forum however the forum requires you to be a member to view the thread. If you really badly want to see the rest of the thread register here and you can find the thread here: http://aussiepinball.com/index.php?topic=6396.0

Taken September 2013

However after painting the cabinet and playfield, applying according decals, spraying the playfield with a clear for protection, assembling the machine and re-populating the playfield it has become to look like this: 

The machine still has some things it needs doing such as touching up the paint on the backglass and some minor electrical work but I'm proud to say I took on my biggest challenge yet and came out with my biggest success.

How it came to be, FRANKENSTIEN

About two months ago my laptop broke and I needed something to use to finalize my assignments. I bought $60 worth of old computer parts from a mate as he just upgraded. So for $60 I got an AMD AM3 socket GIGABYTE branded motherboard containing an Athlon II dual core CPU clocked at 2.9GHz that came with 2x sticks of DDR2 2GB. I also got an ATI Radeon 4000 series graphics card (I don't remember what it was)

I used a power supply, case and old 80GB IDE (PATA) hard drive from the shed, all thickly covered in dust.

I used this to get me by. Games weren't playable on the crappy graphics card and there was no space to install games on the hard drive anyway. I then realised I had a spare 250GB laptop hard drive laying around waiting to be converted into an external hard drive. I put that in, formatted it and used it for all my programs and games. I later had a nVidea GT430 given to me which replaced my old graphics card and I also needed a DVD drive to install Mafia 2 on it so I found one laying around.

Thats how it became Frankenstien. My mates and I joked about how it's so dodgy looking and how shocking it is that it performs well with Windows 8 and all games playable at 720p resolutions...

We were organizing a LAN party and I kept saying everyone will get to meet Frank. It then later came to me that I had 100's of LED's and decided to hook one up... Then another. 

I liked how it looked so the next day I found some green paint in the shed and went mad. Frankenstien was finished. I did a dodgy paint job to add character and it worked!

Post by Mildflame.

I was considering making a 4-5 minute long video explaining most of what I explained in this post and show more of the beast. If you think it sounds like a good idea like either my G+ post on it or this Facebook post:

Post by Mildflame.

If you have suggestions for the video comment and let me know please.

New Blog

Hello everyone. I've never had a blog before so I hope this doesn't become too messy.
Thanks for any support! Feel free to follow me on YouTube, G+ and Facebook.

Now I have to go and post all my other work here to catch you up.
Happy Following! -M