-
Another of our large collection of dice towers, this one being the Sorcerer theme. Painted by my wife, who is a much more artistically oriented crafter, rather than a miniature painter. The stone and rock was painted with a layer of light grey on a grey background, various colors for the building, and a bronze cover for the ceiling tiles. Of the various designs, this particular one had a bit of a Harry Potter look, which I suspect inspired some of the choices for this painting. As before, this is from a Kickstarter for Fates End.
-
Second of our numerous dice towers, this time painted by my son. This is the GM tower, though not exactly sure of the design aspects. The tower itself is rather large, especially with the dragon’s wings. Coloration was done entirely by my son’s choice, which turned out well, though he was frustrated a bit by some of the details of the painting process and the various nooks and crannies of the model itself. The stone was a layer of black with a heavy grey drybrush, the dragon was a red with a orange highlight, and the ceiling tiles used a…
-
You may have noticed in my prior posting a few decorative pillows on the chairs for the gaming space. These colorful and creative objects are the end product of a project the wife started many years ago, way back in the days of Everquest. For those for which this is unknown, Everquest was one of the first big online RPG games – well before World of Warcraft – and a game which occupied many years of entertainment for us. I believe it may still be running, though we haven’t played in many many years. At the time, whenever there was…
-
In preparation for a game George is hoping to host this weekend, we moved forward with setting up the gaming space and table to take advantage of the first wave of ideas. In particular, we wanted to use the massive table, along with a flat screen to display Fantasy Grounds and the virtual tabletop. This set up is a draft – I want to see how well the ideas work before I commit to my next projects of a larger game surface with the embedded screen. The other challenge is that with the ongoing pandemic, several of the players will…
-
One of my longer term projects has been the printing and painting of a large number of themed dice towers, as a product of a Kickstarter from Fate’s End. Although I have printed a great many towers, we only just started the painting process. With the assistance of the wife and my older son, we managed to knock out 4 of the structures. The first is one I painted, the Bard Tower. Overall a fairly basic structure, not much in the way of paint colors, though I am not completely satisfied with the result. In truth I short-cutted the paint…
-
Digging into the code today, to document how I have our door sensors configured, in case this example is useful for anyone else. In our case, we have a set of door sensors (we use YoLink brand, but any Alexa-compatible will work) attached to various doors, including the front. These are configured thru their respective applications to connect to Alexa, and register their state. Where the magic happens is the integration into Home Assistant, though it is actually more of a Home Assistant entry integrating into Alexa. In plain language – this automation will trigger an Alexa announcement after a…
-
With our new home, I have been diving further and further into home automation, and learning the coding of Home Assistant along the way. Unfortunately, it has a bit of a learning curve, so its not for the casual user, but after a bit of effort (and a lot of youtube videos) I have started to make some sense of it. I have found that not everything is directly compatible – however, I am utilizing a combination of Amazon Alexa, Home Assistant, and a small piece of Z-Wave, which covers all of our devices and current needs. Smart home technology…
-
Planning on our first true session this coming Friday for our new Warhammer FRP game, and strongly leaning towards a live, in-person game again. It has been many months since we played any game face to face, and although the ongoing pandemic is still a big concern in the United States, it feels like time to get back to “normal”. For this group, it is significantly smaller than our other sessions, so could be more manageable. Of course, this will be dependent on a lot of factors – not the least of which will be player willingness, and my wife’s…
Halfling13 Hobbies
Something about nothing – a collection of miscellaneous hobbies
14,228 visitors