evilchili @evilchili@mastodon.social

you know how a coupla years back, just as the Outrage Machine was really starting to hum, there was this orthogonal push to stop tweeting about your lunch, because nobody cares about your sandwich? that was the thing I loved best about Twitter: people sharing their most mundane, their most regular experiences. It's like a warm blanket, mercifully free of judgement and outrage. I'm no Buddhist, but I really dig the concept of the sacredness of the every day.

I had grilled cheese with bacon, btw.

Hey. I'm a guy in his 40s doing platform engineering at AWS (sorry). I'm married to the best person I know. We're raising twin 6yr old twin boys to be empathetic, careful and considered members of society, I hope. It's really hard.

I dig #music. I drink #coffee. I play #boardgames and run #DnD. I have a half-blind greyhound, Rufus; he's a lovable idiot.

I post random nonsense about my day, music I'm listening to, and what I'm having for lunch.

#introduction

Today's #dicefail was inspired by Van Gogh's starry night. I did better managing bubbles this time but now two of the dice are misshapen because I secured the seams poorly. *sigh*

Son had a fit and yanked the door off his clothes cabinet. So after we had a long conversation about expressing anger without violence I made him help me fix it. Here he is doing the final bit of sanding of excess woodfiller after we rehung the door. #DadOps

Welp, a heated coaster does help drive bubbles to the surface, but this one has two settings and the higher of the two accelerated the exothermic reaction of the resin. By the time I got to the last mold there was a big chunk of solidifying resin at the bottom of my cup and the d6 was only partially filled. So I'm experimenting with topping it off with UV resin. #dice

more resin #dice making experiments.

I have been carting around the same three giant tupperware drawers and tubs for something like 25 years filled with the randomest of random crap: nails. screws. corner braces. electrical fixtures. shelf holders. industrial velcro. putty. woodfiller. mudding tools. I had three of those 101 ESSENTIAL TOOLS things in various stages of loss. and I have two or three actually really pretty good power tools that inevitably got chucked around the garage. NO MORE. #ExtremeDadEnergy

Spent the evening being frustrated with lack of results on this #dice business. somehow managed to trap an air bubble at the bottom point of half the molds and the ones where I didn't do that had one stuck beneath the sprue. So instead of casting more I decided to go back through my coffin of fails. I found a couple in otherwise-failed sets thst just need sanding and a couple more thst needed a patch job. Think I'm going to stick to one-offs for a while until I get more consistent results.

My son made a "magic wand" out of beads.

🍆

these guys are still a little tacky :( I'm hoping another day or two and I'll be able to clean off the uncured resin with alcohol, but I am doubtful. shame, cuz I really like the colors.

#dice

Today in the chilihouse:

- resin dice (me)
- woodworking with glue and clamps (the boys, me)
- sewing a dog toy (boy)
-quilting (wife)
-barfing up tin foil eaten out of the garbage (dog)

We are quite the crafty bunch lately!

#DadOps

What a difference a higher quality paint and good brush makes! Paint pens are no substitute -- convenient, but the paint is garbage. This is DecoArt silver metallic; by no means high end stuff but it goes on real easy and cleans up well. Here's the orange, red and gold foil I did yesterday, including a reinked d20 (you can see how the previous black acrylic got everywhere but the silver stayed put) plus a couple of earlier glittery purple dice I sanded and inked.

#dice

Copper #dice out. As usual, big voids at the top of the squish molds, but I think I can patch them up with some UV resin. You can't tell from the picture but I think I did better with keeping bubbles out of the pour this time, so I'm hopeful they will ink up nice.

My wife gave me big jars of copper, silver and gold shredded glitter foil, so I might do a set of each. Really like how these look atm so I hope I don't screw then up. 😊

About three years ago someone gave the boys a robot kit. They're clever, but they're not follow-poorly-worded-circuit-assembly-directions-at-age-5 clever. We pulled it out today and built it. It required some minor soldering to fix the leads on the motor, and some bolts were replaced with twist ties, but we have a functioning soda can robot.

#dadops

Well the molds are great and produced really lovely #dice. But this was my first attempt at the 2 part exist resin and bubbles got everywhere. You can see the problem the creates when inking on the d20: blotches everywhere, and as you wipe off excess paint it gets stuck in all the little divots. Gonna practice some more but I suspect I will eventually suck it up and get a pressure pot.

I love the colors though; that d12 in particular looks great. Will try this one again I think.

I do this thing where I am mildly irritated by something every day for months until *SNAP* I have to fix it Right. Fucking. Now. which explains why as I was putting on my pyjamas just now I had to stop and get some power tools and industrial adhesives from the garage and drill a guide hole into the back of my bedside table so I could mount the powered charger on the back and thread all the USB cables into the drawers so the top of the table can remain free of clutter.

new #dice molds! woooo! I bought some sprue molds from Druid Dice on Etsy which are beautiful and super clear so they should work for UV resin, but UV resin is about 4 times as expensive as two part epoxy, so I'm giving that a shot this time. Don't have a pressure pot tho, so who knows how this is going to turn out. We'll find out in 36 hours!

Rufus fell asleep reading his book again. #mastodogs

also experimented with thickening one portion of resin under uv a second or two at a time to thicken it to do dirty pours. worked pretty good!

#dice

Finished inking these odd pink and grey dice. definitely easier to do with a fine tip brush and paint than the acrylic paint pens. which is a shame since i am cheap and don't want to buy lots of paint but also i want a lot of options and right now i only have black and red so i guess I'm buying a lot of paint.

#dice