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Nov
26
2021

September Homeschool Miscellany

September was States month and it felt unusually close to Regionals because it was (we had the slightly awkward situation of that we needed to put people forward for states before we had the results from regionals to make sure they'd actually qualified, and to add chaos to the confusion, because it had been another unprecedented year, people were allowed to apply for states if they hadn't done regionals (there were a number of people that missed out due to being sick or having to quarantine).

I forgot to mention, over badge test and regionals, 16yo learned how to make chips in a commercial deep fryer from one of the people he would accept chips from and helped out on regionals and states weekends.  He makes a great bucket of chips.  Below is one he handed me during a break.  We hung out at the door I guard before he headed back to the canteen to get ready for the between-round rush.

Nov
23
2021

November ProgBlog #4: railroading

I'm apparently that good at not being too obvious about railroading (unless I make it obvious like when I want to end a session, like I did on the weekend and had my players playfully accusing me of railroading when after a while I was like "YOU'RE GOING BACK TO THE FREEHOLD.") that I can't even railroad myself when I need to.

Weekend was busy again with gym events so once more not a lot got done.  I worked a bit more on the dice system, and some notes, yesterday I got started on Gundry.

sculpting Gundry

Nov
19
2021

TTRPG writeups: WoD Modern 2 - Mercenaries #1

Mild content warning: occasional swearing and mild adult themes

We had a slight derailment right at the outset as S was unable to make the session.  I only do character driven stories so players not being able to make sessions can make things fall apart, so normally we would just skip (I had previously tried to encourage the kids to make Redcaps that we could use in a casual drop-in/out filler game as a Redcap gang lends itself well to that, plus they could get any murderhobo/random dickishness/silly out, but the older boys had decided "Changeling is cringe").  However in this case seeing as it was early on, I managed to restructure stuff in my head (and later on in my notes) enough to postpone S to the next session.

Nov
16
2021

November ProgBlog #3: out of whack

I have done literally nothing on either project since the last progblog.

This time I got distracted choreographing a "fight" scene for the big boys.  And because I'm a bit extra it's easier to visualise, I 3d'd it.

choreo visualisation

Nov
15
2021

TTRPG writeups: WoD Modern 2 - Mercenaries #0

System: World of Darkness (edition uncertain as the sourcebooks are all over the joint and also I fudge and homebrew a lot)

Nov
09
2021

November ProgBlog #2: distractions

There are many and some of them are just things I've decided to add on because I'm not very smart like that.

After WoDMod1 finished I started hacking on a dice system I'd written for AER two decades ago x_x when I was roleplaying a lot more.  It mostly worked out fine when I was playtesting it with the friends I roleplayed with frequently back then because it was a fork of World of Darkness with a lot of my fudges and homebrew built in (it's actually more or less the system I run now when we're playing World of Darkness, just closer to the original than my fork so the children reading the sourcebooks know what's going on). 

Nov
04
2021

November ProgBlog #1: legitimate reasons

I actually had them for the delay for once, and that was going out for birthday churros (not mine, but someone's). 

After that I was trying to render out some super quick and dirty walk cycles (which are literally just hands and feet approximating walking motions, no refinements or personality injected whatsoever, which partially accounts for the jerkiness and the other part is only vaguely remembering how to do looping gifs and animated gifs in general and couldn't get the timing right when making the gif, I haven't done one for game engines yet and I don't use them at all for animations) and my computer crashed three times while rendering the first one (I'm a bit extra so I did three different views because of course I did).

Oct
28
2021

October ProgBlog #4: "I just wanted a nice render..."

Late progblog is late again but that's nothing new.  This time was an interesting combination of I had to go in to work early and completely forgot to start (I'll usually make a start on writing in the morning, pick at it throughout the day and then finish up at night when I get back from work and do super basic if any edits) and then because I'm really close, figured I'll just get a render done to use as a cover image because I've been doing my usual doing a lot but nothing to show for it thing.

Do you think I could get a nice render? Physics did not want to play nicely.

I have no idea what I'm doing

Oct
20
2021

October ProgBlog #3: geared up

UASG

Spent today trying to catch up with the last couple of weekend's worth of work and I have now almost completed the three main items that Yue carries around with her (partly because they're things that she uses very regularly and mostly because they're kind of a security blanket).

First is the airfoil, which is a sword when folded up:

Yue's airfoil folded into a sword

Oct
18
2021

August Homeschool Miscellany

I did not forget July, apparently we didn't do anything at all.

Or at least we didn't do anything that I took photos of.  The boys had random conversations with me and 16yo with his friends at gym about astrophysics, philosophy, life, the universe and everything and I really wish they would write this stuff down so I had proof.  14yo has been out and about with her boyfriend including going to AQWA.  I'm trying really hard to pressure them harder into writing down stuff and basically doing their own reports especially as they're doing so much stuff on their own now but still having zero luck with that.

12yo had homeschool group where he's made a couple of friends and is doing science and drama classes, and I won't usually use any photos I take there (which is not many at all) as it's hard not to get someone else in the shot.