Don’t feel bad. I played Pillars of Eternity I & II and Tyranny … again … more times than I should probably admit.
Seriously, I think there were 5 or 6 play-throughs of Tyranny to cover as many of the plot lines as possible.
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Terrific work on the guitar amps.
Pandemic-wise, after waiting for the US gov’t to sort out my economic impact payments, I dropped a bit of cash on an Ibanez archtop hollow-body guitar and have been trying to learn to read standard notation on it while playing jazz unplugged.
The thing that gave me the most trouble is Mark Knopfler’s fingerstyle riff to “Money For Nothing.”
Other than that, nothing. I was working the whole time on-site and spent the rest of the time “investing” in Irish and Scotch whiskies. And learning some Finnish.
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I 've been taking a break from 3D scanning and printing (and printing my original models made years ago) like this one:
…and I’ve been focusing more on making music lately, particularly covers of famous synthy horror/exploitation and other 70s/80s movie scores. All of my other music output is original stuff, but covers are fun and teach you new approaches and techniques. You can certainly get a better appreciation for a song’s complexity and nuances when you have to recreate all or most of it.
The twist is I have to make them on the Roland JD-Xi (no computer) with occasional help from another small synth if I run out of layers/voices (only had to do that once so far for the Tangerine Dream track). No samples/loops from the original score are allowed, so I have to get as close as I can in a short period of time using internal samples and tweaking the synth engine. A fun challenge so far. 
See the playlist of WIP tracks here, more to come:
If you want to see video versions of these tracks (making of) and more they are all on my YouTube channel. Here is the most elaborate live video of all the soundtrack covers (and it needed the second instrument):
Good times…
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I started a couple of video projects, a creature feature/riffing show and a puppet/cartoon show. They’re both heavily chroma-keyed, which is a heck of a learning curve in your kitchen.
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I was just putting down a deposit on a new condo- my first place all to myself with no husband, roommate, or family- when Covid hit. It was a challenge completing the buying process in the first month of lockdown, but I had to go through with it at that point. It was surprisingly easy to get contractors for painting and small repairs, because they were happy to work on an empty place. I love purple, and since it’s mine and mine alone, I went nuts with it!
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Nice, now you just need an Emily-style purple jumpsuit and you’ll match the condo.
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This house is AMAZING!
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I’m working on a baby. First time I’ve made one so there’s a lot to learn.
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The assembly instructions are pretty straightforward. Once you actually get your hands on the finished baby and start trying to figure out the operating manual though…that’s been the tricky bit for us.
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It’s a tricky journey. Whatever you do, keep the receipt.
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Be sure to keep any leftover parts. The instructions are often unclear, and you’ll need them down the road.
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Crow (and his puppet pals) were my 2020 projects since I actually had the time to build him finally! (The two dragons next to GPC2 were actually commissions)
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The house numbers on our mailbox looked awful so we took them down and my wife started painting the numbers on a sign we hung on the wall. She repainted the sign as the seasons changed, which was cool.
…but it wasn’t super visible at night, so we made a new sign with shiny metal numbers and hung it where it’s more visible.
Now my wife can paint whatever she wants on the old sign, and it’s pretty good.
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I did lots of little projects during lock down last year, mostly to do with lighting fixtures. Replaced the rusting out front and back porch fixtures. Then found the ceiling fan in my bedroom was sagging, took it apart and found that who ever installed it has only screwed it into the 80 year old plaster lath boards, WTF? No wonder it was falling down and taking the ceiling with it… And there was a beam right there, all that was needed to secure it correctly were longer screws. This made me check on 2 other fixtures and they were installed just as poorly, only good install was the ceiling fan in the kitchen.
I also decided to try and learn piano again, spent way too much on a digital piano, build a nice solid wood stand for it that is way better than the overpriced particle board stand they sell for it. Was good for about 3 months using various apps every day and then less and less, but I’m farther along than all my previous attempts, hopefully this winter I’ll get back into more regularly.
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I bought and learned how to play my uke (which I named Bob Ueckerlele). I’ve also been learning Spanish from scratch for 490 straight days. I can now tell you highly important things, like my high heels are uncomfortable but they were on sale (mis tacones son incómodos, pero estaban en oferta).
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Your moose inspired me to remember this fanvid (despite it being a camel puppet):
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That’s cool
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