Busy Busy Busy

Wow. Its been a busy couple of weeks, and with everything else thats been going on, I guess Ive needed a bit of a break from Gmax, but a few things have been happening on the sidelines that you might find interesting.

Its not that I actually took a break, its more that so much else has been happening that I just didnt have the brain capacity left to deal with complex shapes in three dimensional space. Things seem to have calmed down a little now and hopefully I will get back into modelling soon.

First a bit of self-promotion: You may have noticed the "Atom" button towards the lower right of the page. If you have an Atom reader or use a web site which lets you add Atom feeds to your personal page, you can get headlines from this blog, and can easily see when Ive added a new article. I meant to mention that weeks ago when I created the button.

So, basically Ive just been doing other things for a while. Real life stuff, and also a bit of goofing around because we all need to unwind occasionally. For example... I discovered YouTube which is a brilliant idea, and a great time waster. You can sit and watch videos for hours. Make sure you check out the videos by Brookers. Her fresh style caught my attention well before I discovered that it had also caught the eye of the NBC network, who promptly hired her. There are a lot of other good videos too - and a ton of crap. For my personal favourite its best to go directly to their home page for the full story, and if you like the Honda Accord "Things Work" commercial, you'll find the full length version on YouTube too. (you know... the domino effect one - you'll recognise it about a minute in).

You remembered to search for a few train related keywords, right? Try Cityrail, Tangara, Zigzag, "NSW train" etc. In case I missed it, theres a cab ride across the harbour bridge too. YouTube looking more interesting now?? If you really want to be impressed try Shinkansen, Nozomi, or FastTech. Doh! Ive created another YouTube addict.

What else. Lets see... I bought MSTS on special for $12.95 and have had a bit of look at that. I needed to see it for myself to see how it is different to Trainz. Both have strengths and weaknesses, but I think I still prefer Trainz.

Work has been busy lately with a few problems that Im still fixing now (even over the weekend). At least I can log in from here and dont have to travel to the office.

I spent Saturday at HET preparing both of the Red Rattler sets for a tour at the end of the month. RailCorp still hasnt decided if they will allow the manual door F1 set to run. If they dont, the other set (W3) has automatic doors and will be our backup plan, so they both have to be ready just in case.

A lot more has been going on, but these are a few things that come to mind right now.

Once I get back into Gmax I have a few things to do. Naturally theres the Tangara and the 86 Class to finish, and a few smaller things to think about, but theres something else as well. I always save the best until last, to make it worthwhile to those who read through all this waffle, so heres what I can tell you...

Ive come to an arrangement with another Trainz content creator to do some work on a couple of his models. I dont want to say too much at this stage because when its complete it will be a welcome surprise to all NSW Trainz fanatics, and its all about the models rather than my small part, so I want the creator to get all the fuss when he finally releases them. Im only mentioning it here to let all of you know that there is something else that I will be spending my time on, so progress on the 86 and the Tangara will be a little slower than usual over the next few weeks.

Im still trying to figure out the texturing for the Tangara, but I have read a lot and looked at some textures on other models to get an idea of how everyone else does it, so its progressing, but just a little slower than I would like. I always said that the texturing would be the hard part. Between complex scripting and texturing, I'll take the scripting any time! I'll keep you up to date on the Tangara, but naturally I cant post updates on the other "secret" project. Im sure you'll appreciate it when its done. Its minor work, so hopefully it should be done within a few weeks.

Before the break, I managed to get a fair bit done on the 86 Class interior which I havnt posted here yet. Theres still more to do but most of the levers and main attachment points are in place and just need a little tweaking. The S set interior will also get some attention soon, as its been a while since I worked on that, and Im still waiting for someone to start a Japanese Trainz group :)

The photo above was taken in the far corner of the yard at Redfern Carriage Workshops a couple of weeks ago.

Hmm, extra long post - too much stuff in my head. Back to normal next week I hope.