Monthly Archives: April, 2008
Upgrade Complete
In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve switched to a new content engine – Pivot, to be exact. Hopefully, it’ll be better than Drupal was. Everything isn’t quite finished yet, though; I haven’t finished the layout, and I have yet to figure out how to organize my content such that it’s easy to browse and read. [...]
Spaceship Parts
When I built the Atropos, I learned the valuable lesson that it’s difficult to create props (read: spaceship components) that look realistic. Since then, I’ve begun hording what I casually refer to as “spaceship parts”, which normal people refer to as electronics surplus or junk. In an effort of organization, I decided to create a [...]
Plastic Canvas
When I get tired of programming and engineering, I typically turn to hands-on activities – it took programming video games for 40 hours a week to get me started in blacksmithing and metal casting. Since I’m up at school now and don’t have as easy access to forging space (not to mention that it’s currently [...]
Metal Casting Recap
I started doing metal casting about a month and a half ago after reading about it on the internet on and off for over a year. The premise is simple: melt zinc (~787F) or aluminum (~1221F) in a charcoal fed blast furnace and then pour into a mold made from a mixture of sand, bentonite [...]
Short Sword
After returning home for winter break and building a new furnace more suited to blacksmithing (pictures to come shortly), I crafted my first real piece of steelwork – a short sword. Made from the same stock as the chisel, it turned out much nicer than I anticipated, and, while not designed for cutting, has a [...]
Insight Studio
I made this a while ago, but never finished it – I wasn’t sure exactly where to go next, and, I guess, sort of lost interest. It’s got a bit of function, however, and thus I’m releasing it to the world! Insight Studio was designed as a tool to assist in reverse engineering filetypes, such [...]
HWND Hunter
When using Windows API functions such as SendMessage, it is often necessary to locate the HWND of an arbitrary control on an arbitrary window at runtime. HWND Hunter, designed to speed up this process, is a program that generates code to programmatically determine HWNDs using a Spy++ style window finding method. The following function, FindHWND_AIM(), [...]
Silicon Foundry
Silicon Foundry is my latest game in the games for engineers series. You play as the new owner of an integrated circuit factory who must produce chips to meet orders from your customers, and use the profit to pay back the loan for the factory. It’s surprisingly complicated, so I’ve forgone written documentation and made [...]
Pulse
Pulse, previously titled Ruckingenur: Puzzle, is the second game in my games for engineers series. In it, you must arrange devices on a grid to redirect and filter pulses in order to achieve different objectives, depending on the mission. It’s sort of like the incredible machine, in that you have to assemble pre-created parts to [...]