Media - Page 16 | virtualwolf.org

A photo of a small scruffy blonde dog lying mostly upside-down, except his head and shoulders are propped up on a green/blue blanket and the back of his head is resting against the pointy edge of a bookshelf. It looks decidedly NOT comfortable.

Beanie has made himself apparently (?) comfortable.

beanie our house dog darkroom

Posted on 4 April 2024, 11:19

A photo of a small blue circuit board that's hanging by its wires from a piece of wood that's attached to the side of our back room. Towards the end of the wood there's also a blue box with a little fan vent in it (a Plantower PMS5003 air quality sensor) and a small white plastic enclosure that houses the existing DHT22 temperature/humidity sensor. And at the VERY end is my extremely dodgy solution to avoiding getting the sensors wet: a plastic tupperware that I've screwed into the end of the wood so it shields the sensors.

And we're alive! That was quite straightforward, I found a MicroPython library for the BME280 (https://github.com/robert-hh/BME280) and updated my sensor code (https://github.com/VirtualWolf/esp32-sensor-reader-mqtt) so it can use either the DHT22 or the BME280. And as a fun additional point, the BME280 library also calculates the dew point based on the current temperature and relative humidity! I don't have it running "in production" yet, I've just got it hooked up to a spare ESP32 and it's sending its data to an MQTT broker running on our Mac mini so I can keep an eye on it for a while, but it's very interesting comparing the values between the two sensors... right now the DHT22 says it's 20.2˚C and 94% humidity outside, the BME280 says 19.9˚C but only 71% humidity. I also want to get a better enclosure for the whole setup as well, I'll think I'll ask a friend who has a 3D printer to print me out one of the multitude of Stevenson screens that seem to be out there.

our house diy darkroom esp32

Posted on 3 April 2024, 20:02

A photo of three small dark blue printed circuit boards, two are BME280 temperature/humidity/atmospheric pressure sensors and one is a splitter with little connectors on all four sides, plus a selection of cables.

Yessss, new (small) project time!

our house darkroom new toys esp32

Posted on 2 April 2024, 15:03

A photo of a game of Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team. The board looks like the metal of the inside of an ancient steampunk starship, and the terrain is a bunch of walls all connected together in the same steampunk style to form number of interconnecting rooms. On the right of the board are the xenomorphs from Aliens pretending to be Genestealers, painted in a very dark blue colour. On the left are the six hulking and putrid Death Guard in large military green amour with all sorts of tentacles and demon faces coming out of the armour, and at the far side away from the camera are six Ultramarines of broadly the same shape armour as the Death Guard, but it's a rich blue and doesn't have tentacles and demon faces in it.

A closeup of my Death Guard Fighter, who is wearing hulking green armour with a HUGE toothed mouth in his chest armour going across his whole abdomen and chest and wielding two plague knives, facing off against one of the xenomorph "Warriors", which is down on four legs and looks like it's about to pounce. To the side is a smaller xenomorph more upright behind a set of ammo crates.

A close-up of a Space Marine aiming his boltgun (complete with a 3D-printed muzzle flash weapon effect) at one of the Tyranid Warriors, while a second one lurks just around the corner behind him.

We had our rematch of the Death Guard vs. Tyranids vs. Strike Force Justinian tonight, and because tomorrow is a public holiday we all stayed slightly later and managed to finish the whole game, AND I won 8-7-4! 🎉 (We _did_ slightly fuck up one rule up about injuries and so my Heavy Gunner did better in close combat versus the Space Marine leader than he should have, and ended up killing the leader.) Instead of ten Genestealers, my friend playing the Tyranids took three Tyranid Warriors instead and used, uh... some different type of Aliens miniature for them that looked very cool. The Death Guard felt extremely thematic, it was just a slow, steady, plodding advance across the battlefield, and they were hard enough to kill that they were difficult to dislodge from the objectives once they were on them. My plasma gunner was my MVP, he only shot three times but each one was a killing shot, taking out two Space Marines and a Genestealer. I also took the dual-plague-knives Fighter for the first time and he did okay, but he _definitely_ served well as an extra close-combat threat beyond just my leader. The Disgustingly Resilient rolls were a lot swingier this game than usual, I either did fantastically well (my Plasma Gunner took nine damage from the Space Marine sniper and would have died but ended up rolling so well he only took four, and subsequently ended up vaporising the sniper in his own activation), or really badly (my Fighter took something like ten damage in his first melee combat and saved NONE of it), with nothing in between. As with the first game, we had a couple of very cool cinematic moments, my Fighter facing off against one of the Warriors and a Genestealer, and one of the Space Marines shooting at another of the Warriors while one lurked behind him ready to pounce.

darkroom kill team games workshop death guard tyranids seven hills space marines into the dark

Posted on 31 March 2024, 23:45

A photo of Space Marines, three Assault Intercessors and three standard Intercessors. They're all wearing standard massive Space Marine armour with big shoulder pads painted in a deep rich red, the Assault Intercessors all look like they're mid-stride and are wielding got pistols and chainswords, and one has a grenade in her hand and looks like she's about to lob it. The other three are holding big boltguns, two look like they're in the middle of firing and the third had hers held upright in one hand while she points commandingly with the other. None of them have helmets and they've all got either mohawks or very short cropped hair and various cybernetic implants. Their guns and chainswords are all black and they've got various brown leather pouches attached to their waists. The bases are done up to look like battlefield mud, it's all dark brown and wet-looking and splattered part-way up their shins, and there's some swampy-looking grasses and green goopy swamp water on the bases too.

And with that, the Intercession team is complete! So very happy with how these came out, but let me tell you, I am not doing this much edge highlighting ever again. 😂

lightroom our house kill team games workshop painting space marines

Posted on 28 March 2024, 21:22

A photo of just one of the Assault Intercessors, she's in a very dynamic pose and is in the middle of running forwards while aiming a chunky bolt pistol in one hand and in her other is a chainsword like she's about to swing it at whoever it is she's aiming at once she gets there. Her armour is a deep rich red colour and all the edges of the armour plates have a lighter red highlight around them. Her skin is black and her hair looks like it's been done in cornrows.

My converted Intercession team is now completely done bar the basing and decals! 🎉 The magnifying headset and the absurdly fine brush I bought were definitely both excellent purchases, there's no way I'd have been able to get the eyes done this well otherwise. I included the second photo because I just CANNOT get the edge highlighting properly visible when they're sitting on the table like in the first photo.

lightroom our house kill team games workshop painting space marines

Posted on 21 March 2024, 22:19

Another Sunday, another game of Kill Team! I didn't actually play tonight because I didn't have a great night's sleep last night and absolutely did not have the mental capacity for it, but I DID supply the terrain and it looked absolutely fantastic. It was Plague Bearers vs. converted Skaven Adeptus Mechanicus, but because there were 12 Plague Bearers and 11 AdMech we only got through two turns, final score was 5-4.

darkroom gaming kill team games workshop chaos daemons seven hills

Posted on 17 March 2024, 23:12

A photo of a dining table with four players worth of cards around it.

We went out to visit @scarydan and their lovely partner today, and brought good ol' Munchkin. Super-close game, we had everyone at Level 9 and @scarydan's partner who had never played before ended up winning!

darkroom gaming newtown munchkin

Posted on 16 March 2024, 18:14

A photo of a group of six partially-painted Space Marines, three Assault Intercessors and three standard Intercessors. They're all wearing the standard massive Space Marine armour with big shoulder pads which has been painted in a deep rich red colour. All the guns are black and they have brown leather pouches strapped to their waists. The armour all has lighter red strokes along the edges of the plates, and the only completely unpainted bits are the heads.

THE EDGE HIGHLIGHTING IS DONE! ::collapses in a heap:: I didn't even do the "proper" pin-sharp do-it-with-the-edge-of-the-brush thing except for the very lightest highlights at the very end, on the tops of their kneepads and along the edges of the armour in front of their faces, but man that took a while. I only managed to do two each night because it was that tedious, no way in hell would I be doing an entire army like this. Very happy with the results, though looking at the photo it's not super-obvious with the lighting there, but trust me, it is in person. 😅

our house darkroom kill team painting space marines

Posted on 15 March 2024, 21:48

A photo of a white half-size IKEA Billy bookshelf sitting against a wall. The top shelf is mostly full of cozy mystery books, and top of it is a white Apple HomePod plus a selection of little knickknacks (a stuffed sheep, a couple of elegant-looking glass penguins, a framed photo, etc.). To the right is part of a painting hanging on the wall, underneath is a dark blue single seater lounge, and to the left is the doorway looking out into two shadowed rooms.

On a lark I decided to pull out the trusty old Fujifilm X100S and snap some photos around the house, ended up keeping just this one. The X100 series is SUCH a fantastic form factor, I'd love to get the just-released X100VI but since COVID we don't remotely go out taking enough photos to justify it.

lightroom our house fujifilm x100s

Posted on 12 March 2024, 22:11