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I spent a significant amount of time last year gearing up to make PCBs at home. The motivation was because for small prototypes the costs do not justify having the boards made at a PCB fabrication company. Also, the lead times suck, but more it's to do with living in the arse end of the world. Shipping is expensive. Local PCB manufacturers also don't help with their attitude towards homebrew. So over the next however many months I will be documenting my process, how I do it and how I get professional results without having to dump my life savings on tools and machinery. As with all things in life, it's not really what you know, its more about being willing to experiment and using a bit of good old social engineering to find out where to get things like solder mask. So the question is, is it possible to even make professional printed circuit boards at home? Well of course. Read more here 
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After a long time, approximately a year in all, I have decided how I want to proceed with this site and what I do outside of the day job. Unsurprisingly, the current state of the internet, and the world in general has been a major drag on my mood. Even Eminem said something about the times we live in right now: But fuck it though, somebody needs to come and hit the reset button Back to 2003 'cause how did we get stuck in This woke BS? I'm tryna make it regress, fuck 'em I think the album and track that line it's from says more than I can and better too. No need for me to go into that. So let's discuss the changes: YouTube YouTube just isn't what it used to be. The effort put in does not translate to any kind of benefit to me so I will treat it for what it is, a place to host videos to make them easy to share. So I want to go back to a simpler format, and just drop the animations and fancy title cards. Yearbooks I am not going to publish a whole yearbook full of Sonic stuff again. Nobody has read that yearbook despite me making efforts and spending money to promote it everywhere I could. I might, however do something different, a book of projects like this:  Yes I think I will keep it focused on projects and nothing else. Let's make up for that missed opportunity with Tails.
Online Social Presence I am looking into using Mastodon, primarily because I confirmed that well known people (local developers known to me) are active there, and the platform is promoted as being exactly what social media was supposed to be, but isn't. I will try it and see where the rabbit hole goes down. What I also going to do differently is publish blog posts with links to articles on the Tails' Workshop page (and/or include a YouTube video if appropriate). Yes I think that can work. So recently .meme domains became available. So I decided to look and see what my options were.
The catch with this new domain type was that I had to pre-register the domain which cost as much as the actual domain cost. GoDaddy didn't explain that well at all. So when the all-clear happens with the pre-registration you have to pay again to get the actual domain. Daylight robbery if you ask me. Also just plain sonic.meme was eye-wateringly expensive, at two weeks' pay. Now I am a huge Sonic fan but I couldn't justify spending that kind of money, especially not since I had my bonus cut at work (more on that later). Anyway I managed to register sonicthehedgehog.meme and it points to a new subsection of this site which you can access directly from the menu at the top of the page, called MEMES. It took a bit of doing to get the domain, because GoDaddy would not register the domain until our good friends at SEGA-SAMMY approved it. In the end they did give their blessing. Yoroshiku Onegaishimasu Sonic Team to SEGA Kabushiki-gaisha! About three months ago, I completed my first animation for my YouTube channel. While there's always room for improvement, it's an impressive first try. I always felt that Tails' technical abilities was an opportunity missed by SEGA, so a couple of years ago already I decided to try and change that. I don't know of any other video game character or animated character that has the true engineering spirit like Tails does.
Of course this kind of media only really finds appeal with makers and engineers, it is what it is. Recently, I had a very close look at TailsTube. If you are not familiar with it, here's one of the short episodes on YouTube: Now, upon close inspection, it seems to me that this was a LOW BUDGET production. Lots of mistakes exist, the most obvious ones are the fact that all the characters have a touch of strabismus (for those who don't know that's lazy eye syndrome). Further analysis shows that it was done in vector format, and most likely with Adobe Animate. This got me thinking- surely I can do the same, and maybe a little better? Well sure enough, its viable. It is a LOT of work but in the end it will be a very fitting format to my YouTube channel videos. So I have done an animation test, and sure enough, it's incredibly do-able. The initial learning curve is there, I've been through frame-by-frame animation but this is done differently. I am currently pumping out assets. I finished all the assets on 26 March. I am doing import operations of several hundred files into the animation software which will inevitably take a bit more than a week as I figure out the optimal way of doing things. Here is my test animation: In line with the yearbook I have taken the decision to create a separate category for the technical stuff I write about.
This category is appropriately called "Tails' Workshop". Accordingly all the hardware/software tinkering goes in there, and it allows those who have no interest in it, to skip over it. I pre-ordered the game and got to install it on the day. Unfortunately I had to upgrade my system to Windows 10 before the game would run so I used the opportunity to reinstall everything properly. All that, only to discover my GPU sucks. Nonetheless I got it running okay-ish and me and Tails2k20 got our first play:  Today is probably as significant as September 9th 1999.
Bet Iizuka-san hasn't had any sleep, but I think he needn't be worried. Ganbatte, ne, Iizuka-san! At least its coming out now, and bonus, its being released in my country too. Yay! 15 December...  So yesterday SEGA put out a Sonic Frontiers prequel... In June, I said the game would be great. Yes people, in June 2022, when every Sonic fan out there was flipping their nut about the Frontiers reveal and saying the game was going to be crap!
Now its November 2022 and people are repeating what I said in June 2022: "This game gives me Sonic Adventure vibes" Oh the irony... |
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