Stories of family, creativity, and diverse distractions.

Author: Walt Page 5 of 12

Save VS Boredom! Keeping Documents Interesting in an RPG

Sometimes in the course of a roleplaying game (RPG) the characters come across documents. These are often very important to the overall plot of the game. But documents are boring. Players don’t want to sit around and sift through pages of text to find important clues. They want to roll some dice and move on to the next scene.

You probably don’t want to write pages of text either. What’s a poor GM to do?

My Favorite Tools: Gunsmith Screwdrivers

Have you ever had trouble with an ordinary slotted screwdriver, and the screws it purports to drive? Did it slip, and mar the object you were working on? Perhaps it left the slot scarred up, promising an even more difficult job the next time you have to take out that screw. I have had those troubles too. And the reason is simple: ordinary screwdrivers aren’t made to fit screws! That’s where gunsmith screwdrivers come in.

Shop Tip: Mark the Top Side of the Case

When I got a new cordless drill, I splurged and bought an accessory kit for it. The kit had a set of drills, a couple sets of screwdriver bits, a quick change countersink/driver gizmo, and some other stuff. It was pretty nice, except for one thing that made it really annoying: the case.

A Cool Old Tool – The Unbrako Socket Screw Calculator

A good friend found an old toolbox on a property he purchased. He gifted me some of the contents, and one of the items was this neat old “Unbrako Socket Screw Calculator”. If you have really sharp eyes, you might have seen it sitting in the lid of my toolbox in this post. It’s a very simple device that provides a machinist with all the measurements they’d need regarding socket screws. Let’s take a closer look.

Another of My Favorite Tools: Layout Fluid

We’ve all heard “measure twice, cut once”, right? But if you don’t mark the measurement, you might as well not bother measuring at all.

To mark wood, you could use chalk, or a pencil. But those don’t work very well on metal. You need something more precise. You need a scriber, and layout fluid.

Belated Congratulations to Dave Wulatin!

McSweeney’s has now published two articles by Dave. That’s pretty exciting!

It’s Time For The Sweet Corn Festival!

This weekend is the West Point Sweet Corn Festival! Sadly, I won’t be able to get back for it, but the Sweet Corn Festival holds a lot of fond memories, not just for my family but for just about everyone in the area.

What Is Your Favorite Outdoor Place, and Why?

As some of you may know, I work at the local REI store, selling camping equipment. When you hire on at REI, they ask you to name your favorite outdoor place, and they have it engraved on your name tag, below your name. The other people in my hire group were naming off all the big-name, big-deal destinations. You had Yellowstone, The Grand Canyon, The Smokies, and so on.

When it came my turn, I didn’t have a good answer. I’d never been to the places the other folks mentioned, though I wanted to see them all.

Double Your Pleasure, Double your… um… steam?

As a maker, I see faults in the things I made that nobody else will ever notice. Awhile back I posted about a steam engine I built. I learned a lot, and I was really pleased that it ran well. But as always, I saw the faults, and I wanted to make another, better attempt.

A Difference of Nine Days

Springtime utterly transforms the forest. The colors shift from browns to greens, and the silence is shattered by the sounds of birds, insects, and frogs. The air is redolent with the scents of a hundred species of flower. It’s an amazing change, and it happens quite rapidly.

This spring I was fortunate enough to do two backpacking trips, nine days apart. I had taken some pictures on the first trip, and I though it would be fun to take a new set of the same shots on the second trip, just to compare.

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