Obsessive hobbies....

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Lol mark. Well thanks for the ride. :).

Anything that makes you feel a bit queasy would be a turnoff in the long haul I would think. But like any game - for me at least - I get into it but after awhile lose interest. I never lose interest in music as I can play things again and again and still feel good about the experience. I can't do that with anything video for the most part for some reason. I mean I will watch a movie I've seen before again - but in maybe a 1 or 2 year span.

FWIW I'm over being queasy. I can play Dirt Rally for an hour plus and have zero discomfort now. This issue is more that I don't see the point in spending an hour plus playing Dirt Rally.

That said, I suspect that I'll be getting a 1836 thickness sander before I start my next wood working project :)
 
I haven’t contributed much to this thread, so let me add something. Photography is one of my main hobbies. For Christmas I got a new lens — a 7Artisans 50mm f/1.1 for my Leica M10 camera. This lens is made in China but is of very good quality. At $350 it is an insane value (the Leica equivalent would be $11,000!). At f/1.1 it has a very narrow depth of field and a nice bokeh (blurred background) which gives excellent subject separation from the background. It also has low microcontrast, giving a soft look to skin. These features make it an excellent portrait lens. So with that introduction, I’ll leave you with a portrait of my daughter enjoying some red velvet cake.

57541F88-BAA0-41C2-9764-2ACB268A0080.jpg
 
I’ll leave you with a portrait of my daughter enjoying some red velvet cake.

great pic Rich ......... just think, 10 1/2 years ago !
 

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very nice. i read about this lens (I use an M9P) and was really intrigued.

I highly recommend it. Best bang for the buck lens you will ever purchase. I have an M9 as well. Love the photos I get from it in good light, but the M10 is a massive step up in usability and low-light capability. The shot above was taken at iso 3200. I simply couldn’t have taken it with the M9 and been happy with the result.

great pic Rich ......... just think, 10 1/2 years ago !

Wow, Dave. Hard to believe.
 
Great hobbies and amazing woodworking guys.

I share far too many of these hobbies and they start to take over my small living space.

That and the fact that I have not moved in 25 years, and stuff just sort of piles up.

My goal is to streamline a bit and get uncluttered, that will be my new hobby.
 
Uncluttering is a great hobby :)

I had a friend once tell me that he feels like everything in his house pays rent to be there. If there are things he doesn't care about making it hard for him to get to things he cares about than they need to go away.

When I build a piece of furniture, it generally replaces another less effective piece, which goes to Goodwill or anyone else who needs it.
I've also had to puzzle together ways to fit additional power tools into my limited space.

Space is Valuable!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac
 
Your friend is a wise guy. That's a great way to think about that stuff. Luckily I've never had the problems with clutter, but I know someone who does. I'll try to convey this wisdom to them, but I'm not holding my breath.
 
I've also had to puzzle together ways to fit additional power tools into my limited space.

Hey Mark,

I thought you'd appreciate this.... For 20-odd years I've owned a 1952 Delta DP-600 drill press. Worked great, but it was beginning to look kinda sad, so I found a local gent who restores vintage power tools and.....here's the result:

wulahk.jpg


e0qds.jpg


Purrs like a kitten and good for another 60 years.
 
I've had an interesting experience in VR land recently and a title that really captured me.

When I was a kid and had just seen Star Wars I would have thought I had died and gone to heaven if this were available back then.

The title is Eve Valkyrie Warzone. They spent $30 Million creating it and even use Katee Sackhoff's voice (Starbuck in the recent BSG series).

In this you are flying fighters in battles on a team against another team with with real players on both teams.

In addition you earn experience over time that increases your rank and you are grouped with other players of a similar rank. The result is that the game play continues to evolve. Players learn how to fly different ships and learn which ships work best in different battle modes. This makes each battle completely unique. You never know who you will have on your team or the opposing team or what their favorite ships are.

You start each battle being launched like a Viper in Battlestar Gallactica from your carrier into battle with one of an assortment of ships you can chose from. You have to learn how to fly each type of ship and use its capabilities. You cooperate with teammates to achieve objectives. The types of battle are 10 or 20 minutes in length unless the objective is completed earlier.

For example in one mode of combat each team tries to control Relay stations with drones. Your team destroys opposing team's drones and plants your drones to control the relays. If you get control of all 3 relays the opposing carriers shields go down for about 90 seconds and you attack the carrier or alternately have to defend yours. After external cooling vents are destroyed the internal fusion reactor is exposed and the carrier can be destroyed. In a few battles there is a draw and in some battles a carrier is destroyed the battle ends there. Typically the team that inflicts the most damage wins.

I'm using my flight rig and feel like I am there being urged into battle. The dog fights are very intense and fast moving and I'm really enjoying this.

There is a learning curve and a lot of buttons to map to my stick and what they do varies by ship

Focus - allows you to highlight an opponent who is highlighted in yellow.
Primary fire - cannons, lasers, etcm
Secondary fire - missiles, etc..
Countermeasures - anti-missile flak, cloak, Shield, etc..
Ultra - some weapon that takes a while to charge

Virtual Reality makes this game! You can be flying in one direction and using your head tracking to get missile lock on a target going another direction. You can feel like you are out in the vastness of space of in a confined area. You can fly around asteroids, inside large space stations. Meanwhile your heads up display is showing you where all the opponents and mission objectives are located.

Absolutely amazing!

Sadly they were creating this title for years before VR headsets made available and wanted to be the first big block buster in VR, but headset sales were much lower than original expectations and they never recovered their investment making this game. They disbanded the VR development team that created it last October :(

On the other hand this is a great example of what is possible in VR with enough effort.
 
Do me a favor mark. Next time you play VR - close one eye. I can't see out of my left eye. Curious what it does to everything.
 
Do me a favor mark. Next time you play VR - close one eye. I can't see out of my left eye. Curious what it does to everything.

Some people close one eye to aim guns using their site in VR.

What you still get in a game like Eve Valkyrie is the ability to look in any direction by moving your head independent of where you are flying.

You of course miss the depth perception, but the experience of being in a virtual world is still there. So if you are hanging from a cliff by your finger tips in "The Climb" and look around you will see that you are dangling hundreds of feet in the air, and the perspective is there, but the 3D depth won't be. So it should basically be like it is for you in real life.
 
Some people close one eye to aim guns using their site in VR.

What you still get in a game like Eve Valkyrie is the ability to look in any direction by moving your head independent of where you are flying.

You of course miss the depth perception, but the experience of being in a virtual world is still there. So if you are hanging from a cliff by your finger tips in "The Climb" and look around you will see that you are dangling hundreds of feet in the air, and the perspective is there, but the 3D depth won't be. So it should basically be like it is for you in real life.

Thanks. I'll have to try a demo.
 
This sort of surprised me, but I'm currently ranked in the top 50 players on the Eve Valkyrie Leader board in two categories.

I guess that officially makes me a gamer now. I'm not sure I'm happy about it.

HeliRider.jpg
 
It appears my VR adventure ended up with an unexpected payoff.

A customer of about 5 years was interested in what I had been doing in VR and we had a couple conversations including one where I explained where I thought this technology was going which is Augmented Reality, how it would be used, and specifically I mentioned the Magic Leap that is coming out later on this year as being the gateway to this.

He then had a conversation with his CEO and showed him a link from a recent trade show that had examples of AR being used in manufacturing.

So it appears that I'll be downloading the soon to be available SDK from Magic Leap and will be leveraging all the work I've done there over the last 5 years to drive some AR content for their service techs.
 
This is so cool mark.

Thanks!

They just acquired an industrial 3D printing company which prints plastics and metal which is a market they expect to grow faster than their current industrial milling machines.

Sadly, the Eve Valkyrie social media FB and Twitter sites have just been shut down. The VR developers were let go last October as I mentioned earlier. The players who hang around in an area of "Discord" are expecting the servers to be shut down in 3-6 months. Hopefully I'll have my fill by then. This game is epic and I actually have about 90 hours logged playing it so far.
 
I've got a wild hair to build a guitar next. Lots to learn!

I've settled on a Stratocaster.

I'm currently considering a Humbucker at the bridge and single coils in the center and by the neck, although I could have multiple pick guards with different pickups.

Right now I'm thinking Claro walnut body with quilted or birds eye Maple neck for contrast. I'm leaning towards nickel fret wire, knobs and bridge and maybe pearl dots depending on whether I use a Claro or rosewood fretboard. Maybe black pickups.


Changing my mind quickly on this. You can buy complete stratocaster kits for $89 solid maple and rosewood with all the hardware including screws. Granted the pickups and hardware aren't incredible, but still. It makes me think I'd be better off trying that out before embarking on this adventure.

I have a friend who said it took him a year to learn how to build a bad guitar and two years to build a good one.
 
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Hey Mark, wow, you sure like to do projects, I admire that. But one quick question, looking at your signal chain in your sig: Where do you handle volume control?

I figure JRiver (which I also use) can do volume adjustments for sources it plays, but what do you do when you drop a disc in the Oppo?
 

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