2022: Year in Review

Despite best intentions, I effectively stopped updating this site for the entirety of 2022. I've got a pile of projects and personal updates to share; let's take a look month by month.

January: Mostly goal setting, one of the big ones for this year was to cycle at least 1,000 miles before the year was up, which I actually managed to polish off in October! A marked improvement from the previous year, but still leaves plenty of room for improvement in 2023.

Getting started on my cycling goal
Getting started on my cycling goal

February: I spent some time re-playing Morrowind, my favorite of the Elder Scrolls games, but this time with the Morrowind Overall Improvement Suite Enhanced (MOISE) through Wabbajack. It was my first time using Wabbajack and I was surprised at how easy it made deploying the wild number of mods in the package. Have to say, it still holds up all these years later. This month I also polished off Pokemon Brilliant Diamond, which I didn't find as compelling as Platinum, but fun enough, and Kentucky Route Zero, which my friends had been pushing to the top of my queue for months. KRZ was amazing, and quite unique.

March: A significant amount of time in March went into organizing my unwieldy Magic collection. I threw together two shelves sized to wedge perfectly into my office closet, sorted everything, and printed labels for long boxes. Now that I'm writing this, I'm actually thinking to have another go with an eye toward spring cleaning, since I've absolutely accumulated more copies / variants of cards than I'm ever realistically going to use. I sped through Pokemon Legends: Arceus in March, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It was the first really fresh take on the formula in ages, and I absolutely devoured it.

April: A big month work-wise, so not a ton happened home-side. This was the month were the rough sketch for our library finally became a CAD model. It was also when I first began really digging into Elden Ring, a game which eventually became my big obsession for the year.

The pile of fancy plywood that inhabited the living room for most of the year
The pile of fancy plywood that inhabited the living room for most of the year

May: A busy month! A playlist was sent out for my long-running disk exchange, I found a much safer bike route to work that I began using regularly, and we finally began cutting wood for the library. There were a few false starts and errors to sort out (always be clear if you’re measuring shelves center-to-center or inner-face to inner-face, material sold as 3/4” thick can be off by 1/16” and no one will tell you, etc), but real progress was made. Our group of magic-playing friends finally met up again, and I built new EDH decks for Ouliana and myself for the occasion (Jolene treasures and Kotori vehicles) which worked well. In less fun news, the water heater that came with the house finally gave out, after a bit of research we replaced it was a heat-exchanger based electric heater, which has performed beautifully and keeps the garage cool and dry as a bonus.

The new water heater arrives!
The new water heater arrives!
Prototype shelf gets glued up
Prototype shelf gets glued up

June: Rather than risk the expensive walnut plywood, we built the same design in bargain priced maple plywood; this first prototype bookshelf was glued up and put in my office! The other notable project in June was finally putting up mirrors in the garage gym, which required us to learn how to cut thicker glass. The methods for handling stained glass still work in principal, but we had to upgrade to some beefier “grozing” pliers to get consistent breaks.

First shelf finished!
First shelf finished!

Fancy mirrors cut and installed
Fancy mirrors cut and installed

July: I made a trip out to Arizona to see family, which was a fun time. We hosted one of Ouliana’s friends for bit, and began lacquering the bookshelves. The details of HVLP spraying were a little intimidating at first, but once we’d getting the mix ratio correct (and remembered to clean the spray gun!) it was an absurdly easy way to apply multiple coats of lacquer to large projects. This was the month were most of the library got built.

After a few design tweaks, the first walnut shelf is complete
After a few design tweaks, the first walnut shelf is complete
LIbrary Layout in CAD

August: A month of travel! I joined Ouliana on a road trip that took us to Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, and attended Siggraph for the first time, which was an absolute blast. It'd been years since I'd gotten to travel with my sister, which was a real treat. We even managed to hop over to Victoria for a day via seaplane, which was fun!

While it's basically a fancy ferry, the novelty can't be denied
While it's basically a fancy ferry, the novelty can't be denied

September: Another busy month at work, not a ton of projects got attention. I did start experimenting a bit with fasting, with some success with 8-36 hour long fasts. Success meaning I felt good, wasn’t hungry the entire time, and could easily focus on tasks. Going forward I’ll likely only fast for 8 hours or so a day, since the pattern of biking in, working, and biking home before breaking my fast felt quite good, and still gave me the energy and protein intake to support lifting. This was also the month I started a rune level 1 run of Elden Ring, and started recording videos of the notable fights. This run would continue through the end of the year, and still has two fights left to close out. This was both an excuse to practice my video editing skills, engage more deeply with a game I really enjoyed, but also to take part in the /r/OneBros subreddit of challenge runners, which has generally proved to be a bit more friendly and open than the /r/EldenRing community.

First three shelves down, randomly populated with books
First three shelves down, randomly populated with books

October: Another year, another Spooky Movie Month! This year we fell off the wagon a bit, and only a handful of the selections actually got watched, but it remains a fun tradition I’ll no doubt return to. In October we also made a trip out to Las Vegas for Magic’s 30th anniversary event! After playing the game on and off since 1995, I finally obtained a piece of power, a NM Unlimited Mox Jet. Not a major life event for most, but still a big day for me. I also picked up the last few cards for another deck (Nebuchadnezzar old cards) While in Vegas we also visited OmegaMart, which was amazing, and caught Tom Segura live, which was a treat. We got back just before Halloween hit, and went big on our halloween decorations, including the now-infamous 12 foot skeleton.

I got to meet Mark Rosewater at Magic 30th!
I got to meet Mark Rosewater at Magic 30th!
My first piece of power!
My first piece of power!
Our 2022 Halloween display
Our 2022 Halloween display

November: Given holiday travel, this was the month a lot of the end-of-year work had to be done, plus all the planning for the trip in December. The one project I did find time for this month was attempting to improve the fog machine we used at Halloween. The fog everyone wants is a spooky layer, hovering about ankle-high, obscuring the ground. Unfortunately, the fog most machines produce is hot and light, and mostly floats away in large clouds. We did grab something advertising itself as a low-lying fog machine that passes the hot fog through a chamber you load with ice, but it was hardly any better. Searching around surfaced this video demonstrating an ice-less solution. The guy postulates that it’s not the temperature of the fog that dominates it’s behavior, but it’s water content, which tracks since loading with water will change the density a lot more than a few degrees of temperature change. I went ahead and hunted down the parts, between Amazon for the transducers, and Lowes for the containers and couplers, and built a significantly improved fog generator! The other notable event was the acquisition of a wood lathe through The Crucible's annual garage sale! We haven't turned anything yet, but absolutely will soon.

New lathe!
New lathe!

December: With travel fast approaching, I had to batch out a lot of Christmas gifts in just a few days, so I defaulted to the things I know people will enjoy: jerky, cookies, and books. Unfortunately the dehydrator I’ve been using for close to a decade now finally gave up the magic smoke, and had to be replaced. The BeefBot 9000 (not it’s actual name, but rather a bestowed title) proved itself by working through 6 lbs of marinated meat in just two long sessions. After a frantic weekend of baking, dehydrating, and packing boxes, I got all the Christmas treats sent off before my flight. In January I should have an update to share, at present I’m in France, making use of my very-limited French and taking in the sights.

Magic: Learning to make foil peel alters and an alternative method

Update 2: I've started adding the newer attempts to the gallery linked on the top bar. If there are any major process changes I'll likely make another post about it.

Update: It seems allowing the cards to soak for long times (that is, overnight) has mixed results. One of the two I tried came out perfectly, the other had some minor cracking though I'm not sure when it developed. Moving forward I'll probably keep it to 2 hours and make sure to use cold water when removing the residual paper. Hopefully I can update with more results this weekend!

I'd spotted some really excellent work posted up on reddit by users djpattiecake and bigupalters and became interested in giving foil alters a go. In short, the idea is to carefully peel away the foil layer from one card, trim it down, and glue it onto another card for visual effect.

My first attempt at this turned out to be rather ambitious, transferring a gnawing zombie I'd happened to have onto the text box of a swamp. I started primarily following the guide put up by bigupalters on facebook, here. Using a hobby knife I picked at the edges until I was able to get at a layer with mostly foil and very little paper. I thought it wasn't an issue, but it turns out having the fibrous layer beneath makes cutting small accurate segments very difficult and results in ragged white edges. A second gripe, once peeled the foil has the tendency to want to coil up like a scroll. I did try to flatten the foil out by pressing it under a stack of hefty books, but that didn't work.

A M14 Gnawing Zombie composited onto an 8th edition swamp.
A M14 Gnawing Zombie composited onto an 8th edition swamp.

For my second attempt I decided that getting a paper-free foil was absolutely key. I followed the advice given here. Namely, I got some acetone and rubbed the corner until it managed to dissolve the adhesive between the paper and foil layers, giving me a good clean peel. However, this still had the issue of yielding a very tightly curled foil layer.

At this point I decided to science at it a little bit: what causes the curling? Internal stress from the peeling process. The 'curl' clearly aligns with the direction of the peeling, likely due to alignment of the polymer in the film. We can, in principal, remove internal stress by heating the material up with it in the desired orientation, essentially ironing. I used two advertisement cards (generally regarded as worthless) to sandwich the foil flat, and kept a scrap of parchment paper on top. This stack was ironed for 10 seconds, cooled for 10 seconds, ironed for 10 seconds, then cooled for 10 seconds. This did indeed flatten it out, however the glue remelted and stuck it to one of the cards. After carefully pulling it off of that card it was much less curled, but it did begin to wrinkle and crack in several regions. Testing with a foil scrap showed that a single 10 second cycle produced substantially less wrinkling and cracking.

Joint Assault composited onto a Shards of Alara Forest. Note the cracking.
Joint Assault composited onto a Shards of Alara Forest. Note the cracking.

The peeling process itself was the cause of the problems. It got me thinking, "If only we could lift it straight off of the paper-adhesive stack without tensioning the film, we'd be golden", and it turns out we can. Given that the peeling method is destructive anyways, it opens the door to a lot of other methods I would normally shy away from. Short story: intentional water damage. When soaking the to-be-peeled card for long periods in water the adhesive eventually dissolves, the paper backing soaks up water and breaks away as it expands. The foil layer is a polymer, a water-proof plastic with water-proof ink on it, so it survives unscathed.

Below is an example, I wanted to composite the art from the 2012 Lifelink onto a 10th edition plains.

 

Two cards to composite
Two cards to composite

I used a small tupperware with room temperature tap water.  Linked are images taken immediately, at 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes. Below the card after 1.5 hours is shown. I'll be honest, I did get a bit impatient and started tugging at the corners after 45 minutes, hoping for a clean separation. This may have influenced the resulting curling, and I'm planning to let one soak over night to see if my impatience was a factor.

The card submerged in water.
The card submerged in water.

 

The card after 1.5 horus
The card after 1.5 horus

The foil layer was easily separated from the backing, with any residual paper removed by rubbing it under running water. Once the entire foil layer was smooth it was dried by pressing it between paper towels a few times, then being left to air dry. Some curling is still apparent, and this may just be a property of the foil as curling of foiled cards is an established problem. It is, however, much less curled than the peeled foil. From here we can simply cut it to size and glue it to the host card.

The foil layer removed from the cardboard backing.
The foil layer removed from the cardboard backing after drying.

From here on I cut out the art from the foil. In order to get the art the right size for the text box on the plains, I went ahead and made a template using a newspaper, artist's tape, and two advert cards, yielding three well-defined edges.

The foil layer cut apart, isolating the art
The foil layer cut apart, isolating the art
The template allowing me to cut a rectangle with the correct angle and height.
The template allowing me to cut a rectangle with the correct angle and height.

After the art was cut out, all that was left to do was to gingerly glue it in place and trim any stray edges.

Gluing the art in place
Gluing the art in place

The round handle of the hobby knife was used to roll over the glued region to ensure it lay flat. The final product actually looks pretty nice!

The final product!
The final product!

As with everything in life, there are many right ways to do it, but I'm happy to say I've found a method that works for me.