| (no subject) |
[Oct. 31st, 2009|11:50 pm] |
Three images of the Sojourner class Free Trader Junket (AMC-234), en route to its next port of call. I'm getting better with SketchUp, as this model did not take nearly as long to build as my earlier works.
( Click for the images ) |
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| Qapla'!!! |
[Oct. 28th, 2009|09:30 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  sick | ] |
Sick with a cold. Speaking of colds, it suddenly went from the low 80s here to the mid 50s... Damn you, Al Gore!!!
And now, some Klingon propaganda in the finest tradition of totalitarian regimes everywhere
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 21st, 2009|08:22 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  drained | ] |
I wasn't sure if this was even worth posting here, but the Year of Death™ has claimed another close to me. Shu Shu, my recently departed grandmother's cat, died Sunday morning. He was buried next to my other dead cat, Nabiki, in my back yard. It's just me and Sakura now, and while she seems healthy and happy for the moment, she's coming up on 16 years old - and I can do the math on what that implies. |
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| This Shit Again... |
[Sep. 29th, 2009|10:18 pm] |
It seems they're talking about putting women on submarines again. To the two or three people who actually read this journal, you would not upset me in the slightest if you hit the 'back' button on your browsers and got the hell away from this post unread. For anyone who is still here reading, I am about to get as UnPC as possible. I do it because the world of Politically Correct thinking is worth absolutely fuck-all in the real world where bad policies often put people in body bags and most certainly destroy worthy and noble institutions.
( Commence Rant, Commence Rant, Rant at Will! ) |
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| Wolveriiiiiiiiines? |
[Sep. 16th, 2009|09:12 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Partisan Rock | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  annoyed | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Enough - Gravity Kills | ] |
Patrick Swayze is dead. Yet his body is not even in the ground, and already I hear rumors of a remake of Red Dawn. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. Let's leave aside for a moment that the world of that movie is no longer the world we live in today. Not even close. Yes, let's leave aside this, and cut right to the heart of the matter.
Why did anyone think this movie needed to be remade?
It used to be a running joke that Hollywood had run out of ideas. It's not funny any more.
Stop.
Just stop.
You there. Put down that A-Team script with Liam Neeson cast as Hannibal. (God I wish this was a joke.) You, over there. What exactly did you mean by "I didn't see any politics or intrigue at all, I saw an action movie" when discussing yet another Dune remake? (Also not a joke.) Are you on drugs? Are you stupid? Are you just plain evil?
I hate people. |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 24th, 2009|12:13 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | hot | ] |
The Astral Queen tours a system very close to the Gum Nebula, whose closest edge is about 400 light years from Earth.
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| Payday |
[Aug. 1st, 2009|07:11 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | accomplished | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Pain - Oingo Boingo | ] |
A completed image of the Harvester model, showing off the level of articulation that the mining bore arms possess as they dig into a gelidic (icy) asteroid. I actually rendered this mesh several times, then combined the images generated into the finished product.
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| O_o |
[Jul. 27th, 2009|06:48 pm] |
Ho...Lee...Shit...
You can't buy that kind of crazy+stupid for any price. For. Any. Price. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 19th, 2009|12:25 am] |
| [ | music |
| | Send Lawyers Guns and Money - Warren Zevon | ] |
MV Ceres Lodestone (AMC-141)
Tartarus System, HM+31 5806
18 July 2361
Day 129 of a six month tour
The architect that designed the Lodestone and the shipwrights who built her made her for one thing: profit. For myself and the forty-seven other inmates of this aluminum and carbon-fiber prison, comfort wasn't even a secondary concern. We're cooped up like rats in one of the two spin habitat modules, spinning three times a minute to give us just six tenths of a gee so we can maintain our physical strength. And we need it. Even with all of the automation, the job's filled with back breaking work. Maintenance, repair, inspections, even man handling chunks of rock the pods bring in to the processing house directly for assay. Ceres Metals has always been an equal opportunity employer, but the last time I saw a woman that wasn't shaking what her momma gave her on a display or taped up to the top of my bunk was four months ago.
I get email, sure, and the occasional two minute video (company bandwidth permitting), but light speed lag's a good forty minutes out here, so all my conversations tend to be a bit one-sided. Not much to talk about anyway. If we're transiting to the next work site, we're ass-deep in work getting the machinery ready. If we're at a work site, well, we're working our asses off keeping the machinery running. Every minute of downtime costs us four thousand bucks, and that's coming straight out of our shares, so you bet your sweet ass that we don't let that happen too often. It's a lot of work, but it's all the same, all the time. I try to pull a split shift if I can - six hours in the processing house and six in the fuckup factory (the control room, that whole other Hab module we could be using for living space but don't). A change of scenery as well as a change of workmates does a world of good out here.
One thing I can never get over is the noise. You get hit with the smell first thing through the airtight door from the skiff, and float right into a miasma of sweat, bad breath, old socks, amine from the backup scrubbers, and God only knows what else. Your brain filters it out after a couple days. But the noise. When we're on a work site and those gigantic fucking bores are going... The vibrations carry through the whole ship. It's not loud, just constant and all encompassing. I swear, when I'm home I can hear it in my sleep.
Just one more run this tour. I tell you, it was looking pretty weak in the bonus situation for a bit. Demand from Higher was for the usual light stuff - lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, and silicon. It pays the bills, but not much else. We dug into this rock about twenty days out from home, and the next thing we know, the bores hit a vein of rare earths. Niobium, hafnium, europium, ytterbium, even some iridium. The Old Man didn't need to ask for instructions on that one. We pitched the cheap shit into an inflated bag polymerized from all the carbon we collected, and loaded up on the rare earths for as long as they held out. We're going out to make up for what we didn't harvest on that run, but it's all gravy now. Just as long as nothing breaks, in fifty-one days I will be home with a fat bonus check. I have no idea what I'll do with my share. As long as I don't do what all the other rockheads on this bucket do, which is piss it away on hookers and blow.
Yeah, right... Like that's gonna happen...
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| Independence Day |
[Jul. 4th, 2009|01:18 pm] |
IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Everyone who can remember even a little bit of the Declaration of Independence can usually summarize the part quoted above. It's great that we're all created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights - I believe this fervently. Unfortunately, most people haven't read, don't remember, or are even unaware of the rest of it. The real meat of the Declaration of Independence is not in these first two paragraphs, it follows after:
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Now that's a dangerous idea. One might even say it was revolutionary for its time.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
We seem to be suffering a lot of evils by our government in the form of taxation and regulation, a usurpation of those powers in our Constitution withheld to the States or the People (see 9th and 10th Amendments). But alas, these evils do seem sufferable to most of us.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.
Are we here yet? It would seem not, but for the various 'tea party' tax protests going on today. Many have heaped scorn and derision upon these protesters in the past, and I'm certain there will be plenty of looking down noses at them from our self-professed elite. I think they miss the point. In all the jokes about teabaggers, I think these people miss that the protests aren't simply about taxes. They are about a Government that no longer serves its people, but exists instead to serve itself. That, my fellow Americans, is Tyranny, no matter how lightly our chains may happen to rest upon our shoulders.
People are getting tired. The evils are becoming harder to suffer. We can be free, or we can be slaves. What frightens me the most is that, to give a nod to a guy of my generation, some have found that they can find happiness in slavery. |
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| It's like I'm living in a Bad Dream... |
[Jul. 1st, 2009|08:11 pm] |
Bob Zubrin (known for his Mars Direct plan for a manned Mars mission) has some chilling words about the Cap-and-Trade Carbon Tax bill that just passed in the House and now goes on to the Senate. The bill was 1100 pages, including a 300 page addendum that makes in-line changes to the text of the bill which was added at 4AM on the morning of the vote. It was not humanly possible for Congress to have read the bill, much less all the last second changes and know what in the hell they were voting on, but a slim majority managed to pull their thumbs out of their asses and vote 'yes' anyway.
So here it is folks: say hello to a doubling of your electric bill, higher prices on goods, and less food and higher prices.
Yay. |
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| Bonaventure Interiors |
[Jun. 21st, 2009|10:37 pm] |
I haven't played with Sketchup in awhile, and decided to try my hand at doing some interior shots of the Bonaventure's spin habitat. I created multiple component cubes 2.5 meters on a side, and set them together to create the interiors. Theoretically, I could create the entire deckplan of the ship, though I think my computer would catch on fire if I tried to render it.
The bits labeled 'EAB' are a nod to my submarine days. 'EAB' stands for Emergency Air Breathing, a manifold of 100# clean air that runs throughout the ship. In the event of a fire or a chemical spill, the crew would don EAB masks and plug them into the nearest EAB manifold. The EAB system does not protect against a depressurization casualty, only against a toxic atmosphere. |
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| Farewell Nabiki |
[Jun. 3rd, 2009|09:52 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | melancholy | ] |
My companion of many years, nibbler of my beard, the one whose tummy I often rubbed as I mocked her for her chubbiness, my Nabiki, is gone. She died tonight at 9 PM, several minutes of terror and pain melting away into peace as I stroked her head and whispered that it was okay over and over to her. |
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reactor_axe_man's journal
