Intro
Oh Lawd, it’s already the second of the month and I’m just now writing this!
June really flew by. From starting out the first few days of it stuck on the mainland waiting out a typhoon, to having to use my lunch break most days to swing by my house and feed little 1-month-old Waffle, to seeing said Waffle grow big enough to start jumping around and getting under the bed, behind the TV, on the shelves… she’s been a huge hassle.
I still love her to death, though, and if you want to see her in all her cow-patterned feline glory, she now has an Instagram! So please follow it; she’s worth it.
…she already has more followers than I do.
Japanese studies have been eating up more and more of my time as the days go by; my method of studying involves past flashcards steadily coming back to be answered again and again, coming back even later every time I get them right. Essentially, that means that when I started, I had X amount of flashcards every day, and then 1 day in I had 2X every day, four days in I had 3X, etc etc. So until the day comes that I stop learning more words, the time I have to take every day to clear out my reviews will steadily increase. Fortunately, the rate at which the amount of words is increasing is decreasing, if that makes sense. If it doesn’t… ah well. It’s not that important.
What is important, however, is that I simply haven’t had a lot of time recently in order to get the things done that I want to get done, and that might be a continuing theme for the next… 5 months or so. December is both the month Waffle is scheduled to get fixed and the month that I am scheduled to take the Japan Language Proficiency Test, so it’s looking like 2026 is going to be a tiring year.
However! The silver lining is that starting the 17th of July and continuing through the entirety of August, I have 0 classes to teach. Which means that I, as an assistant teacher, will have the very important job of sitting at my desk for 8 hours and making sure it doesn’t go anywhere. So I absolutely will have time to catch up! I just need to use it wisely.
June Time
Pokemon TCG Pocket Coins
So… I didn’t actually knuckle down and upload anything. I’ve printed out Arven, Morpeko, and Sobble, with Mega Lucario on the way, but Mega Sceptile, Koraidon, Miraidon, and now Elesa and Piplup are all sitting there, waiting to be printed. The issue with taking pictures is it involves having to basically clear my desk and set it up again as a photo studio, and I have to do that every time I want to take a picture of a coin. So, I thought it would make more sense to take pictures of all of them at once in order to batch load them, but for that, I’d need to print them all out. The current plan is to finish printing the available coins, knock out all their pictures at once, and then hack away at uploading them one by one. I’m currently 9 in the hole, with presumably more coming. Yeesh.
Other Stuff
I posted some YouTube videos!
This one is about how Japan Airlines almost sent me the wrong direction, and this playlist contains a whole bunch of videos about the various booths I visited at JRRF.
I’ve also been having a pretty fun time writing articles on my blog, which I enjoy checking out! It’s like a less time-intensive way to get my thoughts out there compared to making videos.
I’ve been posting weekly updates about my Fire Emblem: Binding Blade challenge run streams over on Twitch. I’ve also uploaded an article about my thoughts on MakerChips, so check that out!
I don’t believe I have any blog subscribers yet, so if you wanna be the first to sign up for email alerts, that’d be amazing!
New Models!
…Don’t exist!
Unfortunately, it does seem that I’ve uploaded literally 0 models in the month of June.
…Dang.
Past Goals
My one goal was to mainly finish up preparation for the Pumpkin Jam. Read more about that here!
And unfortunately, I think this is the first time where I can’t say in good faith that I finished my goal. Don’t worry, though, the accompanying tutorial video is all filmed and cut up, and it just needs the final edit + the thumbnail, etc, but I’m not 100% done. The Theme itself has been written up, but the intro video hasn’t been started. It’ll all definitely get done before the 11th, but it’s unfortunately not done right now.
What’s Next for July?
Main Goal
Unsurprisingly, the Pumpkin Jam is my number one priority, so I want to
- Absolutely finish all preparations for the Jam before it begins, and then
- Use the rest of the month to record all the footage for the results.
That’s it!
Stretch Goal
The Stretch Goal would be to get a rough cut of the results video together, and the
Impossigoal
is to finish the Pumpkin Jam, publish the results, and get it all behind me. That would be absolutely amazing, because then I could have the entirety of August essentially free for projects.
To which honestly, I really, really want to do, because I haven’t sat down and designed something new in god knows how long.
Conclusion
That’s the plan! Sorry if I’ve come off as having the all energy of a worn-out boot; it’s just that sometimes I feel like I have all the energy of a worn-out boot. I’ve honestly been trying to do too many things in too short a time span, and I feel like I still haven’t recovered from the whole snafu that was returning from JRRF. I’m really hoping that August will come with it fewer responsibilities, so I can take a step back, chill out, and focus on taking it easy and making what I want.
Until then, though, PLEASE sign up for the Pumpkin Jam, and I’ll see you then!
As always, Bucket List below.
Bucket List
This is just every idea from the last time put here again for recordkeeping. I’ll probably delete some if I have zero interest in doing them, but feel free to skim through this and see if anything catches your fancy. So here they are!
Testing actual VG Boomerangs
Boomerangs have always interested me–I mean, how cool is a piece of wood with 0 moving parts that returns on its own after you throw it? I’m interested in designing a bunch of Boomerangs from Video Games (Specifically from the Zelda Series) and testing out how well they actually would fly if you threw them irl, if at all. Lemme know if you know of any games that have boomerangs in them.
3D Modeling Poseable Models in Blender
I know Blender is more about animations and stuff, but I currently almost exclusively use it for importing one kind of filetype, and then exporting it as another. Since it certainly seems to be a powerful tool for handling meshes and stuff, I figure it’d be good to learn more about how it works, and to try and model some basic poseable figures in there. The prefecture I live in, Kagoshima, has a group of mascots that are all pigs–I think it’d be cool to create a base form for them, add bones onto it, pose it like they do in their promotional images, and then add their little accessories to make a cute little figurine set.
Gameripping and Crowdfunding
I’ve used The Models Resource to find models as reference material many times before, so I was considering repaying the favor and getting some models to add. The Magical Sword from Hyrule Warriors has always been in the back of my mind to make, but there are a couple problems.
No one ripped the sheath from the game. Both the sword and shield are there, but no sheath to put the blade in.
It would take a lot of filament. More than would be sustainable for a hobbyist such as myself.
For this challenge, I’d like to see if I can’t learn how to rip the model, so I can try and upload it myself. And to get the filament, I want to try out Maker World’s crowdfunding feature to see if I can’t scrape together enough to get the filament to properly test it and then print it out. It’s a pretty complicated model, as you can see here. It’d be a big undertaking by itself in order to try and adapt it.
Making Practical Mechanisms
So I have no idea what direction this would go, but have you ever worn a hard hat? You put it on, and there’s a knob in the back that tightens it down so it doesn’t fall off your noggin. I want to try making a headband that works like that, but has a mechanism in the front that lets you easily attach and detach a mask. How would that work out? Is PLA even bendy enough to make a reliable headband? I don’t know, but I found the patent for the ratchet, so…
Making More Rubber Band Hinges
Y’all remember Bakugan? I do. Really cool marble-like toys with a hidden magnet in ‘em which, when passed over a metal card, triggered the magnet which unlatched a bunch of springed hinges, transforming it into a little figure. Really crappy card game, super interesting concept. I wanna see if I can make one using rubber bands to power the hinges, similar to how my Poke Ball works.
Working with TPU
Fun fact: I’ve never printed in TPU. Ever. Sounds fun though. I’ve seen people make squeaky rubber duckies with TPU, and I want to try to do that myself. Except instead of a Duck, I want to make a Pig Ball, from the obscure PlayStation game Tomba! 2. This is the highest resolution photo I could find of it via a quick google search, which should tell you how rare it is.
What are those Suspended String Thingies Called?
I’ve seen some pretty cool models like the one in this image here. I have no clue (ok I have some clue) how they work, but I want to try one! I’m a fan of Naruto, and for some reason these prints remind me of a Sharingan floating in a tank. I’d like to make one, and swap out the design for every one seen so far in the series. Shouldn’t be that hard, right?
Trying out Some Cosplay
Really small goal, but I want to try and make Zero’s Buster from Mega Man X3. I’ve got an idea to try and use straps that might make it relatively ergonomic and solid, but I also want to think of a way to make it easy to take on and off.
Electronics and API, maybe?
A while back I made a video (or 2… or 3…) in which I attempted to make disco lights for my twitch stream. I kinda succeeded, but the end product was really finicky, unreliable, and hard to set up. Basically, the gist of the thing was that I wanted to make a spinning ball with holes in it that projected shapes from an internal light onto my walls, in order to spice up my twitch stream. I was toying around with trying to make one from the maker’s supply, and if that worked out, I want to try and sync it up with my twitch stream so that it changes color if I get a follow, raid, sub, or something like that. That’d be gnarly. I’ve had a couple people tentatively offer to help, and I feel bad that I haven’t followed through…
The old one had (technically) remote control, RGB capability, and variable spinning speed somehow, but it’d take a lot of learning to figure out how to do it effectively and reliably.