You mean you broke Your hard disk and You lost a book or what about HDD?
Maybe You could email me it so i could read it ? That would be neat

Yeah, the HDD got broken up, couldn't save it. It was in that notebook on which I've spent 5 years playing Tremulous.

So its all is just gone ? Boy thats a shame :/

So its all is just gone ? Boy thats a shame :/

It wasn't really finished, anyway I started my own novel "The Ranger", it's some sort of post-apocalyptic, but the story begins when the apocalypse does, so it has its great feeling. So far just in Slovak, and I don't feel really like some kind of artist writer. Some kind of romance story is going to be there too. I wonder if I can connect it to the Metro univerzum, so the main protagonist would decide to go to Moscow Metro first, before the nuclear holocaust. With his love ofc..

Write it in English man :d .

Write it in English man :d .

My english is not as advanced as my native language hehe.

Ye i guess :/ . I just would love to read your novel

So where are we at?

 - Do we have funding?

 - Do we have any dev seats?

 - Do we have any models or textures underway?

We haven't had any substantial news for months...  We need the truth.

Dont worry, everything is true. Murnatan will be done as we said. News slowly comming out. Hairy aliens are little bit complicated and we meet some unexpectable behavior with static VS skeletal meshes, but we will deal with everything

Have some adorable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6GKOz1Rx4s

snakes are awesome :d

I've been getting ready to start a very large metalworking+electronics project lately, so I got some TIG welding practice in today after not having touched a welding stinger for about 6 months.

This is my resulting work on the left, compared to the rest of the class on the right:






And an unrelated project in Jewelry class... (long story short, I can't have two open hours, so I had to fill 6th period with an art credit, and another metalworking class seemed a lot better than listening to stuffy lectures about so-and-so artist or this-and-that sculptor).

Not bad weld indeed . I love welding and i love TIG because its so freaking easy comparing to classic SMAW arc welding.

During summer when i have some free time i usually go to the vacations in the forest in scout camp where i help them as technical support in exchange for free stay. There is always shitload of stuff to weld and they know i am good at this so very often i end up welding whole day xD . And i got to tell you i love it.
Last year they got TIG machine and i was just in love with this!

But tell me more about your large project

its so freaking easy comparing to classic SMAW arc welding.

Except when you're welding aluminum (above), which is literally impossible without a foot control.  I imagine it's probably a fair bit easier with the more modern solid-state machines too, but all I've ever used is the school's old 8-ton Miller Dialarc saturable reactor:


As far as SMAW goes, that's just personal preference I guess.  I find that stick welding is exceptionally easier for me than MIG or TIG, but that might just be because I've had access to 225-amp welders and brand new rods.  It's a lot easier welding when you have as much power as you need, unlike with the cheap Craftsman or Harbor Freight 90-amp piles of absolute junk.  You *CANNOT* lay a good bead with most rods with less than 125 amps @ ~30V.

I don't have time to continue this post right now, but I will explain the project when I get back later today.

That is interesting. As far as i can recall amps wasn't the problem since sometimes when i couldn't find angle grinder i were using welder to cut thru some plates which is legitimate technique but you need to have much amps for that.
But it could have been old rods. After all i cannot say that SMAW was unpleasant but for me MIG is very easy. You don't even have to care what you are doing , just weld your way thru the world  

Yeah old rods are usually absolutely terrible to weld with, because they tend to stick and freeze no matter how hot you get them...

And yes, MIG is about as easy as it gets.  It's literally a point-and-click interface.  If you can play Tremulous with any decency, you can run a MIG.   

This is some of the SMAW I worked on earlier today:



It's not as pretty as a comparable TIG weld, but that's just the nature of stick welding:



You will know when you're stick welding correctly when you're laying a nice straight bead, and the arc itself is nice and tight - giving off a sweet hissing and crackling sound like it's literally burning.

Welding is just such fun, lol.   



As for the project I'm working on, I'm going to be building a 24kW solid-state switch-mode power supply for experimental use... although I have absolutely no justification for making something capable of handling 24,000 watts (48,000 surge for 10 seconds  ) other than the fact that I love the brute force side of electric power, it's something I've wanted to do for a long time. 

The design will be capable of outputting continuously variable voltage from 0-240VAC, or 0-350VDC at anywhere from 0 to 100 amps continuously... 200 momentarily for about 10 seconds.  It will have a manual (unregulated) control input for setting precise AC voltage, and an automatic (regulated) control input that *should* be able to regulate DC volts, as well as AC and DC amps.  The unit will have absolutely no transformers or computers inside of it, except for the main cooling blower, and a few of the self-contained SMPS units powering the controls.

This is about what it will look like when it's finished... there have been some minor changes since that sketch was made, but the aesthetics are almost the same.  All measurements are in feet and inches because 'Muricah.



It will use 10 of these mean little Fuji IGBT transistor modules to switch line voltage AC... each one of them has 6 individual transistors inside (wired in 3x2 parallel-series) that are rated for 100 amps at 600 volts each (adding up to a total of 300 amps at 1,200 volts across the positive and negative bus terminals).  I managed to find a bunch of them on E-bay for $13 each.   



Because these just happen to be three-phase transistor modules, I should be able to convert the unit to operate on three-phase power instead of standard North-American split-phase if I ever so desire.


And yes, this is going to cost me a lot in parts and aluminum... but this is a project that I have been looking forward to and saving for for some time now.




Since we're speaking of welding, this unit could probably pull off a few beads just for show if I found a suitable current-limiting device now that I think about it.  XD